246 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



gile shell rested on the treacherous waters of the interior abyss, 

 "the waters under the earth/' and the sun overroasting, finally- 

 cracked and burst it ; the broken fragments of the ruined world 

 fell downward into the abyss, and the subterranean waters 

 rushed out in a mighty flood to remain as our present seas and 

 oceans, from which the broken crust protrudes as continents and 

 islands. As might naturally be anticipated, the bursting out of 

 the abyss corresponds to the Noachian deluge, which we thus 

 perceive to have been profounder in its origin and wider reach- 

 ing in its effects than we might previously have supposed. This, 

 for distinction, we may call Burnett's deluge ; of his geology we 

 may say that it is cosniological, since it endeavors to trace the 

 history of the earth backward to its origin in chaos ; that it is 

 catastrophic, because it attempts to account for all the great 

 features of the earth by a single event which occurred suddenly 

 and with violence ; and that it is theologic, since it owes its in- 

 spiration to Holy Writ. 



As geology grew older it went to school : what was the name 

 of the school is not quite certain ; some have called it " Science 

 falsely so called," others more briefly, " Inductive Science." How- 

 ever this may be, the immediate efi^ect on the manners of young 

 geology was very distressing. It grew contradictory, and was 

 frank in the expression of obnoxious opinions. One of its most 

 irritating remarks was that the world was not made in a week, 

 and it would appear that at this time the relations of child and 

 foster-parent became not a little strained. Still, geology proved 

 an apt scholar, and its progress was rapid. One of the most 

 important lessons it learned was that if we want to know how the 

 world was made, the first essential is to study the earth itself, to 

 investigate with patient drudgery every detail that it presents, 

 and particularly the structures that can be seen in river banks, 

 sea cliffs, quarries, pits, and mines. Thus it discovered that the 

 solid land beneath our feet is to a large extent composed of layers 

 of sediment which were once deposited more or less quietly at 

 the bottom of ancient seas, and certain curious bodies known as 

 fossils it concluded to be the remains of plants and animals, sea- 

 shells and the like, which were once the living denizens of these 

 seas. 



It discovered that these deposits lie so regularly, one upon 

 another, that it compared them to a pile of books, or to a slant- 

 ing row of books lying cover to cover ; and that in some cases, at 

 least, the simile was not strained, will appear if we trace the 

 structure of England from Oxford westward toward Bristol. 

 We then find that the thick bed of clay upon which Oxford 

 stands lies evenly on a series of gently sloping beds known as 

 the lower Oolites ; these in like manner repose on those thin 



