THE IMPERFECTION 



OP 



THE GEOLOGICAL EECOED. 



THE general who is for ever counter-marching and 

 skilfully executing retrograde movements cannot always 

 sustain the enthusiasm of his own troops, much less 

 excite in his favour that of the civilian multitude. To 

 many minds, the reliance placed on the imperfection of 

 the geological record appears to be a rather damaging 

 retreat in the strategy of science. They were just 

 beginning to believe in geology as a wonderful reve- 

 lation of the past history of the globe, when suddenly 

 they are told that the fragments of that history which 

 have been saved are merely tattered pages out of 

 different chapters, giving no adequate notion of the 

 enormous bulk and varied contents of the whole volume. 

 Since, without the geological evidence of time's duration 

 and of the countless changes in organic structures which 

 that duration embraces, the theory of development could 

 never have been imagined, it seems half ungrateful and 



