System cannot be of the age of the Old Red Saridstone. 133 



unaltered killas ; and the same rock is included in true Cod- 

 don grit at Camelford, Milton Abbot, Lidford, and on the 

 east of Oakhampton. I mention this because Professor Sedg- 

 wick and Mr. Murchison, in their memoir on South Devon, 

 have coloured it in the section from Dartmoor to Plymouth 

 as " altered slate." 



At Bittaford Bridge the Coddon grit dips S.S.E., the killas 

 beyond dipping the same. 



At Ivy I3ridge it dips south 60°, but I have ascertained no 

 precise dip of the killas ridge south of it, but in several places 

 to the west it dips south. 



At Shaugh Prior on the N.W. it assumes its true Coddon 

 Hill type, and underlies the killas, both of them dipping S. 

 by W. The section adopted by Professor Sedgwick and 

 Mr. Murchison, fig. 8, from Dartmoor to Abbots Kerswell, 

 is to me a marvel and a mystery, as I state emphatically and 

 in unreserved sincerity, that I have never met with one in- 

 stance which has negatived the superposition of the killas in 

 its relation to the floriferous. 



I have stated that the hypothesis of the Cambrian slates 

 being the base of geology as a system, is altogether gratuitous ; 

 it may be prudent therefore that I guard myself from miscon- 

 struction. Geology, like every other science, has its prescribed 

 limit, — the extreme shore, on which the inevitable decree is 

 written, " So far shalt thou go and no farther." The great 

 Creator has enabled every thinking and well-constituted mind 

 to apprehend and feel that it necessarily must be so, from the 

 operation of diurnal natural causes only; the progress of in- 

 quiry in all the other kindred sciences, quickens our percep- 

 tion of, and strengthens our faith in, a great and good Crea- 

 tor; if it do not, the sublimest conclusions we arrive at are 

 more heartless and worthless than the rattle of childhood or 

 the toys of dotage. On what analogy, then, shall the geologist 

 assume that his science becomes deficient in moi-al induction, 

 and retrogrades as he advances in the comprehension of its 

 profoundest truths ; that it will only conduct him to an un- 

 brooded abyss of darkness and chaotic masses of matter 

 acted on by crystalline forces alone, but otherwise destitute of 

 the higher evidences of His eternal superintending wisdom, 

 power and providence ? No. The nethermost apparent foun- 

 dations of the earth, when or wherever they shall be attained, 

 if possibly they may not teem with the most exquisite organi- 

 zation of plant and animal, will doubtless testify of life and 

 light, and all the secondary agents by which the physical go- 

 vernment of this world of ours has been and is now con- 

 ducted. At that terminus the natural records end and the moral 



