12 GLAUCUS; OR, 
Fo1, when questions belonging to the most sacred 
hereditary beliefs of Christendom were supposed to _ 
be affected by the verification of a fossil shell, or 
the proving that the Maestricht “homo diluvii 
»? 
testis ” was, after all, a monstrous eft, it became 
necessary to work upon Conchology, Botany, and 
Comparative Anatomy, with a care and a reverence, 
a caution and a severe induction, which had been 
never before applied to them; and thus gradually, 
in the last half-century, the whole choir of cosmical 
sciences have acquired a soundness, severity, and 
fulness, which render them, as mere intellectual 
exercises, as valuable to a manly mind as Mathe- 
matics and Metaphysics. 
But how very lately have they attained that firm 
and honourable standing ground! It is a question 
whether, even twenty years ago, Geology, as it then 
stood, was worth troubling one’s head about, so little 
had been really proved. And heavy and uphill 
was the work, even within the last fifteen years, 
of those who stedfastly set themselves to the task 
oi proving and of asserting at al] risks, that the 
