Mr. Robberds's Reply to Mr. R. C. Taylor. 193 



the first step. It surely indicates any thing but a disposition 

 to decide precipitately, or an eagerness to di'aw extensive con- 

 clusions fi'om narrow and insufficient data. My desire, on 

 the contrary, is to make good my ground as I proceed. I 

 therefoi'e wished that the first in the long series of facts which 

 I have collected, should pass through the ordeal of strict ex- 

 amination, and be tried by its own merits ; and I am thankful 

 to Mr. Taylor for having so effectually seconded my wishes 

 on that point. There is no individual who is more practically 

 conversant with the district, to which I referred, nor who has 

 taken a more scientific view of its seolomcal features. His 

 professional pursuits have afforded him repeated opportunities 

 of minutely investigating objects, which 1 have been able only 

 to siu'vey casually, in hours of leisure, abstracted from widely 

 different occupations. 1 was well aware, both from his recorded 

 statements and from colloquial communications, that we en- 

 tei'tained opposite opinions on this subject ; and I was solicit- 

 ous that the grounds on whicla our respective judgements had 

 been formed, should be distinctly set forth, and candidly com- 

 pared. They are now before the public, and sooner or later 

 the knowledge of truth will be the result. I appretiate duly 

 the accuracy of Mr. Taylor's observations, and the importance 

 of the phaenomena which he has described. But his deductions 

 from them ought to be received with caution. Mr. Taylor is 

 the disciple of a school. I hope that I shall not be suspected 

 of using the term invidiously ; but the geologists of the pre- 

 sent day have formed a school which, while it professes only 

 to collect facts, for the information and use of an indefinitely 

 remote posterity, has still a system of its own ; while it depre- 

 cates hasty and premature decision in others, it has itself de- 

 cided prematurely and hastily ; and that too, upon the very 

 points on which it is the most deficient in evidence, and the 

 most inconclusive in argument. One of these is the invaria- 

 bility of the level of our present seas, which has insensibly be- 

 come a canon of this school of science, without any satisfactory 

 proofs whatever. As a member of this body, Mr. Taylor 

 naturally upholds its doctrines, not indeed against his better 

 judgement ami honest conviction ; but by the influence of great 

 names, — by his respect for his teachers, by the supreme au- 

 thority of his Cuviers and Bucklands, — he is predisposed to 

 adopt their sentiments, and to read the volume of Nature in 

 conformity with their expositions. I am grateful to these 

 eminent men for the services, the invaluable services, which 

 they have rendered to the cause of science ; but it is to tlie facts 

 which they have attested, not to the opinions which tlicy have 

 put forth, that I bow with the deference of accorded faith. 

 Nni)i>iries. Vol.2. No. 9. Sept. 1827. 2 C The 



