370 
and subsidence is passing from the scientific mind. It too is 
doomed. 
The latest ideas of upheaval and subsidence entertained in 
what may be called “ head-quarters }> in this science, are stated 
by Professor Ramsay, in his address already quoted. He says, 
“ There, in the Alps, we find areas half as large as an English 
county, in which a whole series of formations has been turned 
upside down. But by what means were masses of strata many 
thousands of feet thick bent and contorted, and raised into the 
air, so as to produce such results, and thus affording matter for 
the elements to work upon? Hot by igneous or other pressure and 
upheaval from below; for that would stretch instead of crumpling 
the strata in the manner in which we find them, in great mountain 
chains like the Alps, or in less disturbed groups like those of 
the Highlands, Wales, and Cumberland, which are only frag- 
ments of older mountain-ranges ; but perhaps, as some have 
supposed, from the radiation from the earth of heat into space, 
producing gradually a marked shrinkage of the earth/ s har- 
dened crust.'”* Again, he speaks of the formation of mountain- 
chains by “ direct igneous action operating from below,” as an 
old-fashioned idea which he wonders to see produced in memoirs 
of even well-informed writers now, and thus he leads on to the 
new theory of a “ shrinkage of the eartlds hardened crust.” 
He does not say how this shrinkage and crumpling were pro- 
duced. He only speaks of the radiation of heat as that which 
“ some have supposed;” and in regard to the formation of gneiss 
and granite, he says frankly, as to how they were produced, 
he “ cannot tell;” only he imagines that somehow the means 
must have been heat ! This launches the hypothesis of a 
shrinking crust on the sea of willing speculation ; but by “the 
law of continuity,” which has so ruled the race of theories 
from the beginning till now, ought we not to expect that 
“ shrinkage ” will, perhaps, by the time the British Association 
meets again, have given place to a successor ? Surely when 
we recollect that the lowest stratum yet discovered in the for- 
mation of the globe is one from water, which gives no sign 
whatever of shrinkage , it requires a very bold stroke of fancy 
to imagine that such a thing is to account for the mighty dis- 
turbance evident even in the Alps themselves. Who, then, can 
contemplate the real state of speculative geology, as we are 
thus finding it in its very foundations, wuthout seeing that its 
great leaders are completely adrift, and that without either 
chart or compass by which to steer? We have been kindly 
told, not to be afraid of the effect which this science may have 
* Geological Magazine for November 1st, 1866, p. 510. 
