From all these facts it is clear that the geological record, as it now exists, is at the best but an imperfect chronicle of geological history. In no country is it complete. The lacunae of one region must be supplied from another. Yet in proportion to the geographical distance between the localities where the gaps occur and those whence the missing intervals are supplied, the element of uncertainty in our reading of the record is increased. The most desirable method of research is to exhaust the evidence for each area or province, and to compare the general order of its succession as a whole with that which can be established for other provinces. PART VII.--STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY This branch of the science arranges the rocks of the earth's crust in the order of their appearance, and interprets the sequence of events of which they form the records. Its province is to cull from the other departments of geology the facts which may be needed to show what has been the progress of our planet, and of each continent and country, from the earliest times of which the rocks have preserved any memorial. Thus from mineralogy and petrography it contains information regarding the origin and subsequent mutations of minerals and rocks. From dynamical geology it learns by what agencies the materials of the earth's crust have been formed, altered, broken, upheaved and melted. From geotectonic geology it understands the various processes whereby these materials were put together so as to build up the complicated crust of the earth. From palaeontological geology it receives in well-determined fossil remains a clue by which to discriminate the different stratified formations, and to trace the grand onward march of organized existence upon this planet. Stratigraphical geology thus gathers up the sum of all that is made known by the other departments of the science, and makes it subservient to the interpretation of the geological history of the earth. The leading principles of stratigraphy may be summed up as follows: 1. In every stratigraphical research the fundamental requisite is to establish the order of superposition of the strata. Until this is accomplished it is impossible to arrange the dates, and make out the sequence of geological history.