his assertion (founded upon the testimony of all
mineralogists), is illustrated. Now my geological proposition should
certainly be applicable to Scotland, which is the country that I ought
to be best acquainted with; consequently, if what our author here
asserts be true, I would have deserved that blame which he is willing to
throw on me. Let me then beg the readers attention for a moment, that I
may justify myself from that charge, and place in its proper light this
authority, upon so material a point in geology.

I had examined Scotland from the one end to the other before I saw one
stone of granite in its native place, I have moreover examined almost
all England and Wales, (excepting Devonshire and Cornwall) without
seeing more of granite than one spot, not many hundred yards of extent;
this is at Chap; and I know, from information, that there is another
small spot in the middle of England where it is just seen. But, let me
be more particular with regard to Scotland, the example given in proof.

I had travelled every road from the borders of Northumberland and
Westmoreland to Edinburgh; from Edinburgh, I had travelled to
Port-Patrick, and from that along the coast of Galloway and Airshire
to Inverary in Argyleshire, and I had examined every spot between the
Grampians and the Tweedale mountains from sea to sea, without seeing
granite in its place. I had also travelled from Edinburgh by Grief,
Rannock, Dalwhiny, Fort Augustus, Inverness, through east Ross and
Caithness, to the Pentland-Frith or Orkney islands, without seeing one
block of granite in its place. It is true, I met with it on my return
by the east coast, when I just saw it, and no more, at Peterhead and
Aberdeen; but that was all the granite I had ever seen when I wrote
my Theory of the Earth. I have, since that time, seen it in different
places; because I went on purpose to examine it, as I shall have
occasion to describe in the course of this work.

I may now with some confidence affirm, from my own observation, and from
good information with regard to those places where I have not been,
except the northwest corner, I may affirm, I say, that instead of the
basis of the greatest part of Scotland being a granitic rock, which our
author has maintained as an evident thing, there is very little of it
that is so; not perhaps one five hundred part. So far also as I am to
judge from my knowledge of the mineral construction of England and
Wales, which I have exa