geologist,--that man had had access to every part of the earth, and had
made sections of the whole, and put them all together,--even then his
record must of necessity be imperfect.

But to how much has man really access? If you will look at this Map you
will see that it represents the proportion of the sea to the earth: this
coloured part indicates all the dry land, and this other portion is the
water. You will notice at once that the water covers three-fifths of the
whole surface of the globe, and has covered it in 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 surface during a given