Volume 183501

Principles of geology, being an inquiry how far the former changes of the earth's surface are referable to causes now in operation / By Charles Lyell, Esq. F.R.S. President of the Geological Society of London ... In four volumes.

  • Lyell, Charles, Sir, 1797-1875.
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles of geology, being an inquiry how far the former changes of the earth's surface are referable to causes now in operation / By Charles Lyell, Esq. F.R.S. President of the Geological Society of London ... In four volumes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lake or in the ocean, or to the prolific increase of testacea and corals. To select another example, we find. in certain localities subterranean deposits of coal, consisting of vegetable matter, formerly drifted into seas and lakes. These seas and lakes have since been filled up, the lands whereon the forests grew have disappeared or changed their form, the rivers and currents which floated the vegetable masses can no longer be traced, and the plants belonged to species which for ages have passed away from the surface of our planet. Yet the commercial prosperity, and numerical strength of a nation, may now be mainly dependent on the local distribution of fuel determined by that ancient state of things. Geology is intimately related to almost all the physical sciences, as history is to the moral. An historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology ; in a word, with all branches of knowledge by which any insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intellectual nature of man, can be obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geolo- gist should be well versed in chemistry, natural phi- losophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany ; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature. With these accomplishments, the historian and geologist would rarely fail to draw correct and philosophical conclusions from the various monuments transmitted to them of former occurrences. They would know to what combination of causes. ana- logous effects were referable, and they would often be enabled to supply, by inference, information con- cerning many events unrecorded in the defective B 2