The Express.
London, England, 1851-07-26 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

The Geological (N..erre►. By Sir Erna T. nr. LA Seen,
Ihrettor-General or the Gkologicul Survey of the
United Kim:dom.
Aes Elemseolory roorxe of Geology, arc. By DAVID T.
ANWIT.D. Profesror of Geology in King's College, London.
Van Vector.

The rapid multiplication and pre-eminent success
of geological hocks has struck every one who takes
interest in the intellectual signs of our times. Doubt-
less, other causes concur with the taste of the read-
ing public to ettel this result. The reputation of
able and distinguished men has demanded that de-
fective statements should be completed with the in-
crease of knowledge, and premature conclusions
withdrawn before the advance of higher and more
just generulizut• s. It was impossible that a science,
but yesterday a bold hypothesis resting upon mine-
ralogy and geography, should extend suddenly its
foundations over so many fields of natural inquiry,
and interest every• anatomist, botanist, and che-
mist, without making its inthienee felt in the
literature of the age. But this cause, tide.
quote to the production of scientific memoirs
and academic disquisitions, cannot account for
what all may now observe. It does not explain why
the memory is unable to retain so much as the names
of the works which from " Geologies fur Beginners,"
" Wonders," and " Thoughts on Pebbles," down to
the costly maps of the government survey and the
ponderous " Observer" of Sir Henry de la Beebe,
have followed one another throughout the last ten
years in so rapid a succession. The principal causes
of this development are twofold. The first, con-
nected with that intertwining with the separate
sciences already noticed, but still distinguished from
it, is the wide and truly comnical range of geological
inquiry. In the detailed sciences of chemistry man
experiments and familiarises himself with the tools,
so to speak, of nature's working. In geology all the
molecular and mechanical powers are gathered up
and combined. Here Nature herself is the sure ex-
perimentalist. The soul, obeying the secret voice
which bids it—

Search, undismayed, the vast profound,
Where Nature works in r,ecret ; view the beds
Of mineral treasure, and the eternal vault
That hounds the hoary ocean: trace the forms
Of atom.. moving with incessant change
Their elemental round—
sees here, as in a minor, its own original dignity,
and feels a vigorous glow as it exults in its alliance
with tile all tot ming mind. This grandeur of geo-
logienl objects, which, consciously or unconsciously,
is universally felt, assimilates the science in the popu-
lar regard to astronomy, the itatund study best
loved by our countrymen ever since it met worthy
expounders. And here let us notice how highly
geology has been favoured in the manner in which
her chtracter and merits have been placed before our
countrymen. The works of our first geologists are
as much an honour to letters as to SWICIICV.. We shall
nowhere find more beautiful or finished descriptive
writing than in the passage in the " Bridgewater
Treatise," when. Buckland has depicted a Silesian
coal-mine, with all its splendid scent ry of the grace-
ful vegetuble forms of the primeval earth. Dr.
Illautell's narrative of the mutations of our island us
seen by an imaginary supernatural observer is a
literary polonium. Sir Charles " Elements"
abound with high philosophy and vigorous sense,
often exalted to poetic dignity by the genius of the
writer.

