32 TOWN GEOLOGY. [i. 



not taken into account, and for which your old explan- 

 ation was not sufficient ; and you would have to try a 

 new induction to use your common sense afresh 

 saying, "I have not to explain merely how a dead bird 

 got here, but how a dead humming-bird." 



And now, if your imaginative friend chimed in 

 triumphantly with : " Do you not see that I was right 

 after all ? Do you not see that it fell from the clouds ? 

 that it was swept away hither,, all the way from South 

 America, by some south-westerly storm, and wearied 

 out at last, dropped here to find rest, as in a sacred 

 place ? " what would you answer ? " My friend, that 

 is a beautiful imagination ; but I must treat it only as 

 such, as long as I can explain the mystery more simply 

 by facts which I do know. I do not know that 

 humming-birds can be blown across the Atlantic 

 alive. I do know they are actually brought across the 

 Atlantic dead ; are stuck in ladies' hats. I know that 

 ladies visit the cathedral ; and odd as the accident is, 

 I prefer to believe, till I get a better explanation, that 

 the humming-bird has simply dropped out of a lady's 

 hat." There, again, you would be speaking common 

 sense ; and using, too, sound inductive method ; trying 

 to explain what you do not know from what you do 

 know already. 



Now, I ask of you to employ the same common 

 sense when you read and think of Geology. 



It is very necessary to do so. For in past times 

 men have tried to explain the making of the world 

 around them, its oceans, rivers, mountains, and con- 

 tinents, by I know not what of fancied cataclysms and 

 convulsions of nature \ explaining the unknown by 

 the still more unknown, till some of their geological 



