Silliman, Prof. B.
Suggestions Relative to the Philosophy of
Geologyand Theory of this Science with Sacred
History.
New Haven, 1839

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SU G G *fs T I O N S

RELATIVE TO THE

PHILOSOPHY OF GEOLOGY,

AS DEDUCED FROM THE FACTS AND TO THE CONSISTENCY OF BOTH

THE FACTS AND THEORY OF THIS SCIENCE WITH

SACRED HISTORY

BY PROF. B. SILLIMAN.

NEW HAVEN:
PRINTED BY B. L. HAMLSN.
1839.

APPENDIX

THIRD AMERICAN FROM THE FIFTH ENGLISH EDITION OF

BAKEWELL'S GEOLOGY.

SUGGESTIONS RELATIVE TO THE
PHILOSOPHY OF GEOLOGY
AS DEDUCED FROM THE FACTS AND TO THE CONSISTENCY OF BOTH THE FACTS
AND THEORY OF THIS SCIENCE WITH
SACRED HISTORY.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
My acquaintance with the Geology of Mr. Bake well com
menced with the first edition, published in 1815.
Being strongly impressed by its perspicuity, attractiveness, and
sound philosophy, I made it the companion of my lectures on this
science, and in 1829, an American edition, from the third Eng
lish, was published at New Haven, under my supervision, and
with the author's privity and approbation. The work met so
favorable a reception in this country, that a second American edi
tion, from the author's fourth, also with his approval, was edited
by me in 1833, and thus it became generally known in the United
States, as a book of standard authority.
It appears, that the republications in this country produced so
favorable an influence at home, that, from being less generally
known there, than its great merits deserved, this work soon made
its way into several, of the first British universities ; and we infer,
from the appearance of a fifth edition, that it continues to main-
2

tain its ground with other excellent treatises on geology, which
have appeared long since this was first published.*
It is in accordance with Mr. Bakewell's wishes, that I now
pass a third American edition to my countrymen, not doubting
that I am doing to them and to all our students of geology an
acceptable service.
In relation to the present edition, I have revised the discourses
which were appended to the two former American editions of
1829 and 1833. They have been greatly condensed, and to some
extent written anew, with the intention of bringing them up to
the present state of the science.
The outline of my lectures, annexed to the first American edi
tion of 1829, does not present a correct view of the courses which
I now give. Fifteen years have elapsed since that outline was
first sketched, and ten since it was published. Within those
periods geology has made great advances, particularly in the
proofs of igneous action, in all ages, ancient and modern ; and
perhaps my own admissions of its agency were not commensu
rate with the proofs that existed in 1833. The powerful direc
tion early given to my mind, towards the Wernerian theory, by
the captivating eloquence of the late Dr. John Murray of Edin
burgh, whose lectures on geology as well as chemistry I attended,
was not, at that time, fully appreciated by myself.
I was also a deeply interested listener to the lectures of Dr.
Hope,f based on the Huttonian theory, and I was a careful student
of Playfair's splendid illustrations of that theory ; while Playfair
himself, with many other eminent men of that school of geology, as
well as of its rival,! was then in full vigor and activity at Edin
burgh. It was delightful to listen to their eloquent statements
and acute reasonings. In this way I heard both sides of the
question fully vindicated, while, from my youth and inexperience,
I endeavored to sustain a neutral position, and reserved the lib
erty to decide ultimately, with an unbiased mind. Still I was, to
a degree, incredulous in regard to the fundamental postulates of
* We are informed that it has been translated and published in Germany.
t The distinguished Professor of Chemistry, &c. in the University of Edinb.
t Professor Jameson, then recently returned from Germany, where he had
studied under Werner, had not at that time entered on his public duties.

the Huttonian geologists, and could not perceive that they made
out their case, as to the extent and energy of internal fire. The
powerful arguments in favor of great igneous action, contained in
Mr. Bakewell's Geology, were supported by Dr. Daubeny's fine
Treatise on Volcanoes, and this by the full and exact work of Mr.
Scrope on the same subject, with particular reference to the extinct
volcanoes of France, illustrated also by an ample atlas of volcanic
regions. The more recent exhibition of proofs by Mr. Lyell, as to
the extent, persistence, and energy of igneous action ; the satisfac
tory evidence accumulating every year respecting the increasing in
ternal heat as we descend into the earth ; the decisive influence of
galvanic power in mineral veins, as ascertained by Mr. Fox, its effi
ciency in producing mineral crystallization and its power even in
rousing into life the long latent eggs and germs of insects, as estab
lished by Mr. Crosse — with the splendid proofs which our gal
vanic and electro-magnetic machines now afford of an igneous
energy inherent in the earth — an energy which knows no limits
— attended also by magnetic and decomposing power, equivalent
to all which geology demands ; these and many other considera
tions that might be stated, have removed my doubts, and I have
been for a series of years in a condition to do full justice to the
internal agency of fire, as my various classes in the university
and elsewhere can attest.
It is of little importance to occupy the reader's attention, even
for a moment, with my own personal views and opinions, nor
would I have ventured to do so, were it not of some importance
that the science may not suffer by any apparent, although not real,
caprice of opinion in those who teach it to others. I have there
fore thought it but honest to make, this frank declaration, my
amende honorable, of the change in my views, and of the grounds
of it ; and perhaps it may not be entirely without utility, as an
exhibition of tha effect of progressive development and accumu
lation of evidence upon one mind, inasmuch as other minds may,
by similar means, be led to the same result. If, however, I still
sustain the claims of water and of all things which, by the aid of
heat and pressure, water is able to dissolve — to more efficiency
than is now generally conceded to them — it is I trust not so
much because I am still tenacious of early impressions, as because

the state of experimental science, both mechanical and chemical,
fully bears us out, in attributing powerful solvent properties to
water, aided especially by heat and pressure and many active
chemical agents.
The remarks on the consistency of the fact^ and theory of ge
ology with the scripture history, although superfluous with respect
to learned geologists, and even learned theologians, who have
studied and understood both sides of the question, appear to me
to be still demanded by the state of moral feeling, and by the im
perfect comprehension of geological truths on the part of the ma
jority even of our educated people. I have therefore retained a
condensed view of this question, which was discussed in connex
ion with the edition of 1833.
I. General Object of Geology. — The object of this science
is to ascertain the structure of the earth ; the nature of its mine
ral aggregates ; their disposition and arrangement, forming rocks
and mountains ; the relative position and nature of the rocks them
selves, with their included minerals and organic remains; the
useful substances which they contain ; the natural associations of
these with other substances ; the proximate causes, which have
given the mineral masses their present form and position ; and
those, which, operating upon them still, are causing them to un
dergo alterations, more or less considerable, and are producing
changes, which will ultimately give them new forms of exist
ence. II. Positive and Speculative Geology. — It is obvious, there
fore, that geology is erected upon observation, and not upon mere
speculation ; yet, speculation is with propriety admitted, as an
important means of advancing the science ; but it is of no value
if not founded upon facts, and they must never be contradicted
by it.
Positive is therefore the parent of speculative geology, and it
proceeds, like the other natural sciences, upon a careful examina
tion of particulars ; from particular it ascends to general conclu
sions, and upon these builds legitimate theory. Thus, there is
a clear distinction between geological theory and geological hy
pothesis. The former draws conclusions directly from facts, and
follows strictly the inductive course. It has therefore the same

foundation, as general physics ; and its conclusions often approxi
mate to demonstration. The latter also appeals to facts, but in a
manner less conclusive, and it sometimes makes suppositions of
facts, not actually proved to exist.
III. Former and present State of Geological Knowledge
in this Country. — Before the American revolution, geology as a
science, had no existence in this country, and indeed there was
hardly any thing in Europe that deserved the name.
In Mr. Lyell's Principles of Geology, there is an interesting
historical sketch of the rise and progress of geological research and
opinion, from the ages of Grecian, Arabian, and Roman philoso
phy to that of the revival of letters in Europe ; and from that
period, through several centuries to our own time. Vigorous
minds have indeed appeared in various and remote periods, which
have formed just conceptions of some parts of geology, but it
could not be said to have taken the form of a science until the
Wernerian and Huttonian schools began their friendly conflicts,
about 60 or 70 years ago.
In this country, considerable attention was early bestowed upon
the research for metals and other valuable minerals, as is evinced
by numerous excavations in our hills and mountains, whose date
is generally in the first half of the late century. Several of the
men are still living who led the way in introducing scientific ge
ology among us. William Maclure* was the man who, from
extensive personal examination, made the first geological sketch
of the United States, after having visited geologically, most of
the countries of Europe ; he has also given us much interesting
geological information respecting the West Indies, Spain, and
other countries. He and others, his juniors in years and in the
date of their knowledge, can well remember, when the names of
the most common minerals and rocks were scarcely known in
the United States. Now, there are geological cabinets and
schools in many places, and many geological surveys have been
made, or are in progress, under public authority. We have nu
merous good reports on states and territories, and many valuable
* Who now, at an advanced age, resides in the city of Mexico — a country which
he finds congenial to his health. 2

