Town and Country Sermons

on the special subject of this paper, say

perly speaking, an astronomical question. If I may be allowed to liken this earth to a fruit, then astronomy will tell us-when it knows-how the fruit grew, and what is inside the f

worth our awful and reverent study. It has been well said, indeed, that the history of it, which we call geology, would be a magnificent epic poem, were there only any human interest in it; did it deal with creatures more like ourselves than st

or the free use of the imagination, in a science which tells of the growth and decay of

acts of geology do not require, to discover them, any knowledge of mathematics or of chemical analysis; they may be studied in every bank, every grot, every quarry, every railway-cutting, by anyone who has eyes and common sense, and who chooses to copy the late illustrious Hugh Miller, who made himself a great geologist out of a poor stonemason. Next, its most important theories are not, or need n

learn science by

he thing most like it which you have seen before; and try if that which you know explains the one will not explain the other

told you the prettiest tale of how the bird came to so strange an end, you would answer, "No, no; I must reason from what I know. I know that birds haunt the cathedral tower; I know that birds die; and therefore, let your story be as pretty as it may, my commo

e adrift again. The fact of it being a humming-bird would be a new fact which you had not taken into account, and for which your old explanation was not sufficient; a

u answer? "My friend, that is a beautiful imagination; but I must treat it only as such, as long as I can explain the mystery more simply by facts which I do know. I do not know that humming-birds can be blown across the Atlantic alive. I do know they are actually brought across the Atlantic dead; are stuck in ladies' hats. I know th

the same common sense when y

founded on known facts, than that of the New Zealand Maories, who hold that some god, when fishing, fished up their islands out of the bottom of the ocean. But a sounder and wiser school of geologists now reigns; the father of whom, in England at least, is the venerable Sir Charles Lyell. He was almost the first of Englishmen who taught us to see-what c

specially of English students, geology has thriven and developed, perhaps more than any other science; and ha

them downward, as it were, into the earth; deeper and deeper in each paper, to rocks and minerals which are probably less known to them than the soil in the fields. Thus you will find I shall lead you, or try to lead you on, throughout the series, from the known to the unknown, and show you how to explain

rock or earth-or indeed two stones in the street, or two sheets on a bed, or two books on a table-any two or more lifeless things, in fact, lie one on the other, then the lower one was most probably put ther

irst. And I said "most probably," because it is most probable that in nature we should find things done by the method which costs least force, just as you do them. I will warrant that when you want to hi

and let the cover fall on it again. And so, even i

thing under another, you have not only to move weight, but to overcome friction. That is why you do

on each other, and not thrust under each other, because

oducing a volcanic eruption, produces only an earthquake. Of that I may speak hereafter, and may tell you, in good time, how to distinguish rocks which have been thrust in from beneath, from rocks which have been laid down from above, as every rock between London and

asons for it. Until I can get you to "let your thoughts play freely" round this question of

he water had laid down the mud on the top of it? Then, perhaps, they might come to a layer of dead leaves. Would not common sense tell you that the leaves were there before the sand above them? Then, perhaps, to a layer of mud again. Would not common sense tell you

went down into sandstone, you would say-would you not?-that sandstone must have been here before the clay; and however thick-even thousands of feet-it might be, that would make no difference to your judgment. If next the boring came into quite different rocks; into a different sort of sandstone and shales

ome of the corals plainly in the very place in which they grew, would you not say-These creatures must have lived down here before the coal was laid on top of them? And

rock; is not under the limestone here, but higher than it. So perhaps in this part it has made a shift, and the highlands are younger than the lowlands; for see, they rise s

e soil of

shall perhaps be on the right road toward understanding what all England-and, indee

the uplands are fields in which the soil is already made. You do not know how? Then look for a field in which the soil is still being made. There are

town, you have every advantage for seeing soil made. Thousands of square feet of fresh-ma

; and also for this reason, that, if Sir Charles Lyell's theory be true-as it is-then the soils and rocks below the soil of the fi

filled up, in the course of ages, the great ?stuar

s mass. You know that. You know that every flood and freshet brings a fresh load, either of fine mud or of fine sand, or poss

into the river? The r

finer particles from the coarser, dropping the latter as soon as it can, and carrying the former downward with it toward the sea. Follow the nearest roadside drain where it runs into a pond, and see how it drops the pebbles the moment it enters the pond, and then the sand in a fan-shaped heap at the nearest end; but carries the fine mud on, and holds it suspended, to be gradually deposited at the bottom in the still water; and say to yourself: Perhaps the sands which cover so many inland tracts were dropped by water, very near the shore of a lake or sea, and by rapid currents. Perhaps, again

full of roots and vegetable fibre; perhaps under that again another old land surface with trees again growing in it; and under all the main bottom clay of the district-what would common sense tell you? I leave you to discover for yourselves. It certainly would not tell you that those trees we

be always right in your conclusion, but still you wil

nd Rivers alone

of Sir Charles Lyell's new "Elements of Geology," or the first hundred pages of that admirable book, De la Bêche's "Geolo

t is a maker of soil, likewise; and by it mainly the soil of an u

w feet below the surface, it becomes, in almost every case, rotten and broken up as it

oes by the rock what it has done by the stones of many an old building. It sinks into the porous stone, freezes there, expands in freezi

e country folk they will tell you whether I am right or not. If you go thither, not in the summer, but just after the winter's frost, you will see for yourselves, by the fresh frost-crop of newly-broken bits, that I am right. Possibly you may find me to be even more right than is desirable, by having a few angular stones, from the size of your head to that of your body, hurled at you by the frost-giants up above. If you go to the Alps at certain seasons, and he

of rain, in the shape of ice. Now

ght of lime which must be so carried down to the sea every year by a single limestone or chalk brook. You can calculate it, if you like, by ascertaining the weight of lime in each gallon, and the average quantity of water which comes down the stream in a day; and when your sum is done, you will be astonished to find it one not of many pounds, but probably of many tons, of solid lime, which you never suspected or missed from the hills around. Again, by the time the rain has sunk through the soil, it is still less pure. It carries with it not only ca

making the soil of alluvial flats. Perhaps it has helped, likewise, to make

n Cheshire, try if you cannot

nce. Look steadily at those rolled blocks, those twisted stanchions, if they are there still; and then ask yourselves-it will be fair reasoning from the known to the unknown-What effect must such wave-power as that have had beating and breaking for thousands of years along the western coasts of England, Scotland, Ireland? It must have eaten up th

nd into them. But more, the sea-currents do not allow the sands of the ?stuary to escape freely out to sea. They pile it up in shifting sand-banks about the mouth of the ?stuary. The prevailing sea-winds, from whatever quarter, catch up the sand, and rol

England or in Scotland, have been made b

s, crags which look exactly like old sea-cliffs eaten by the waves, from the base of which the waters have gone back. Why should not those crags be old sea-cliffs? Why should we not, following our rule of explaining the unknown by the known, a

he whole of the lowland is many feet above the sea; it must therefore have been r

thing but what you can prove for yourselves. Let me ask you this: suppose that you had proof positive that I had fallen into the river in the morning; would not your

nds, and alas! often feel but too keenly with your own feet, that the whole of the lowlands were once beneath

my next paper, when I speak

petually melting and grinding up old land, to compose new land out of it; and that it must have been doing so, as long as rain, rivers, and seas have existed. "But how did the first land of all get made?" I can only reply: A natural question:

e right way of finding out truth on this and perhaps on all subjects; to make some simple appeals to your common sense; and to g

at there is plenty of geological matter to be seen

side bank; much more where there is a sea, or a tidal ?stuary, there is geology enough to