During the infancy of the “GeologicalMagazine” (1864–66), the new year was appropriately commenced with a short article on the Past and Present Aspects of Geology, or Geological Progress. As the Magazine is now entering upon its “teens”—the Third Volume of the Second Decade—and has attained an age in advance of any magazine having similar objects, it may not be out of place to return to the early plan, and commence the volume with some reflections upon the Science, which it is no flattery to state it has been one medium of advancing.

In our last chapter we referred to the frequency of the occurrence of lakes in districts which contain volcanos that are still active or have only recently become extinct. In connexion with this subject, we must also call attention to the interesting circumstance that, wherever the geologist finds evidence of the former action of subaerial volcanos, there he almost invariably detects proofs also, that numerous lakes have been formed and successively filled up with sediments. Very strikingly is this fact illustrated among the great series of volcanic rocks, which, during a great portion of the Tertiary period, were being erupted in Central and Southern Europe; and which form an almost complete girdle surrounding, but lying at a considerable distance from, the great central masses of the Alps. We have in these districts the most unmistakable palæontological evidence that the periods of violent volcanic activity were also characterized by the repeated formation and filling up of lake-basins.

Ice and Bell Sounds are two large fiords opening out on the west coast of Spitzbergen, which cut deep into the country, both in an easterly direction towards Stor Fiord, and in a northerly direction towards the south part of Wijde Bay. The shores of the Sounds are for the most part occupied by high mountains, precipitous towards the sea, nearly free from snow during the summer, whose sides, being bare of vegetation, offer the observer an uncommonly favourable opportunity for studying the geological structure of the rocks. Within an excecdingly limited space one meets here with a succession of strata belonging to a great many different geological periods, and rich in fossils, both of the vegetable and animal kingdom.

In framing a theory attributing the terraced form of limestone outcrops in the Yorkshire Dales to glacial erosion, Mr. Goodchild was doubtless prepared to encounter much adverse criticism. If in this communication I venture to differ from his views, he will believe that it is in no captious spirit. The district in Northumberland from which I write supplies materials for criticism of the most relevant kind, presenting as it does the same series of Carboniferous rocks cropping out in surface features closely allied, and subjected in the Glacial Period to the pressure of the same ice-sheet. The terraces of Wensleydale, too, are not wholly unfamiliar to me.