memoirs on particular districts ; they are to be found also in sci
entific journals, in books of travels, especially of the exploring
expeditions sent out by the American government ; in the trans
actions of learned societies ; in detached publications, and some
times even in the newspapers. These materials are of great value ;
but much more must be done before they will be sufficiently co
pious to enable some master spirit to reduce the whole subject to
order, and thus to give a full and digested account of American
geology. Foreign geologists will do us the justice to remember,
that our field is vast, while our laborers, although every year in
creasing in number, are still comparatively few, and they are,
generally, men occupied by other pursuits ; this country is rarely
explored by those whom fortune leaves at ease to follow a favorite
object. The learned leisure of Europe, and especially of Eng
land, is here almost unknown, and our most efficient cultivators of
science are also laborers in other fields. But the habit of making
efforts by systematic industry, is often an equivalent for leisure.
Many of our geologists labor with zeal and effect, and in the scien
tific corps, now surveying several of our states, we have men who
are able to maintain their standing with those of any country.
IV. Limits of our Knowledge of the Earth. — It is only the
crust, the superficial part of our earth, that we can examine ; a
few miles or leagues in depth of its outer rind. We no longer
attempt, by a brilliant excursion of the imagination, to account
for its present form ; poetry and fiction have ceased to perform
the work of philosophy ; those obsolete hypotheses, falsely called
theories — many of them adorned by the eloquence of powerful
minds — which substituted waking dreams for the patient exami
nation of facts, are no longer regarded, except as monuments of
the restless activity of the human mind ; which is inclined to re
pose on almost any conjecture, however visionary, rather than to
confess its weakness and ignorance.*
In Europe, and we are now happy to say in America also, a
great number of highly qualified men are occupied in geolo-
* The geological student may find a spirited outline ofthe most prominent geolo
gical hypotheses in Cuvier's Introduction to Geology ; they may be read as a mat
ter of amusement; but it will be easily perceived, that they bear no closer analogy
to modern geology, than the visions of Alchemy sustain to modern chemistry.

gical researches ; collectively they bring to the investigation, all
requisite science and the habit of careful observation and induction,
with the industry and patience, which are demanded. The pro
gress made in these inquiries, even since the commencement of
this century, is wonderful. Districts, provinces, and countries are
surveyed ; and this kind of research, favored by the propensity for
travelling, to which it affords both a strong incitement and a high
gratification and reward, will, doubtless, continue to be extended,
until there shall be no countries unexplored, except those from
which the scientific traveller is debarred,J)y insuperable moral or
physical impediments.
Geology takes rank among the physical sciences, and is worthy
of the attention of the greatest minds.
In grandeur, it falls indeed short of astronomy ; and what phys
ical science does not ; since, astronomy presents to our optics, or
to our intellectual vision, the " great frame work" of the universe ;
we pass from the view of our own planet to the entire planetary
system, of which our earth is a member ; and from this system,
to other and similar systems ; and to the immense systems of
suns innumerable, with their attendant worlds, arranged and con
nected, in perfect harmony ; performing all their revolutions with
out interference, or irregularity, and illustrating the power and
wisdom and sustaining energy, of the omnipotent Creator and
Governor. Still the structure of a single planet is a subject of
great interest and grandeur ; especially as we may reason from it
analogically, respecting the structure of other planets.
V. Modes of Investigation and Sources of our Knowledge.
— Our direct penetration into the earth, by mines, the deepest ex
cavations of art, has scarcely exceeded three thousand feet — a
little more than half a mile, not ¥?Vo Part °f the earth's diameter
or ?TV o Part of its radius.
It might therefore at first view, seem that we can attain only a
very slight knowledge of the internal structure of the planet, and
that it would be idle to attempt to speculate respecting that of which
we can see so little. Still, we are able to reason correctly on this
subject, for we have many sources of information and ample means
of perusing the internal structure of our globe.

8
1. The obliquity ofthe Strata.— The strata or natural beds of
rocks are found in all positions, from the perfectly vertical, to the
perfectly horizontal. Were they all horizontal, it is obvious, that
the edges could come into view, only on the sides of mountains,
in the banks of rivers, on promontories, or in artificial excavations ;
and that, in a tolerably level country, we might travel over many
leagues, and see very little change in the rock formations.
But if the strata are inclined to the horizon, then, their edges
must come into view, Unless the rocks are concealed by the soil
or by ruins. Thus the strata, that in a given situation are many
miles below the surface, may emerge, and crop out, in some
other place. Were the soil and diluvium removed, from a se
ries of inclined strata, then, their edges would appear, and we
could have no reasonable doubt that we should see an adequate
representation of the subterranean geography, as far as those strata
extended downwards ; perhaps for many leagues — or possibly for
hundreds of miles beneath the surface. The same instruction is
obtained from vertical strata, and indeed from those in all posi
tions, except the perfectly flat ; and even then, we are not with
out means of information.
2. Horizontality — Density of the Earth. — Strictly, a horizontal
position is parallel to the general curve of the earth's surface, con
sidered without reference to the hills and mountains. Were this
horizontal position strictly /preserved, and were there no perfora
tions and ruptures of the strata, by artificial or natural causes,
Ave should, except in the sides of hills and mountains, see only
the upper stratum of rock, and our knowledge of the geology of
the region in question, would be confined, very nearly, to the
visible material beneath our feet. A horizontal stratum may
overlie parallel strata, descending so deep as to come out obliquely
at points distant from the position of the observer, and thus to ex
hibit inclined or even vertical strata cutting off a segment of the
globe. In common with the pressure of superincumbent masses, it
may be proper to mention the density of the earth. By the con
clusions of the British and French philosophers, the mean spe
cific gravity of the earth is at least twice that of the most com
mon rocks and stones.

This important conclusion implies nothing more than a highly
condensed state in the materials in the interior of the earth ; still
it does not prove a prevalence of metals, in the sense in which they
are generally known to mankind. It is, however in full proof,
that metals, such as are known only to chemists, form the basis
of the rocks, and in their oxidized and mineralized condition, they
may, from pressure or from other causes, acquire a high specific
gravity. This is illustrated by carbon as it exists in diamond, in
which it is three or four times as heavy as in the bitumens, and
six or eight times as heavy as in charcoal ; alumina, in sapphire,
sustains a similar relation to the alumina of clays, and so does pul
verulent carbonate of magnesia to that earth in boracite or in chry-
soprase ; or silica in swimming fluid (quartz nectique) to the same
substance in rock crystal. Thus the specific gravity of the entire
mass of the earth compared with that of the surface may present
no contradiction or inconsistency.
3. Mines and Wells. — The excavations in mining are the
most profound that have been made by art. The deepest mine
in the world, that of Truttenberg in Bohemia, penetrates three
thousand feet into the earth. ', In all mines, the strata being
perforated and broken, we obtain the most satisfactory informa
tion, as to the nature and arrangement of the rocks. Few of the
mines of England are, in perpendicular descent, deeper than a quar
ter of a mile, (Dolgoath in Cornwall,) and none in the United
States exceed four or five hundred feet, (Richmond coal mines,
and those of Pennsylvania. )
The evidence afforded by wells is of the same nature. The
depth attained rarely equals one hundred feet, but in some in
stances it extends to two hundred, three hundred, four hundred,
&c. as at Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight, on the plain or
valley of London, &c. (Conybeare and Philips.)
4. Boring for Salt Water, Salt Mines, Coal, Sfc. — This affords
similar, though less distinct evidence ; because the materials are.
brought up, in the state of powder, or at least of small fragments,
and a very imperfect idea is thus obtained of their original appear
ance ; sufficient however to enable us to decide on their nature.
These operations are often carried on to the depth of several hun
dred feet — sometimes 600 to 800 feet or more.

10
5. Roads, Canals, and Tunnels. — Roads and canals are some
times cut through diluvium, as on the Welland Canal, in Upper
Canada, where the cut is in some places, more than fifty feet deep,
in a stiff tenacious clay ; and even through solid rocks, as at
Lockport on the Erie Canal, where for two miles or more, a very
solid, subcrystalline limestone has been excavated by blasting, in
many places to the depth of thirty feet, disclosing not only the
nature of the rock, but many beautiful imbedded minerals and
fossils — strontian, gypsum, calc spar, corals, crinoidea, &c.
Tunnels are less numerous, but every one has heard of that
of the Duke of Bridgewater, between Liverpool and Manchester,
and of the Thames Tunnel, below London, intended to serve as a
substitute for a bridge. That under Standedge, between Hud-
dersfield and Manchester, extends upward of three miles, and is
two hundred and twenty yards below the surface.
It appears that they were not unknown to the ancients. From
the Stadium near Athens, situated in a natural defile, the van
quished charioteers retired through a tunnel which perforated a
neighboring hill, and thus those who had failed of victory were
screened from the sneers and insults of the populace.* Tunnels
are becoming common in this country, as between Philadelphia
and Pittsburgh ; at Harlem, near New York ; at Norwich, Con
necticut, and in various other places. These and all other
excavations into the earth add to our means of geological infor
mation. 6. Rivers and other Water Courses. — Brooks gently transport
gravel and sand, and rivers rush through mountain defiles, as if
they had burst the rocky barriers, transporting not only sand
and gravel and pebbles, but at times large bowlder stones, bear
ing them along and vexing them with incessant friction, till
their angles are rounded or obliterated. The rivers have some
times flowed at a higher level, or their waters are the remnants of
lakes whose barriers time has broken or worn away ; and water-
worn ledges are often found at elevations higher than where the
floods can now flow. This is seen two or three miles below
Bellows' Falls, on Connecticut River, where the primitive rocks
* Dr. Howe's personal communications, Aug. 11, 1828.

