In our daily walks we tread with heedless step upon the apparently uninteresting objects of which it [geology] treats; but could we rightly interrogate the rounded pebble in our path, it would tell us of the convulsions by which it was wrenched from its parent rock, and of the floods by which it was abraded and placed beneath our feet.

More Worlds Than One: The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of, the Christian, Chapter III (p. 44), Chatto & Windus. 1876