Sterry Hunt's Chemical and Geological Essays

Abstract

THIS book contains twenty essays, and a preface, itself an essay, some of which were written as early as 1853, and the others have appeared from time to time, either as original contributions, reviews, or lectures. These literary and scientific efforts are but a small part of Dr. Sterry Hunt's contributions to chemical and dynamical geology, but it would appear, from the preface to the first edition, that a selection was made upon a definite idea. The selected essays, as a whole, cover, he considers, nearly all the more important points in chemical geology; and the introduction of one relating to the hypothesis of a cooling globe and of “certain views” of geological dynamics, he considers make together a complete scheme of chemical and physical geology. He was disposed to re-write some of the essays, but this was not done, because they seem to the author to have a certain historic value and serve to fix the dates of the origin and development of views, some of which, after meeting for a time with neglect, or with active opposition, are now beginning to find favour in the eyes of the scientific world. Dr. Sterry Hunt states that his views, for which his fellow-workers were not prepared, were subsequently propounded by them as new discoveries or original conclusions. Five of the papers, moreover, contain, according to the author—writing in 1874—the germs of a philosophy of chemistry and mineralogy which he hopes one day to develop himself or to see developed by others.

Chemical and Geological Essays.

By Thomas Sterry Hunt Second Edition, revised, with Additions, pp. 489. (London: Trübner and Co., 1879.)