But why enumerate. In Murchison and Phillips,
in Owen and Sedgwick, in Miller and Smith, we i
have vet other wants to mach with those. Patience
to work iu secret and wait the long gestation of
truth, elnisummate skill in conducting the march of
science to a victorious issue, arc the least of their
merits. With an expansion of heart worthy the
mighty scope of their inquiries, they have compre-
hended that the august world-embracing truths
which it was given them to discover, were not
curiosities to 100 dealt with in the spirit of a
entern., but a conquest won for the general mind.
The same men alio have taught the anatoniist and
botanical inquirer' in the casts, shells and ferns of
fossil offruta, to behold again the key to long lost
types of lift:, have made plain to the intellects of
auldren the great evangel of nature. If now, with-
out technical drudgery, the awn but ordinarily COll-
- with science is enublvd, in thought, to sweep
through the mighty range of geologic time,
Front dim oblit ion call
The fleet ide it hood, and hid th, iu go
Break tnrou4h time's hurries., and o ertske the hour
That saw the earth created;
if he can hark dowu, as from sonic commanding
height, and see with admiring awe the labouring
AIMS eternally uphmtring, crushing, fusing. de•
straying, and repairing the world; if, best of all, he
can exult in the sublime immutability of sovereign
law, triumplunitly and benclieently ruling in the
very capital of seining ruin and decay—this high
delight he owes to the large and pre-eminently
human sympathies which combine with power and
culture to distinguish the geologists of our age.
The practical charawter of geology denionstnited in
works whose number is daily increasing has had much
to do in promoting the growth of its literature. We
are all familiar with the attempt made in our own
day inviduously to divide the field of human in-
quiry, by tnur;:ing off with a broad line a certain
portion us "useful" knowledge. The division, funda-
mentally false, is now generally abandoned. In
those days it was the fate of geology to be termed a
speculative science, well adapted to amuse the philo-
sopher, but of no importance to society in general.
'lie uses of geological knowledge arc now seen to be
of most umniftold variety. Some of these are obvious.
Such arc its applications to milling, agriculture, and
engineering. The search for tin precious metals, re-
deemed from the hazard of earlier adventure, is now
conducted according to fixed principles, invariably
found to regulate the distribution of the ore required.
The immense amount of capital formerly lost to
the community in ignorant explorations of all kinds
of strata in search of coal, the latest of which—those
at Bexhill and Kinglithurpc—were conducted in op-
position to the express warnings of geologists, will
henceltorward be saved to the nation. The engineer,
no longer regulating his operations by local tradi-
tion or transmittal rules, finds in geology a repertory
of physical facts. cautions, canons, and suggestions
which. whether he have to construct a railway, rear
n bridge, drain a town, or sink a well, are equally
indispensable. To the agriculturist this science lays
open the might. composition, and qualities of soils, its
capabilities and value, and the nature of their proper
manures. .%reliityyture and the fine arts arc scarcely
less indebted to geology. Au acquaintance with
its principles afforib a sure guide in tho selec-
tion of a good and durable building material. Many-
public edifiers are fast hastening to decay; several of
the ail eges of our universities have needed rebuild-
ing, and many newly-erected churches, reared at
great cost and sacrifice, are in course of premature
dilapidation, owing to the decomposing na-
ture of the stone of which they are con-
structed, while sonic of our venerable edifices have
been repaired with so faulty a material, that old and
new have speedily become one ruin. So great aa
evil, the offspring of ignorance, was only to be
avoided in future erections by the aid of scientillie,
men; and in the beautiful dolomite employed in the,
external construction of the new Houses of Parlia-
ment, in the new Museum in Piccadilly, as well as
in some other recent public buildings, may be seen a
building stone proved to be the best which this
island is capable of supplying. The sculptor is no
less indebted to geology in the choice of a material
for the exercise of his art. Slone of the finest pro-
ductions of the chisel are chipped and decompoaed,
owing to the choice of an unworthy marble. Marned
by the modern example of flannel:yr, whose Ariadne
is spoiled front this cause, the sculptor now follows
the advice of Sir Francis C'hautrev, an artist es ear
Bible of the value of knowledge of this kind, that b•
made himself a proficient in geology and minerologr,
The landscape' painter begins to find that a schist,
. which teaches the physical structure of counteka,
- and the principles which determlno its scenery sal
aspect, can lend him important aid. Had this dia.
covery been nude sooner, our galleries of modern and'
contempontry paintings would have contained fewer
pictures violating the truth of nature; nor shoold
we have seen an event historically laid in the south,
of England pictorially presented amid the rugged
rocks anti angular line of the Plutonic north.
• Probably it is to the utility of this science, much
more than to its sublimity and beauty, that we owe
its introduction not only into our colleges andra
Basin, but into the primary end eleemosynary schools

