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GEOLOGY. 



by revolutions which have repeatedly submerged, elevated, and dislocated its frame- 

 work. Disclosures of this nature surpassing the marvellous fancies of an oriental 

 imagination so novel to the great crowd of men so contradictory to the prevailing 

 sentiments in which they are educated have been received with no little distrust, and 

 have exposed the geologist to no small amount of obloquy, from the parties who prefer 

 cleaving to the tradition received from their fathers, and to the more obvious optical 

 impressions, than to engage in any laborious exercise of the reflective faculties upon 

 the phenomena of nature. In fact, geology has had to encounter the precise difficulty 

 with which astronomy had to contend in its early stages that of being antagonistic 

 in its decisions to habitual ideas, and to the first blush of sensible evidence: for as 

 the eye recognises the revolution of the sun, and the fixedness of the earth, while 

 science teaches the stability of the former, and the rotation of the latter, so the 

 idea conveyed to the mind by the Cyclopean masonry of the limestone mountains, mass 

 piled on mass, till the height of the clouds is scaled, is that of a hard and refractory sub- 



Limestone llocks in the Gulf of Corinth. 



stance, which has sternly stood its ground from the era of primeval time ; whereas the 

 scientific investigator teaches, that its materials were once held in aqueous suspension, 

 and its substance as susceptible of impression as the sand from which the tide of the ocean 

 has just retired. Yet the proof is equally irresistible in the one case as in the other. 

 The minute organisations which enter into the constitution of many of the towering cliffs 

 which proudly throw back the impetuous dash of the billows, and the exquisitely delicate 

 markings by organic structures which they present the impressions of plants, leaves, 

 and shells, and the foot-prints of birds proclaim with undeniable evidence the fact 

 of a former soluble condition, and of great vicissitude having stamped its character upon 

 them. 



It is a distasteful task to the generality of mankind to unlearn. They do not willingly 

 abandon notions that have grown with their growth, and strengthened with their strength, 

 and struck their roots deep and fast into their " heart of hearts." Besides being mortifying 

 to intellectual vanity to admit an error, they disrelish the mental disturbance occasioned 

 by the breaking up of old associations of ideas, and the toil which a correct conception of 



