of the Town of New- Haven. 91 



cooling without any other pressure upon it, than that of 

 the atmosphere ; the latter actually melted in the bowels 

 of the earth, and injected among the superior strata, by 

 the force of subterraneous fire, but never erupted like 

 lava, cooling under the pressure of the superincumbent 

 strata ; and therefore for which reason it assumes a more 

 compact appearance, free from those cells so common in 

 lavas. 



To account for the appearance of the numerous mas- 

 ses of whin stone which w^e now see above the surface, 

 they suppose that the materials which lay above, haAC 

 been worn and washed away in the progress of time by 

 the weather, and have left the harder and less destructi- 

 ble masses of whin stone exposed to view. 



On the other hand, the Neptunian or Wernerian ge- 

 ologists suppose, that whin stone is a crystaline deposit 

 from an actual state of solution in water. 



These ideas, both of the Huttonians and Wernerians, 

 are considered b}^ their respective advocates', as equally 

 applicable to granite, porphyry, and the other varieties 

 of rocks, whose texture is crystaline. Perhaps it would be 

 more correct to apologize for having digressed at all into 

 theories of the earth, where we usually find so much that 

 is visionary, hypothetical or false, than to persist farther 

 in speculations which must at last end where they bcgan^ 

 in doubt and painful uncertainty. It will therefore be 

 more expedient to pass on to matters of fact, where we 

 are in less danger of being misled by imagination. 



South-east of the rock which we have been consider- 

 ing, are two eminences, lying in the same chain or ridge 

 with the East Rock itself. The first of these is com- 

 pact w^hin stone, and the faces of the stone are remark- 

 ably regular in their fracture, presenting frequently the 

 rhomboidal prism. On the front of the other eminence, 

 about two thirds of the way from its base to the top, and 

 on that part which inclines towards the East Rock, we 

 discover a bed of sand stone, having large and distinct 

 masses of quartz imbedded In it. The strata are inclin- 

 ed a little to the east, and apparently sustain the bed of 

 granitic whin, which forms the mass of the eminence it- 

 self. The materials which compose this eminence, are 