11
shew the same water-rounded angles, furrowed lines, and even
pot holes, formed and polished by ceaseless attrition, as are seen
at the Falls themselves, whose torrents are now incessantly
wearing the rocks. Similar facts are observable at the head of
Lake George, fifty feet and more above the lake, in ledges of
transition limestone, over which no water now flows. The same
appearances are seen at the great falls of the Potomac ; where, for
a long distance, and at a considerable elevation above the present
bed of the river, the angles are rounded and smoothed, and there
are numerous holes in the rock, either shallow and irregular, or
deep and cylindrical, like those of cataracts, and certainly produ
ced by the same causes, the wearing of water, aided by whirling
stones.* The passage of the Shenandoah through the Blue Ridge — of
the Connecticut at Middletown, through the Haddam hills, and of
the rivers in the Rocky mountains through their defiles ; these are
a few among innumerable examples of this kind. The rivers
have rarely burst their barriers ; in general, they have merely un
covered the rocks so that their characters can be observed ; they
have not generally formed their own beds, but have deepened
and altered their channels. The Genesee and Niagara rivers,
whose banks are often precipitous and several hundred feet high,
give sections of the strata wonderfully distinct and beautiful.
Thus the wearing power .of water contributes to the mass of geo
logical evidence.
7. Valleys and Defiles, Banks, Precipices, Cliffs and Pro
montories., — In every mountainous country not covered with soil
ahd ruins, these natural sections being often deep, abrupt, and of
great extent, expose the stratification on the sides of the hills and
mountains, and thus the structure is revealed. As a large part of
the earth is mountainous, provision is thus made, oh a great scale,
for judging of the interior of the planet. The shores of the seas
and of the great lakes, and all elevated countries, abound with
such exhibitions. Many of them are indeed inaccessible except
in boats, but however viewed, they exhibit the stratification and
structure more or less distinctly.
* American Journal, Vol. iv, p. 44.

12
8. Landslips, Slides and Avulsions.— The peaceful dweller
in the beautiful Isle of Wight, in the English channel, not un
frequently sees the high chalky cliffs of that coast, that have
been undermined by the sea, totter to their fall, till they come
thundering down in piles of ruins ; and even at some distance
inland, away from the sea, they occasionally slide or slip from
their seats, overwhelming the plains below.
The Alpine mountaineers witness still more stupendous catas
trophes. Large portions of mountains are precipitated with fright
ful devastation upon the valleys and plains, filling the bosom of
lakes, spreading desolation far and wide, and burying villages in
the wreck, or sweeping them away by the sudden rush of the
waters. The' mountains of Vermont and of New Hampshire, have been
the scenes of similar catastrophes, and the Notch in the White
Mountains of the latter State, will long record the desolations of
1826. The Notch is a grand defile in these mountains, five
or six miles in length, formed by a double barrier, rising ab
ruptly half a mile or more in perpendicular altitude, from both
sides of the wild roaring river Saco, which washes the feet of
the barriers. A single carriage can hardly pass between the
stream and the mountains, and the road is in some places cut
into the mountain itself. The ridges are capped by castellated
turrets of rocks, rising in high zigzag turns, which thus imprison
the observer in a vast, gloomy gulf.
The sides are deeply scarred by many floods, and especially by
the memorable deluge of the night of August 28th, 1826, which
destroyed, in a moment, an entire family of nine, and left not one
to tell their story. The Willeys occupied a lonely house in the
wildest part of the Notch, at the foot of the mountains ; it was a
resting place for travellers. For two seasons before, the moun
tains had been very dry, and on the morning of August 28th, it
commenced raining very hard, with strong tempestuous wind •
the storm lasted through that day and the succeeding night, and
when it ceased, the road was found obstructed by innumerable
avalanches of mountain ruins, which rendered it impossible to
pass, except on foot. They were rather slides than ruptures of
the rock : they began at or near the mountain top, and bore down

13
the precipitous sides, the shrubs, the forests, the soil, stones and
rocks ; and of the latter, many of great size.
One of the torrents descended behind, the house, and dividing
into two branches, bore away the unhappy family, who, in the
deep darkness and wild fury of the tempest, issued from their
dwelling only to be overwhelmed by the torrent, which desolated
the mountain gorge for a distance of two miles* filling it with
almost continued masses of ruins, borne down by the deluge
from both sides of the defile.
Such are some of the disclosures made by violent torrents, by
slides and revulsions.
9. Revelations by Fire. — Volcanic eruptions throw up into
daylight the foundations of the fathomless deep below, in the
form of ejected masses, or in rivers of ignited and fluid rocks,
which congeal on the surface of the ground, either inflated,
like the scoria? of furnaces, or in" solid forms, with no visible im
press of heat. They often contain very perfect and beautiful
minerals, conceived in the volcano, or dislodged from still earlier
beds, from a more profound igneous abyss, from which they are
urged along by the irresistible current that often ruptures the crust
of the earth, and covers it with a fiery deluge. In addition to the
products of actual volcanoes, we observe the ignigenous rocks,
crystallized or deposited from fusion, both in the earliest and in
many of the more modern epochs, injected among, and cutting
across strata of almost all descriptions and ages, and thus assim
ilated to known products of internal fire ; these proper rocky
masses, the granites, the sienites, the porphyries, the serpentines
and the traps, give authentic information of the unapproachable
gulf of fire whence they were projected.
10. By Cold and Hot Springs and Gases. — The infernal
waters that gush cool from the fountains on land or under the
* During a visit to this place in May, 1828, two years after the event, there was
still visible a vast rampart of earth, stones, rocks, and trees piled up behind the
house, at the place where the torrent divided, and left the building unharmed,
although it swept away the barn and cattle, sparing, however, » floek of sheep
which lay near by upon a green sward. I was there again in August, 1837, nine
years after my former visit, and found the ruins near the house so covered with
earth, and even grass, that they were almost concealed from the eye, thus serving
as a geological chronometer. 3

14
sea, or those that spout in boiling geysers from the deep caverns
where their imprisoned vapors accumulate explosive force ; all
these bring to the surface the materials of the interior, and con
spire "with tornadoes of gas bursting from volcanoes and other
vents, to reveal the deep secrets of the earth.
VI. Fruits or Results of the Observations made on the
Structure of the Crust of the Earth. — The earth is not, as
ignorant persons usually suppose, a mere rude and unarranged
heap of rocks and minerals, grouped together without order or
plan, and incapable of being rationally investigated.
Order, so conspicuous in the mechanism of our planetary world
and the stellary universe ; in the equilibrium of projection and
gravitation ; of cohesion and expansion and chemical affinity, and
in the structure and exact economy of animals and vegetables, per
vades, indeed, all the works of creation ; nor is it less capable of
demonstration, although the proof is less obvious, in this un
conscious earth, than in the other departments of God's universal
dominion. VII. Beauty and Interest of Geology as a Science. — In
relation to the beauty and interest of geology, we may remark,
that no field of science presents more gratifying, astonishing, and
(but for the evidence) incredible results. Man has been but a
few thousand years a tenant of this world ; nothing which we
discover in the structure of the earth, would lead us to infer that
he existed at a period more remote than that assigned to him by
the Scriptures. Had he been cotemporary with the animals and
plants of early geological periods, we should have found his re
mains, and his works, entombed along with them.
Opinion of Berkeley. — This argument forcibly impressed the
mind of Bishop Berkeley, a century ago, and the following beau
tiful passage is cited from him by Mr. Lyell.* " To any one
who considers that on digging into the earth, such quantities of
shells, and in some places, bones and horns of animals, are found
sound and entire, after having lain there, in all probability, some
thousands of years ; it would seem probable that gems, medals,
and implements in metal or stone, might have lasted entire, bu-
* Principles, 5th edition, Vol. m, p. 255.

