OF THE EARTH. 507 



in our power : yet we can aid conjectures. The great 

 tract of peat near Stirling has demanded two thousand 

 years ; for its registry is preserved by the Roman works 

 below it. It is but a single bed of coal : shali?we 

 multiply it by a hundred ? we shall not exceed, far 

 from it, did we allow two hundred thousand years for 

 the production of the coal series of Newcastle, with all 

 its rocky strata. A Scottish lake does not shoal at 

 the rate of half a foot in a century ; and that country 

 presents a vertical depth of far more than three thou- 

 sand feet, in the single series of the oldest sandstone. 

 No sound geologist will accuse a computer of exceed- 

 ing, if he allows six hundred thousand years for the 

 production of this series alone. And yet^what are the 

 coal deposits, and what the oldest sandstone, compared 

 to the entire mass of the strata? Let the computer 

 measure the Apennine and the Jura, let him, if he can 

 trust Pallas, measure the successive strata, of sixty 

 miles in depth, which he believes himself to have as- 

 certained, and then he may renew his computations ; 

 while, when he has summed the whole, his labour is 

 not terminated. But let the reader supply the figures 

 which it is useless to exhibit, since they cannot be true. 

 If these views of the powers and the results of geo~ 

 logical investigation are alarming to feeble minds, they 

 tend to exalt that science in the estimation of those 

 who neither fear to seek Truth, nor dread it when 

 found. It is not astronomical science alone which will 

 hereafter elevate the mind in the contemplation of the 

 universe : but the Earth has hitherto been reasoned on 

 by mathematicians only, and all but its mechanical re- 

 lations have been forgotten. If there are still ignorant 

 and anxious persons who think that these views inter- 

 fere with our Faith, I refer them to the following chap- 

 ter; for I will not agitate this question twice. The 

 learned reader will not fail to remark their coincidence 



