thereby will furnish the most undeniable evidence of the correctness of these conclusions.

The influence exercised, by the form of the earth, in modifying the relative sites of these boulders, when their other prognostics, such as the distance of their route, &c., are taken into account, together with a candid and attentive application of the whole phenomena, will be found to yield the most satisfactory results, and the most perfect elucidation of those geological manifestations which abound; and to afford one of the most convincing tests of the soundness of the Dynamical Theory. For we feel convinced, that those influential conditions, and those conditions alone, will resolve the enigma, which hitherto has baffled all attempts to explain it, namely-the manifest indifference shown, during their projectile progress, by several immense boulders, located among the Alps, to the enormous mountains which at present intervene between them and the places of their origin; giving rise to innumerable hypothetical conclusions, and to the necessity of calling in the aid of wonder-working debacles to account for their translation; while, at the same time, the comparatively smaller and more distant travelled ones of the North of England present the contradictory evidence of having paid every respect to the sinuosities of the land over which they voyaged, having "been drifted in certain lines, so as to show that the causes, whatever they were, which produced the phenomena, were not capable of overcoming, except in a limited degree, the natural obstacles of the country."* In the former case, the boulders must have been removed simultaneously with the rising of the land, and during the time that the waters were in violent motion; whereas, the latter having continued their route for a greater length of time, were influenced, at every step, by two conjoint retarding causes, the more perfect formation of the land, and the decreasing rapidity of the transporting medium, as it approached its static form and condition of equilibrium.

Indeed, so convinced are we of the soundness of these conclusions, that we venture to stake the validity of this part of

Professor Phillips, before the British Association at Bristol, Sept. 1836.

the Dynamical Theory on the assertion, that whenever the travelled boulders of the southern hemisphere are examined by impartial geologists, they will be found to occupy corresponding positions, with respect to the rocky formations whence they, too, have proceeded. That is, it will be discovered, in general, that they have been removed in a direction towards the northwest, with all the corresponding inflexions, which similar local circumstances are found to have produced on those of the northern hemisphere.*

In addition to those observations on the evidences afforded by the "Erratic Block Group," we take occasion to remark, that there is scarcely any geological data more strongly corroborative of the Dynamical Theory, than the widely spread deposits of rolled pebbles which not unfrequently abound. When the unstratified rocks burst through the superincumbent strata, the scattering of innumerable fragments of all descriptions, shapes, and sizes must have been the immediate consequence; but not one of them could have been round when torn off the parent rock: so certainly as the one rock perforated and passed another, so certainly would the detached fragments be angular, ragged, and pointed. On the other hand, when this convulsion took place, had the whole not been enveloped in much water, a hypothetical combination which might be supposed to have occurred if heat or fire had caused the catastrophe, then the fragments alluded to would have remained almost as angular and as ragged and pointed as when they were detached. Had the displacement, and its natural consequences, occurred in the midst of water, without any peculiar impetus, such as a rush from the poles towards the equator, to complete the

The assertion contained in this passage, which was written in 1836, has been fully verified intermediately by the investigations of those geologists who have since then had opportunities of visiting the southern regions of the globe, more especially in Chili, Bolivia, and Peru, where boulders and massive fragments, resulting from this great day's work, and general commotion over all the earth's surface, are found strewed everywhere around the flanks and amongst the hollows of the huge and far stretching Cordillera, themselves one of the most striking monuments of protorotation long posterior to the deposition and induration of our sphere's concentric stratified envelope, the work of protracted darkness and non-rotation. For one example, see Lyell's Elements, vol. i. p. 251.

figure or static condition of rotation, it is not at all probable, that the stones and fragments, to which we refer, would or could have assumed the perfect appearance of much attrition and of distant travel which those beds of pebbles do. They evidence by their perfect sphericity, in many instances, when coupled with the solidity of their material, that it was no common flood, no short space travelled over, nor no moderate speed which conferred on them their smoothly rounded forms, and which have acquired for them the designation of "travelled fragments."

It is equally as satisfactory to reflect, on taking another view of the case, that without their presence in the precise conditions in which they are found, all our assumptions would have been incomplete, and liable hereafter to have been considered erroneous. And thus, the rolled pebbles afford both positive and negative proof in favour of the cosmography which we inculcate.

