THE ELEMENTS OF GEOLOGY

BY WILLIAM HARMON NORTON

PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY IN CORNELL COLLEGE

PREFACE

Geology is a science of such rapid growth that no apology is
expected when from time to time a new text-book is added to those
already in the field. The present work, however, is the outcome of
the need of a text-book of very simple outline, in which causes
and their consequences should be knit together as closely as
possible,--a need long felt by the author in his teaching, and
perhaps by other teachers also. The author has ventured,
therefore, to depart from the common usage which subdivides
geology into a number of departments,--dynamical, structural,
physiographic, and historical,--and to treat in immediate
connection with each geological process the land forms and the
rock structures which it has produced.

It is hoped that the facts of geology and the inferences drawn
from them have been so presented as to afford an efficient
discipline in inductive reasoning. Typical examples have been used
to introduce many topics, and it has been the author's aim to give
due proportion to both the wide generalizations of our science and
to the concrete facts on which they rest.

There have been added a number of practical exercises such as the
author has used for several years in the class room. These are not