The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1866-03-20 00:00:00

Lttrcaturt.

GEOLOGY FOR GENERAL READERS.
Such is the title of the last and best of a series
of interesting and instructive works on " (ieo-
logy," publighed by Mears. William Blackwood
and Boss, for Mr. David Page, F.R.8.E.,
F.G.S. Aid who is Mr. Page 1 The title page
tells m that he is author of 'Text Books of
Gootoffr and Pliflioei Geography," " Handbook
elf geological Term," "Past and Present Life
of the Globe, "Philosophy of Geology, he."
In "other days and other ranee," as the poet
Bunn would ban said, we have encountered
Mr. Page as • brother editor, rendering himself
useful in his dietriat by the delivery of popular
geological lectures, which was his " specialty,"
(every member of our unsettled profession thit
we ever knew had a specialty,) and if we mis-
take not, these are the fruits of the very lectures
which were wont to attract and excite the Fife-
shire androgen to an almost ucpamflelsd degree,
DOD prISOUOI4I in the volume befor, as as " •
series of popular sketches in geology and *moo-
*orgy ;"—insisted, in an extract from Hoffman's
Introduction to Modern Chemistry, prefixed to
the volume, Mr. Page implicitly signifies as
much, and we must therefore swept the present
work as • brief, striking, and attractive exhi-
bition of the guiding prineiples of geology, freed
from unnecesemy detail, and thoroughly 40111001•
paled from the trammels of systematic routine.
Nieverthelens, it is • volume which cannot bet
adsi to Mr. Page's reputation as a master of his
✓ime% and mark him out es the °argent of the
future dear of Geology at Edinburgh.
The earth is • huge volume to perms; bat
our reeding is restricted to its few outer pages,
which we call "the crust." We remember very
well when geology as agorae, held anything but
a reoognlsed place, and old Professor James=
confined his lucubrationa strictly to mineralogy
and its detached specimens; whilst the wild and
baseless speculations collected in Dr. Burnet's, of
the Obarterhouse's "Theory of the Earth," ia
eluding the mundane egg theory, (while he die-
seemed,) and the theory of the earth being a ball
of living Same destined for final conflagration,
(which he adopted,) were naturally received with
that amount of suspicion such unsupported
views deserve. Mr. Page, proceeding on prin-
ciples of induction and observation, can now,
however, safely state the same thing without the
possibility of its berg doubted. "As we deemed
Into the earth by mines, shafts, and artesian
wells, the temperature seems to increase at •
given ratio (about one degree Fehr, for every
60th of derma), aad at this rate • depth would
moos be mashed at which every known substance
would be held in • state of molten fusion." We
petty men, outside this crust or cinder, hazoso2
to "met and be thankful." like Earl
that it interposes itself between us and each
unpleasant warmth. Indeed, as Mr. Page re-
marks, even this is • thing which we ese see
and investigate only to • limited depth. We
sLall not allow ourselves to suppose that the
keenest geologist is such •..)...'-ter as to
lament this restrictioo. Besides the studzatiez
varied • field of mechanical amid chemical o
as could ponibly exist; and Mr. Page's book
commends itself for matter-of-feet for beyond
any other subject of curiosity, whilst as matter
of astounding wonder, yet within the range of
finitude, It. contents excel all the fables of
romance. This ought to constitute agreeable
reading. It is more—it is reeding from which
the mind Where such refreshment as can only
be afforded by an intelligent survey of the works
of Creation. Telling us of the earth's crust, be
dimness the " rooks " (all formations with
geologists are rocks) of which it is composed,
whether stratified or unstratified, older or
younger, giving, in fact, • chronological table, or
table in the order of time, of the ceargeten of the
different formations demagog-di as fuse we know.
Then follow considerations conaeord with the
presumes of waste and re-ocestruation it has
undergone, whether from air, rain, frost., winds,
waters, chemistry, organic growth, fire, or earth-
quake, showing how the crust is held in equili-
brium betwixt waste and racoustrootion, and
how these sedans and counter-actions are as en-
during. the planetary system, and indeed we
know that the stars shall melt away at the day
of doom, and that there shall be new heavens and
• new earth. His chapter on volcanoes, the upshot
of which is to prove volcanoes and earthquakes
to be necessary portions of the worlds mecha-
nism, is strange and startling. Then as respects
the different' period." represented in the world's
crust--the first or primary period with its few
traces of life is interesting only as the dawn of
world-history, as Mr. Page calls it. Fossils, which
simply mean things "dug up," are the remains
of plant. and animals embedded and preserved
In the earth's emit in consequence of being more
or lees petrified or converted into stony matter.
The general reader who wants to know all about
foe.ik cannot do better than refer to Mr. Page's
fifth chapter. Perhaps they ere tree trunks,
brioches or leaves, booes, teeth or shells—but
they each tell some story which Geology tries to
✓ Mental calls them "Medals of
and so they are ; medals strut* as it were to
commemorate each successive stage of being—of
races thousands of ages since swept from the
face of the earth, in theiereat Fest of eternity,
for why should-not the Creator manifest in Hie
works that with them as with fline—o dammed
years are as ODO day, and one day as • thousand
grFor • clew scheme a( arrangement
'age's volume is one of unparalleled per-
spicuity, and the leading facia of their mime,
history and arrangement, have never been pre-
sented in • 'sore connected form. In the old
Red Band stone the labour of Hash Miller and
Aguas for example, havertaught; as to dwell
with almost entire expectancy on the fishes;
bus Mr. Page first shows us the entire lora and
fauna, vasetahi. and animal remains or the
period ad its gigantic erustaces (crake, we shall
say,) and finally its varied sad abundant fish
remains. One of his most Interesting as well as
Important chapters relates to coal anirmal for-
mations--tracieg batik the prosier" of minera-
lising vegetation through peat, lignite, ma 4
luid anthracite to the lowest form, graphite; all
vegetable maser which have undergoes different
degrees of mineralisation. Coal, in these several
forma, occurs in all-dages-of the earth's history,
but it is only in 'what is
,prolierly called
"Carboniferous" (coal bearing) system that it
apposes in numerous Name In many varieties
and in greet thickness And continuity over exten-
sive areas In connection with dries " old coal
inessures," whew. Britain, Trance, Belgium,
Rower, China, Australia, and the United States
of America obtain their stall DaPttilio(fat some
have anthracite,) have next
valuable
Serial of ' fim-days, shun-shales,
lime-stones, and iron-roods, as well as coal;
iend Mr. Page does not fail to show their infla-
mes on civilisation and human progress. One
warning he repeats:room the-annuakamount of
Mel raised is Great Britain did lot mond
30.000.000 tons, now it has reached 93,000,000
wed is steadily • but British goal-adds
have a limited =kr- Pads frankly tells
es
the time most mese when every wallah/e
esem will be exhausted—some people my 400 to
en% some 900, and others IMO Pion homa
But whenever Britain is "snuffed out " there is
mill America—the available opal aroma of Great
Brads being estimated at 6000 amen miles, sod
those of North America alone exceeding 900,000.
We shall not dwell on his droriptions of the
masodary and tertiary ages with their curlew
plums of life and gradual approximations .to
forms. But &spears more striking
dna on "Ice, informs and &notions,"
ind The glad& pc jos •=it would b•
daimon to mantion. lea, in its oscar-
muase
in the sioensPilore am himr4"l4, "°' or
hail ;in its 000UNTOS011 in frog water, river,
lake, or ground We; or in salt water as los-felda,
re-fiegka, ea In the polar seas ; or in
enewiso
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