to other Branches of Knowledge. 309 



logical or historical. It may then be admitted, that there 

 are some grounds for the opinion of those who would even 

 deny us any place in the great system of scientific inquiries, 

 which the British Association has established. 



We are saved from apprehension as to the consequence of 

 this admission, by remarking, that Ethnology stands exactly 

 on the same ground, in this point of view, as one of the 

 most popular of the studies which are cultivated at the British 

 Association ; and that it is impossible, with any shew of 

 reason, to deny a place to one of these sciences in the ar- 

 rangement of sections, without refusing the claims of the 

 other. By comparing the position of ethnology to that of 

 geology, we shall be enabled to survey, in a clear point of 

 view, the relations of each of these sciences to other branches 

 of knowledge. 



Geology, as every one knows, is not an account of what 

 Nature produces in the present day, but of what it has long 

 ago produced. It is an investigation of the changes which 

 the surface of our planet has undergone in ages long since 

 past. The facts on which the inferences of geology are 

 founded, are collected from various parts of natural history. 

 The student of geology inquires into the processes of Nature 

 which are at present going on, but this is for the purpose of ap- 

 plying the knowledge so acquired to an investigation of what 

 happened in past times, and of tracing, in the different layers 

 of the earth's crust — displaying, as they do, relics of various 

 forms of organic life — the series of the repeated creations 

 which have taken place. This investigation evidently be- 

 longs to History or Archceology^ rather than to what is ge- 

 nerally termed Natural History. By a learned writer, whose 

 name will ever be connected with the annals of the British 

 Association,* the term Palaeontology has been aptly applied 

 to sciences of this department, for which Physical Archae- 

 ology may be used as a synonym. Palaeontology includes 

 both Geology and Ethnology. Geology is the archaeology of 

 the globe — ethnology that of its human inhabitants. Both of 

 these sciences derive the data on which they found conclu- 

 sions from the different departments of natural history. But 



* The Rev. Dr Whewell. 



