‘pie 
Principles of Geology. 3 
ence which embraces the contemplation of so many sources of hu- 
man 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 labor in the 
mine or the coal pit, I refer the question. What is the use of the 
principles which have extended our control 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 indiyid- 
ual happiness ;—a science which, under many discouragements, has 
gradually uplifted and spread itself around, till there is perhaps, no 
corner of the earth which contains not a man desirous of investiga- 
ting its physical history. 
Sology, a8 a system of observation and induction, is decidedly 
of modern origin, Some of the more obvious facts connected with 
Such are the sinking of rivers into the ground, and their gliding along 
subterranean channels, of which such elegant descriptions ornament 
© poems of antiquity. Nor did the ancients pass, without a mo- 
Mentary reflection, those fossil shells which are inclosed in rocks, 
and buried in mountains, far removed from the sea. ‘The lines of 
id are known to every one ; and the simple conclusion he draws 
of the dry land having once been sea,* has served as the basis of 
many later hypotheses which contain no more information. The 
*gotean doctrine of the intermutations of the substance, and re- 
Peated revolutions in the nature of all created things, of which this 
4S urged as an example, has not a little resemblance to some of Dr. 
Hutton 
i ’S speculations on cosmogony, whilst in Ovid’s description of 
c 140s, 
We really seem to behold the germ of a Wernerian theory. 
ay pass the centuries of darkness which succeeded the 
splendid era of Rome, and fix our attention on times more approach- 
m§ Our own. The discoveries of Newton, in celestial mechanics, 
‘nttoduced a new order of inquirers concerning the history of the 
3 but, unhappily, few of them followed the steps of their illus- 
tous leader. The “ theories,” as they were.arrogantly termed, of 
a 
* 
———--———_ vidi factas ex zquore terras, 
Et procul a pelago conche jacuere marine. Pee 
