No. 161.] 
211 
habit of the latter, subservient to the well-being of all. In this way 
it is, that man's power, colossal as it is, has been obtained; and 
though his discoveries have been truly great, yet what is known 
forms but a limited scale or measure by which to estimate what 
the future will reveal. 
r 
In a report of a reconnoissance of a division of the State, form- 
ed with reference to the discovery of a particular fossil product, 
limited likewise as to time, and embracing so extensive a country, 
no important result could be expected, unless from the unpublished 
discoveries of others, or what mere chaiice might have revealed. 
Yet who can doubt the ultimate advantage of the survey ! believ- 
ing that "nothing was made in vain," and that all things can be 
made subservient to the purposes of man. Is it not true, ail things 
else being the same, that amongst the various races and nations of 
men, those who in proportion to the extent in which they make 
the earth tributary to them, rise in the scale of humanity T Be- 
sides, is not negative knowledge of importance ? Do not hundreds 
seek for coal, where none can exist? and is it not so with tin, an-^ 
timony, and many other mineral products? A survey is a cheap 
way of acquiring and imparting knowledge. It makes known, for 
example, what are the rocks which have been created in any given 
country, for instance our district, and what are the minerals asso- 
ciated with them. Should any discovery that is new and impor- 
tant, elsewhere be made in like rocks, knowing of the discovery, 
we at once enter with sanguineness upon a search for the same. 
A knowledge of geology destroys confidence in empirics, a source 
of evil in the direct ratio of ignorance. When we know, as we 
do, that the superposition of rocks and the association of minerals 
are the result of certain laws, we discard all that savors of the 
mystical. 
Many probably may consider that the subject of geology offers 
no motive for its study beyond what the mineral wealth of its rocks 
may unfold; but to those who have pursued it, even in its earlier 
and then comparatively barren days, its attractions were irresisti- 
ble. What ought it now to be! since wealth, talent, power, are 
employed in unfolding its wondrous, nay most marvellous truths. 
From its interior having been considered as an uniform mass, the 
earth is not pnly now regarded as the work of the Lord, but the 
book, the record of creation, to whose truths more sceptics are ta 
be found, than to the truths of revelation. The layers of which 
