here
was coal, and consequently the sand-stone strata; and reasoning upon
those data we were sure that our proper course of investigation was to
trace the river Ey to the shore, and then go south the coast in search
of the junction of the schistus with the horizontal strata. This we
executed as well as the weather would permit; but had it to regret,
that the rainy season was not so favourable for our views, as it was
agreeable to the country which had been suffering with the drought.

It is needless now to enlarge upon this subject. I shall only mention
that we found the red marly strata above the pudding-stone in the bed of
the Ey and its branches; we then traced the schistus down the Ey, and
found a mass of the most consolidated pudding-stone upon the coast to
the north of the harbour of Eymouth. But this mass did not rest on the
schistus; it is immediately upon a mass of whin-stone; and the schistus
is in the harbour, so that this whin-stone mass seems to be here
interposed between the pudding-stone and schistus. We then pursued
the coast southwards until we found the junction of the schistus and
sand-stone strata about two miles from Eymouth; but here the junction
was not attended with any pudding-stone that we could perceive.

Having found the same or similar appearances from the one end to the
other, and on both sides of that range of mountains which run from sea
to sea in the south of Scotland, we may now extend our view of this
mineral operation in comprehending every thing of the same kind which we
meet with in our island or any other distant country.

Thus perhaps the pudding-stone of the south of England will be
considered in the same light as having been formed of the _debri_ and
_detritus_ of the flinty bodies.

In the island of Arran, there is also a pudding-stone, even in some
of the summits of the island, exactly upon the border of the schistus
district, as will be described in the natural history of that island.
This pudding-stone is composed of gravel formed of the hardest parts
of the schistus and granite or porphyry mountains. That compound
parasitical stone has been also again cemented by heat and fusion; I
have a specimen in which there is a clear demonstration of that fact.
One of the water-worn stones which had been rounded by attrition, has in
this pudding-stone been broken and shifted, the one half slipping over
the other, three quarters of an inch, besides other smaller slips in
the same s