THE GEOLOGIST. 
SEPTEMBER 18G3. 
]ME. EUSKIN'S LECTUEE OX THE SAVOY ALPS. 
By the Editor. 
Of Mr. Euskin's admirable lecture on the Alps of Savoy, delivered 
at the Eoyal Institution, we have already given an abstract at p. 256. 
AVe recur again to that subject because tliere were two points so 
forcibly and so well put by ^Ir. Euskin, and so seemingly pregnant 
with the germs of future progress to our science, as to merit the 
special attention of geologists. These were the inefficacy of ice to 
scoop out lake-basins, and the mighty wave-like action of force that 
crumbles the gigantic roek-masses of our mountains almost into 
wave-like breakers ready to nod and fall. " Geology," well remarked 
Mr. Euskin in his opening words, " properly divides itself into two 
branches, — the study, first, of the materials and chronology of depo- 
sits ; and, secondly, of their present forms." The interest attaching 
to the relics of organic life, without doubt, has carried geologists 
away from the study of external forms ; and this almost exclusion of 
regard for structural phenomena is the more to be regretted that it 
is the threshold of the grand field of record of ancient physical phe- 
nomena. The gigantic mountain-wave is not heaved up and rolled 
onwards in a few moments, like the surging waves of the sea ; the 
particles of rock-masses are not quickly moved about like the 
water-atoms of the dancing ripples on our rivers, but slowly — 
slowly indeed — are the almost immovably linked-together particles 
forced onwards by some ponderous pressure, some solemn but irre- 
sistible force, due perhaps to the very strain of the earth's altering 
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