he truly grand idea, which all I
have said tends to prove true--that all the soil we see is made by
the destruction of older soils, whether soft as clay, or hard as
rock; that rain, rivers, and seas are perpetually melting and
grinding up old land, to compose new land out of it; and that it must
have been doing so, as long as rain, rivers, and seas have existed.
"But how did the first land of all get made?" I can only reply: A
natural question: but we can only answer that, by working from the
known to the unknown. While we are finding out how these later lands
were made and unmade, we may stumble on some hints as to how the
first primeval continents rose out of the bosom of the sea.

And thus I end this paper. I trust it has not been intolerably dull.
But I wanted at starting to show my readers something of the right
way of finding out truth on this and perhaps on all subjects; to make
some simple appeals to your common sense; and to get you to accept
some plain rules founded on common sense, which will be of infinite
use to both you and me in my future papers.

I hope, meanwhile, that you will agree with me, that there is plenty
of geological matter to be seen and thought over in the neighbourhood
of any town.

Be sure, that wherever there is a river, even a drain; and a stone
quarry, or even a roadside bank; much more where there is a sea, or a
tidal aestuary, there is geology enough to be learnt, to explain the
greater part of the making of all the continents on the globe.

II. THE PEBBLES IN THE STREET

If you, dear reader, dwell in any northern town, you will almost
certainly see paving courts and alleys, and sometimes--to the
discomfort of your feet--whole streets, or set up as bournestones at
corners, or laid in heaps to be broken up for road-metal, certain
round pebbles, usually dark brown or speckled gray, and exceedingly
tough and hard. Some of them will be very large--boulders of several
feet in diameter. If you move from town to town, from the north of
Scotland as far down as Essex on the east, or as far down as
Shrewsbury and Wolverhampton (at least) on the west, you will still
find these pebbles, but fewer and smaller as you go south. It
matters not what the rocks and soils of the country round may be.
However much they may differ, these pebbles will be, on the whole,
the same everywhere.

But if your town be south of the valley of the Thames, you