333 
another, — if this, I say, appears to any too startling a con- 
ception ; let me quote briefly the words of some other eminent 
geologists, as to the startling changes that are known to have 
taken place in the strata of this earth. In Professor Ramsay's 
address to the Geological Section of the British Association at 
Nottingham, in 1866, he says : — 1 
“ The Silurian strata in North Wales are now to a great extent inter- 
mixed with igneous rock. . . . All the rocky masses of which the region 
consists, both igneous and aqueous, have been disturbed and thrown into 
sweeping undulations formed of curved strata thousands of feet thick, by 
those agencies, whatever they may have been, that at a later date produced 
disturbance.” 
He goes on to say, that even those who have witnessed 
these contortions, can have no conception how still more 
marvellously the strata have been disturbed elsewhere, as in 
the Alps : — 
“ There (he says) we find areas as large as half an English county, 'in which 
a whole series of formations has been turned upside down.” * 
And what is now the scientific doctrine respecting the 
so-called igneous rocks mentioned in the above quotations ? 
At one time, you may remember, it was taught as scientific 
truth 33 that granite had an igneous origin ; and it was upon 
“ the fundamental granite 33 that the sedimentary strata used 
to be laid down. Can any geological “ exponent 33 now tell 
us, upon what the sediments of the seas are even conjectured 
to have been deposited ? I am not aware that even specula- 
tive geology has yet invented a bottom for the waters of the 
globe, since the fundamental granite failed them. For what is 
this granite now found to be ? In a paper read by Mr. Geikie 
in the Geological Society, and in a paper in the Geological 
Magazine for 1866, he says, that the sand-stones and clay, as 
well as limestone in Ayrshire, can be seen passing into trap 
and granite ) and he adds : — 
“At last I am therefore forced to conclude that the crystalline rocks 
described above have resulted from the alteration, in situ , of certain bedded 
deposits.” 
In like manner writes Mr. Hamilton in his annual address, 
already quoted : — 
“ It was formerly supposed that the crystalline rocks, particularly the 
granite, owed their origin to igneous action. Now it is well known that these 
* Report of Brit. Ass., 1866, pp. 46, 47 ; and Journ. of Trans. Viet. Inst. 
vol. i. p. 370. 
