A
TREATISE ON GEOLOGY.
1. Objects of Geological Science..
THE phenomena of geology are so various and complicated,
that hardly any class of writers has left them
wholly untouched; and the aspect of this science changes
according to the peculiar object of different inquirers.
Strabo, accustomed to enlarged views of physical geography,
spoke of the existing forms of the surface of a
part of Asia Minor, in reference to the ancient revolutions
of nature which had occasioned them, and thus
appeared to include geology among the tributaries to
physical geography. Werner, habituated to minute
discrimination of minerals and rocks, regarded the
science, which sought for philosophical explanations of
these differences, as a branch of mineralogy; while in
Hutton's comprehensive mind geology applied itself to
