INTRODUCTION. 
Chapter I. 
Extent of the Province of Geology. 
If a stranger, landing at the extremity of Eng- 
land, were to traverse the whole of Cornwall 
and the North of Devonshire ; and crossing to 
St. David's, should make the tour of all North 
Wales ; and passing thence through Cumber- 
land, by the Isle of Man, to the south-western 
shore of Scotland, should proceed either through 
the hilly region of the Border Counties, or, 
along the Grampians, to the German Ocean ; 
he would conclude from such a journey of 
many hundred miles, that Britain was a thinly 
peopled sterile region, whose principal inhabit- 
ants were miners and mountaineers. 
Another foreigner, arriving on the coast of 
Devon, and crossing the Midland Counties, 
from the mouth of the Exe, to that of the Tyne, 
would find a continued succession of fertile 
GEOL. I. rT B 
