VII. PERMIAN. From being developed in New red sandstone and limestone. Last unequally-lobed Geology compared to History. 'Geology is intimately related to almost all the physical sciences, as history is to the moral. A historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology; in a word, with all branches of knowledge by which any insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intellectual nature of man, can be obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geologist should be well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature. With these accomplishments, the historian and geologist would rarely fail to draw correct philosophical conclusions from the various monuments transmitted to them of former occurrences. They would know to what combination of causes analogous effects were referrible, and they would often be enabled to supply, by inference, information concerning many events unrecorded in the defective archives of former ages. But as such extensive acquisitions are scarcely within the reach of any individual, it is necessary that men who have devoted their lives to different departments should unite their efforts; and as the historian receives assistance from the antiquary, and from those who have cultivated different branches of moral and political science, so the geologist should avail himself of the aid of many naturalists, and particularly of those who have studied the fossil remains of lost species of animals and plants. "The analogy, however, of the monuments consulted in geology, and those available in history, extends no further than to one class of historical monuments-those which may be said to be undesignedly commemorative of former events. The canoes, for example, and stone hatchets found in our peat-bogs, afford an insight into the rude arts and manners of the earliest inhabitants of our island; the buried coin fixes the date of the reign of some Roman emperor; the ancient encampment indicates the districts once occupied by invading armies, and the former method of constructing military defences; the Egyptian mummies throw light on the art of embalming, the rites of sepulture, or the average stature of the human race in ancient Egypt. This class of memorials yields to no other in authenticity, but it constitutes a small part only of the resources on which the historian relies, whereas in geology it forms the only kind of evidence which is at our command. For this reason we must not expect to obtain a full and connected account of any series of events beyond the reach of history. But the testimony of geological monuments, if frequently imperfect, possesses at least the advantage of being free from all suspicion of misrepresentation. We may be deceived in the inferences which we draw, in the same manner as we often mistake the nature and import of phenomena observed in the daily course of nature, but our liability to err is confined to the interpretation, and, if this be correct, our information is certain.'-SIR CHARLES LYELL. Full strongly armd, and on a courser free That through his fierssnesse fomed all with sweat, When his hot ryder spurd his chauffed side: heated And on his shield Sansloy in bloody lines was dyde. When nigh he drew unto this gentle payre, began soon after to And saw the Red-crosse which the knight did beare, So bent his speare, and spurd his horse with yron heele. But that proud Paynim forward came so ferce And full of wrath, that, with his sharphead speare, L pagan, infidel also power, force Dismounting lightly from his loftie steed, When mourning altars, purgd with enimies life, take away pass do slake or mitigate Life from Sansloy thou tookst, Sansloy shall from thee take.' The Seasons. So forth issew'd the Seasons of the yeare: That as some did him love, so others did him feare. Then came the jolly Sommer, being dight In a thin silken cassock coloured greene, adorned encounters gilded, helmet He wore, from which, as he had chauffed beer, heated A bowe and shaftes, as he in forrest greene leopard And now would bathe his limbes with labor heated sore. And in his hand a sickle he did holde, To reape the ripened fruits the which the earth had yold. yielded Lastly, came Winter cloathed all in frize, Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill; In his right hand a tipped staffe he held, nose still old age move 1 Lethe, a river of the infernal regions, the water of which, when drunk, produced forgetfulness of the past. 2 Furies, the three mythological goddesses of vengeance. |