S2G ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY. 



local, that oven those most on their guard against it seem 

 unable to escape its influence. At page 158 of his Princi 

 ples of Gcoloyy, Sir Charles Lyell says : 



&quot; A group of red marl and red sandstone, containing salt and 

 gypsum, being interposed in England between tbe Lias and tlio 

 Coal, all otber red marls and sandstones, associated some of them 

 witli salt, and others with gypsnm, and occurring not only in dif 

 ferent parts of Europe, but in North America, Peru, India, tho 

 salt deserts of Asia, those of Africa in a word, in every quarter 

 of the globe, were referred to one and the same period. . . . 

 . . It was in vain to urge as an objection the improbability of 

 the hypothesis which implies that all the moving waters on tho 

 globe were once simultaneously charged with sediment of a red 

 colour. But the rashness of pretending to identify, in age, all tho 

 red sandstones and marls in question, has at length been suffi 

 ciently exposed, by the discovery that, even in Europe, they bo- 

 long decidedly to many different epochs.&quot; 



Nevertheless, while in this and. numerous passages of 

 like implication, Sir C. Lyell protests against the Lias hero 

 illustrated, he seems himself not completely free from it. 

 Though he utterly rejects the old hypothesis that all over 

 the Earth the same continuous strata lie upon each other 

 in regular order, like the coats of an onion, he still writes 

 as though geologic &quot; systems &quot; do thus succeed each other. 

 A reader of his Manual would certainly suppose him to 

 believe, that the Primary epoch ended, and the Secondary 

 epoch commenced, all over the world at the same time 

 that these terms really correspond to distinct universal eras 

 in Xature. &quot;When he assumes, as he does, that the divis 

 ion between Cambrian and Lower Silurian in America, an 

 swers chronologically to the division between Cambrian 

 and Lower Silurian in &quot;Wales when he takes for granted 

 that the partings of Lower from Middle Silurian, and of 

 Middle Silurian from Upper, in the one region, are of tho 

 same dates as the like partings in the other region ; does it 



