500 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



" The geologist is an antiquary of a new order," we do not mark a 

 fanciful and superficial resemblance of employment merely, but a real 

 and philosophical connexion of the principles of investigation. The 

 organic fossils which occur in the rock, and the medals which we find 

 in the ruins of ancient cities, are to be studied in a similar spirit and 

 for a similar purpose. Indeed, it is not always easy to know where 

 the task of the geologist ends, and that of the antiquary begins. The 

 study of ancient geography may involve us in the examination of the 

 causes by which the forms of coasts and plains are changed ; the an- 

 cient mound or scarped rock may force upon us the problem, whether 

 its form is the work of nature or of man ; the ruined temple may 

 exhibit the traces of time in its changed level, and sea-worn columns ; 

 and thus the antiquarian of the earth may be brought into the very 

 middle of the domain belonging to the antiquarian of art. 



Such a union of these different kinds of archaeological investigations 

 has, in fact, repeatedly occurred. The changes which have taken 

 place in the temple of Jupiter Serapis, near Puzzuoli, are of the sort 

 Avhich have just been described ; and this is only one example of a 

 large class of objects ; the monuments of art converted into records 

 of natural events. And on a wider scale, we find Cuvier, in his inqui- 

 ries into geological changes, bringing together historical and physical 

 evidence. Dr. Prichard, in his Researches into the Physical History 

 of Man, has shown that to execute such a design as his, we must 

 combine the knowledge of the physiological laws of nature with the 

 traditions of history and the philosophical comparison of languages. 

 And even if we refuse to admit, as part of the business of geology, 

 inquiries concerning the origin and physical history of the present 

 population of the globe ; still the geologist is compelled to take an 

 interest in such inquiries, in order to understand matters which rigor- 

 ously belong to his proper domain ; for the ascertained history of the 

 present state of things offers the best means of throwing light upon 

 the causes of past changes. Mr. Lyell quotes Dr. Prichard's book 

 more frequently than any geological work of the same extent. 



Again, we may notice another common circumstance in the studies 

 which we are grouping together as palsetiological, diverse as they are 

 in their subjects. In all of them we have the same kind of manifesta- 

 tions of a number of successive changes, each springing out of a pre- 

 ceding state ; and in all, the phenomena at each step become more 

 and more complicated, 1 y involving the results of all that has preceded, 

 modified by supervening agencies. The general aspect of all these 



