372 
tion to the terrestrial surface only, or of an altered position of 
England in relation to the sun. I am aware that I am sug- 
gesting a “ heresy 99 for which Mr. Evan Hopkins is responsible 
now for some twenty years ; but surely the fact that an idea has 
been condemned as te heretical 99 can be no drawback to it 
among truly scientific men.* The idea is forced upon us, not 
by the weight of any name, unless it be that of Professor 
Ramsay. His facts and his bewilderment, when meditating 
among those old Alps, seem to urge us to accept the idea. 
His observed crumpling cannot be explained by his suggested 
shrinkage — of that we are sure. It can be explained by a 
lateral motion of the earth's unequal surface— of that we are 
as sure. How could shrinkage lay half an English county fiat 
on its back? A force sufficiently powerful, pushing the mass 
along among other masses, might accomplish such an overturn. 
That force whose shiverings shake the solid globe at once over 
even 1,500 miles, when at its steady, earnest work, is more than 
enough to lay England itself, if not upside down, at least on a 
new and distant bed in the course of years. We do not. say 
that this view is infallibly right, nor can we say that it is 
wrong ; but we certainly think that the progress of Descriptive 
Geology shuts us up to some doctrine of lateral movement m 
the surface of the globe, if we would allow our physical prin- 
ciples to keep pace with discovery. Its rejection by geologists, 
combined with the necessity for some such explanatory force, is 
another powerful proof that the science we have in hand is 
loose in an extreme degree in its fundamental principles. As it 
now stands, no one can say ' what its doctrine as to the real 
character of strata, or as to their superposition, may be to- 
morrow. It is, in these essential principles, in a state of perfect 
indecision, and ready, like a vane in the wind, to turn itself 
to any current that may blow. 
But it is equally clear that a thoroughly unsettled state of 
mind prevails among speculative geologists as to organic 
remains. We have already seen how important are the dis- 
coveries that men have thought they had made in this direction. 
Sir Roderick Murchison especially lays great stress on the idea 
of successive creations in the peopling of the globe, and those 
who take very different Mews from his are almost equally in- 
terested in progression. It is clear, however, that discovery 
of great importance is threatening the science m the direction 
of its doctrine as to these organic remains. The writer of the 
* See Geology and Terrestrial Magnetism, by Evan Hopkins, C.E., F.G.S. 
third edition, 1865 ; a book worthy of earnest study. 
