Economic Geology. 17 



sociated as they were with certain points of theological 

 belief, furnished a ground on which the opposing parties 

 could meet and struggle. The consequence naturally was, 

 that amid the bitterness of controversial discussion, obser- 

 vers viewing the limited range of facts they possessed 

 through a distorted medium, drew only such conclusions 

 as were agreeable to their own opinions, while a spirit of 

 wide and unwarranted generalisation took the place of close 

 and rigid induction from carefully observed phenomena. 

 Under such circumstances geology was little more than a 

 mass of fanciful and fantastic cosmological doctrines, and 

 practical men seeing theory succeed theory in endless 

 succession, and remarking the useless, and often mischiev- 

 ous tendency most of these speculations exhibited, naturally 

 became prejudiced against the science in which they origi- 

 nated. In time, however, as generally happens in such ca- 

 ses, these controversies wrought their own cure, and men 

 began to see that in order to form any correct notions of 

 the original state of our earth, it was first essential to 

 obtain accurate ideas of its present and actual condition. 

 Devoting themselves therefore to observation and careful 

 induction from that alone, geologists succeeded in rapidly 

 rearing a fabric second in solidity, beauty, and importance 

 to but one in the whole range of physical science, esta- 

 blishing the claims of geology to high economical value 

 by exhibiting numberless instances of its successful appli- 

 cation to the purposes of man, and at the same time deriv- 

 ing from their discoveries such additional and convincing 

 proofs of the benevolence, wisdom, and power of God, 

 as in themselves to be sufficient to render " doubt absurd, 

 and atheism ridiculous." 



Economic geology has now an existence as real as eco- 

 nomic astronomy, chemistry, or botany, and an acquaintance 

 with its principles is calculated to afford most valuable as- 

 sistance in, and is sometimes absolutely essential to, the 



