RHYTHMS AND GEOLOGIC TIME. 353 



of original versus imposed rhythm with the aid of all the light which 

 the field evidence can cast on the conditions of sedimentation. 



Neither do I think of rhythm seeking as a pursuit to absorb the 

 whole time and energy of an individual and be followed steadily to a 

 conclusion; but hope rather that it may receive the incidental and oc- 

 casional attention of many of my colleagues of the hammer, as other 

 errands lead them among cliffs of bedded rocks. If my suggestion 

 should succeed in adding a working hypothesis or- point of view to the 

 equipment of field geologists, I should feel that the search had been 

 begun in the most promising and advantageous manner. For not only 

 would the subject of rhythms and their interpretations be advanced by 

 reactions from multifarious individual experiences, but the stimulus of 

 another hypothesis would lead to the discovery of unexpected meanings 

 in stratigraphic detail. 



It is one of the fortunate qualities of scientific research that its in- 

 cidental and unanticipated results are not infrequently of equal or even 

 greater value than those directly sought. Indeed, if it were not so, 

 there would be no utilitarian harvest from the cultivation of the field 

 of pure science. 



In advocating the adoption of a new point of view from which to 

 peer into the mysterious past, 1 would not be understood to advise the 

 abandonment of old stand-points, but rather to emulate the surveyor, 

 who makes measurement to inaccessible points by means of bearings 

 from different sides. Every independent bearing on the earth's begin- 

 ning is a cheek on other bearings, and it is through the study of dis- 

 crepancies that we are to discover the refractions by which our lines of 

 sight are warped and twisted. The three principal lines we have now 

 projected into the abyss of time miss one another altogether, so that 

 there is no point of intersection. If any one of them is straight, both the 

 others are hopelessly crooked. If we would succeed we should not only 

 take new bearings from each discovered point of vantage, but strive in 

 every way to discover the sources of error in the bearings we have 

 already attempted. 



