OF ORGANIC NATURE 33 



the reach of a deposit, and at other times its own deposit 

 broken up and carried away, it follows that our record 

 must be in the highest degree imperfect, and we have 

 hardly a trace left of thick deposits, or any definite know- 

 ledge of the area that they occupied in a great many cases. 

 And mark this I That supposing even that the whole sur- 

 face of the earth had been accessible to the geologist, 

 that man had had access to every part of the earth, and 

 had made sections of the whole, and put them all together, 

 even then his record must of necessity be imperfect. 



But to how much has man really access ? If you will 

 look at this Map you will see that it represents the pro- 

 portion of the sea to the earth : this coloured part indicates 

 all the dry land, and this other portion is the water. You 

 will notice at once that the water covers three-fifths of 

 the whole surface of the globe, and has covered it in the 

 same manner ever since man has kept any record of his 

 own observations, to say nothing of the minute period 

 during which he has cultivated geological inquiry. So 

 that three-fifths of the surface of the earth is shut out 

 from us because it is under the sea. Let us look at the 

 other two-fifths, and see what are the countries in which 

 anything that may be termed searching geological inquiry 

 has been carried out : a good deal of France, Germany, and 

 Great Britain and Ireland, bits of Spain, of Italy, and 

 of Russia, have been examined, but of the whole great 

 mass of Africa, except parts of the southern extremity, 

 we know next to nothing ; little bits of India, but of the 

 greater part of the Asiatic continent nothing ; bits of 

 the Northern American States and of Canada, but of the 

 greater part of the continent of North America, and in 

 still larger proportion, of South America, nothing 1 



Under these circumstances, it follows that even with 

 reference to that kind of imperfect information which we 

 can possess, it is only of about the ten-thousandth part 

 of the accessible parts of the earth that has been examined 

 properly. Therefore, it is with justice that the most 

 thoughtful of those who are concerned in these inquiries 

 insist continually upon the imperfection of the geological 

 record ; for, I repeat, it is absolutely necessary, from 

 the nature of things, that that record should be of the 

 most fragmentary and imperfect character. Unfortunately 

 this circumstance has been constantly forgotten. Men of 

 science, like young colts in a fresh pasture, are apt to be 

 66 B 



