584 



DENUDATION AND SCENERY. 



DENUDATION AND SCENERY. 



Fig. 98. — View of the Wye, looking towards Monmouth. 



From a photograph taken at King Arthur's Cave, Great Dovvard, near 



Symonds Yat. 



No subject is more fascinating to students of Geology than 

 Scenery. In contemplating the present landscape, we see but one 

 picture in a series of dissolving views which the science reveals, 

 and that take us back in imagination to the dim and distant past. 

 The chief aim of the Geologist, indeed, is to portray these scenes 

 in ancient geography, to discern the varied features of the land and 

 water, their successive occupants, and the changeful climates that 

 the earth's surface has witnessed since first it became habitable. 



The question has often arisen whether the pleasure and the 

 emotion evoked on the contemplation of beautiful scenery are not 

 likely to be marred by scientific explanations ; and no doubt some 

 who have glanced through the preceding pages will regard the 

 Geology of England and Wales as a mass of uninteresting and 

 tedious detail.- They must remember, however, that the object of 

 this work is to record the facts from which the pleasanter de- 

 ductions may be made, — these last it is which lend a charm to the 

 investigation of details ; and as Principal Shairp has remarked, 

 while "there is a poetic glow of wonder and emotion before 

 Science begins its work, there is a larger, deeper, more instructed 

 wonder when it ends."^ 



Those who have made themselves familiar in the field with the 

 general characters of the rocks in England and Wales, will easily 

 recognize their intimate relation with the form of the ground. 

 Broadly speaking, we have two main types of scenery : the moun- 

 tainous and more hilly districts of Wales, the north and west of 

 England, largely composed of slates, grits, limestones and eruptive 



^ On Poetic Interpretation of Nature, 1S77, p. 43. 



