30 
EXTENT OF DISTURBANCE. 
thrown into those undulations presented by the hills 
of our “ transition series” of rocks ; it might also at 
the same moment be asked, whether the same intru¬ 
sions did not induce a bodily sinking of the land, 
and thereby, those evidences of oceanic ingress ex¬ 
hibited by our coast. Now, we are enabled by mere 
reference to the granitic andtrappean pebbles which 
occur amidst the osseous reliques of our caves, to 
show at once that the granite and trapp had been 
upheaved, prior to that great convulsion (whether 
the Mosaic flood, or any subsequent deluge) which 
annihilated the creation of animals and vegetables 
as they then existed with us; and, if so many ages 
have elapsed, and subsequent catastrophes occurred 
to us, there will not only be a great difficulty in tra¬ 
cing what were the precise results of this igneous 
disturbance, but even, a probability amounting to 
indirect proof, that those appearances of raised 
beaches and submerged land on the coast, were pro¬ 
duced by later events. Having thus paved the way 
to a more consistent theory, I may remark, that I 
have devoted a separate portion of this work to an 
ample consideration of the sera to which these phe¬ 
nomena are to be ascribed, and confining my attention 
here, to the igneous class of rocks, I must confess 
that notwithstanding the reasonableness of the con¬ 
jecture of general superficial disturbance, there is 
no evidence of such, beyond the limits of these pre¬ 
sumed agents, or beyond that, of which I have given 
an illustration in our slate deposit. If therefore, we 
are to measure consequences by actual phenomena 
I may entertain a suspicion that the granite confined 
its dislocating influences to those regions or spots 
where it appeared, and, that the other Plutonic 
agents conformed on their part, to the sweep of those 
hills of which they were to become component 
portions. 
