loved, he had been ripening for those everlasting and incorruptible habitations, where intellect, not less than affection, shall attain the highest enjoyment. He had not lived in vain. The scientific literature of his own and of other lands will ever bear witness to his success as a student and a discoverer. He had read God's thoughts in nature wisely, and had studied His thoughts in the infallible Word, as a sinner deeply conscious of sin and guilt, needing a Saviour, and having found one in "the man Christ Jesus "-the eternal God. And there is good reason to believe that he had not been without tokens in his ministry that God, who had revealed Christ in his own soul, had blessed his labours to others. While, too, he realised his true position as a Christian apologist in connection with modern phases of scientific speculation, others, who walked with him in the paths of pure science, were not slow to acknowledge his work in this respect. The expression of regret for his loss, entered on the Minutes of the Royal Physical Society concludes thus:-"In his capacity as Professor of Natural Science in the New College, it is believed that Dr Fleming has been eminently successful in imparting much of his own healthy spirit to the many students who have listened to his prelections, while his own full testimony to the compatibility of a sincere belief in revealed truth with the acceptance of the facts and views of modern science, must have helped not a little to stem the torrent of speculative infidelity which threatened not long ago to break forth in our land.

دو

LITHOLOGY OF EDINBURGH.

CHAPTER I.

HISTORY OF EDINBURGH LITHOLOGY-Bulmer and Atkinson-Sibbald-Sinclair -Hutton-Playfair -Hall-Allan-Greenock-Walker-Thomson

Williams-Townson-Jameson-Hibbert-Patterson-W. Nicol-Rhind -Milne-Maclaren-Museum and Scientific Societies.

THE neighbourhood of Edinburgh presents a very remarkable assemblage of different rocks, and several interesting mineral species, important to the student of theoretical and practical geology; yet it was not until the close of the last century that their characters began to be studied, or the resources of science called upon to furnish the requisite illustrations. Previous to this period, our Scottish observers were principally occupied in mine-hunting," and under the auspices of Sir Bevis Bulmer, Stephen Atkinson, and other "menerall men" of that ilk, every rock, ravine, and river were explored in search of gold and silver, and reported, in many instances, as being found in places where, in later times, they have been sought for in vain. Thus, in the preface to the translation of a French account of the life of James V., printed in a volume entitled, " Miscellanea Scotica" (London, 1710), it is said "the Laird of Marchestone got gold in the Pentland Hills." The reader who wishes further information respecting the treasures disclosed during this active metallurgic era, will find considerable entertainment by

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the perusal of" The Discoverie and Historie of the Gold Mines of Scotland, by Stephen Atkinson, written in the year 1619." An edition of this curious work, with additions, was published by the Bannatyne Club in 1825. Notices of the discoveries of this period may likewise be found in the various topographies of Sir Robert Sibbald. In his "Scotia Illustrata," and in connection with this district, he merely notices, under the head of Bitumens, "Oleum Fontis S. Catharina." But in the work quoted above (p. 84), Sibbald has stated, on the authority of Colonel Borthwick :-"There was lately found within four miles of Edinburgh, copper upon Curry water, in John Scot of Lamphoy's ground. I have seen good copper got out of it." "The Colonel shewed me a piece of lead found within four miles of Edinburgh. The Lapis Heematites is also found in Scotland, particularly in the King's Park, at Edinburgh." "At Braid Craigs there is a stone with many blue and green veins, that argues there is copper in it."

The attempt to unfold some of the first principles of geology was begun in Scotland by George Sinclair, Professor of Philosophy in Glasgow; but the results which he published in the "Miscellany" accompanying his treatise on "The Hydrosta ticks" (Edinburgh, 1672), have met with unmerited neglect. Professor Sinclair is known, indeed, to a few inquirers, as the first individual in Scotland who repeated the experiment of Pascal on the different heights of the mercury in the barometer at the bottom and top of mountains, selecting Arthur Seat as the field of his operations, and to many as the reputed author of "Satan's Invisible World" but we have not found an acknowledgment of his illustrations of the structural character of the coal-measures, unless we consider as such a couple of condemnatory remarks by Mr Milne, in his memoir on the coalfields of the district, to which we shall shortly make reference. In his preface to the "Hydrostaticks," Sinclair says that there "is added a short history of coal, which I hope will be acceptable to some; this, so needful a subject, never being treated of before by any. In it mention is made of things common to coal in general, as dipps, risings, and streeks.

