Excerpt from The Student's Handbook of Stratigraphical Geology

Scope of the Subject - In most manuals of Geology this branch of the subject is called Stratigraphical Geology because it chiefly consists in the description of the great stratified series of rocks which make up the mass of the earth's crust. It is some times called Historical Geology, because it should comprise not only a description of the various rocks which were formed during each period of the world's history, but also some account of the forms of life which are entombed in these rocks, with a sketch of the physical geography of the earth during each period, and a notice of the changes in the relative position of land and sea which took place from time to time all this should be made as complete as the imperfection of the geological documents will allow.

Neither designation is quite satisfactory, but either of them may be used so long as it is understood to mean a geological history - a collation of the knowledge acquired in all the other depart ments of the Science, and its application to elucidate the history of the earth, or of a portion of the earth, from the earliest time of which any records exist down to the time of human history.

At present there are only a few limited areas of the earth's surface about which we have anything like a full stratigraphical knowledge, and much remains to be learnt even in the areas about which we know most. Geological History, therefore, is yet in its infancy; but enough is now known of the stratigraphical geology of Europe to make it possible to give an outline of its geological history, and American geologists are rapidly making it possible to do the same for North America. In this volume, however, we shall not travel beyond the limits of the British Islands, except where our own records are deficient, or where some knowledge of continental geology is necessary to the proper understanding of the changes that took place in Britain.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.