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they may have srained in passing through previous formed roclcs. Had it not been for 
the outburst of such igneous rocks, our ' old and craggy earth,' as Cowper caEs it, would 
have been full of yawning chasms, and its solid crust would have presented an appearance 
something similar to a clay-bank that has been exposed to a July sun. But the fluid molten 
matter has been squirted from beneath into all the fissures which had been formed from the 
contraction of the masses after their formation, and has bound and cemented them together. 
Nay, were it not for the existence of such outlets to the fier;/ reservoir below these volcanic 
vents^ our world could not have lived out half its days. These have been, in all stages of 
its history, the safety-valves to let off the superfluous patency, itistead of being yent up 
and explodhiq the thin shell formed hy the stratified rocks, or causing the earth to 
come to an untimely end hy its disjointed continents uoandering in several o/-^/^^ through 
space, in a manner similar to that hypothetical planet Pluto," 
Mr. Taylor has said here nothing new which others have not said before, 
but the passages we have set in italics will show the incongruity of the 
items of which this igneous theory is compounded ; for how that which 
has cemented together the fractures of the sliell of our earth can be a means 
outlet for the liquid matter beneath, is not clearer than is the source of 
the heat that made and maintains a molten core attributed to our planet. 
As to the origin of these so-called igneous rocks, just let us put againt these 
old parrot-repeated dicta what Sterry-Hunt, one of the best of modern 
geologists, has recently written in his " Contributions to Lithology," in 
SiJliman's Journal. 
" I have already, in other places, expressed the opinion that the various eruptive 
rocks have had no other origin than the softening and displacement of sedimentary de- 
posits ; and have thus their sources xdthin the toicer portions of the earth's stratified 
covering, and not beneath it. The theory which conceives them to have been derived 
from a portion of the interior of the earth still retaining its supposed primitive condition 
of igneous fluidity, is, in my opinion, untenable. It is not here the place to discuss the 
more or less ingenious speculations of Phillips, Durocher, and Bunsen as to the constitu- 
tion of this supposed fluid centre, nor the more elaborate hypothesis of Sartorius von 
Walterhausen as to the composition and arrangement of the matters in this imnginary 
reservoir of Plutonic rocks. The immense variety presented in the composition of 
eruptive masses, presents a strong argument against the notion that they are derived, as 
these writers have supposed, two or more zones of moll en matter, differing in com- 
position and density^ and lying everywhere beneath the solid crust of the earthy which, 
in opposition to the views of many modern mathematicians and physicists, the school of 
geologists just referred to regard as a shell of very limited thickness. The view which I 
adopt is one. the merit of which belongs, I believe, to Christian Keferstein, who, in his 
' Naturgeschichte des Erdkorpers,' published in 1834, maintained that all the unstrati- 
fied rocks from granite to lava are products of the transformation of sedimentary strata, 
in part very recent ; and that there is no well-defined line to be drawn betioeen Neptu- 
nian and Volcanic rocks, since they pass into each other." 
The general tenor of Mr. Taylor's Essays however is very good, and 
his book is a very readable and useful one, especially in all that he has to 
say on the local geology of those districts in which he has resided. Thus 
the accounts of the Lancashire coal-field and of the strata in the vicinity 
of Manchester, are exceedingly interesting, while the illustrations of fossil 
plants and shells are very appropriately selected. 
Flora of Surrey. By J. A. Brewer. London : Van Voorst. 1863. 
This is a full and comprehensive catalogue of the flowering plants and 
ferns found in the county, with the localities of the rarer species, from the 
manuscripts of the late J. D. Salmon, F.L.S., and from other sources, 
