hill-side to the valley, and along the valley to the sea. The land, then, is the region of perpetual disintegration, denudation and destruction. The sea is the region of perpetual deposit and conservation. And sea strata, when hoisted up by heat in the form of slate, sandstone, limestone, &c., form museums of sea life of an antiquity quite incomprehensible to man. But these museums contain sea life only; land animals neither live nor die in the sea; they live and die on the land. And where are the museums for the preservation of ancient land life? There cannot be such a thing. The entire surface of the earth is perpetually vanishing, and with it the museums for the preservation of ancient land life. The most ancient museums of land life are caverns, filled-up lakes, and drift and alluvium-things which, speaking geologically, were formed yesterday, and will be gone to-morrow. In these modern land museums, however, the remains of man and mammalia are found, and they would be found in more ancient land museums, if such ancient land museums could exist. In the Geological Magazine of January last, page 2, the editor tells us that, Foraminifera of the present day form no less than 95 per cent. of the ooze covering the floor of the wide Atlantic ocean.' Suppose our present continents to be destroyed or submerged,-- And where the Atlantic rolls wide continents shall bloom; 6 -that is, suppose that this floor of the wide Atlantic ocean,' turned into slate, shall be raised up as the Silurian slates have been: is the geologist of after ages to dub this Foraminifer the Eozoon Atlanticon, and to inform his pupils that it was almost the sole existent animal of the period of that deposit, instead of the place of that deposit? That is, that from the beginning of the world up to the 19th century inclusive, Foraminifera were the dominant race on this terraqueous globe? Yet this is the argument of our present geologists as regards the Eozoon Canadense, the Oldhamia Antiqua, and the Silurian Trilobites. The whole affair is the result of the most childish confusion between space and time, between place and period. That is because in the deposit of a certain place such a life only existed, we set it down that in the period of that deposit that life only existed. Hence such errors as The age of reptiles,' The diluvial period, The boulder period,' The drift period,' &c. GEORGE GREENWOOD, Col. Brookwood Park, Alresford: Feb. 2, 1866. The doctrines advocated in this book were first published by me in the second edition of the Tree-lifter,' Pt. III., 1853. Then in the first edition of Rain and Rivers,' 1857. In 1863 Mr. Jukes writes, This chapter had been sent to the printers some time before I became acquainted with an excellent little work called "Rain and Rivers," published in 1857 by Colonel George Greenwood, in which the atmospheric origin of all river valleys is advocated in the clearest and most convincing style. I would beg leave to recommend it to the perusal of all geologists.'-School Manual of Geology. The Rain and River' theory lays the first foundation stone of Geology, because it shows the origin of stratification; and it lays the first foundation stone of Physical Geography, because it shows the difference between a hill and a valley. See denundation of the Weald Hill. CONTENTS. Lyell has retrograded from sound to unsound doctrines . Lyell's own particular theory of the formation of valleys Terraces of Glen Roy prove enormous denudation in Why should this denudation have ceased now? |