the London and Hampshire Basins. 115 



and the secret of whose power is to be found in the lapse of 

 time." 



Now, it may be fairly said, that if the noble Duke^s dictum is 

 not moi-e specious than true, his position is rather overstated. 

 For fifty j^ears I have been an observer of the progress of geo- 

 logy, and my experience, if not opposed to, does not run exactly 

 in a parallel line with this position. It was my good fortune to 

 mix for a short time in the society in which Playfair and Sir 

 James Hall gave the tone of geological research, — I witnessed 

 the inauguration of Jameson and the Wernerian Society in the 

 University of Edinburgh, and the temporary ascendency of the 

 Wernerian doctrines; but neither then nor afterwards, when 

 the geology of Loudon began to assume consistency, did I wit- 

 ness in either metropolis any obstruction given to the progress 

 of sound knowledge by the speculations of the advocates of par- 

 oxysmal activity. On the contrary, the impulse given by the 

 two greatest exemplars of this school, by Cuvier in his ' Theory 

 of the Earth,' and Buckland in his Reliquia Diluvianee, to the 

 spirit of curiosity and inquiry, tended greatly to the advancement 

 of ti-ue science, and actually paved the way for, and facilitated 

 the reception of, the doctrines of Smith, Brougniart, Conybeare, 

 Murchison, and a host of fellow-labourers, and finally of Sir 

 Charles Lyell himself. 



On the contrary, the tide has long been setting too strongly 

 in the other direction. And now, when a new element is want- 

 ing to put us in harmony with nature and the opinions of the con- 

 tinental geologists, who still talk of diluvial loam and diluvial 

 drift, we find it most difficult to obtain a hearing from the too 

 rigid adherents of a school who would transcend the zeal of their 

 teacher, and to whom the word ' diluvial ' is distasteful, because 

 they do not appreciate its true significance and value. 



The apophthegm is rather trite, or it might not inaptly be op- 

 posed to the proposition of the noble President, — that men may 

 be so long accustomed to dwell on details, as to acquire a sort of 

 microscopic vision, and grow insensible to the larger features, 

 and unable to picture to themselves the great eventualities of 

 nature. 



For as much as I have here and in my former essays attempted 

 to expound, I rest in the conclusions, — that Elevation and Denu- 

 dation have gone hand in hand ; — that there is a totality in the 

 denudations of this part of our island that bespeaks their syn- 

 chronism ; — and that the agencies of these changes have been of 

 the most violent character. 



Pulborough, February 1856. 



12 



