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16
INTRODUCTION.
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or in the ocean, or to the prolific increase of testacea and corals.
"We also 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 connected to almost all physical sciences, as
history is to the moral. An historian should, if possible, be
profoundly acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the
military art, theology, and with all branches of knowledge, by which an
insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intellectual nature
of man, can be obtained. No less desirable is it for a geologist to be
well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology,
comparative anatomy, botany, and every science relating to organic and
inorganic nature. Having such accomplishments, the historian and
geologist would rarely fail to draw correct and philosophical
conclusions from the various monuments transmitted to them from former
occurrences. They would know to what combination of causes analogous
effects were referable, and would often be enabled to supply by
inference information concerning many events unre-•corded in the
defective archives of former ages.
Mineralogy is sometimes understood as comprising the natural history of every portion of inorganic nature. Here
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