508 Dr. Mac Culloch on Staffa. 



tributed to change the face of the globe by our own short span, we 

 are led to seek for that solution which may appear the least difficult. 

 Even then, we must admit that StafFa has formed part of one con- 

 tinuous land with the islands of Coll, Tirey, and Mull, since no 

 transportation could have been effected without the existence at 

 some period of a continuous declivity between them. 



The language which this circumstance speaks, is not obscure, and 

 the nature of these changes allows of little dispute. If we admit 

 this obliteration of so large a portion of solid land, and consider 

 that a deep sea now rolls above the foundations of former mountains, 

 we have no further difficulties to obstruct us in accounting for the 

 numerous and distant accumulations of transported materials which 

 occur over the whole surface of the earth. The same power, 

 whatever it was, that hollowed the great sinuosity of Mull, might 

 well remove the solid matter that once filled the valleys which now 

 separate Mont Blanc from the ridge of Jura. 



But if appalled at the supposed magnitude of those changes, and 

 at the period of time w^hich must have elapsed to complete them, 

 v;e suppose that the island of Staffa was elevated from the bottom 

 of the sea in its present detached form, and retaining on its summit 

 a portion of the bed of loose matter deposited under the present 

 waters, another order of phenomena crowds on us, no less impor- 

 tant, and involving circumstances almost equally repugnant to the 

 visible operations of nature. 



The appearances are perhaps insufficient to enable us to decide 

 between two difficulties of equal magnitude, nor is it here necessary 

 to enter further on that question. I may also leave it to those who 

 have engaged moredeeplyinsuch investigations, to determine whether 

 in the supposition of the first of these causes, whether the wasting of 

 the land has arisen from the gradual action of natural operations, or 



