THE MIND FOR THE STUDY OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 79 



in use, or to construct new ones, which the progress of 

 science may render necessary, in order to convey, without 

 periphrasis, a knowledge of new facts, or of new results ari- 

 sing from the combination of those already known. To the 

 science of Geology, among others, these remarks are par- 

 ticularly applicable. The success with which it has of late 

 years been cultivated in England, and the knowledge which 

 has been acquired by that means of the physical structure of 

 the British Islands, must be attributed, next to the establish- 

 ment of the Geological Society of London, to the activity 

 with which the science has been pursued, by students of the 

 Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The Reliquice Di- 

 IwoiancE of Professor Buckland, a work which has displayed, 

 in so interesting a manner, the remains of an epoch when our 

 forests were traversed by the lion, the tiger, the hyaena and the 

 elephant, and from which so much satisfaction has been derived 

 with regard to the physical records of the Deluge, is one of the 

 fruits of the Oxford School of Geology. Mr. Conybeare's 

 Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales, and Pro- 

 fessor Daubeny's History of Volcanos, are examples from the 

 same source. The extensive researches in almost every consi- 

 derable group of our rocks, of the gentleman who now fills the 

 chair of the Geological Society, and who is a distinguished 

 ornament of the University of Cambridge (Professor Sedg- 

 wick), are proofs of a similar nature. With these also we 

 must associate the still more extensive researches of the same 

 geologist upon the Continent, pursued in concert with Mr. 

 Murchison, another active member of the Geological Society. 

 How far they can be regarded as affording proofs of some of 

 the positions advanced by Mr. Lyell, in his late work, remains 

 for discussion; but it would certainly appear from them, in con- 

 junction with the continental researches of Messrs. Lyell and 

 Murchison themselves, that the series of processes to which 

 the globe has been subjected, may at least be compared to an 

 ascending spiral or helix, in which every portion of a new vo- 

 lution corresponds with some portion of that which has pre- 

 ceded it. For the earth appears to have undergone several 

 successive changes of surface, each of which has given rise to 

 a class of distinct but strictly analogous rocks, characterized at 

 the corresponding terms of each series by analogous mineral 

 and organic contents. The deposition of common salt and the 

 development of carbonaceous matter from vegetables, or efforts 

 towards them, for example, seem to have taken place at every 

 great aera in the formation of the secondary strata, as well as 

 at several aeras in that of the tertiary beds. 



Many of these contributions of the Cambridge School of 



