Of all the subjects which have ever engaged the attention of man, 

 perhaps none have excited his interest and curiosity so much as Geology. 

 Men are drawn to it in various ways ; some study it as a profession ; 

 others, through studying some cognate science; but by far the greater 

 number are led to it out of curiosity. They wish to examine for them- 

 selves the grounds upon which geologists base their opinions. They want 

 to know "if there is anything in it," "if the world be really so very old," 

 "if it be true that so many races of plants and animals have become 

 extinct." They wish to know if the wonderful restorations of a Mantell, 

 a Buckland, or an Owen had ever any real existence. When they go to 

 the Crj'stal Palace at Sydenham, and behold animals of such vast size and 

 strength that one blow of their paws would be instant death to the largest 

 crocodile that ever basked on the banks of the Nile; or if they go to the 

 British Museum, and stand before the monster elephant (Mastodon) and a 

 host of other fossil animals, they want to know when they lived, where 

 they lived, and what relation they hold to living animals; and when they 

 are told that they inhabited this country, and that some lived upon herbs 

 and some upon one another, like those at the present day, and were 

 succeeded by animals such as are now confined to tropical regions, as the 

 lion, tiger, cave boar, hyaena, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, &c., &c., they see 

 at once that there is "something in it." 



Curiosity first led me to study this subject. When I went about in 

 our own neighbourhood, and picked up from every shale-heap at the coal- 

 pits of Shibden and Low Moor specimens of what appeared to be marine 

 and fi-eshwater shells, along with teeth and scales of fish, I asked myself, 

 could these be mere sports of nature? could chance have placed them 

 there? And when I saw those beautiful shells of the nautilus, so much 

 like the shells which inhabit the southern seas at the present day, I asked, 

 were they the ancestors of the argonaut of the poet who tilts along the 



Atlantic waves — 



" But if a breath of danger sound, 

 With sails quick furled she dives profound. 

 And far below the tempest's path, 

 In coral grots defies the foe 

 That never broke, in heaviest wrath, 

 1 be Sabbath of the deep below." 



