e. rocks immediately round
Liverpool, 12 per cent.
Now, does not this sample show, as far as human common sense can be
depended on, that the great majority of these stones come from the
Lake mountains, sixty or seventy miles north of Liverpool? I think
your common sense will tell you that these pebbles are not mere
concretions; that is, formed out of the substance of the clay after
it was deposited. The least knowledge of mineralogy would prove
that. But, even if you are no mineralogist, common sense will tell
you, that if they were all concreted out of the same clay, it is most
likely that they would be all of the same kind, and not of a dozen or
more different kinds. Common sense will tell you, also, that if they
were all concreted out of the same clay, it is a most extraordinary
coincidence, indeed one too strange to be believed, if any less
strange explanation can be found--that they should have taken the
composition of different rocks which are found all together in one
group of mountains to the northward. You will surely say--If this be
granite, it has most probably come from a granite mountain; if this
be grit, from a grit-stone mountain, and so on with the whole list.
Why--are we to go out of our way to seek improbable explanations,
when there is a probable one staring us in the face?
Next--and this is well worth your notice--if you will examine the
pebbles carefully, especially the larger ones, you will find that
they are not only more or less rounded, but often scratched; and
often, too, in more than one direction, two or even three sets of
scratches crossing each other; marked, as a cat marks an elder stem
when she sharpens her claws upon it; and that these scratches have
not been made by the quarrymen's tools, but are old marks which
exist--as you may easily prove for yourself--while the stone is still
lying in its bed of clay.
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