It is with peculiar satisfaction, mingled with thankfulness, that we are thus enabled to close the geological evidences for the truth of the Dynamical Theory with a class of phenomena so universal and so admirably adapted as are the components of the "erratic block group," both by their character and their durability, to point out the form which the earth assumed on being caused to revolve around its axis. No evidences. could possibly have been more appropriate than these “boulders," tangible as they are to the senses, and everywhere to be found. Most heartily ought we to thank the great Creator of all, for having permitted, in His infinite wisdom, that these effects should have proceeded from natural causes, in order, that along with the other designs, which they were intended to fulfil, they should afford the most undeniable evidence, that when they were torn asunder from their parent rocks, and strewed over and imbedded in the surface of the surrounding soil, the globe was in the act of receiving from His almighty hand, "who weighed out its hills in His balance," the identical inflexions of surface which, to the present moment, it retains.

SECTION VI.

GEOLOGICAL PHENOMENA RESULTING FROM THE EARTH'S

PROTOROTATION.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Brief recapitulation of the principal subjects of this Section. Uranographical effects of the transformation of the earth, from a non-rotating sphere to a spheroid of rotation. Series of evidences. Precession of the equinoxes astronomically explained, and its bearing on the question pointed out. Geologically confirmed. Chronological data to show at what period the longer axis of the solar ellipse coincided with the equinoxes. Conclusion drawn from a combination of these evidences, that the precession of the equinoxes commenced with, and is dependent for its existence on the earth's protorotation; and, that the commencement of the two was coeval, and their periods have had the same duration. A combination of these established positions, with the fact of "matter never engendering motion in itself," employed to show, that the earth's motions must have originated from the Creator, and that the Creator is God.

ON reviewing the leading points of this protracted section it will be perceived, first of all, that evidences of a mechanical character have been adduced to prove, that the earth, which, during the period of darkness circulated around the unillumined sun without diurnal motion, was, by the formation of the light, and its division from the darkness, caused to revolve around its axis. Having dwelt sufficiently on that particular point we proceeded to enquire, in continuation, what were likely, theoretically, to have been the results of this new motion upon the general outlines of the globe. After these were defined, as nearly as possible, we entered into a minute and lengthened investigation, which concluded by determining, satisfactorily, that not only all geological phenomena, but

likewise the greater general elevation of lands within the equatorial regions, and the formation of continental ridges and oceanic hollows accorded with these theoretical conclusions.

In concluding the geological enquiries, we attended both to the external evidences afforded by the action of one rock upon another, and also to the internal evidences, arising from the mineralogical structure of the primary and older secondary rocks, supposing them to have been moved from where they were considered, in our previous chapters, to have been formed. We likewise included, in these investigations, the mineral veins, dykes, and fissures, and the metallic lodes, and made manifest that they, too, could be satisfactorily accounted for by the same theory. Going on, afterwards, to the sedimentary rocks, which owe their origin to the deposition of debris, spread abroad by the elevation of mountain chains, it was shown, that with the exception of some of the more recent of the tertiary, whose origin we hinted at in passing, they, likewise, correspond in geological developments with what might, a priori, have been expected from the first rotation of the earth around its axis, after induration had taken place at the period alluded to. And we concluded the whole with a brief description of the "erratic block group," which was also found to be susceptible of easy elucidation, by the facts and arguments brought to bear upon it.

Under these concurring and favourable circumstances, looking upon the geological and mineralogical evidences as being uninterruptedly linked together from first to last; and feeling assured that the proofs in favour of the Dynamical Theory are persistently conclusive; we now consider ourselves authorised to conclude, as a final deduction from the whole, that the first revolution of the earth around its axis took place AFTER the formation of those materials which now constitute the independent coal measures, and immediately BEFORE the deposition of the new red sandstone, the oolitic, and the cretaceous groups: from which conclusion three important deductions necessarily follow:

1. That the period during which the earth revolved around the sun without rotatory motion, extended from the instant of its being translated in space at "the beginning," from the first