504 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



degrees, but are content to be numbered among that 

 heterogeneous crowd of geologists popularly known as 

 amateurs. They and their teachers and their companions 

 may comfort themselves in the fact that all the most 

 famous geologists of the past have been in their day 

 amateurs in the science — Hutton, Murchison, Lyell, 

 Sedgwick, Ramsay, De la Beche, and in modern times 

 Iieim and the great Suess. This is surely a great and a 

 goodly company. Even if we ourselves never rise higher 

 than the amateur stage in one or more of the many 

 branches of the science, and get merely an occasional 

 geological outing in the country, and collect only now 

 and again a new fossil or make an original observation— 

 what more glorious and exhilarating than a summer 

 geological excursion in the field ! From the sunny morn 

 to the dewy eve, the entire land we traverse is all our own. 

 There is the charm of freedom, there is the keen joy of 

 the chase. The hunt for discovery is as exciting as the 

 hunt for game, and moreover, it is all unstained by the 

 horror of bringing death to a helpless creature. Rather, 

 on the other hand, have we often the delight of restoring 

 to life and light some grand geological phenomenon 

 hitherto dead to science for want of its true interpreta- 

 tion ; or we have the pleasure of discovering some fossil 

 relic of the extinct creatures of the lost geological past, 

 and in the words of the great historian — " He who calls 

 what has vanished back again into being, enjoys a bliss 

 like that of creating." 



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