146 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION.- 
the human breast, and we find the earliest philosophers 
hazarding speculations upon the subject. This desire is 
quite natural, and forms a part of the thirst after knowledge 
which is one of the attributes of human beings. 
Leaving on one side the more or less fanciful geology 
and cosmogony of the ancients we find that the first deve- 
lopments of geological science were chiefly confined to the 
study of the mineralogical and petrological features of the 
earth. The first rude classification of rocks arose out of 
this study ; and the principles upon which that classifica- 
tion were based have held sway for a very long time over 
geological science. Accordingly ve find that the first I 
attempts to classify the rocks of the Caribean area were 
made upon old principles. Nearly every traveller to the 
West-Indies and equinoctial America has had something to 
say upon the physical structure of this part of the globe. 
The illustrious Humboldt, in his Personal Narrative and 
his Political Essay on the Island of Cuba, presents us with 
his observations on the Geology of Venezuela and Cuba. 
He noticed the fossiliferous rocks of Cumana, and put the 
query whether any of their organic contents were identical 
with existing species in the adjoining seas ; a query an- 
swered by me in my paper on the Pelations of the Tertiary 
Formations of the West Indies. 
Among the more noteworthy of Humboldt’s successors in , 
this field I may mention the names of Dauxion Lavaysee, , 
St. Claire-Deville, Nugent, and DelaBeche, who have i 
written upon the geology of Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica 
and other islands. 
It was not however until the science of Paleontology t 
arose that Geology was evolved from the chaos in which it I 
had lain previously to the beginning of the present century. | 
