Rev. Mr Wheweirs Address to the Geological Society. 147 



classification, and which may be considered, in a general way, 

 as including England, France, Italy, Germany, and Scan- 

 dinavia. The language which the rocks of these various 

 countries speak has been, in a great measure, reduced to 

 the same geological alphabet. The questions of the deter- 

 mination of any member in one country, or the identification 

 of similar members in two countries, are, for the most part^ 

 problems admitting of a definite and exact solution. In coun- 

 tries out of this district, on the other hand, we have not only to 

 explore but to classify. We have to divine their geological 

 alphabet ; — to decipher as well as to read. We have not only 

 to discover of what British rocks the observed ones are the 

 equivalents, but we h^e to ascertain whether there be an 

 equivalence ; and, where this relation vanishes, we have to dis- 

 cover what new resemblances and differences of members are 

 most worthy our notice. The great difference in the nature of 

 the geologist's task in these two cases seems to me to make it 

 desirable to employ the familiar division of Home and Foreign 

 Geology in a wider sense than has hitherto been common, in- 

 cluding in the former all that region of Europe which has had 

 its order of strata well identified with our own ; this distinction,. 

 then, I shall employ. 



1. Home {North European) Geology. — If we attempt, in this- 

 part of our subject, to follow an order of strata, we must begin 

 with the oldest stratified rocks, though they are undoubtedly 

 the most obscure ; for the same reason which compels the his-^ 

 torian of states to begin with the dim twilight of their savage 

 or heroic times ; namely, because at the other extremity of the 

 series there is no boundary ; since the events of past ages and 

 their records form an unbroken series, leading us to the un- 

 finished occurrences and works of to-day. Going, then, as far 

 back as the historian of the earth can discern any light, and, 

 for reasons which may hereafter be spoken of, shaping our 

 course by the stratified rocks alone, we should first have to ask 

 what addition has been made during the past year to our ac- 

 quaintance with those formations which have generally been 

 called transition. And here, gentlemen, many of you well 

 know, that if I had had to address you at a period a little later, 

 I might have hoped to be able to point out, among the labours 



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