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 inha- 
bitants were miners and mountaineers. 
Another foreigner, arriving on the coast of 
evon, and crossing the Midland Counties, 
mm the mouth of the Exe, to that of the Tyne, 
'k'oa d find a continued succession of fertile 
G. 
IS 
