32-1 ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY. 



more luxuriant than it has since done ; and were they in 

 any of our colonies to meet &quot;with a coal-bed, they would 

 conclude that, as a matter of course, it was of the same 

 age as the English coal-beds. 



Now this belief that geologic &quot; systems &quot; are universal, 

 is quite as untenable as the other. It is just as absurd 

 Avhen considered d priori / and it is equally inconsistent 

 with the facts. Though some series of strata classed to 

 gether as Oolite, may range over a wider district than any 

 one stratum of the series ; yet we have but to ask what 

 were the circumstances of its deposit, to see that the Oolitic 

 series, like one of its individual strata, must be of local 

 origin ; and that there is not likely to be anywhere else, a 

 series that exactly corresponds, either in its characters or 

 in its commencement and termination. For the formation 

 of such a series implies an area of subsidence, in which its 

 component beds were thrown down. Every area of sub 

 sidence is necessarily limited ; and to suppose that there 

 exist elsewhere groups of beds completely answering to 

 those known as Oolite, is to suppose that, in contempora 

 neous areas of subsidence, like processes were going on. 

 There is no reason to suppose this ; but every reason to 

 suppose the reverse. That in contemporaneous areas of 

 subsidence throughout the globe, the conditions would 

 cause the formation of Oolite, or anything like it, is an as 

 sumption which no modern geologist would openly make : 

 he would say that the equivalent series of beds found else 

 where, would very likely be of dissimilar mineral charac 

 ter. 



Moreover, in these contemporaneous areas of subsi 

 dence, the phenomena going on would not only be more or 

 less different in kind ; but in no two cases would they be 

 likely to agree in their commencements and terminations. 

 The probabilities are greatly against separate portions of 

 ,he Earth s surface beginning to subside at the same time, 



