lated mountains and eminences. They are commonly in the form of
inclined planes; and, to a person a little conversant in this subject,
they are extremely distinguishable in the external form of the hill.

We have a good example of this in the little mountain of Arthur's Seat,
by this town of Edinburgh. This is a peaked hill of an irregular erupted
mass; but on the south and north sides of this central mass, the
basaltic matters had been forced also in those inclined beds among
the regular strata. On the north side we find remarkable masses of
whin-stone in that regular form among the strata, and lying parallel
with them. The most conspicuous of these basaltic beds forms the summit
of the hill which is called Salisbury Craig. Here the bed of whin-stone,
more than 60 or 80 feet thick, rises to the west at an angle of about 40
degrees; it forms the precipicious summit which looks to the west; and
this is an appearance which is distinguishable upon a hundred other
occasions in the hills and mountains of this country.

Rivers make sections of mountains through which they pass. Therefore,
nothing is more interesting for bringing to our knowledge the former
state of things upon the surface of this earth, than the examination of
those valleys which the rivers have formed by wearing down the solid
parts of alpine countries. We have already seen that the wide extensive
valley of the Rhone, between Loiche and Kolebesche, as well as the whole
extensive circus of the Rosa mountains, has on each side mountains of
the same substances, the strata of which are horizontal; consequently,
here the valley must have been hollowed out of the solid rock; for there
is no natural operation by which those opposite mountains of horizontal
strata could have been formed, except in the continuation of those beds.
We are therefore to conclude, that the solid strata between those ridges
of lofty mountains had been continuous.

The most perfect confirmation which this theory could receive, would
be to find that those ridges of mountains, which the Rhone divides in
issuing from the Alps into the plain, had been also united, in forming
one continued mass of solid rocks. But the observations of M. de
Saussure, who has most carefully examined this subject, will leave no
room to doubt of that fact.

This view of the entry to the valley of the Rhone is too interesting not
to give it here a place. It follows immediately after that which we have
last transcr