OUTLINES OF FIELD-GEOLOGY 



CHAPTKR I 



IRODUCTORN 



To those who are fond of country- -rambles, geology 

 offers many attractions, Few men are so unobservant 

 as not to be struck now and then by at least t he- 

 more salient features of a landscape. K\m in a flat 

 featureless country, the endless and apparently capri- 

 curvings of the sluggish streams may occasionally 

 suggest the question why such serpentine courses should 

 ever have been chosen. But where the ground rises 

 into undulations, and breaks out into hills and crags; 

 still more, where it towers into rugged mountains, cleft 

 by precipices down which torrents are ever pouring 

 and by ravines in the depths of which hoarse streams 

 ceaselessly murmur, one can hardly escape the natural 

 curiosity to know something about these singular aspects 

 of landscape, when and how they arose, and why 

 they should be precisely as they are. For the day is 

 now happily past when the sterner features of the land 



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