282 ON THE PARTICULAR ORDER OF 



and logic are here alike made to yield to an imaginary 

 convenience. 



If this view of the abuse of a term should be judged 

 too strong, there is no geologist of any reading and 

 experience, who will not confirm the fact of its mis- 

 application to these ends. The evil consequences 

 arising from it are considerable: since it substitutes 

 words for facts, and affords the student a ready 

 mode of husbanding his industry and his reasoning, 

 by stating, not that which is, but that which ought 

 to be. It is not meant to be denied, that the term 

 subordinate may often be properly used; since many 

 rocks do occur in very small portions, in a single and 

 important series of some other. But it is a wide 

 difference to make a legitimate use of a fact, and to 

 pervert it to mischievous purposes. 



It will be no small acquisition to the student, if 

 these remarks shall relieve him from that anxiety 

 which must ever follow all attempts to discover what 

 is not, but which he believes to exist; if they shall 

 preserve him from that distrust of his own skill or 

 discernment, which often ends in turning a modest 

 mind from a pursuit in which it finds its observations 

 at variance with those which it is taught to think 

 established. 



Of the Succession of the Strata in Britain. 



After thus giving some general illustrations of the 

 successions or orders of the strata in confirmation of 

 the views here held out, it will not be considered 

 superfluous to add some examples in detail from the 

 very extensive succession of strata found in this 

 country. In an elementary work produced in Britain, 



