SECOND REPORT -1832. 
O '*!£' 
o < u 
vating forces which have affected the strata,—whether similar 
groups of organic remains universally, and in the most distant 
countries, characterize contemporaneous geological deposits,— 
or whether those zoological species are not rather restricted (like 
most of the species of the actual period,) to different geographi¬ 
cal districts. All these are evidently questions at the very root 
of any sound geological theory, whenever the time shall be 
fully ripe for constructing such a theory ; and although it were 
assuredly premature to assert that this time is even yet com¬ 
pletely arrived, we may nevertheless boldly assert that no eye 
at all capable of appreciating these problems, or the appro¬ 
priate evidence tending towards their solution, can glance over 
the discoveries of any single year since 1821 without observing 
a very rapid accumulation of the most valuable materials for 
their elucidation. During the same period, moreover, our know¬ 
ledge of the principal volcanic districts, both those which are 
still in activity and those now extinct, has been advanced to the 
greatest degree of precision ; and the whole of that which is 
perhaps the most important geological series *,—that of the ter¬ 
tiary formations, with the lower members of w hich alone the pre¬ 
vious researches of Cuvier, &c. had made us acquainted,-—has 
within the few last years received an additional development, no 
less important than that which, in an earlier stage of geological 
progress, the secondary system of the Wernerians received from 
the discoveries of Smith. 
To confirm this general statement, it will be necessary to 
enter more minutely into the detail of the recent progress of 
geological discovery. To begin, then, even with that part of our 
subject which we have admitted to have been far the least pro¬ 
mising of interesting novelty ; with reference to the series of En¬ 
glish strata alone, the corrections and additions to our previous 
information since 1821 have not only supplied such details as 
were of local interest, but such as were moreover often preg¬ 
nant with important general consequences : the rectification, 
for instance, of the previous arrangement of the subcretaceous 
sands has brought to light in the Weald of Kentj~ a fresh-water 
formation, previously unknown as such, between these sands and 
* The tertiary period is especially important in systematic geology, in as much 
as since, on every hypothesis, the geological causes must have acted during this 
period under conditions most nearly approximating to those which belong to 
the actual order of things ; the formations of this age therefore afford the most 
essential link in connecting our actual experience with our speculations on the 
former state of our planet. 
f The lowest bituminous clays of this formation have also been noticed on 
the opposite side of the Channel in the Boulonnois; and traces of them are said 
to have been observed, in our midland counties, in Buckinghamshire. 
