POPULAR GEOLOGY. 613 



and worship of forms give rise to dreams of Utopia and all manner of 

 illusions. We had little better than illusions to oppose to the sternly 

 practical science of Germany. It is Utopian ideas that have produced, 

 after a disastrous war, another crisis more serious still. Only solid, 

 positive education can avert such disasters. England has opposed to 

 fanciful dreams the serious study of political economy. Germany has 

 profoundly studied the historical sciences, and has cultivated a search- 

 ing criticism as well as the natural sciences. But France has followed 

 an ideal, without regard to facts, and the result is, that every thing is 

 in a state of disorder. 



Present disaster may bring France to her senses, and induce her to 

 start from different principles. 



-*--*- 



POPULAB GEOLOGY. 1 



By Eev. CHARLES KINGSLEY. 



aEOLOGY is the science which explains to us the rind of the 

 earth ; of what it is made ; how it has been made. It tells us 

 nothing of the mass of the earth. That is, properly speaking, an as- 

 tronomical question. If I may be allowed to liken this earth to a fruit, 

 then astronomy will tell us when it knows how the fruit grew, and 

 what is inside the fruit. Geology can only tell us at most how its rind, 

 its outer covering, grew, and of what it is composed ; a very small 

 part, doubtless, of all that is to be known about this planet. 



But, as it happens, the mere rind of this earth-fruit, which has, 

 countless ages since, dropped, as it were, from the Bosom of God, the 

 Eternal Fount of Life the mere rind of this earth-fruit, I say, is so 

 beautiful and so complex, that it is well worth our awful and reverent 

 study. It has been well said, indeed, that the history of it, which we 

 call geology, would be a magnificent epic poem, were there only any 

 human interest in it ; did it deal with creatures more like ourselves 

 than stones, and bones, and the dead relics of plants and beasts. 

 "Whether there be no human interest in geology ; whether man did not 

 exist on the earth during ages which have seen enormous geological 

 changes, is becoming more and more an opan question. 



But meanwhile all must agree that there is matter enough for in- 

 terest nay, room enough for the free use of the imagination, in a sci- 

 ence which tells of the growth and decay of whole mountain-ranges, 

 continents, oceans, whole tribes and worlds of plants and animals. 



And yet it is not so much for the vastness and grandeur of those 



1 From advance sheets of Prof. Kingsley's excellent little book entitled " Town 

 Geology." 



