"The earth on which we live has too great an influence on ourselves, directly and indirectly, to justify ignorance on the subject of its nature and constitution, or the laws which govern its material existence. The history of the present is too nearly connected with, and too directly derived from, the events of the past to allow us safely to neglect it; and the mode of arrangement of the materials of which the outer film of matter, sometimes called the "," is composed, too deeply involves the question of the daily and yearly change that takes place in what we see about us, to permit with safely any indifference in the comparison of results, often hardly to be distinguished except in degree, and in the probable date of their occurrence. In all these matters the investigations concerning the earth's history, which are most generally understood by the term Geology, are found to be very interesting and important in a general sense, and afford much useful information ..."