2 PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY. 



If, then, so many delightful themes of human study are directly or 

 indirectly connected with the earth, there is no need to assert the interest, 

 it would hardly be possible to display all the advantage, which is to 

 be expected from the study of geology. It must be evident that not 

 only our daily wants are supplied, and our comforts provided, by various 

 productions which acknowledge the earth for their common parent, but 

 that the charms of scenery, and all the lovely variety of nature, are so 

 intimately dependent on peculiarities in the structure of the earth, that 

 no one can think uninteresting a science which embraces the contem- 

 plation of so many sources of human enjoyment. Let us, then, be 

 spared that question which is clamorously repeated to the authors of 

 new discoveries, " What is the use of it ?" To those who direct the 

 thousands that labour in the mine or the coal-pit, I refer the question. 

 What is the use of the principles which have extended our controul 

 over the subterranean riches of our country ? In the extension of mines 

 and collieries, and in the construction of roads and canals, we experience 

 the value of a science, which, though noiseless in its career, and with 

 no pretension in its appearance, lends strong support to national wealth 

 and individual happiness ; a science which, under many discouragements, 

 has gradually uplifted itself and spread itself around, till there is, per- 

 haps, no corner of the earth which contains not a man desirous of in- 

 vestigating its physical history. 



Geology, as a system of observation and induction, is decidedly of 

 modern origin. Some of the more obvious facts connected with it, could 

 not, indeed, be overlooked in the most inattentive age. Such are the 

 sinking of rivers into the ground, and gliding along subterranean chan- 

 nels, of which such elegant descriptions ornament the poems of antiquity. 

 Nor did the ancients pass, without a momentary reflection, those fossil 

 shells which are inclosed in rocks, and buried in mountains, far removed 

 from the sea. The lines of Ovid are known to every one ; and the 

 simple conclusion he draws of the dry land having once been sea *, has 



vidi factas ex sequore terras, 



Et procul a pelago concha jacuere marine. 



