ORIGIN OF ERUPTIVE AND PRIMARY ROCKS. 295 



great cosmos, are the points that chiefly interest us : and if any 

 one desires to understand more in detail, how they were created, 

 we wish him all success in his inquiries, but warn him not to 

 suppose that this great mystery is to be solved by a reference 

 merely to material agencies apart from that Spiritual Power 

 who is the essence of forces, the origin of laws. 



Art. XXII. — On the Origin of Eruptive and Primary Rocks, 

 By Thomas Macfarlane. Part J. 



{Presented to the Natural History Society.) 



On a former occasion, * I had the honor of presenting to this 

 Society a series of papers describing the primitive formations 

 as they occur in Norway, and comparing them with their Cana- 

 dian equivalents. I then confined myself to a simple statement 

 of the facts known regarding these formations, referring to their 

 constituent rocks, to their structure, and to the order of their 

 succession, but abstaining altogether from any attempt to pro- 

 pound a theory which might explain the various phenomena 

 described. I subsequently f however gave a translation of a 

 chapter from Naumann's classical Lehrbuch der Geognosie, wherein 

 the various views entertained by geologists as to the origin of 

 these formations, are plainly and impartially stated. It there 

 appears, that although there exists an extraordinary diversity of 

 opinion among geologists on this subject, there are two distinct 

 and opposing theories, under one or other of which those different 

 views may be classified. The first of these theories, and the one 

 adopted by the majority of geologists, supposes the primitive or 

 primary rocks to have resulted from the alteration or metamor- 

 phism of sedimentary strata. The second theory supposes them, 

 in part at least, to represent the first solidified crust of our 

 planet. 



Although these opposing theories might with justice be 

 respectively termed, so far as they refer to the origin of the 

 primary rocks, the aqueous or metamorphic theory, and the 

 igneous theory, still they must not be considered as bearing the 

 slightest relation to the old theories adopted, and so pertinaciously 



* Canadian Naturalist, Vol. VII, p. 1. 

 t Canadian Naturalist, Vol. VII, p. 254. 



