Excerpt from An Introduction to Geology This book had its origin in the attempt to write an introductory work, dealing principally with American Geology, upon the lines Of Sir Archibald Geikie's excellent little class-book. In spite Of vigorous efforts at compression, it has expanded to its present size, though the difference from the class-book, in this respect, lies not so much in the quantity of matter as in the larger size of the type and illustrations. The book is intended to serve as an introduction to the science of Geology, both for students who-desire to pursue the subject exhaustively, and also for the much larger class Of those who wish merely to obtain an outline Of the methods and principal results of the science. To the future specialist it will be of advantage to go over the whole ground in an elementary course, so that he may appreciate the relative significance Of the various parts, and their bearing upon one another. This accomplished, he may pursue his chosen branch much more intelligently than if he were to confine his attention exclusively to that branch from the begin ning of his studies. 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.