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me, these upheavals and depressions without forming gaps in the earth’s crust 
are just the very difficulties in geology that Mr. Hopkins’s paper tends to 
solve. Geological authorities now admit that mere upheaval and depression 
do not account for the phenomena. In Professor Ramsay’s inaugural address 
to the Geological Section of the British Association he says : — 
“ 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 ? Not by igneous or other pressure and up- 
heaval from below, for that would stretch instead of crumpling i he 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, W ales, and Cumber- 
land, which are only fragments of older mountain-ranges.” 
Now, if we regard the earth’s crust as a whole, comprising its hills and 
vales, — and in these vales I especially include the great beds of the ocean, it 
does not form one rigid smooth plain ; and even supposing it to be crushed 
together or compressed into smaller space, if we consider that it is not level, 
but formed of materials unequal both in their constitution as regards stiffness 
and pliability, and also in elevation and depression, the result would be that 
mountains would be raised higher, while at other places there would be 
depressions, by means of that very compression. I do not say that this 
would be the result universally, for we must further consider the slowness of 
this motion, and the waste of solid material that also takes place in various 
ways ; as, for instance, from the very atmosphere crumbling down even the 
hardest granite rocks, and from igneous action below ; for although we do 
not hold, I suppose, now, with the igneous theory that we were taught to 
believe for a long time, still we know there is burning going on below some 
parts of the earth, and a certain amount of solid material is thus disposed of. 
And even this internal heat, it seems, might be the result of this crushing 
and jamming together that Mr. Warington finds so difficult to understand. 
At all everts, this subterranean combustion, and the throwing out of materials 
from below, will make room for the fresh material, to be jammed and crushed 
together. Of course we know that this paper now puts before a scientific 
meeting, I think for the first time, a series of views perfectly heretical in 
geology, and perfectly new, though the facts on which they are based are 
pretty well known to all ; and in my opinion Mr. Hopkins has put forward 
his hypothesis to account for them very fairly. He has worked at it for 
many years, and has endeavoured to gain the ear of the public by means of his 
very valuable work on Terrestrial Magnetism and Geology ; and we know 
that Professor Kirk, when at our request he was kind enough to give us a 
review of the whole theories of geology, was driven, to a certain extent, to 
the acceptance of Mr. Hopkins’s views, as affording the best explanation of 
those facts, which neither the igneous nor the aqueous theories, nor the up- 
heavals and subsidences of other theorists, could properly account for. Now, 
that being the case, at least it is of great consequence that this theory 
