

GEOLOGY 



THE FUTURE OF GEOLOGY. 



REGARDING the geological scale of formations as an artificial scheme, 

 founded on local considerations, although an instrument and scale of 

 great value when used judiciously, the questions have to be answered, 

 whether the terms of its graduation be required, and whether, as 

 we have them, they are complete. See those broad stripes of demar- 

 cation printed on even* geological diagram between the terms palaeo- 

 zoic and secondary, secondary and tertiary. These lines are popularly 

 understood to mark boundaries between a complete cessation of one 

 great system of types of species, and the commencement of an entirely 

 new series of creatures, animal and vegetable. They really mark pro- 

 digious gaps in our knowledge of the sequence of formations and the 

 procession of life. One of these supposed impassible boundaries, that 

 between " tertiary" and " cretaceous," threatens rapidly to give way, 

 and to vanish in due time, as speedily as artificial social distinctions in 

 society. In France, Belgium, Germany, and England, there are 

 symptoms of an intergrowth between the long separated " chalk" and 

 " eocene." Strata are coming to li^ht which rudely insist on finding 



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elbow-room among our neatly-packed systems and formations, Janus- 

 like fossils are turning up with two sets of features. Our preconceived 

 notions of what ought to be are sadly disconcerted. An already exten- 

 sive terminology is threatened with an inundation of new terms, too 

 necessary to be evaded. If we are not mistaken, there are little clouds 

 rising on the geological horizon that indicate revolutions'elsewhere in 

 the series. That narrow black line drawn on geological diagrams 

 between the words " Trias" and " Permian," has more meaning in it 

 than its dimensions indicate. The line between " Eocene" and " Cre- 

 taceous," has swollen out, broken up, and is enlarging fast into inter- 

 mediate sections. But all its changes and increase will be as nothing 

 compared with those that must take place by and by in its representa- 

 tive lower down. If we interpret aright, the signs indicated by extinct 

 organisms preserved to us in palseozoic rocks, and the comparison of 

 them with others in the lowest mesozoic or secondary strata, there is a 

 gap in our knowledge of the succession of formations, the extent of 

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