Excerpt from The Journal of Travel and Natural History, 1868, Vol. 1
It is a common belief that geology as a science deals wholly, or almost wholly, with a time earlier than the advent of man upon the earth, and that its proper subject of research ends where human history begins. As Sanscrit, though indispensable in the philosophical study of living tongues, is itself a dead language, so geology, though it may be admitted to give the key to much that would otherwise be hard to understand in the present economy of things, is, nevertheless, frequently looked upon as essentially the investigation of an extinct past. But this estimate, true so far as it goes, is a signally defective one. Its prevalence, by fostering the love of the marvellous, has probably increased the general interest in geological questions; yet there can be little doubt that, at the same time, it has tended to hinder the progress of sound geology. The great truth cannot be too often or too strongly reiterated, that geology is still, to continue the figure, a living language. Not only does it record the history of the earth and its inhabitants during bygone periods, but it chronicles the life and motions of the world around us now. It is, if one may so speak, the physiology of the earth. The physiologist inquires into the structure and functions of the body: the geologist, in like manner, studies the nature and functions of the different forces that affect the surface or the interior of the crust of the earth. He watches their modes of working, and notes especially the results which they achieve.
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