15
ried under ground forty or fifty years, if the world had been so
old. How comes it then, to pass, that no remains are found, no
antiquities of those numerous ages preceding the Scripture ac
counts of time ; that no fragments of buildings, no public mon
uments, no intaglios, cameos, statues, basso-relievos, medals, in
scriptions, utensils, or artificial works of any kind, are ever dis
covered, which may bear testimony to the existence of those
mighty empires, those successions of monarchs, heroes, and demi
gods, for so many thousand years ? Let us look forward and
suppose ten or twenty thousand years to come, during which
time, we will suppose that plagues, famines, wars, and earth
quakes, shall have made great havoc in the world, is it not highly
probable, that at the end of such a period, pillars, vases, and
statues, now in being, of granite, or porphyry, or jasper, (stones
of such hardness as we know them to have lasted two thousand
years above ground, without any considerable alteration,) would
bear record of these and past ages ? Or that some of our cur
rent coins might then be dug up, or old walls, and the founda
tions of buildings, show themselves, as well as the shells and
stones of the primeval world, which are preserved down to our
times."* This remarkable passage proves that the great man
from whom it fell, saw the geological argument in a true light.
and felt its force to such a degree as to convince him of the great
antiquity of the earth, which he justly viewed as in no way in
consistent with the comparatively recent origin of man, or with
the historical account of both events contained in the Genesis.
It is easy to understand how such a mind would have been con
vinced, warmed, and excited even to enthusiasm, by the discov
eries that have burst upon us during the last fifty years.
VIII. Organic Remains. — As we descend from the alluvial
under our feet, through the strata, the lowest of which lies upon
the granite, or the early slates, we are almost never without the
records of life, in ages long past, and those records are drawn both
from the animal and vegetable world.
Early Animals. — The shells and forms of molluscous and tes
taceous animals are every where seen ; their casts, and their sub-
* Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, Vol. n, pp. 84, 85. 1732.

16
stance, are apparently preserved in stone, but are really converted,
by the substitution of mineral matter, into true fossils. Myriads
on myriads of these things are found, not merely in the visible,
superficial strata, but in the heart of the mountains, and at pro
found depths, forming an essential part of the solid frame work
of the globe. The animals and plants are not accidental resem
blances, but authentic specimens of organic antiquity, enclosed
in the strata and mountains, as the materials, in mechanical or
chemical suspension in the waters, concreted around them. It
was impossible that they should be due to any sudden or acci
dental event ; the organic beings came into life, as now — per
formed their parts as now, and were entombed in the forming
masses, which were therefore, of more recent origin.
Fossil Fishes. — If we descend with Agassiz* from the strata
of newest formation, to those that lie near, or upon the primary
rocks, we are astonished and delighted to find not only that shell
fishes -and crustaceous and molluscous animals, of various kinds,
have existed in the early ages, but that fishes, furnished with fins
and vertebrae, have occupied the waters of almost all geological
ages, since life began, and that among the earliest, even those that
are buried beneath the coal, there were races of great size, power,
and ferocity ; formidable from their teeth and jaws, which had,
in some species, the structure of carnivorous reptiles, and whose
forked tails, with unequal flukes, enabled them quickly to turn
over on their backs, before striking their prey. The fossil fishes,
of particular genera and species, are characteristic of particular
geological formations — they extend geographically, far and wide,
to distant countries, so that certain species may, if found at all,
be expected in similar rocks in Europe, in America, in Asia, and
Africa, and they are of every size, from inches and fractions of
an inch, to several feet. They occur either solitary, or in groups,
or in fragments, or in immense shoals, like those of Mount Bolca,
near Verona, in Italy, where there are more than one hundred
species ; still, not a single fish of the strata that precede the most
recent tertiary, is identical in species with any now existing in
the waters of the globe.

The great wiiler on fossil ichthyology, of Noufrhatel, Switzerland.

17
Fossil Vegetables. — Vegetables are found in nearly all geolo
gical ages, after the granite family, and the labors of Count Stern
berg, of Adolphus Brongniart, and others, have proved that a pe
culiar vegetation, adapted to the temperature, the degree of mois
ture, and other circumstances of the earth's successive surfaces,
attended the different geological epochs.
Splendid and expensive works are now in the hands of geolo
gists, containing exact delineations of the fossil vegetables, as far
as they have been ascertained. They are of all dimensions,
from minute confervse and lichens, to gigantic stems ; their struc
ture, from mere fragments and ruins, to perfect plants and trees,
has been beautifully delineated, >roots, trunks, branches and
leaves, with the most delicate ramifications of the skeletons of
the latter ; in some rare cases, the more perishable organic fruc
tification has been made out, and the fruits themselves Mve
been identified.
Vegetation of the Coal Period. — The most exuberant ancient
vegetation appears to have been that of the coal period, and its en
tombed treasures now supply the world with fuel, especially in
countries where the forests are exhausted, or where economy of
the modern vegetation, or preference for the results of the an
cient, decides the choice.
Varieties of the Ancient Fossil Vegetation. — The ancient
vegetation appears in many forms, as in that of lignite, of coal, and
of siliceous, calcareous, and ferruginous petrifactions, still pre
serving the structure peculiar to different species ; and this has
been made still more distinct and satisfactory, by cutting thin slices
of the petrified trunks, and grinding them down until they be
come so thin as to be transparent, when the microscope reveals the
internal arrangement of pores and fibres, which characterizes the
family. Thus, it has been made to appear, that coniferous trees
of forest growth, preceded the coal formation in the south of Scot
land and the north of England, and that Zamias, Cycadeee and
other palm-like trees preceded the chalk in the south of England.
No species of the ancient world is "identical with any one of the
modern, and, as has been already remarked, the early vegetation
implies, generaUy, a warm and moist climate, and great fertility
of production.

18
Aquatic Animals — Reptiles. — Animals, almost exclusively ma
rine, attest the great prevalence of the ocean in the earlier geolo
gical, periods, and it is not until we have passed the coal in the
ascending order, that we begin to find reptiles of marine, or am
phibious families, and ultimately, still higher up, of terrestrial
races. With a similarity of type to the reptile families of the
present day, both their genera and species are, however, without a
single perfect copy in modern times. Some were carnivorous, and
swam in the shallow seas, estuaries, lagoons, and bays, and prey
ed upon fishes, molluscous animals, and each other. Some lived
on land, and were herbivorous, and although a few species, the
megalosaurus and iguanodon, for example, were colossal in size
and terrible in form, it is probable that the latter of these terres
trial saurians was harmless and inoffensive, while the tooth of the
megalosaurus would indicate a ferocious animal of prey, like the
marine saurians. Bones of many genera and species of the rep
tile tribes, especially the saurians, have been found, and of some
individuals, entire, or nearly perfect skeletons ; — among them,
those of vast dimensions have been discovered, enclosed in the
solid rocks, along with their petrified and half-digested food, and
with their exuviae, called coprolites.
Marsupials. — If the reptiles formed the transition from the
marine animals upward — the marsupials, as they are called, were
the link between the ancient reptiles and terrestrial quadrupeds.
The marsupials, of which the opossum is an example, receive their
young (which, although b6rn, are still immature) into an exterior
pouch or abdominal sack, and there nourish them at their paps,
until they are fitted to go abroad, and to encounter the vicissitudes
of their peculiar modes of life. These are the only animals
hitherto found below the Chalk which approximate to the proper
terrestrial character. Dr. Mantel! has, however, found the bones
of birds in the Wealden beneath the Chalk, Dr. Buckland found
them or the bones of flying reptiles in the Stonesfield slate, and Prof.
Hitchcock has discovered numerous tracks of animals, believed to
be those of birds, and possibly of reptiles, some of them of gigantic
dimensions, in the new red sandstone of the Connecticut river.
Fossils of the Chalk and Tertiary. — The Chalk then follows
with its immense and varied marine treasures ; and then the lower

19
tertiary, still marine, and then the middle tertiary, where proper
and fully characterized terrestrial animals are first found ; then,
through the remaining beds of tertiary, both marine and fresh water,
we find molluscous animals, fishes, reptiles, cetacea and vegetables,
verging towards, and even identical with those of our own times.
Occasionally we discover also terrestrial animals, but still, dif
ferent from the modern, until, at last, in the diluvium, and allu
vium, and the most recent sedimentary, and concretionary forma
tions, we discern animals and plants, still more and more like those
now living, and finally graduating into perfect identity with ex
isting races.
The pages of our author will disclose the great variety and ex
traordinary form, and, in many cases, colossal dimensions, unri
valled at the present time, of some of the ancient animals, the me
gatherium, the sivatherium, the dinotherium, the mastodon, the
elephant, the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, the cavern bear, the
tiger, and many others. In consequence of the most recent dis
coveries of geology, we are hurried from that which is stupen
dous and vast, to that which is inconceivably minute. The ex
tremes of creation meet in the mineral kingdom. In the solid
rocks are found both the colossal reptiles, and the microscopic in
fusorial animalculae. Ehrenberg has discovered that polishing
slate is made up of animalculae so minute, that forty one thousand
millions of them are required to fill a cubic inch, in every grain of
which there are one hundred and eighty seven millions, and their
siliceous shields are the cause of the well known effects of the tri-
poli, or rotten stone, in polishing steel, &c. An analogous consti
tution has been discovered in flirit, opal, and bog iron, and the
deposits of our modern peat bogs in this country, are filled with
similar animalcules, the figures of some of which have been given
by Prof. Bailey, in the American Journal of Science, vol. 35, p. 118.
Man no where Fossil. — Man and his works appear only in the
last stages, associated with just such beings as now exist, both in
the animal and vegetable world.
General Remarks. — Such is an exceedingly general and very
imperfect sketch of the progressive creations of animals and plants,
that have inhabited our world — have become extinct, and are, in
countless myriads, entombed in the rocky strata, and in the solid

