GEOLOGY 



ENGLAND AND WALES 



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INTRODUCTION. 



EOLOGY in its widest sense is the History of the 

 Earth. It deals with the nature and origin of the 

 rocks that form the solid ground on which we live, 

 and with the fossil plants and animals whose re- 

 mains are embedded in the rocks. It inquires into 

 the conditions of climate and scene under which these forms 

 of life existed, and into the character and causes of the 

 physical changes which have occurred in the past, and which 

 have led to the life, climate, and scenery of the present. 



The science, in the first instance, is best looked at in a 

 broad, general way. For so intimately is all knowledge 

 linked together through the ' Unity of Nature,' that our in- 

 vestigations lead us by insensible gradations from Astronomy 

 to Geology, and thence through Geography to the various 

 subdivisions of Natural History and to the study of Man 

 himself. And, in the words of Mr. E. A. Freeman, " He who 

 puts together a record of the strata, and he who puts together 

 a record of the political changes of England or of any other 



