240 



LECTURES ON GEOLOGY, 



IN ILLUSTRATION OF THE STRATA IN THE NKIQIIBOURHOOD Of 

 BIRMINGHAM. 



DELIVERED AT KIDDERMINSTER, BY OGIER WARD, M. D. 



The Lecturer, after a few preliminary remarks upon the course he 

 intended to pursue in treating the various subjects that would be 

 brought under the notice of the Society, observed, that in the 

 general thirst for knowledge which characterized the present age, 

 it was quite unnecessary to defend the study of Geology from the 

 ridicule of those who set no value upon its acquirement. He then 

 proceeded to impress its importance upon his hearers, by alluding 

 on the one hand to the losses that had been sustained by many 

 persons in vainly seeking for coal among the oolites, for gold 

 in the yellow mica of Malvern, and for copper in the chlorite of 

 Nuneaton 3 and on the other hand to the discoveries of tin in 

 Brittany, of coal in the Holy Land, and more recently of an inex- 

 haustible vein of plumbago on the Welsh estates of a gentleman 

 in Birmingham. Again, the endowment of Professorships of 

 Geology in our Universities and Colleges, and the attention that 

 this Science has met with from the British Association, and from 

 the various Philosophic Institutions of the country, prove that it is 

 at length beginning to hold that place in public estimation which 

 its practical utility, and the interesting nature of its details, may 

 fairly claim for it. 



The preference of the civilized nations of antiquity for specula- 

 tive studies prevented them from paying much regard to geological 

 phenomena j and their peculiar mythological notions induced some 

 to refer them to alternate destructions and restorations of the 

 earth's surface j while others who believed in the eternal existence 

 of the world from past to future time, saw nothing more in these 

 changes than matters of daily occurrence, whose etfects were pro- 

 portional in their magnitude to the lapse of time since their 

 commencement. This latter is the opinion of one set of modern 

 geologists. 



Where Christianity prevailed, the Noachian Deluge offered an 

 explanation, apparently so easy, for the appearance of the action of 

 water upon high mountains ; and the ignorance of Natural History 

 prevented any attempts to determine the relative ages of strata by 

 distinguishing the remains of extinct from those of recent animals, 

 that we must not be surprised at the opposition Fracastors met 

 with, in the 16th century, when he asserted that a bed of shells 

 found under the city of Verona, must have hved and died in that 

 situation. 



; The controversy respecting the origin of these shells gave a 

 stimulus to the study of geology in Italy, which extended from 

 thence into every country in Europe ; but it was not till towards 

 the end of the last century that just notions began to be entertain- 



