Never was there a dogma more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than the assumption of the discordance between the former and the existing causes of change.

It is probable that a greater number of monuments of the skill and industry of man will, in the course of the ages, be collected together in the bed of the ocean than will exist at any other time on the surface of the continents.

Geology differs as widely from cosmogony, as speculations concerning the creation of man differ from history.

When the aggregate amount of solid matter transported by rivers in a given number of centuries from a large continent, shall be reduced to arithmetical computation, the result will appear most astonishing to those...not in the habit of reflecting how many of the mightiest of operations in nature are effected insensibly, without noise or disorder.

Such discoveries have led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence previously derived from caves brought forward in proof of the high antiquity of Man.

Never was there a dogma more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than the assumption of the discordance between the former and the existing causes of change.

That ere long, now that curiosity has been so much excited on this subject, some human remains will be detected in the older alluvium of European valleys, I confidently expect.