A. li. Hunt — A Viitdication of Bacon, Hnx/c//, and off/era. 273 



fails. Lord Kelvin assumes that the earth consolidated throughout 

 from within outward, and that the surface was the last to hax'den. 

 Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geology say — No. 



By way of recapitulation I must submit trhat the charges levelled 

 respectively against Bacon, Huxley, Darwin, and Lyell have all 

 failed, and for the following reasons. 



Huxley objected to Bacon only theoretically. In practice he 

 followed him. The Baconian system of working from experience 

 to axiom, from axiom to experience, and back again to axiom, until 

 the latter is established, is the only safe road, and a safe road it is. 



Lord Kelvin's attack on Darwin, for an error acknowledged and 

 corrected some thirty-six years previously, is a species of attack 

 which no reputation can withstand. 



Lord Kelvin's attack on Lyell is sufficiently repelled by Huxley. 



Professor Sollas's charge against Lyell, of what almost amounts 



to mala fides, is disposed of by showing that men of repute have 



held doctrines even more unorthodox without their good faith being 



questioned. 



I may perhaps be allowed to say that I have myself been 

 compelled to attempt the solution of problems of the most varied 

 character, for none of which I was fitted by previous training; and 

 that under these adverse circumstances I have never known the 

 Baconian method to fail. 



Before undertaking the investigation of the age of the Devonshire 

 schists I had never so much as seen a section of schist. After my 

 paper on Eipplemark was in print I heard for the first time of the 

 existence of Airy's standard work on Tides and Waves ; and as for 

 petrology, I have never had a couple of hours instruction in ray 

 life, to my own infinite loss and regret. Pengelly used to say : 

 " Be careful in scientific enquiries that you get a sufficient number 

 of trustworthy facts, that you interpret them with the aid of 

 a rigorous logic, that on suitable occasions you have courage enough 

 to avow your convictions ; and don't be impatient if your friends 

 don't receive all your conclusions, or even if they call you hard 

 names." This is safe advice, and it may be added that if by any 

 possibility two entirely distinct lines of enquiry can be induced to 

 point to the same fact, that fact is probably trustworthy, whereas if 

 three agree it most certainly is so. For instance, if after a gale 

 a dredge indicates a wave-rippled bottom, and if the fauna present 

 are specially adapted to resist waves, and if mathematical theory 

 asserts wave-action at the particular depth — experience, zoology, 

 and mathematics agree, and there is no doubt the bottom is rippled. 

 If, in addition, the ripples can be experimentally reproduced by 

 proportionate waves at a proportionate depth, experience, experiment, 

 zoology, and theory all agree. It is rarely enough that a fact can be 

 assured by four harmonious cross-bearings, but two cross-bearings, 

 if accurate, are sufiicient, whereas three are conclusive. For 

 instance, when geology, zoology, and chemistry agree independently 

 as to the age of the Cambrian rocks, or as to the salinity of the sea 

 at that epoch, that much desired information will have been obtained. 



DECADE IV. VOL. IX. NO. TI. 18 



