280 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 



stated and discussed at greater length. For the sake of reference, 

 and for greater perspicuity, we have numbered them. 



1. The whole of our rocks (the whinstone dike excepted) 

 have been formed by aqueous deposition. — The parallelism of the 

 beds, the arrangement of the organic remains in seams, and the 

 position of the large and broad shells, skeletons, and pieces of wood, 

 which have their flattest sides placed in the planes of the strata in 

 which they are imbedded, all concur in proving, that the materials of 

 each stratum must have successively floated in water, and subsided to 

 the bottom. — It follows, as a corollary, that all our strata have been 

 covered by the sea, at the time of their formation. 



2. Hence it appears, that the strata must have been originally 

 horizontal, or nearly horizontal. — In depositions by water, there is 

 always a tendency to the horizontal posture; and where we see beds 

 that are the result of aqueous deposition running parallel to each 

 other for several miles, we must conclude, that they have been de- 

 posited horizontally, or on a declivity so gentle as not to affect their 

 apparent parallelism. 



3. Some powerful force, acting upon the strata, has thrown 

 them, in almost all places, out of their horizontal position, and pro- 

 duced extensive dislocations and contorsions. — Into the nature of 

 that force, we do not at present inquire; but its effiects are every 

 where visible, in the present irregularities of the strata, described in 

 Part First. No one who attentively observes the breaks and undula- 

 tions at Whitby, at Peak, at Scarborough, and other parts of the 

 coast, can suppose that the strata were originally deposited in their 

 present form. When we see the aluminous beds gradually descending 

 at Hawsker Bottoms, and after various undulations, suddenly break- 

 ing off" at Whitby harbour, and then rising again at Sandsend, in the 

 same order in which they had sunk, we are compelled to believe, 

 that they were once continuous, and that their continuity, as well as 



