sociations does this little piece of quartz give rise! I am already an antediluvian, and instead of a stag bounding by that wood, I witness the moving mass of a mammoth. I live in other worlds which, at the same time, I have the advantage of comparing with the present. Geology is indeed a magnificent study! What excites more the imagination? What exercises more the mind? Can you conceive any thing sublimer than the gigantic shadows, and the grim wreck of an antediluvian world? Can you devise any plan which will more brace our powers and develope our mental energies, than the formation of a perfect chain of inductive reasoning to account for these phenomena? What is the boasted communion which the vain poet holds with Nature, compared with the conversation which the geologist perpetually carries on with the elemental world? Gazing on the strata of the earth, he reads the fate of his species. In the undulations of the mountains is revealed to him the history of the past; and in the strength of rivers, and the powers of the air, he discovers the fortunes of the future. To
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