Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 4.djvu/241

 of Nature as they do the narrow operations of our own laboratories. Till that be done, it is not only legitimate, but it is indispensable for the purposes of accurate reasoning, to describe facts by their most obvious analogies where we cannot pronounce on their nature, to call that a mechanical arrangement in Nature which bears a resemblance to mechanical arrangement in the products of art, and to consider that only as the result of chemical action in Nature, which is imitable by chemistry under the direction of art, or has been demonstrated to be in other cases the result of chemical laws.

It appears then that at Kinnoul portions of schist are found presenting an obscure appearance of connection with the red sandstone. It also appears that this rock exhibits but a small portion of a bed, instead of that great and extensive continuity in which it is generally disposed. And it is further seen that this portion is entangled and almost surrounded by a mass of rock of a peculiar aspect, which bears no mark of stratification or of mechanical arrangement, and that it is much bent and contorted, so as to be irregularly intermixed with the unstratified mass. Lastly, it is to be remarked, that appearances of fracture as well as contortion occur in the stratified rock; that veins pass from it, and that fragments of it are dispersed throughout the unstratified one; as far at least as a judgment can be formed from the only view we can obtain of the imbedded portions.

It is difficult to see on what other ground these and similar appearances can be explained than on that of motion; the action of the unstratified on the stratified mass, and that stratified mass existing in two different conditions, a state of softness capable of extension, and a state of hardness capable of fracture. Further than this the facts visible at Kinnoul do not perhaps bear us out, and beyond this point it is not my design to venture, since the simplest