Next, of gaes or dykes, which prove so troublesome to the working of coal. Thirdly, of damps and wild-fire. Next, a method is taught for trying of grounds where never any coal was discovered before. And lastly, the manner how levels or conduits under ground ought to be carried on for draining the coal and freeing it of water." In the course of these illustrations, he satisfactorily establishes the existence of chokedamp (carbonic acid) in a coal-pit at Tranent, and of firedamp (dicarburet of hydrogen) at Werdy, "be-west Leith."

In the spring of 1785, the celebrated Dr John Hutton laid before the Royal Society of Edinburgh his leading views of a "Theory of the Earth," which afterwards appeared in 1788, in the first volume of the Transactions of that body, and afterwards in a separate and more extended form, in two volumes octavo, in 1795. The speculations, which Dr Hutton thus presented to public notice, did not fail to excite a deep interest in the minds of those who were occupied with the study of geology, because many recondite subjects were brought prominently forward, and fearlessly discussed, while appeals were as boldly made from the closet to the quarry-from the hall of the Royal Society to Salisbury Craigs and Arthur's Seat.

Dr Hutton, without perhaps any very intimate acquaintance with minerals as species, or with rocks as constituted by their aggregation, had become fully convinced that great changes in the constitution and position of the strata had taken place, and he assigned to himself the task of explanation. There are few observers who would venture to express a doubt that sandstone, slate, and coal, were originally sand, mud, and peat. He endeavoured to determine the agent which had so greatly changed their characters, and produced the metamorphic condition; and this agent he announced to have been heat. It is equally obvious that these strata, which were originally assorted by water under the influence of gravity, have been broken and variously displaced from their first horizontal position. He likewise undertook the task of determining the character of the disturbing agent, which he believed to have been analogous to the cause of earthquakes and volcanoes.

Although Dr Hutton failed, in many instances, to reach the truth, by neglecting to make accurate observations, by the employment of imperfect premises, and by overlooking residual or unexplained phenomena, he, nevertheless, drew around him several kindred spirits, who screened him from charges not easily evaded, protected him from misrepresentations to which the obscurity of his style peculiarly exposed him, and expounded his views by the aid of descriptive geology of a local character. The most eminent and successful of Dr Hutton's supporters was the amiable and accomplished Playfair, who gave, in the "Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth" (Edinburgh, 1802), a luminous exposition of the geological tenets of his friend, and thereby contributed, in a very great degree, to render these intelligible and popular. But the illustrator of Huttonianism laboured under the same defects as its founder. He had never studied mineralogy, so that his knowledge of rocks was necessarily imperfect; nor had he ever applied himself to the task of marking their more ordinary gradations of character, their interjacencies, and their contents. He appeared, therefore, as a special pleader, anxious to conceal the weaker points of the case of his client, to overrate the statements which were tenable, and ever seeking to turn the attention of the reader, where practicable, to the inaccuracies of his antagonist.

Sir James Hall likewise strengthened the speculations of Hutton, in no ordinary degree, by a series of well-devised experiments, rendering probable some of the hypothetical explanations of his school, and at the same time extending our knowledge of the character of mineral masses. The first of these essays was entitled, "Experiments on Whinstone and Lava," published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. v. p. 44. The specimens were chiefly selected from rocks in the immediate vicinity of Edinburgh, and the results had their value greatly increased by the co-operation of Dr Kennedy, who published in the same volume "a chemical analysis of three species of whinstone, and two of lava," p. 76. The "whin of Salisbury Rocks," and the "whin of the Calton Hill,"