XI. Amphibious Animals allied to Crocodiles. XX. Proofs of Design in the Effect of Disturbing Forces on the Strata of the Earth ....... 539 INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. Extent of the Province of Geology. Ir a stranger, landing at the extremity of England, were to traverse the whole of Cornwall and the North of Devonshire; and crossing to St. David's, should make the tour of all North Wales; and passing thence through Cumberland, by the Isle of Man, to the south-western shore of Scotland, should proceed either through the hilly region of the Border Counties, or, along the Grampians, to the German Ocean; he would conclude from such a journey of many hundred miles, that Britain was a thinly peopled sterile region, whose principal inhabitants were miners and mountaineers. Another foreigner, arriving on the coast of Devon, and crossing the Midland Counties, from the mouth of the Exe, to that of the Tyne, would find a continued succession of fertile hills and valleys, thickly overspread with towns and cities, and in many parts crowded with a manufacturing population, whose industry is maintained by the coal with which the strata of these districts are abundantly interspersed.* ; A third foreigner might travel from the coast of Dorset to the coast of Yorkshire, over elevated plains of oolitic limestone, or of chalk without a single mountain, or mine, or coal-pit, or any important manufactory, and occupied by a population almost exclusively agricultural. Let us suppose these three strangers to meet at the termination of their journeys, and to compare their respective observations; how different would be the results to which each would have arrived, respecting the actual condition of Great Britain. The first would represent it as a thinly peopled region of barren mountains; the second, as a land of rich pastures, crowded with * It may be seen, in any correct geological map of England, that the following important and populous towns are placed upon strata belonging to the single geological formation of the new red sandstone :-Exeter, Bristol, Worcester, Warwick, Birmingham, Lichfield, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Stafford, Shrewsbury, Chester, Liverpool, Warrington, Manchester, Preston, York, and Carlisle. The population of these nineteen towns, by the census of 1830, exceeded a million. The most convenient small map to which I can refer my readers, in illustration of this and other parts of the present essay, is the single sheet, reduced by Gardner from Mr. Greenough's large map of England, published by the Geological Society of London. |