for the education of the children of the poor. In the
descriptive portion of geology, in its distinctions and
I
localisations of phenomena, there are so many facts
to be learned apart from all hypotheses ns to their
causation, that the science comes to he regarded as
almost a necessary outgrowth of physicial ge.)graphY.
But surely the adoption of geology ns a sub,ect .of
instruction by such a body as the National Society,
more, the publication by its committee of a map ac-
cepting the igneous origin of the earth, is a sign
that the ignorant prejudices which once opposed the
progress of this strictly inductive and physical
science are fast disappeanng from society. A pitia-
ble case were it indeed, if, when divines so learned,
devout, and independent as Posey, Rockland, and
l'yc Smith, had declared frankly their adhesion to
geology as conformable to the letter and meaning of
revelation, the uneducated and fanatical could suc-
ceed in quenching its light. Happily our public
museums, our active press, and the vigorous spirit of
our time, are a guarantee against this disastrous result;
meanwhile, we may look upon the prejudices which
here and there still betray themselves, as the unsub-
dued remains of that tendency to chain philosophy
to a creed, against which, from Abclard and Descartes
downward, every thinker in Christendom had had to
protest.
The two works whose titles are given above are
the latest publications on the subject of which they
treat. Sir Henry de la Beche's "Observer" a
portly, well-to-do looking octavo of above $OO pages,
is, to a certain extent, founded upon his well-known
little treatise long since out of print, entitled " How
to Observe." Ile tells us in his preface that it was
undertaken "to assist persons entering upon the
study of geology, especially in the field.' As Hum-
boldt has truly said, to behold is not necessarily to
ry obsee,that is, to compare and combine; and the
history, of geology well attests the observation.
Now the author seeks to send his reader out, say
for example, on the sea coast, and teach him to mark
the forces which are now at work, modifying and
changing the earth's surface, in order afterwards to
employ this knowledge, so far as it can be made applic-
able, in explanation of the geological accumulations
of a prior date. 'file volume is, therefore, one great
body of explanations of existing phenomena, aceoni-
panted by directions how to discriminate similar and
connect remote phenomena, as well as how to solve
the difficulties which beset the application of theory
to fact. It will be at once obvious that coming
front a man of so vast experience acquired in the
field, the " Observer" must be an invaluable book.
It should, however, be said that its plan is tacitly
curried out upon the supposition that the student is
already in possession of the chemical, mineralogical,
and zoological knowledge to which geology so often
appeals.
Professor Ansted's work is of an entirely different
class. It is a course of geology, elementary- in the
sense°, at once the most popular and most strict. Its
arrangement and scope ate admirable ; indeed, no
one seems to understand the wants of nine-tenths of
the reading public better than its author. The first
130 pages, about one-fourth of the whole, are de-
voted to physical geography, and contain the sub-
stance of a course of lectures well received some
four years ago at the ltoyal Institution. 'l'he na-
ture of the elements composing the earth and the
reactions produced by meteorological causes are
here discussed, as well as the mechanical and che-
mical changes produced by waves, icebergs, glaciers,
volcanoes, earthquakes, tee. The second part treats
of the crystallographic, physical, and chemical pro-
perties of minerals, and is compiled with much skill.
Ile third part is occupied with descriptive geology,
in which the composition, classification, and superpo-
sition of rocks is well described: and a summary sug-
gestive of the practical use of geology concludes the
work. The simple plan of this volume, the extent
of geological reading which it contains, and the ju-
dicious order in which the various portions of the
work succeed each other, constitute it one of the best
which eau be placed in the hands of a beginner. In
justice it should be added that the book is not with-
out positive bleniishes, which, if they do not greatly
detract from its practical merit, are the less excusable
in a writer of Mr. Amsted's standing, inas-
much as they might have been avoided with
common care. These remarks apply espe-
cially to a looseness of expression often
übscUring the sense, and sometimes even rendering
the sentence equivocal. The same cause, hasty com-
position or iniperfect revision, has probably led to
the error in the following passage:
" Assuming the weight of hydrogen to be unity,
or 1, we find that of oxygen to be it, for water being
always composed of an equal r.umber of atoms of
oxygen gas (which appears from experiment), the
weight of the atom of the latter must be eight times
that of the former, since, &c."

