BEN-NEVIS. 353 



cause iii cooling, they could not possibly have 

 assumed so distinctly their respective characters, 

 as mineral substances. But they exhibit every 

 indication, which can be required as proof, that 

 they have been regularly and successively formed 

 by deposition. 



Under the precipice, indeed, where the dark 

 coloured rock is first observed along the channel 

 of the stream, it exhibits veins and nodules of fel- 

 spar, which may be regarded as igneous pheno- 

 mena. But the same substance in the same forms, 

 being found in the upper part of the formation, 

 at the distance of many hundred feet in perpendi- 

 cular height, from the red coloured rock, and ha- 

 ving evidently no communication with it by means 

 of veins ; and a great proportion of the interposed 

 mass, being entirely destitute of the crystals or 

 veins in question : we are entitled by all the rules 

 of scientific induction to conclude, that the felspar 

 in these cases, forms a part of the original struc- 

 ture of the rock, and has not been intruded into 

 its substance, by the agency of any external force. 

 The mere similarity of what is contained in such 

 veins and nodules, to the rock below, affords no 

 argument for the doctrine of ejection, since mi- 

 neral substances of the same oryctognostic charac- 

 ters are known to be formed in very different po- 

 sitions and repositories. It is also deserving of 

 remark, that the faces of rock where the veins in 

 question present themselves, are commonly very 



