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Ch. I.] 



GEOLOGY COMPARED TO HISTORY. 



3 



dependent on the local distribution of fuel determined by that 

 ancient state of things. 



Geology is intimately related to almost all the physical 

 sciences, as history is to the moral. An historian should, if 

 possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with ethics, poli- 

 tics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology ; in a word, 

 with all branches of knowledge by which any insight into hu- 

 man affairs, or into the moral and intellectual nature of man, 

 can be obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geolo- 

 gist should be well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, 

 mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, 

 in every science relating to organic or inorganic nature. 

 With these accomplishments, the historian and geologist 

 would rarely fail to draw correct and philosophical conclu- 

 sions from the various monuments transmitted to them of 

 former occurrences. They would know to what combination 

 of causes analogous effects were referable, and they would 

 often be enabled to supply, by inference, information con- 

 cerning many events unrecorded in the defective archives of 

 former ages. But as such extensive acquisitions are scarcely 

 within the reach of any individual, it is necessary that men 

 who have devoted their lives to different departments should 

 unite their efforts ; and as the historian receives assistance 

 from the antiquary, and from those who have cultivated dif- 

 ferent branches of moral and political science, .so the geolo- 

 ist should avail himself of the aid of many naturalists, and 

 particularly of those who have studied the fossil remains of 

 lost species of animals and plants. 



The analogy, however, of the monuments consulted in geo- 

 logy, and those available in history, extends no farther than 

 to one class of historical monuments — those which may be 

 said to be undesignedly commemorative of former events. The 

 buried coin fixes the date of the reign of some Eoman empe- 

 ror ; the ancient encampment indicates the districts once 

 occupied by invading armies, and the former method of con- 

 structing military defences ; the Egyptian mummies throw 

 light on the art of embalming, the rites of sepulture, or the 

 average stature of the human race in ancient Egypt. The 

 canoes and stone hatchets, called celts, found in our peat- 



B '2 



