THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE 11. VOL. V. 



No. VI.— JUNE, 1878. 



I. — Physiography. 

 By C. Lloyd Morgan, F.G.S., A.E.S.M. 



THE artist who is illustrating a great theme upon a large 

 spread of canvas finds it necessary from time to time to lay 

 down the brush, with which he is accurately filling in the more 

 delicate minutise, that he may retreat to a distance and view his picture 

 as a whole. It is essential to the higher development of his art 

 that he should not omit this comprehensive survey. The same 

 thing holds good in Literature and Science, as well as in Art. The 

 historian must, from time to time, take a fresh survey of History as 

 a whole. If he neglect to do so, the group of figures to which 

 he devotes his special attention will certainly not take up its true 

 position among the other groups that appear on the canvas of 

 History. The man of science, also, should not forget that he is, 

 according to his individual bent or capacity, aiding in the con- 

 struction of a great Philosophy ; and he should now and again turn 

 aside from the microscope, or lay down the hammer, to take a 

 more comprehensive survey of that Philosophy, whose aim it is to 

 comprehend and consolidate the widest generalizations of Science. 



A rude attempt at such a survey of the principles of geology and 

 the bordering branches of science will be found in the following 

 pages. They are from the notes of a lecture which formed the last 

 of a course delivered before a school audience. In that lecture I did 

 my best to give a rough sketch of that chain of events by the study 

 of which we may build up a history of the Earth, while I en- 

 deavoured at the same time to lead my hearers upwards from the 

 simple to the complex : for I hold that the teacher of science should 

 lead his pupils from the well known, through the less known, to 

 the unknown. Taking a few simple and obvious facts as a basis, 

 he should first test whether those whom he teaches really know 

 them to be facts, and then, carefully building upwards, seeing that 

 each stone of his superstructure rests securely on one which has 

 before been firmly laid down in its true place, he should mount 

 slowly and surely, until, at last, he reaches that rare atmosphere of 

 the unknown in which, for the present at least, no man may build. 



Standing by the sea-side, then, let us inquire of Nature con- 

 cerning the things which we see around us. The waves roll in 

 upon the shore, the wind blows freshly in our faces, a heavy 



DECADE II. — VOL, V.— NO. VI. 16 



