200 THE SECONDABY AGES. 



and exciting an interest more in keeping with that which 

 has so long been attached to their palseontological and 

 purely scientific aspects. In corroboration of this we need 

 only refer to such discoveries as the Cleveland ironstone, 

 which within the last dozen years has wrought such a re- 

 volution on the aspects and industry of northern York- 

 shire ; to the deposits of rock-salt near Middlesborough on 

 the Tees and in Antrim ; and, above all, to the fact that 

 the main coal-fields of India and the East are of secondary 

 origin. How changed the aspect of opinion within the last 

 thirty years, when our predecessors, generalising from their 

 limited knowledge, regarded coal and iron as belonging 

 alone to formations of earlier date, and sought for traces 

 of their existence only in connection with these primary 

 systems ! But so it ever is ; the more limited our acquaint- 

 ance with nature and nature's operation, the more restricted 

 our notions of her bounties, and the less prepared are we to 

 avail ourselves of their benefits and amenities. It is only 

 when mankind have taken the wider survey that they can 

 arrive at sounder conceptions, and forego the conclusions 

 they had drawn from their local and circumscribed expe- 

 rience. 