20
mountains. It is only on the upper surface that we discover loose
and scattered ruins, either in the soil, or buried in masses of gra
vel, sand, and clay ; ruins of rocks and fragments of strata, along
with the relics of animals, trees, and smaller plants, such as we
could in any reason, attribute to the catastrophe, or catastrophes of
rising and rushing water, the, deluges of geologists, or the deluge
of the Scriptures ; the latter, almost alone, being admitted to the
contemplations of those who are uninstructed in our science.
Now, it is matter of physical demonstration, that the_ earth ex
isted for many ages before man was called into being. The
whole course of geological investigation proves this view to be the
only one that is consistent with the facts. To be convinced of
its truth, it is only necessary to become thoroughly acquainted
with the innumerable records of a progressive creation and destruc
tion which the earth contains, inscribed nn medals, more pregnant
with historical truth, and more worthy of confidence, than those
that have been formed by man ; as much more as nature exceeds
in veracity, the erring or mendacious records of the human race.
IX. Some Features in North American Geology. — Probably
no country is more favored in the nature, abundance, variety, and
distribution of the most important mineral treasures. The limits
of these preliminary remarks must prevent even the most general
summary of our geological formations, or at most, admit of noth
ing more than a skeleton ; but the materials for information, al
ready abundant, are yearly increasing, as may be seen in the
various public reports, in the transactions of learned societies,
and in the journals of science.
Of the primary and transition rocks, to which we may add the
coal formation and the early secondary, we- have immense ranges,
extending in a northeasterly and southwesterly direction, through
the continent, and comprising most of the minerals and many of
the fossils that are found associated with such groups in the old
world. The Alleghanies, (including many mountains having local
names,) following the general bearing of N. E. and S. W., and
ranging between the Mississippi and the Atlantic, form, with their
branches and connected chains, the great rain-shed of the coun
tries east and west, and rising to two, three, four, and five thou-

21
sand feet and more,* give direction to the streams and rivers,
either to the Mississippi, the Atlantic, or the great lakes, and the
St. Lawrence.
Rocky Mountains. — In like manner, the far more stupendous
chains of the Rocky Mountains, whose loftiest peaks are reported
to be between three and five miles high,f give a geological char
acter to the regions east and west, in which directions the waters
flow to the Mississippi and to the Pacific, while the other contri
butions descend to the Gulf of Mexico, and to the Northern
Ocean, lt is to be regretted, that in the United States proper,
there are no mountain ridges, or solitary peaks, that pierce the
region of perpetual cold.
. Mount Washington. — Mount Washington, of the White Moun
tain group in New Hampshire, which approaches a mile and
a quarter in height, being in 44° of north latitude, and on a
continent whose average temperature is many flegrees below
that of Europe, throws off its snowy mantle only for a short
season, in July and August, while it is clad in white, during
the remaining months of the year. Even on the first day of
September, (1837,) as adventurers upon this Alpine mountain, J
we were, both on its flanks and summit, involved in a wintry
tempest of congealed vapor, formed into splendid groups of feath
ery and branching crystals, unlike to the snows of the lower re
gions ; the driving masses came in fitful gusts, veiling in a white
cloud, all objects far and near ; but occasionally breaking, ad
mitted a flood of solar light to render visible this hoary pinnacle,
and the deep gorges and valleys of the neighboring groups of
mountains. The mountains of Essex county, State of New York, between
Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, approach the White Moun
tains in altitude, but no one of them is permanently snow-clad.
Mountains of Central Europe. — It is otherwise in Europe,
whose grand central group of- Mount Blanc, and the various
* Professor Mitchell, University of Chapel Hill, states that the Black Mountain
in North Carolina, is 6476 feet above the level of the ocean. See Am. Journal,
Vol. xxxv, No. 2.
t See Professor Renwick's Outlines of Geology.
j; See Am. Journal of Science, Vol. xxxiv, p. 74.
4

22
Alpine mountains, rise far into the region of perpetual congela
tion; and Mount Blanc would pierce that region even at the
equator. Thus is provided an eternal store-house of ice and
snow, over whose wintry surface, the winds, rendered heavier by
contact, glide into the valleys and plains of the countries at the
feet of the mountains, and thus temper even the warm climate of
Italy, preventing the extreme vicissitudes which we experience.
But these immense natural magazines have a still more impor
tant relation to the irrigation of the vicinal countries. The melt
ing by the heat of summer, supplies copious streams to feed the
innumerable rivers that flow from these grand fountains to almost
every part of continental Europe, south of the Baltic. Thus, the
effects of drought are in a great measure prevented, while de
structive mountain floods are of rare occurrence.
From the absence of such mountains, we have no permanent
stores of ice and snow, and, consequently, our rivers are liable to
extreme variations of altitude and force. The Ohio, in midsum
mer, sometimes leaves numerous fleets aground, while occasional
risings, from deluging rains, aided perhaps by the melting of the
snows of vast regions, swell the river to an immense flood, that
spurns the barrier of the banks, lays villages and cities under
water, and expanding into an internal sea, rushes with wasting
violence, over the wide-spread meadows and farms.
For this reason, hydraulic engineering is, in this country, at
tended with peculiar difficulties, both on account of a deficiency
and an excess of water ; the former rendering the works inope
rative, and the latter invading or sweeping them away.
The future civilized inhabitants of the countries near the Rocky
Mountains, (excepting, of course, the immense sandy deserts,
which near the eastern slope emulate the sterility of Arabia and
Zahara,) will enjoy advantages, in many respects, similar to those
of Piedmont, Switzerland, Germany, and France, and it is easy to
predict, that peculiar structures, and a peculiar state of society,
will be modelled in relation to the sublime physical features of
those truly Alpine regions. From this, his native land, we have too
much reason to expect, that, despite of the efforts of the benevo
lent to avert the impending doom, the red man of the forest, not
reclaimed to humanity, but abandoned to his fate, will vanish

23
before the prevailing arts and power, and the still more prevailing
seductions of civilized life ; the exterminated victim of cupidity
and cruelty.
Influence of Geological Structure on Society. — It is perfectly
apparent to geologists, that the scenery of a country is not more
exactly stamped by its geological formations, than are the man
ners and employments of its inhabitants. This argument, so
beautifully displayed by Dr. Buckland,* with respect to England,
is capable of an equally satisfactory application to this country.
New England. — The bleak hills and long winters of New
England are unfavorable to the most extensive and profitable
agricultural pursuits, while the extensive and deeply indented
sea-coasts, abounding with harbors, headlands, rivers and inlets,
naturally produce an impulse towards the ocean, which, conspir
ing with the original adventurous character of the population,
sends them roving from the arctic to the antarctic circle, till the
wide world is laid under contribution by their enterprise. Their
numerous streams and waterfalls furnish the cheapest means for
moving machinery, and thus manufactories spring up, wherever,
in their expressive phraseology, there is water power ; and steam
supplies local deficiencies of moving force. Ingenuity, conspir
ing with a general system of education, is excited under such
culture, to produce numerous inventions, and hosts of young men
seek their fortunes successfully abroad as mechanics, seamen, tra
ders, instructors and politicians, who thus operate powerfully,
and, we trust beneficially, on other communities.
Southern States. — The immense tracts of rich alluvium in the
southern states — the mildness of the climate — the coasts, less
abounding with safe inlets, and often modified by the action of
the existing ocean, with a population not originally commercial,
give a decided impulse to a vast agriculture, and a few great sta
ples form the chief reliance of the landholders. It is easy to see,
that this state of things grows out of the recent secondary, the
tertiary, and the alluvial formations, which constitute the ocean
barrier from Staten Island to Florida, and from Florida to Texas,
extending inland towards the mountains.
* Bridgewater Treatise.

24
Western States.— In the west, the boundless fertile prairies
and other tracts of productive soil conspire with remoteness from
the ocean, to indicate agriculture and pasturage as the main em
ployment of the inhabitants, while exhaustless beds of coal,
limestone, plaster of Paris, and iron, and rich deposits of lead,
and copper, and salt fountains both numerous and copious, fur
nish means for a manufacturing, as well as an agricultural popu
lation. These pursuits occupy the greater number of the people,
while many find a profitable employment in navigating those
immense inland seas, the great lakes — and the vast rivers, which
run thousands of miles before they mingle with the ocean.
What geologist fails to perceive, that this state of things is the
result of the immense lower secondary and transition formations
which cover the western states, sustaining portions of tertiary,
and like all countries, alluvial depositions. While New England
produces granite, marble, and other building materials, of excel
lent quality, Pennsylvania, with the western and several of the
southern and southwestern states, supplies inexhaustible maga
zines of coal, to prompt and sustain the manufacturing interests
of this wide country, and to aid its astonishing navigation by
steam, already of unexampled extent on its internal waters, and
destined at no distant day, to compete, on the main ocean, in
amicable rivalry, with our parent country.
Geological Treasures. — Our coal formations are unrivalled in
the whole world, in richness and extent; our iron and lead are in
the greatest abundance and excellence ; Missouri has mountains
of pure oxide of iron, that have no compeers, and there is a fair
prospect that copper will also abound in the West. We have regat
deposits of limestone and marble, of plaster of Paris, marl, and
salt, and of building stones of almost every kind ; our soils are so
various in quality, and in geographical position, that almost every
agricultural production is obtained in abundance. It is obvious
then, that we have all the physical elements of national and indi
vidual prosperity, and that the blame will be our own, if we do
not follow them up by proper moral and intellectual culture, which
alone, can render them sources of public and private happiness.
Geological Deficiencies — Upper Secondary. — Ofthe upper sec
ondary, below the chalk, and above the new red sandstone, lying

