Literary Notices. 15 L 



aroused, or until he sinks into a state of actual sleep or stupor 

 from exhaustion." 



Notes upon the Errors of Geology: Illustrated by Reference 

 to Facts observed in Ireland. By John Kelly, Vice-President of 

 the Royal Geological Society of Ireland. (Longmans.) — Mr. Kelly 

 is acquainted with a considerable number of geological facts, and 

 he puts them to a very curious and singular use. He thinks men 

 like Lyell, Murchison, Phillips, and Ramsay all wrong. They can 

 only account for the appearances they observe upon the supposition 

 that the causes producing them were in action during very long 

 periods, while Mr. Kelly requires all sedimentary rocks to be made 

 in a hurry. He supposes that a few thousand years ago there was 

 a turmoil in the interior of the earth, and " its hard nucleus of 

 granite was split up into large blocks by volcanic agitation." 

 " Suppose," he says, "one of these blocks heaved up by the expan- 

 sive power of steam, and, on the escape of the steam, let down 

 again by its own gravity. In the fissures or joints about the block, 

 after having been put in motion, there would have been a consider- 

 able amount of ground granite made by the sliding or friction of 

 the moving block." Not withstanding that this process is supposed 

 to have taken place at the bottom of the sea, the " granite would 

 be," in Mr. Kelly's hypothetical arrangements, "red-hot, or nearly 

 so." Having obtained a large quantity of powdered granite, nothing 

 ( is easier than to make it into strata, sorted out according to the 

 size of the particles. It only requires " another volcanic heave 

 and a puff from below" to scatter all the materials about in the 

 water, and allow them to subside into any quantity of sedimentary 

 rock that might be required. The operation commences with the 

 formation of great cracks in the sea bottom. " Call every such 

 fissure a Grinding Machine. In this way give it steam power 

 to lift the block, gravitation to cause it to slide down, friction to 

 grind off projections in the act of sliding, and make sandy depres- 

 sions to receive this sand ; and steam again to blow out the ground 

 stuff, a vacuum left in its place, cold water to rush into the vacuum, 

 hot granite to convert that into steam again, for a new effort." Ten 

 or twenty thousand of such grinding machines all going at once in 

 a' hundred square miles of ocean bottom, would, according to Mr. 

 Kelly's computation, make a bed over the whole area twenty miles 

 thick in a century, or, working at half speed, they would turn out 

 " any of our geological systems " in that time. We ought to add 

 that Mr. Kelly knows of actions of this sort in Ireland, we presume 

 in some parts, verifying the old joke, that the laws of nature refuse 

 to operate in that interesting country. 



