the same manner ever since man has kept any record of his own
observations, to say nothing of the minute period during which he has
cultivated geological inquiry. So that three-fifths of the surface of
the earth is shut out from us because it is under the sea. Let us look
at the other two-fifths, and see what are the countries in which
anything that may be termed searching geological inquiry has been
carried out: a good deal of France, Germany, and Great Britain and
Ireland, bits of Spain, of Italy, and of Russia, have been examined,
but of the whole great mass of Africa, except parts of the southern
extremity, we know next to nothing; little bits of India, but of the
greater part of the Asiatic continent nothing; bits of the Northern
American States and of Canada, but of the greater part of the continent
of North America, and in still larger proportion, of South America,
nothing!

Under these circumstances, it follows that even with reference to that
kind of imperfect information which we can possess, it is only of about
the ten-thousandth part of the accessible parts of the earth that has
been examined properly. Therefore, it is with justice that the most
thoughtful of those who are concerned in these inquiries insist
continually upon the imperfection of the geological record; for, I
repeat, it is absolutely necessary, from the nature of things, that
that record should be of the most fragmentary and imperfect character.
Unfortunately this circumstance has been constantly forgotten. Men of
science, like young colts in a fresh pasture, are apt to be exhilarated
on being turned into a new field of inquiry, to go off at a
hand-gallop, in total disregard of hedges and ditches, losing sight of
the real limitation of their inquiries, and to forget the extreme
imperfection of what is really known. Geologists have imagined that
they could tell us what was going on at all parts of the earth's