XI PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 341 
two-fifths, and see what are the countries in 
which anything that may be termed searching 
geological inquiry has been carried out: a good 
deal of France, Germany, and Great Britain and 
Treland, bits of Spain, of Italy, and of Russia, have 
been examined, but of the whole great mass of 
Africa, except parts of the southern extremity, 
we know next to nothing; little bits of India, but 
of the greater part of the Asiatic continent 
nothing; bits of the Northern American States 
and of Canada, but of the greater part of the 
continent of North America, and in still larger 
proportion, of South America, nothing ! 
Under these circumstances, it follows that even 
with reference to that kind of imperfect informa- 
tion which we can possess, it is only of about the 
ten-thousandth part of the accessible parts of the 
earth that has been examined properly. There- 
fore, it is with justice that the most thoughtful of 
those who are concerned in these inquiries insist 
continually upon the imperfection of the geological 
record ; for, I repeat, it is absolutely necessary, 
from the nature of things, that that record should 
be of the most fragmentary and imperfect 
character. Unfortunately this circumstance has 
been constantly forgotten. Men of science, like 
young colts in a fresh pasture, are apt to be 
exhilarated on being turned into a new field of 
inquiry, to go off at a hand-allop, in total 
disregard of hedges and ditches, to lose sight of 
Mere. 
