A Period in the History of our Planet, 8 



Formerly scarce attended to, it is only in very recent times 

 that Geology has risen to the rank of a science. The solution 

 of the enigmas was sought for in a different way ; people 

 either rested satisfied with what they regarded as immediate 

 divine revelation, or sought to gain their end by metaphysical 

 investigation, and endless sets of inferences, without being 

 very particular about having a foundation for them in fact. 

 To interrogate the Earth itself about its history, was a notion 

 which was late of occurring, but which, once it did occur, was 

 so much the more zealously acted on ; and we may now say, 

 that Geology, like all new sciences, has for a while become 

 the fashion. 



And a most comfortable thing to be sure is such a science, 

 in which the greater part still remains to be done, which as 

 yet possesses no history, or at best, the history of a few de- 

 cades ! Moreover, it is a science, for the prosecution of 

 which, collections are necessary. One can gratify one's dilet- 

 tanteship under the semblance of performing a service to 

 science. Which of its sisters, then, can contend with it in 

 the possession of such captivating qualities 1 Not one of 

 them! And it bids fair long to remain the bosom-child of 

 scientific amateurs, and of the rich Maecenases of poor natu- 

 ralists. May it derive from them all the benefit that it can 

 derive, before they become tired of their plaything, and cast 

 it aside for a new one ! 



I hope I shall not be accused of seeking to follow the 

 fashion, in introducing a subject belonging to this my favour- 

 ite science, which I have pursued with great predilection, 

 and which I am now desirous to treat of, because it perhaps, 

 more than any other geological subject, trenches upon every- 

 day life, and is thus interesting for a wider public. The mat- 

 ter in hand is not an epoch, which lying at an immense re- 

 moteness, comes scarcely into indirect relation with our pre- 

 sent one ; it is an epoch of which the vast remains still stifle 

 whole tracts and provinces^ under their deadly influences, and" 

 oppose themselves, as it were, like powerful dykes, to the 

 progress of civilization; an epoch of which the remains at* 

 tract so many tourists to our native Switzerland, who, lost in 



