Page:A Treatise on Geology, volume 1.djvu/17



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CHAPTER I.

HE 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