Outlines of Geology, 185 



practical nature, and if I sometimes venture to put a theory before 

 you, it will rather be to show its failings and defects, than to 

 offer any thing towards its embellishment and support ; for it 

 will be found, that in geology philosophers have too generally 

 commenced their inquiries in the study , instead of in the field; 

 that the most visionary and preposterous notions have been sanc- 

 tioned by great names, and supported by most able controver- 

 sialists ; and that personal and acrimonious disputes have been 

 suffered to ruffle the calm of philosophical society, which might 

 have been speedily and amicably settled, by a reference, not to 

 books of theorists recording opinions, but to the book of nature, 

 establishing the fact. It is, I think, chiefly to the labours of 

 modern and even contemporary geologists, that we owe the new 

 and improved features which this branch of natural knowledge is 

 acquiring. In their publications they have candidly recorded 

 facts, which have shown the futility of much that was before 

 thought sound argument and reckoned as brilliant reasoning ; and 

 there has therefore of late, in our hemisphere at least, been a pro- 

 portionate and promising defalcation of those writers, who though, 

 on some occasions, profound and ingenious, are not consistent with 

 nature ; or who have misemployed their abilities in assimilating 

 facts to theory, instead of adjusting theory to facts. 



Geological theory, however, has, if properly estimated, many 

 and important advantages, and many of the geological facts which 

 have been established, as M^ell as of our most valuable practical 

 documents in illustration of the structure of the globe, or the 

 stratification of particular districts, have (as I hinted in my in- 

 troductory lecture) been derived from those whose curiosity has 

 been incited to the inquiry, by the stimulus of theoretical discus- 

 sion ; this indeed is universally the case in the progress of expe- 

 rimental science ; and although there are still among the philoso- 

 phers, a few who are credulous in respect to all that confirms 

 their preconceived opinions, but sceptical upon the facts that 

 oppose them, the greater number have shown their willingness to 

 exchange opinions for truth, and to eradicate error wherever it 

 occurs, and however exalted the name or character by which it 

 may have been planted. 