25
higher than the coal, we have no well ascertained strata : rocks
of oolitic structure we may have, but it is not ascertained that
we have the true oolite of England and continental Europe, nor
have we traced the Wealden nor the Lias* with their colossal
animal wonders.
Equivalent of Chalk. — Chalk, properly speaking, appears to be
absent from the United States, but there is an equivalent to the
chalk formation, containing similar fossils, between the Delaware
River and the shores of New Jersey, as well as in various places
in the south, and, as we are recently assured, in Missouri.
Absence of Volcanoes. — The principal deficiencies in the geo
logical formations of the United States, are in the absence of active
volcanoes, as well as of most of the members of the upper secon
dary. However delightful, active volcanoes, with their earth
quakes and eruptions, may be to speculative geologists, the sober,
unscientific population, may well rest quite contented without
them, satisfied to barter the sublime and terrific, for quiet and
safety. Although the soils formed from decomposed lava are
often fertile, and the vine flourishes, and the clusters smile most
remarkably, on the flanks, and at the feet of the volcanic moun
tains of warm countries, these influences are too local to be of
much importance to agriculture.
Within the United States proper, including the states and terri
tories beyond the Mississippi, and east of the Alleghany Moun
tains, there is not, so far as we know, a single active volcano, nor
even an unequivocal crater of one that is dormant. It remains
yet to be decided, whether in and beyond the Rocky Mountains,
quite to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, there are any active vol
canoes within our parallels of latitude.
Both north and south of our limits, there are on the Pacific
shores and the islands, numerous volcanoes, and it would be
strange indeed, if there were none, within our extensive posses
sions on the same coasts.
Records of fire in the far West. — However this may be, there
remains no doubt that fire has done its work, on a great scale,
among the Rocky Mountains, and between them and the Pacific ;
* It is plain that the lias, so called, in the West, is not the lias of England.

26
for all our travellers attest the existence of immense regions cov
ered with scoriae and other decidedly igneous products, as if there
had been actual and vast eruptions, within a period too short for
decomposition to have reduced those tumefied and semi-vitrified
masses to soil.
Trap and Basalt. — Regular formations of trap and of basalt,
with symmetrical columns, are common among and beyond the
Rocky Mountains, and the rocks of this igneous family are fre
quent in many parts of the old United States. They abound in
New England, New Jersey, and the Carolinas, and, as usual else
where, they protrude their dykes among other rocks. We are not
aware that they have invaded the coal, as in Europe ; but in New
England, and especially in New Hampshire, they often divide
the primary rocks, cutting even granite mountains from top to bot
tom ; branching out, in many places, with numerous veins either
dying away to extinction, or perchance, returning again to the
main current after having cut off a portion of the invaded rock.
The White Mountains of New Hampshire, abound with such fea
tures. Similar intrusions are found in the mountains of Essex, Lake
Champlain, New York, and in many other places, and the primary
rocks on the coasts of Massachusetts and Maine, as well as in the
interior, are wonderfully cut up, by invading veins and dykes of
trap, basalt, porphyry, and even of granite itself.
It appears, also, that in the state of New York, there are similar
intrusions of limestone into other rocks, including the primary,
and not excepting granite.*
Tertiary Formations. — Our tertiary formations are exceedingly
extensive, and are rich in fossils, chiefly of the middle and earlier
eras. They bound a large portion of the sea coasts south of New
England, quite to the Mexican gulf, and up the Mississippi and
Missouri. Oceanic deposits are found also, extending hundreds
of miles into the interior from the coasts, where, as well as near
the sea, they furnish, in the calcareous marls, inexhaustible re
sources for agriculture. Even on the shores of New England,
there are marine tertiary deposits, as at Gay Head, in Martha's

See Professor Hall, in the Geological Reports for 1838.

27
Vineyard, and elsewhere in that vicinity, while there are, in every
part of the United States, innumerable inland deposits of fresh
water tertiary.
Boulders. — In boulders and rocks of transport, our country,
especially in the north, northwest and northeast, abounds ; vast
regions of older secondary, and of transition, are occupied, more
or less, by ruins of primary rocks, some of them of vast size,
while the primary countries themselves, and the transition too,
are marked by their own disjecta membra. We are precluded
by our limits, from discussing the causes of their transportation,
whether by floods, ice floes, or other motive powers.-
Pebbles, gravel and sand, are found here as in other countries,
transported and arranged by water.*
X. Classification and Nomenclature of Rocks. — We are
gratified that our author, in the fifth edition of his work, has pre
served the classification of rocks, to which the geological world
has been so long accustomed. The changes that have been,
from time to time, proposed by eminent men, — Brongniart, Cony-
beare and Philips, Lyell and others, have commanded our careful
consideration, and we find them, as we might expect, since they are
proposed by men of knowledge and talent, supported by powerful
reasons ; but still these reasons appear to us not sufficiently impor
tant to counterbalance the great inconvenience of novel terms, espe
cially as there has been no decisive adoption or approbation of either
of the new nomenclatures ; nor are most of them free from the
objection made to the established language — namely, that of im
plying theoretical views. It would be easy to prove this by in
stances cited in illustration ; nor does the old language necessarily
imply more of theory, than that there is among rocks an order of
succession, and that there are also prevailing characteristics, dis
tinguishing the classes of rocks from each other ; and so much of
theory as this must be admitted by any language that may be
adopted, whether the terms are significant or not.
The terms primary, transition, secondary, tertiary, alluvial, di
luvial, volcanic, trap, &c, are still in general use, and they are
* These remarks on American Geology, were inserted also, in an Introduction
to Dr. Mantell's Wonders of Geology, first American edition, 1839.

28
retained even by those who introduce new terms, for the latter
must, in order to be intelligible, be translated by means of the
former. It is not necessary that every portion of a primary rock
should, in its present form, be older than the masses that are gen
erally superincumbent : granite may shoot its veins into the rocks
that he over it, without invalidating its general claim to a prior
existence, at least in the form of materials, if not in the present
mode of aggregation.
New terms are, with propriety, introduced into geology when
they are needed, as into other sciences ; thus, the vast secondary
is divided into older and newer, or upper and lower ; the im
mense tertiary is now separated into three divisions, older, mid
dle, and newer, or in Mr. Lyell's language, eocene, miocene, and
pliocene, and the latter of these is again subdivided into older
and newer.
There are, however, limits to the utility of subdivisions ; where
they are very numerous and minute, and withal founded on the
oretical considerations, they may become inconvenient, and pro
duce the confusion they were intended to avoid. This was the
fact in the minute details of the Wernerian language, while its
leading terms were happily chosen.
If they were first contrived as a key to Werner's peculiar the
oretical views, they no longer retain that peculiarity ; they are
now rather indicative of order and character in the formations,
than of a theory of origin ; and as this order and these distinctive
characters really exist, they may, without inconvenience, be de
signated by these terms ; nor do any terms that have been con
trived, appear to us more unobjectionable.
We must concede the propriety of local names for local forma
tions, especially where they are remarkable in their structure and
contents. Such is the Wealden in the S. E. of England, the
region which Dr. Mantell, and other English geologists, have so
admirably illustrated ; it is indeed a member of the upper secon
dary, but it is unique and most interesting in its geological char
acteristics. Such, also, to some extent, is the Stonesfield slate,
a member of the lower oolite and middle secondary, but it pre
sents organic remains, different, in some respects, from those of
any other rock — at least, of any one that is coeval.

