Contributions to the Physical History of the British Isles; with a Dissertation on the Origin of Western Europe and of the Atlantic Ocean

Abstract

IF Geology may be correctly described as a history of the earth, then a geologist is in the first place and essentially a historian. His function is to trace back the gradual growth of the world, organic as well as inorganic, and to show through what successive stages the present conditions of geography and of life have been reached. His materials, like those of the historian of human pro gress, become fewer and less reliable in proportion to their antiquity. More and more as he pilots his way into the records of the remoter past is he driven to piece together their evidence with conjecture, until at last evidence of every kind fails him, and he is reduced to mere speculation. There is undoubtedly a strong temptation to minds of a particular order to indulge in wide excursions into the unknown realms of primeval cosmogony. The fewer the facts that may serve as guideposts the greater the scope for the fancy. So long as the picture does not appear to outrage our established conceptions of physical law its enthusiastic limner considers himself within the safe limits of fact or, at least, of legitimate inference. He does not stop to consider whether his restoration may not in itself be flagrantly improbable, or whether enough may not be already known on the subject to show that it is quite untenable. In this way much harm has been done to the progress of sound geology.

Contributions to the Physical History of the British Isles; with a Dissertation on the Origin of Western Europe and of the Atlantic Ocean.

Illustrated by 27 Coloured Maps. By Edward Hull., &c. (London: Stanford, 1882.)