POPULAR GEOLOGY. 615 



fell from the clouds ? That it was swept away hither, all the way from 

 South America, by some southwesterly storm, and, wearied out at last, 

 dropped here to find rest, as in a sacred place ? " what would you answer ? 

 " My friend, that is a beautiful imagination : but I must treat it only 

 as such, as long as I can explain the mystery more simply by facts which 

 I do know. I do not know that humming-birds can be blown across 

 the Atlantic alive. I do know that they are actually brought across 

 the Atlantic dead ; are stuck in ladies' hats. I know that ladies visit 

 the cathedral : and, odd as the accident is, I prefer to believe, till I get 

 a better explanation, that the humming-bird has simply dropped out 

 of a lady's hat." There, again, you would be speaking common-sense ; 

 and using, too, sound inductive method ; trying to explain what you 

 do not know from what you do know already. 



Now, I ask of you to employ the same common-sense when you 

 read and think of geology. 



It is very necessary to do so. For in past times men have tried to 

 explain the making of the world around them, its oceans, rivers, moun- 

 tains, and continents, by I know not what of fancied cataclysms and 

 convulsions of Nature ; explaining the unknown by the still more un- 

 known, till some of their geological theories were no more rational, be- 

 cause no more founded on known facts, than that of the New Zealand 

 Maories, who hold that some god, when fishing, fished up their islands 

 out of the bottom of the ocean. But a sounder and wiser school of 

 geologists now reigns ; the father of whom, in England at least, is the 

 venerable Sir Charles Lyell. He was almost the first of Englishmen 

 who taught lis to see what common-sense tells us that the laws 

 which we see at work around us now have been most probably at work 

 since the creation of the world ; and that whatever changes may seem 

 to have taken place in past ages, and in ancient rocks, should be ex- 

 jilained, if possible, by the changes which are taking place now in the 

 most recent deposits in the soil of the field. 



And in the last 40 years since that great and sound idea has be- 

 come rooted in the minds of students, and specially of English stu- 

 dents geology has thriven and developed, perhaps more than any 

 other science ; and has led men on to discoveries far more really as- 

 tonishing and awful than all fancied convulsions and cataclysms. 



I have planned this series of papers, therefore, on Sir Charles Ly- 

 ell's method. I have begun by trying to teach a little about the part 

 of the earth's crust which lies nearest us, which we see most often 

 namely, the soil ; intending, if my readers do me the honor to read 

 the papers which follow, to lead them downward, as it were, into the 

 earth ; deeper and deeper in each paper, to rocks and minerals which 

 are probably less known to them than the soil in the fields. Thus you 

 will find I shall lead you, or try to lead you on, throughout the series, 

 from the known to the unknown, and show you how to explain the lat- 

 ter by the former. Sir Charles Lyell has, I see, in the new edition of 



