ON THE PROGRESS OF GEOLOGY. 405 
in numerous parts of New Zealand, of which many have begun 
to be deposited before the beginning of our great glacier period, 
will be of great use, and offer us an excellent field for research 
in this direction. These beds being of subeerial origin, not only 
the remains of land animals are preserved in them, but we shall 
find in them also the tracesof man. I may here mention the 
strange fact that the true nature of these beds has for a long 
time been misunderstood and misinterpreted by most English 
geologists. Even in the last edition of Lyell’s Elements of 
Geology the Loess of the Rhine is described as fluviatile loam, 
whilst the author himself shows that only the remains of land- 
shells and land vertebrates are imbedded in it. It has always 
been inconceivable to me how such an error should have re- 
mained so long uncorrected ; the more so, as as far back as 1847 
Alex. Braun in “ Leonhard and Bronn’s Neues Jahrbuch” has 
shown the true state of things, and German geologists have re- 
peatedly furnished new facts in illustration and given analyses of 
Loess and of recent and older fluviatile deposits of the Rhine 
for comparison. 
But, as I have previously pointed out, the peculiar nature of 
the Loess deposits—the minute vertical capillary structure caused 
by the empty spaces once filled by the rootlets of innumerable 
generations of grasses—is a sure guide even toa tyro in Geology. 
This structure amongst these localities is well exhibited in the 
fresh cuttings near Lyttelton. 
I fear that the time allotted to me will not allow me to enter 
more fully into a review of what has already been accomplished 
to make Geology an inductive science,and what remains still to be 
‘ done, but I may be permitted to allude to one of the principal 
causes that retarded Geology from taking its present position. 
This was the fear of the student to enter into antagonism with 
the established religious cosmogony. It is unnecessary to allude 
to the middle ages, because the stake or disappearance in the dun- 
geons of the holy inquisition were the rewards of fearless physical 
research, and men like Galileo and Descartes were obliged to use 
often evasive language, unworthy of such great thinkers, in order 
to preserve their lives or freedom, and therefore my remarks will 
_ only apply to our own times. In proof of this I wish only to quote 
one work, “ Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,” of which 
the first edition appeared in 1844. If we read this book at the 
present time we can scarcely understand how it could have 
created such intense indignation amongst a large portion of the 
community, or that so much could have been written against it. 
Lyell himself, when publishing his Principles of Geology, a work 
of a true philosopher, was, judging from some letters in his 
biography, very careful not to hurt too much the prejudices of 
his time, not wishing to mar the usefulness of his work. Even 
at the present time are there not thousands and thousands of 
well-meaning but narrow-minded persons, at once entering into 
strenuous opposition when there is any reference made to 
scientific cosmogony differing from that they have been accus- 
