TUE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 11 



ing to the imagination. Nay, the very opposition 

 with which Geology met was of as great benefit 

 to the sister sciences as to itself. For, when 

 questions belonging to the most sacred hereditary 

 beliefs of Christendom were supposed to be 

 affected by the verification of a fossil shell, or 

 the proving that the Maestricht " homo diluvii 

 testis " was, after all, a monstrous eft, it became 

 necessary to work upon Conchology, Botany, and 

 Comparative Anatomy, with a care and a rev- 

 erence, a caution and a severe induction, which 

 had been never before applied to them ; and thus 

 gradually, in the last half-century, the whole choir 

 of cosmical sciences have acquired a soundness, 

 severity, and fulness, which render them, as 

 mere intellectual exercises, as valuable to a man- 

 ly mind as Mathematics and Metaphysics. 



But how very lately have they attained that 

 firm and honorable standinjr-crround ! It is a 

 question, whether, even twenty years ago, Geol- 

 ogy, Jts it then stood, was worth troubling one's 

 head about, so little had been really proved. 

 And heavy and up-hill was the work, even with- 

 in the last fifteen years, of those who stead- 

 fastly set themselves lo the task of proving, and 

 of asserting at all ri?ks, that the ]\Iaker of 



