326 ILLOaiCAL GEOLOGY. 



local, that even those most on then* guard against it seem 

 unable to escape its influence. At page 158 of his JPriiici' 

 pies of Geology i Sir Charles Lyell says : — 



" A group of red marl and red sandstone, containing salt and 

 gypsum, being interposed in England between the Lias and the 

 Coal, all other red marls and sandstones, associated some of them 

 with salt, and others with gypsum, and occurring not only in dif- 

 ferent parts of i\urope, but in North America, Peru, India, the 

 Bait deserts of Asia, those of Africa — in a word, in every quarter 

 of the globe, were referred to one and the same period. . . . 

 . . It was in vain to urge as an objection the improbability of 

 the hypothesis which implies that all the moving waters on the 

 globe were once simultaneously charged with sediment of a red 

 colour. But the rashness of pretending to identify, in age, all the 

 red sandstones and marls in question, has at length been suffi- 

 ciently exposed, by the discovery that, even in Europe, they be- 

 long decidedly to many different epochs." 



Nevertheless, while in this and numerous passages of 

 like implication. Sir C. Lyell protests against the bias here 

 illustrated, he seems himself not comj)letely free from it. 

 Though he utterly rejects the old hypothesis that all over 

 the Earth the same continuous strata lie upon each other 

 in regular order, like the coats of an onion, he still writes 

 as though geologic " systems" do thus succeed each other. 

 A reader of his Manual would certainly suppose him to 

 believe, that the Primary epoch ended, and the Secondary 

 epoch commenced, all over the world at the same time — 

 that these terms really correspond to distinct universal eras 

 in Nature. When he assumes, as he does, that the divis- 

 ion between Cambrian and Lower Silurian in America, an- 

 swers chronologically to the division between Cambrian 

 and Lower Silurian in Wales — when he takes for granted 

 that the partings of Lower from Middle Silurian, and of 

 Middle Silurian from Upper, in the one region, are of the 

 same dates as tl e like partings in the other region ; does it 



