and the materials on which it operates are under a vast pressure; and, consequently, while they are indurated into limestone, sandstone, and coal, along with their included fossils, their essential qualities are but very slightly affected, and the arrangement and disposition of their particles but little disturbed. The hills around, by which this theory was to be tested, and to whose singular structure it owed its origin, consist of an alternating series of tabular masses of trap and the sedimentary deposits, basalt forming generally the central nucleus, with tufa, greenstone, and sandstone variously disposed and folded over. All the conditions of upheaval, tortion, angularity, induration, fracture, and dislocation, are amply furnished; the columnar, jointed structure is well defined in Samson’s Ribs; the very momentum of pressure, forcing the sandstone into the perpendicular, may be studied as a nice dynamical problem on the Castle rock; and when Sir James Hall brought from his crucible a reconstructed whinstone, regularly jointed and with no trace of vitreous fusion, the demonstration of the theory was felt and acknowledged, in its leading features, to be complete. Palæontology has added its living wonders to the mere lithological speculations which were then in vogue and engrossed all attention. And geologists can now afford to smile at the misinterpretations, made by both parties, of established facts and well-ascertained things—nay, at the eagerness with which they irrelevantly pressed facts to bend to their conflicting views—the vehemence with which the Wernerian declared whinstone to contain organisms, and to be no exception to the law of mechanical deposition; while the Huttonian as deliberately set himself to prove that the nodules in chalk could only be the product of fire—the formation itself, as now determined, being merely a concretion of shells of the most perfect structure and undiminished luster. Truth, like light, emerges slowly, feeble in its dawnings when objects are obscurely seen or readily mistaken, a portion of the view half in shade, and half in brightness. And thus it has happened with both systems, as in the progress of the science errors have been detected and deficiencies supplied, peculiar to each. The acrimony of the contest, too, has passed away. Theology has been disentangled, and declared by the divine to be in no way affected by the issue. And while the scurrilities of the indiscreet abettors of both are utterly forgotten, the deductions of Hutton and the masterly expositions of his illustrator are in the main adopted as the basis of the only true system of geology.