By G. Poulett Scrope, Esq., U.P. EE 
Wiltshire Geology, I must apologize for its imperfect character. 
My object has been to excite a popular interest in the subject, which 
may lead to further inquiry, rather than to enter into those details 
which would only be understood by such readers as have already made 
it their study. It is not to those only who specially occupy them- 
selves with scientific pursuits that the geology of their neighbourhood 
should be a matter of some importance. In an agricultural point 
of view, a knowledge of the nature and disposition of the subsoils 
or strata underlying the vegetable mould of our fields may often 
throw light on the value of land, its most fitting system of cultiva- 
tion, the depth and direction of drainage, the probable supply of 
waters from wells, of building or roofing stones, of clay for tileries, 
of limestone for burning, of sand for household use, and other matters 
of economical value. The railroads with which our county has been 
recently furnished, will in many cases, perhaps, now give facilities 
for utilizing minerals formerly of little or no value from defective 
means of conveyance, The iron ores of Seend and Westbury now 
about to be smelted on a large scale by the coal of Wales or Somer- 
setshire, may prove not the only example of this class of benefits. 
A correct knowledge of the position of the coal-bearing strata, not 
themselves within the limits of our county, but which approach 
very near to its western border, and probably underlie the oolitic 
range of the Cotswolds, though at far too great a depth to be work- 
able, must be serviceable, if only in a negative sense, by preventing 
such useless expenditure as took place some years back near 
Malmesbury in the vain search for coal, where a geologist would 
know it could scarcely by possibility be met with. These con- 
siderations will satisfy my readers that some acquaintance with 
geology may be practically useful to them. 
But there are, probably, few among them who will not also take a 
speculative interest in the historical view of physical events to which 
the portion of the earth they inhabit has been subjected, set before 
them by the geological facts above described. They will learn that 
in ages far remote, but yet by no means the earliest that geology 
has made known to us, the sea washed the shores of some great con- 
tinent then existing to the west of us, and threw up its spoils ona 