29
These local names have, however, been much multiplied, es
pecially in England, where new terms are now proposed for sub
divisions of the transition series, for which there exists, indeed, a
commanding necessity, rendered apparent by the researches of
Mr. Murchison, among the slates of Wales.
XI. Suggestions as to Geological Agents and Geological
Theory. — Creation is the work of God. The earth, in com
mon with the whole universe, unfolds volumes filled with proofs
of intelligent, wise and benevolent design. The work bears
the impress of a mind, omniscient — of energy, omnipotent — of
skill, infinite — and of consistency and benevolence — without
doubt real and perfect, although not always obvious to our lim
ited faculties.
Without presuming to know, when or how, the act of creation
was performed, we may, without presumption, inquire as to the
physical powers that were put forth in arranging the materials of
the earth, and as to the manner in which they may have operated
to produce the grand and multiform results.
Granite — the deepest rock of which we have any knowledge,
is not a mechanical deposit ; it is made up principally of crystals,
or of parts more or less crystalline in structure, mutually adjusted
by salient and re-entering angles, or confusedly aggregated ; pre
senting occasional cavities, lined by more perfect crystals. Every
thing implies a previous state of corpuscular mobility, the parti
cles having liberty of motion ; and the only powers equal to the
effect, are heat and electricity, aided by water and the saline, al
kaline, acid, and other soluble chemical agents ; these we now
find abundantly in the constitution of the rocks, and they or their
elements were therefore originally provided in the grand store
house of created materials.
Comparative Agency of Fire, Water and Electricity. — The
accumulation of geological evidence leaves no doubt of the
prevalence of fire in the interior of the planet ; the portion in
actual ignition or fusion, in order to be sufficient to feed the
host of volcanoes in various parts of the globe, must be very ex
tensive, and the regularly increasing temperature as we descend
into the earth — regular on the whole, although accumulating in
different ratios, in different places aud countries, concurring with
5

30
the evidence of volcanoes, fully establishes the dominion of in
ternal fire. Our knowledge of the powers that generate heat, in
many modes of chemical and mechanical action, and more than
all, by galvanism, renders it entirely credible, that any portion of
the crust of the earth, whose origin appears to have been igneous,
may have been really derived from that source. Any part of
the interior may, therefore, have been melted, and if not now
in ignition or fusion, it may readily pass to that condition by a
transfer or increased energy of the powers which, even in our
comparatively small experiments, are sufficient to generate, in
stantly, the most intense heat, in the most unfavorable circum
stances. It is extremely probable then, that heat may have wrought
those wonders in our earth which demand extensive fluidity —
fluidity by fire, rather than by water. Fire and galvanic electri
city have this vast advantage over any fluid solvent, namely, that
they can render any substances fluid, without the addition of more
matter, to that which is to be thus made fluid ; the materials
themselves become, in a sense, the source of the heat needed to
melt them, and it is without doubt that this agent may be suffi
cient to render the entire planet fluid. This may be granted,
without deciding the question, whether it has ever actually been
in this condition. Thus far we believe, that the opinions of most
geologists will carry them at the present day ; and if our views
are different from those formerly expressed in connection with
this work, the change is the result of conviction founded on ad
equate evidence.
It is now apparent that heat in the earth is not an accidental
occurrence, like our fires kindled on the surface ; it is not the re
sult merely of transient combustion ; it is an inherent and ever
active principle, concentrated at one time in a particular region,
and at another time in a different place ; now, slumbering for
ages, and then revived or transferred, but unextinguished and un-
extinguishable. It must have been prevalent in early ages in the
deep interior of the planet, and indeed all that now bears evi
dence of an origin from fire, is by far the greater portion of the
earth, while the depositions evidently produced by water, and
by aqueous solutions, are but a very small film compared with
the whole.

31
Water and Soluble Chemical Agents. — Leaving out of the
question, for the present, the geological formations that are evi
dently aqueous, and are so regarded by all geologists, we are com
pelled to admit, that in the early periods of the planet the ocean
must have prevailed far more extensively than now, if not uni
versally; or, in other words, the existing dry land must have
been under water. If( granite had been melted under atmos
pheric pressure alone, or when there was no atmosphere, its sur
face would have been inflated and porous, like the upper current
of lithoid lavas ; but, if melted under the pressure of water, it may
be of several miles in height, it would, on cooling from fusion,
crystallize, and become as we see it, a solid mass. The same re
mark will apply to sienite, to porphyry, to trap, to serpentine, &c.
which are admitted to have had an igneous origin.
Early and Present Ocean. — Now, what properties may we
fairly suppose would have belonged to the waters that hovered
over the yet embryo islands and continents, still immersed in
their native element, before the elevation commenced, by which
the dry land was made to appear, and what qualities may we
not suppose the present ocean to possess at profound depths,
where its pressure is great, and in those places where the heat
may also be active and long prevailing.
Modified Properties. — Water, under such circumstances, must
evidently be a fluid of very peculiar properties. It must contain
all the chemical agents not only that are soluble in it, but also
that are soluble in a compound fluid, consisting of water, and
of other agents still more active. The acids would be solvents
for the alkalies, the metallic oxides, and most of the earths ; the
alkalies would be solvents for alumina and silica ; acids and alka
lies may have alternately prevailed ; and even if acids, alkalies,
earths, and the other metallic oxides, had been present at the same
time, and had formed salts, these compounds, so far as they were
soluble in water, would also impart to the fluid peculiar solvent
powers ; while those compounds which were precipitated, would
be thus removed, so as not to impede other agencies. In the
constitution of mineral bodies, we find all the active chemical
agents, oxygen, iodine, chlorine,. fluorine ; and doubtless bromine
will be found ; the acids and alkalies are abundant ; soda exists

32
in great quantities ; potassa is not unfrequent in minerals, and
lithia is found in several. The alkalies are largely, and the alka
line earths are considerably soluble in water ; all the earths ex
cept silica unite with acids, and even this is easily dissolved by
hydro-fluoric acid. Thus all the metallic oxides are soluble, either
in acids or alkalies ; the metals and combustibles combine readily
with oxygen, chlorine, iodine, bromine and fluorine ; carbon* and
other combustibles become soluble by combination with each
other, and with the supporters of combustion.
If the elements came from the hand of the Creator in a state
of freedom, their first action must have been attended with in
tense energy, and innumerable combinations and decompositions
would have taken place, the great agents encountering each other
at every turn, and thus developing a new order of things.
Solubility of Silica and Alumina. — It is worthy of remark, that
quartz, feldspar and mica, the prevailing minerals in granite, gneiss,
and mica slate, are composed mainly of silica and alumina. Now
silica and alumina are (as already remarked) readily soluble in the
fixed alkalies : alumina is soluble in acids ; silica in hydro-fluoric
acid, and this agent can render silica gaseous. There are notable
quantities of potassa and soda in both feldspar and mica, and
fluoric acid has been found in the latter ; it appears therefore, that
those solvents were present at the birth of these minerals, and
entered into their constitution. Alkali exists in the earth in vast
abundance, and thus even silica and alumina may have been
provided with an appropriate solvent.
The solubility of all the existing materials that form the crust
of the globe ; their solubility either in their elementary forms,
or in their proximate or complex combinations, is then a truth
clearly demonstrable, and actually demonstrated.
Auxiliary Power of Heat. — The activity of chemical agents,
especially if subjected to pressure, is much increased by a high
temperature. There can be no reason why we should suppose,
that those causes which now feed the fires of more than three hun
dred active volcanoes, were dormant in the youth of the planet.
On the contrary, innumerable extinct or quiescent volcanoes re
cord the ancient energy and extent of internal fire, which would
* Carbon and chlorine do not unite directly, but they combine through the
agency of hydrogen in defiant gas and chloric ether.

33
operate both as an auxiliary to solution, and in its own proper
agency by fusion.
Add to all this, the intense action of the deep seated fires which
have melted granite and other igneous rocks, and we find ample
evidence both of the direct and auxiliary agency of internal heat.
Before the emergence of the land from the ocean, all volcanoes
must have been submarine, as many now are. They would all
therefore act under vast pressure, a pressure not even approached
by modern experiment, and the heat thus accumulated must have
given great activity to water and to aqueous solutions of chemical
agents. Thus both mechanical and chemical laws conspire to produce
solution and fusion on the greatest scale, and with the greatest
energy. By fusion and softening by fire ; by solution and soften
ing by water, and its dissolved chemical agents, which may have
been even ignited under the enormous pressure of miles of ocean,
we may suppose chemical depositions to have proceeded contem
poraneously or in succession ; confusedly, as in granite, or in lay
ers, as in gneiss and mica slate ; and the imbedded minerals of
the primary rocks, the garnets, the staurotides, the tourmalins,
the beryls, and others, whose elements were present, crystallized
by their affinities, forming first the integrant atoms, whose pro
gressive aggregation produced the beautiful crystalline solids, that
in a peculiar manner adorn the early formations of the globe.
Water and fire and pressure, and all the great chemical agents,
may thus have conspired, in acccordance with physical laws, in
effecting the arrangement of the crust of the planet.
Violent movements were the natural result of this state of things.
Igneous agency, the parent of earthquakes, acting beneath the
rocks already formed, and beneath the incumbent ocean, would of
course produce fractures, dislocations and distortions, tortuous flex
ions, injections of veins and dykes, heavings, subsidence and ele
vation of strata, called faults by the miners, and innumerable ir
regularities. In the same manner many of the trap rocks were probably
thrown up beneath the primeval ocean ; they broke through the
strata and congealed above or between or among them, in ridges,
peaks or flats ; or they were injected in dykes or veins, or driven,
laterally, between the strata, rending them asunder, as if cleft by

