I. Researches in Physical Geology. By William Hopkins, MA 

 Felloiv of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and of the Geological 

 Society, and 3Iathematical Lecturer of St Peter's College, Cambridge. 



[Read May 4, 1835.] 



INTRODUCTION. 



Notwithstanding the appearances of irregularity and confusion 

 in the formation of the crust of our globe which are presented to 

 the eye in the contemplation of its external features, geologists have 

 been able in numerous instances to detect, in the arrangement and 

 position of Its stratified masses, distinct approximations to geometrical 

 laws. In the phenomena of anticlinal lines, faults, fissures, mineral 

 veins, &c., such laws are easily recognized; and though, when we 

 consider how large a portion of the surface of the earth remains 

 geologicaUy unexplored, it may appear premature to assert that these 

 are perfectly general laws, yet, founding our reasoning on our know 

 ledge, and not on our ignorance, and feeling that confidence which 

 we are entitled to feel in the universality of the laws and operations 

 of nature, we shaU, I conceive, be justified, if not in the absolute 

 conclusion, at least in the presumption, that the laws already observed 

 m phenomena such as those above mentioned will be found by the 

 wider extension and increased accuracy of geological research, to be the 

 approximative general laws of those phenomena. 



If the legitimacy of tliis inference be allowed, we are necessarily 

 led to the conclusion, that the phenomena aUuded to are referrible 

 not to the particular and irregular action of merely local causes 

 but to the more widely diffused action of some simple cause, o-eneral 

 m Its nature with respect to every part of the globe, and general in 

 Its action at least with respect to the whole of each district throughout 

 Vol. VI. Part I. A 



