GLEANINGS IN SCIENCE. 
3 
My success, from the first, was such as to promise the most satisfactory result, 
though it is only within the lust year that I have been able to command the repe- 
tition of the experiments in a manner fit to be laid before this Society This 
must be my apology to those who hear me, and to such of my friends as take an 
interest in these investigations, for having so long delayed the publication of a set 
of facts, some of which had presented themselves to my view many years ago. 
Whoever, indeed, has had any experience in the prosecution of new subjects of 
experimental inquiry, knows that, o\\ing to his ignorance of the requisite adjust- 
ment of the proportions of the ingredients, and of other similar arrangements, he 
must depend, in a great degree, upon chance for the success of his first results, and 
that he must often submit to spend much time and labour upon a subject, even 
after it has been made out to his own satisfaction, before he has acquired sufficient 
command over its details to answer lor the result of any particular experiment, so 
as to be able to produce it with confidence to the public. 
It may be interesting, in the first place, to describe, in a general way, the geolo- 
gical structure of the country, in the neighbourhood of the singular scene which 
gave r.se to these speculations. 
On different occasions 1 have laid before this Society observations made on the 
rugged shore which occupies the southern shore of the entrance of our estuary the 
Firth of Forth, which, from being frequently washed by a very boisterous ocean, 
presents to view a distinct exhibition of its internal structure. The eastern part is 
occupied by the promontory of Fas teas tie, composed entirely of the elder quality of 
strata, called by the Germans Grey Waeke. Further to the west it consists of cliffs 
formed of Sandstone, nearly in a horizontal position. These two meeting in the 
crag called the Sicear Point, afford the most distinct view we any where have of 
the peculiar relation and mnrual history of these two rocks. 
More inland, on the borders of Lammermuir, a set of horizontal beds occur, con- 
sisting of a loose assemblage of rounded stones, intermixed with sand and gravel, 
■which bear every appearance of having been deposited by water, and which, as to 
their general history, seem to have undergone no change since the overwhelming, 
though transient agitations of water, of which I have frequently had occasion to 
speak in this Society. 
In the summer of 1812, as 1 was returning from visiting the granitic range 
which occurs in the water of Fas net, in the hills of Larnmermuir, and riding down 
the little valley of Aikengaw, which deeply indents this loose collection of gravel 
and shingle, about two miles above the village of Oldhamstocks, and at the distance 
of eight or ten miles from the sea, I was struck with astonishment on seeing one 
of these graved banks, formed, as above described, of perfectly loose materials, tra- 
versed vertically by a dyke, which, in its middle, consisted of whinstone, and was 
flanked by solid conglomerate; but this solidity abated gradually till, the conglu- 
tination of the rounded masses diminishing by degrees, the state of loose shingle and 
gravel was entirely restored on both sides. The agglutinated mass adjacent to the 
dyke bore no resemblance to the result of calcareous petrifaction ; scarcely ever 
gave effervescence with acid ; and, by its gradual termination, differed from any 
wkinstone-dyke I have seen to penetrate the strata ; for, in the ordinary case, the 
termination of the crystallite against the adjoining aggregate through which it 
passes, is almost always quite abrupt. 
About a hundred yards higher up. the valley of Aikengaw, there occurs an ag- 
glutination similar to the last, though without any whin-dyke, and sufficiently 
strong to resist the elements, by which the surrounding matters had been washed 
away, leaving the pudding-stone, or agglutinated shingle, to stand up by itself in 
a manner remarkable enough to have attracted the notice of the peasantry as some- 
thing supernatural, since they have bestowed upon it the name of the Fairy’s Castle. 
Farther up the stream, other agglutinations occur frequently, as we could see in 
little narrow glens cutting through the mass ; and higher still, they are so nume- 
rous as to meet and convert the whole into one unbroken mass of pudding-stone, 
occupying all that is exposed to view. 
These very remarkable, and, to me at least, novel appearances, were the first 
which suggested the idea, that the consolidation not only of this class of conglome- 
rates, but of sandstone in general, had been occasioned by the influence of some 
substance in a gaseous or aeriform state, driven by heat into the interstices be- 
tween the loose particles of sand and gravel, where it had acted as a flux on the 
contiguous parts. On considering what this penetrating substanee might be, and 
from whence it could have come, the following circumstance presented itself to 
