ITS APPLICATION TO THE PURPOSES OF LIFE. 3 



In addition to other advantages which might be adduced, 

 it must not be forgotten that geology is still a youthful and 

 progressive study, whose investigations possess the charm of 

 novelty, and whose discoveries are but the unfoldings of the 

 history of the past. 



Before the benefits of philosophic research were rendered 

 so obvious as they now are, it was the fate of geology, like 

 many other scientific studies, to be regarded as a speculative 

 pursuit, which, however well adapted to interest the philo- 

 sopher, was useless to society in general. This erroneous 

 opinion, though now, in some degree, dispelled, is still so 

 firmly implanted in the minds of many, who have not paid 

 sufficient attention to the subject, that we deem it necessary 

 to devote some of our earliest pages to a brief statement of 

 the relation of geology to several of the most important pur- 

 suits of life. 



DEPENDENCE OF NATIONAL PROSPERITY ON G-EOLOGICAL 

 POSITION. The social condition and commercial prosperity 

 of a people is often in a great measure due to the geological 

 structure of the region of the earth they inhabit. Of the 

 truth of this proposition our own country is a remark- 

 able example. We owe our high position, as, . a nation, not 

 solely to the moral qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race, 

 but to the physical advantages derived from the geological 

 structure of our island, which by yielding us stores of 

 metals and ores, of limestones and sandstones, of salts and 

 minerals, and above all of coal, enables us not only to supply 

 our own wants, but to minister to those of others, and to 

 convey knowledge and civilisation to the very ends of the 

 earth. From the remotest periods, when the Carthaginians 

 and Pho3iiicians traded with our British ancestors for lead 

 and tin, to the present time, the mineral and geological 

 riches of our island have been eagerly sought by distant 

 nations ; and, at the present moment, countries the most 

 remote from our own, and from each other, are largely our 

 debtors for many of the benefits which they enjoy. On 

 the sultry plains of India, and of Arabia amidst the frozen 

 deserts of the north as far distant as the antipodes, and 

 at every point between the natives are clad in garments, 

 and assisted by tools and implements, which the natural 

 resources of our country, aided by our energy and enterprise, 



B2 