The fact being, by the testimony of every che-
mical author, that no one has determined ex-
perimentally so much as the existence of atoms,
which at present are only conventional particles.
The fact that hydrogen and oxygen always combine
in definite proportions of weight is all that the che-
mist knows, and the atomic theory he accepts until
he finds one better capable of explaining the fact.
To infer the weight of single atoms from their num-
ber, their number being previously inferred from
the weight of the mass, ii to reason in a circle. Of
course this sentence is but a slip of the pen.

How to See She Erk i6it hi Four Fulls. By W. Bt. or-
CHARD JEKROLII. Bradbury and FAWIS,
We have before noticed this handbook fur visitors
to the Glass Palace, but when we did so only one
part of it had been published. The whole series is
now complete, and a glance through the 214 neatly
printed pages that make up the volume is sufficient
Ito ahcw the value of the manual. The plan adopted
by the author has been to divide the whole exhi-
bition into four sections, and the visitor is supposed
to go through these—book in hand—one after the
other. By reference to Mr. W. B. Jerrold's pages
the reader learns without trouble where to look fur'
the things best worth seeing, and about these he
finds descriptions much more satisfactory and maple
than those in the official catalogue. Indeed it is
unfair to expect lengthy notices in the elaborate
work prepared by the catalogue contractors. In
their volume they have been compelled to notice
everything, or their text would be incomplete. But
everything is not worth notice. Thousands of
articles in the Glass Palace arc very well in their
way, but otter no points of attraction to the general
public. All these are passed by in " How to See
tho Exhibition," and the omission of the unattractive
leaves space for amplification about those articles
which present the broadest features of public inte-
rest. A few quotations will show how the writer
has gone about his task :

LIMECTIONS lOU TILE FIILNT mit%
The first important direction that can he given to the
•isitor is, that on entering the building—whether by the

entrance—he proceZ4 at once hi the
southern extremity of the transept, from which point he
will have a comprehensive slew of the general effect of the
fount.kins and statuary, which reach to the northern
entrance.

Taking up his position just within Messrs. Cottam and
liallen's iron gates, he will have a general view of the tran-
sept. lle will s.--c the fountains playing before the fine elm
tree enclosed in the northern portion of the transept ; he
will catch the dazzling brilliancy of the great glass fountain,
i
and on either side, stretching n perspective line, he will
see some of the finest specimens of sculpture which the
building contains. immediately before him is a stand of
magnificent flowers ; behind these, Thorneycroft's eirpies-
trilin statue of the Queen. Immediately behind Thorney-
erult's statue is a group of Amazons and Argonauts, by
Engel, exhibited by Prince Albert. These objects occupy
the central line in the southern part of the transept.
The visitor proceeding from the southern gates, on the
right hand, will find, first, in the line flanking the avenue,
a statue of Beatrice ; then Mel)owall's Eve ; then Weeke's
statue of the Marquis of t% ellesley, and near it a remark-
able Sleeping Infant, in white marble ; then Woodington's
Girl at the Spring; then, marking the south western ear-
( ner of the foreign halt of the building, he will find Mr.
McDowall's colossal group of Virginian sad daughter.
From this point he may take his first view of the effect of
the building in its entire length. Olancing to his right down
the foreign avenues, he will see colossal figures stretching
wwards the roof at all points in the perspective ; glancing
to his left, he will have an indistinct view of the sta.
tuary, models, and glasses, which fill the British main
avenue. -

Tempting as the gorgeous bazaar appears from this point,
however, he should u yet not move from the transept, but
retrain his steps towards the southern gates, taking front
views of the Amass% and other grasps by the way, he
should pass to the western owner of the southern portion of
the tzaitsept. At thitpoint he will And groups of statuary
by Mr. Lough, asaspant others not simulated in the rata-
loese, his Jealousy of Obsess. Pr seeding northward
slang this weans amine, he will And Steptieses Satan
I vasquilshod by the Archangel ; sad at the southern corner
of the British tufa avows, Xr. Leash's eelesoak poop of