262. If all these circumstances are put together, there appears but one conclusion that can be drawn from them. We have here the manifest marks of some power which could lift up this fragment of rock from its native place, distant at least several hundred yards from its present situation, place it upright on its edge, encompass it with a solid rock, of a nature quite heterogeneous to itself, and bestow on it, at the same time, a great addition of solidity and induration. If the mass in which this stone is now imbedded, be supposed to have been once in fusion, and forcibly thrown up from below, invading the strata, and carrying the fragments along with it, the whole phenomena now described admit of an explanation, and all the circumstances accord perfectly with one another; but, without this supposition, they are so many separate prodigies, which have no connection with one another, nor with any thing that is known. It is indeed impossible, that the effects of motion and heat can be more clearly expressed than they are here, or the subject in which these powers resided more distinctly pointed out. 263. The preceding facts being susceptible but of one interpretation, are on that account extremely valuable. The phenomena of Salisbury _Craig_, near the same place, are almost equally free from ambiguity. The basaltic rock which forms that precipice, rests on arenaceous or marly strata; and these, in their immediate contact with the former, afford an instance of what is mentioned § 67, namely, the conversion of the strata in such situations into a kind of petrosilex, or even jasper. The line which separates the one rock from the other, is, at the same time, so well defined, as, in the eyes even of the most determined Neptunist, to exclude all idea of insensible gradation. 264. The same rock affords some remarkable instances of the disturbance of the strata contiguous to the whinstone. The beds of the former are bent upwards in several places; and, at one in particular, form an arch, with its convexity downward, so as to make it evident, that the force which produced this bending was directed from below upwards. 265. It is, however, where whinstone takes the form of veins, intersecting the strata, that the induration of the latter is most conspicuous. The coast of Ayrshire, and the opposite coast of Arran, exhibit these veins in astonishing variety and abundance. The strata are, in many instances, so _reticulated_ by the veins, and intersected at such small distances, that it seems necessary to suppose, that the fissures in them were hardly sooner made than filled up. This at least is true, if the veins are to be accounted all of the same formation; and, in the greatest number of instances by far, there is no mark of the one being posterior to the other.