30 POPULAR LECTURES. 



knowledge, but it is essential to our progress to remember tbe clear 

 distinction between them, and to keep the mind open and attentive to 

 fresh evidence, because it may at any time bring us nearer to the absolute 

 truth. 



Wo know that we exist ; that we feel pleasure and pain ; that two and 

 two make four ; that the whole is greater than its parts ; that there are 

 such things as hght and darkness, warmth and cold ; that the rainbow ia 

 curved and coloured ; that our cat has foiu- legs, and our brother only two. 

 These are all direct perceptions of truth, whether derived from the 

 senses or from reason. But we only bclu've that we shall exist at any 

 future time ; that cei-tain acts always produce pleasure and others always 

 pain ; that we could go to a grocer and biiy a pound of sugar for five- 

 pence ; that the earth is spherical and revolves round the sun ; that every 

 cat has four legs, or every man only two. These are inferences, judg- 

 ments, not perceptions, liable at any moment to be contradicted and 

 proved false. 



At present there is an immense amoimt of confusion in popular 

 language, and even in scientific language, between propositions of these 

 very different kinds. Almost any one would say in popular conversation, 

 "Oh, you kmnv that a cat has always four legs;" and few scientific 

 writers would hesitate to say " we now know that the sun is about 

 92, 000, 000 of miles distant from the earth." Both stateinents are 

 incorrect in calling that knowledge which is really belief. Probably a time 

 will come in which greater precision of language will be demanded ; when 

 belief will be as clearly distinguished from knowledge as art now is from 

 science. 



Every student of science should cultivate such precision as one of 

 his most preciovis instrmnents in the investigation of nature. For man's 

 attempts to pick her locks are still supi-ernely cluinsy. He needs to make 

 his keys a thousand times more delicate than any which he uses now 

 before they will pass the wards of nature's inmost sanctuaiies. 



SOME NEW FEATUKES IN THE GEOLOGY OF 

 EAST NOTTINGHAM. 



BY J. SHIPMAN, ESQ. 



(Continued from pnge 20.) 



Not the least important respect wherein my map differs from the 

 Government map is the much less ai-ea covered by Upper Keui)er marl. 

 The Geological Survey supposed that one effect of their two faults was to 

 throw in between Lower Keuper a patch of Upper Keuper extending 

 from Cranmcr Street to Bed Lano^that is, the space between the two 

 faults. If their supposed curved fault had really existed I believe this 

 would have been correct ; but, as it is, the Ui>per Keuper, of wliich tlie 

 Reservoir Hill consists, is cut off on the north side by No. 2 fault, and does 

 not come in again tiU the ground rises to form Mapperky Hills. Then 

 they mapped the Hunger Hills as being to a great extent composed of 

 Upper Keuper. This is not so, however. The tlat-topped appearance of 

 these hills is caused, apparently, by a bed of sandstone, thi-ee or four 

 feet thick, seen also in the cliff of Lower Keuper on Coppice New Koad ; 

 and the Upper Keuper may be traced by the sudden rise of the ground, 



