Hugh Miller - The primary rocks, ... I regard as the deposits of a period in which the ea

The primary rocks, ... I regard as the deposits of a period in which the earth's crust had sufficiently cooled down to permit the existence of a sea, with the necessary denuding agencies,-waves and currents,-and, in consequence, of deposition also; but in which the internal heat acted so near the surface, that whatever was deposited came, matter of course, to be metamorphosed into semi-plutonic forms, that retained only the stratification.

- Hugh Miller

source: Hugh Miller, Harriet Myrtle (1859). “Sketch book of popular geology: Popular geology: A series of lectures read before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh”, p.297

topic: Agency, Rocks, Sea