528 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



speculations which thus refer to actual past events, 

 and attempt to explain them by laws of causation. 



Such speculations are not confined to the world 

 of inert matter ; we have examples of them in in- 

 quiries concerning the monuments of the art and 

 labour of distant ages ; in examinations into the 

 origin and early progress of states and cities, cus- 

 toms, and languages ; as well as in researches con- 

 cerning the causes and formations of mountains and 

 rocks, the imbedding of fossils in strata, and their 

 elevation from the bottom of the ocean. All these 

 speculations are connected by this bond, that they 

 endeavour to ascend to a past state of things, by the 

 aid of the evidence of the present. In asserting, 

 with Cuvier, that " The geologist is an antiquary of 

 a new order," we do not mark a fanciful and super- 

 ficial resemblance of employment merely, but a real 

 and philosophical connexion of the principles of 

 investigation. The organic fossils which occur in 

 the rock, and the medals which we find in the ruins 

 of ancient cities, are to be studied in a similar spirit 

 and for a similar purpose. Indeed, it is not always 

 easy to know where the task of the geologist ends, 

 and that of the antiquary begins. The study of 

 ancient geography may involve us in the examina- 

 tion of the causes by which the forms of coasts and 

 plains is changed; the ancient mound or scarped 

 rock may force upon us the problem, whether its 

 form is the work of nature or of man ; the ruined 

 temple may exhibit the traces of time in its changed 





