80 THE TRAP FORMATION OF 



materials of which the sides are composed ; applied to the trap, it will thus 

 be an overlying rock, whether it be, as it is seen here, only on the surface, 

 or whether it occurs, as it so often does elsewhere, and here too perhaps be- 

 low the surface, interstratified, entangled, and in what not position in other 

 rocks. The works of after ages, by means of either agent, — the ocean, 

 for instance, acting through those ages, might have exercised denudation, 

 and disturbance, until only a portion of a more horizontal ray is occasion- 

 ally to be seen, indicating an explosion somewhere, either proximate, or 

 remote from the spot : — a stratum, — a dyke or a vein occurs of no obvious 

 connection. If the simile of a mine be at all admissible, it may be carried 

 on and said, that compared with the solid contents of the globe, the product 

 here seems to have been from a line of Fougasses continually working re- 

 sults through a long course of time ; the ruin lies about, a small portion 

 of which is a half calcined lime-stone, can it once have been the lias ? 

 and the chert of Bapyle, and the small fragments occasionally found of a 

 yellow dendritic lime-stone, the only aids at present in corroborating the 

 idea ? and the clays, the yellow and the deep chocolate, and the marly 

 ochres, are they the more unchanged matter, and the laterite an iron 

 ore disfigured and impoverished ? The cellular, or honey-comb lava- 

 like variety of trap occasionally is met amidst the abundance of other 

 kinds; whilst the sand-stone rock is, as a remains, shook and split 

 and vitrified, but not displaced or inclined : — The fluid matter seems 

 to have shrunk and sunk, and thus, in a great measure, arises the 

 phenomena of the trap in the low grounds, and the disrobed naked 

 appearance of the sand-stone islets, as if their clothing had slipt down. 

 But the incumbent waters by their under currents, not by violent agi- 

 tation, would seem to have rounded the masses, and further confused the 

 heaps thrown up, and, after the igneous agency had ceased to act, every 

 trace of the sphere of action would be by those waters quickly obliterated. 

 The small hummocks, which occur so often, and more particularly at the 



ends 



