clx Report of the Miner alogical Survey [No. 126*. 



the latter has torn up a vast mass of consolidated strata, scattering 

 their ruins over an extent of many hundred square miles. 



344. Granting, however, that these attempts to find a geological 

 theory in the sacred records have been as hasty as ill-judged, we 

 shall not find Dr. Fleming more successful than those whose labors 

 he has overturned, in explaining the phenomena in these mountains. 

 With him it is merely the bursting of a series of lakes, and the diluvium 

 is in his nomenclature, lacustrine silt. The mere alteration of the 

 name is of little signification, nor does it lead us a step further in our 

 search after truth. But here is no series of lakes, no vallies that 

 might conveniently be supposed beds of lakes. The only vallies in the 

 several Doons are beyond the limits of many of the phenomena which 

 their bursting is to explain. Were our geologists always satisfied with 

 shewing what is not the cause, the science might make more progress 

 than it has done, but one theory is no sooner laid than another rises 

 to supply its place. 



345. In reality, our chief object should be in the first instance to 

 collect facts from every quarter. If the explanation is to be general 

 the induction should be equally so, as well as the data on which it 

 is founded. Our limited acquaintance with the surface of the earth 

 will not allow of our generalising as yet with safety, and it will be 

 constantly found, that the hypothesis invented to explain the phenomena 

 in one country, will be overturned by facts observed in another. Dr. 

 Fleming, in his hurry to establish his own view of the subject, has 

 certainly confounded two distinct, and in many cases, easily recognised 

 classes of appearances ; and in truth, the whole of what Professor 

 Buckland has advanced in his Reliquise Diluvianse remains untouched, 

 (because it is observation,) excepting his notion of the identity of the 

 cause, the effect of which he has so ably traced to the deluge of 

 Scripture. I need hardly add, that the phenomena in these mountains 

 have a most striking analogy with those detailed in the above work. 



346. The hasty generalisation which produced the Wernerian system 

 of geognosy has long been acknowledged, and the fact established that 

 few countries, even belonging to the same formation, present exactly 

 the same arrangement and succession of rocks. The opinions of some 

 geologists have even taken the other extreme, and it has been questioned 

 whether there be any such thing as a general formation quite round 