34
wedges. When, after the emergence of land, they burst out be
neath the atmosphere, they formed true volcanoes.
Inference. — While, by a vast accumulation of evidence, the
claims of heat have been greatly and justly enlarged, and as re
gards the great mass of the globe, fusion has, by rightful au
thority, been substituted for solution, Vulcan has thus triumphed
over Neptune ; but the latter still enjoys no mean dominion,
either in extent or in power. It is indeed impossible to explain
geological phenomena without having recourse to both these
mighty agents, the one ruling the immense interior kingdom,
the other the external, through whose superficial territories the
restless monarch of fire makes occasional and violent eruptions,
establishing often only a transient sway, and after menacing uni
versal destruction, retreating again to his hot domain, leaving mere
ly the vestiges of his destructive aggression. At other times and
places the irruption is sustained ; age after age, subterranean thun
der and agitations celebrate the victory, and a burning signal-
light is hung out against the skies, the emblem of conquest by
fire. While we have vindicated the too much neglected effects of
water and aqueous solutions in softening, modifying, or dissolv
ing mineral bodies, we are fjee to confess that the solution of the
entire planet, or even of its crust, in water or in any other existing
solvent, is a supposition which no well instructed person would
now venture to make. Sustained by the paramount authority
of Werner, it was long a received doctrine of the geological schools,
and it is perhaps not surprising, that his prevailing eloquence and
the zeal of his numerous disciples, trained under the very sound
of his voice, should have given extensive currency to this theory.
Those who have been among the last to retreat from this un
tenable ground, have however no cause for mortification, since
the converts to the Wernerian theory may find enrolled in their
catalogue names of the greatest celebrity for talent, attainments,
and moral excellence. This theory, as a whole, is now for the
most valid reasons abandoned ; still some important members of
it will be always retained, and Werner, clarum et venerabile no
men, will be ever honored and revered.
XII. First condition of the Materials of the Globe. —
Both geology and revelation are silent with respect to the first

35
condition of the materials of our planet, nor is it possible for us
to decide the question how they first appeared. There is how
ever no reason to suppose, that we see any thing as it was origin
ally created. We are certain of this in relation to the rocks
containing organized beings and fragments, whether the latter
were charged with organized relics or not. This statement in
cludes all formations except the primary or crystallized and ig
neous. Reasoning from the natural products of volcanoes, and
upon the laws of crystallization, as applied to crystalline masses,-
as well as to individual crystals, no geologist hesitates to infer,
that the crystallized and unstratified rocks have assumed their
present appearances from the operation of natural laws, and con
sequently that -the globe, as far as we can examine it, or infer its
condition at profound depths, has been wrought over, and much
of it again and again. Consequently, we cannot be certain that
in this sense even granite is strictly primitive ; but in relation to
subsequent formations, it may be primary or anterior to them ; as
an igneous rock, it may have been melted in all geological ages,
and consequently some of its injections and overflows may have
been more recent than the newest secondary rocks, for it has been
found penetrating and overlying chalk. This appears to be the
most recent geological date which it has been proved to have
attained. Still, it would not be surprising if it were found to
invade and cover even the tertiary ; we ought to be prepared for
such discoveries, nor would they, if made, militate with our pres
ent views of geological dynamics. Farther than this we are
hardly prepared to go, for if that which is granite below were
to be erupted above, under only atmospheric pressure, it would
assume some of the known forms of lava, and if ejected under
the sea, it might take on the character of the traps or por
phyries. In all vicissitudes of geological theory, it must ever
remain true, that the materials of granite, considered as a whole,
have always been below all- other existing rocks, and consequently
that they are prior in order of position, although their form of
existence is not strictly primitive, nor can any thing among rocks
be fully proved to be entitled to that name.
Mr. Lyell's name of hypogene implies formed beneath, which
is in accordance with the ideas expressed above.

36
XIII. Possible modes and results of elementary action. —
In the present state of chemical science, our elementary ponder
able bodies are divided between combustibles, (metallic and
non-metallic,) and supporters of combustion — of the former fifty,
of the latter five ; and if we extend the idea of combustion, as
some authors are disposed to do, to other cases of intense chem
ical action, attended by the extrication of light and heat, we shall
include the agency of the combustibles and metals upon each
other, as well as upon the proper supporters of combustion, and
also the action of the latter upon one another. For our present
purpose, it is quite immaterial which view is embraced.
If we suppose that the first condition of the created elements
of our planet, was in a state of freedom, and the globe being a
mass of uncombined combustibles and metals, that oxygen, chlo
rine, iodine, bromine, and fluorine were added, it is obvious, that
the reaction, awakening energies before dormant, would produce
a general and intense ignition and combustion. Phosphorus, po
tassium and sodium would instantly blaze ; the other combusti
bles and metals would follow in the order of their inflammability,
and thus a general conflagration would be the very first step in
chemical action. Water would be formed, the atmosphere would
result from the mixture of its elements, the fixed and volatile alkar
lies, the earths, and stones, and rocks, the metallic oxides properly
so called, the sulphurets and phosphurets, &c. of the metals and
of the combustibles, the principal acids, the iodides, bromides, fluo
rides, and chlorides, alkaline, earthy and metallic, and ultimately
the salts, besides many other compounds resulting either from a
primary or secondary action, would be produced.
In such circumstances, the imponderable agents, heat, light,
electricity, magnetism, and other forms of attraction, would be
inconceivably active — steam, vapors and gases would be suddenly
evolved in vast quantities, and with explosive force ; and the re
cently oxidated crust of the earth would be torn with violence.
It is however obvious, that this intense action would set bounds
to itself ; for the chemical combinations would relent or cease,
when the crust had become sufficiently thick and firm to protect
the metals and combustibles beneath from the water and the air,
and other active agents.

37
As we are merely stating the conditions of a problem, we for
bear to descant upon collateral topics, or to pursue the primary
rock formations through all their vicissitudes. We do not even
aver that such events have actually happened ; but philosophy is
sober and rational when it assumes that their existence is consis
tent with the known properties of the chemical elements, and
with the operation of physical laws. Supposing that such was
the actual beginning and progress of things, it is obvious that the
oxidated crust of the globe, would still cover a nucleus consisting
of metallic and inflammable matter. Of course, whenever air and
water, or saline and acid fluids penetrated to this internal maga
zine, the same violent action would recur at increasing depths,
and the confinement and pressure of the incumbent strata, aug
menting the effects a thousand fold, would in later ages, necessa
rily produce the phenomena of earthquakes and volcanoes.
Still, it is equally obvious, that every recurrence of such events,
provided no cause of renewal can be indicated, must oxidize the
earth deeper and deeper, and if the point should ever be attained,
when water or air ceased to reach the inflammable nucleus, or if
it were all oxidized, the phenomena must cease, and every ap
proximation towards this-point would render them less frequent.
Does this correspond with the actual history of the globe ?
Are ignition and convulsions less frequent now than in the early
ages of our planet ? The extensive regions, occupied by rocks
of acknowledged igneous origin, but where fire is not now active,
lend support to this hypothesis, which well accords with the
views now generally adopted of the formation of granite. This
hypothesis is perfectly consistent with the opinion that those gal
vanic powers which we know to exist — whose action we can
command, and whose effects, having been first observed within
the memory of the present generation, now fill us with astonish
ment, are constantly active in producing and renewing the phe
nomena of earthquakes and volcanoes, as both at earlier and later
periods, they have been equally efficient in melting granite itself.
Metals and chemical fluids, with juxtaposition, in a certain
order, are the common means by which we evolve this wonderful
power. Even substances apparently dry and inert, will produce a
permanent, and in proportion to the means employed, an energetic
6

38
effect, as in the columns of De Luc and Zamboni. Metals and
fluids are not indispensable, for almost any substances of different
natures properly arranged, will cause the evolution of this power.
Whoever has witnessed the overwhelming brilliancy and intense
energy of the great galvanic combinations of Davy, Children, and
Hare, and considers how trifling in extent are our largest batte
ries, compared with the vast natural arrangements of earths, salts,
metals and fluids, which exist beneath our feet, will not be slow
to admit that this power may in the deep interior be incessantly
and alternately evolved, mitigated, suppressed, revived, and aug
mented to tremendous intensity.
In our instruments, we see emanating from this source intense
light, irresistible heat, magnetism in great efficiency, and a de
composing agency, which, by direct or intermediate action, com
mands all elements, and all combinations. The experience of a
few years has added magnetism as a power at once the effect and
the cause of electricity.
The latter, especially in the galvanic form, evolves immense
magnetic energy, and magnets in turn give out electricity and
produce all the effects of electrical and galvanic combinations —
heat, light, or sparks and ignition, shocks, decomposition, and, by
induction, even magnetism itself.
We have stated an hypothesis as to the condition of the ele
ments when they were first created. We would not insist upon
this, because we cannot know it to be true. But in assigning
galvanic action as a cause of the internal heat of the earth, we
propose a reasonable theory, and we provide not only for heat
independently of combustion, but we may in this manner provide
combustibles which may act chemically, and thus add to the
effect without limit. The decomposition of acids, alkalies, earths,
and other metallic oxides, is a familiar effect of galvanic action ;
their metals and combustibles are set at liberty, and some of them
being inflammable both in air and water, elastic agents may be
evolved, and being rarefied by heat, would produce violent me
chanical action. The first principles of this hypothesis are estab
lished by experiment, and nothing is really hypothetical but the
application to the phenomena of internal heat and of earthquakes
and volcanoes.

39
It is a peculiarity of the present view, that causes are provided
which admit of indefinite continuance, and of unlimited renova
tion, and there appears no reason why the phenomena should
ever cease. It has therefore the great Newtonian requisites of a
good theory : its facts are proved, and the theory is both true and
sufficient. In its application to volcanoes, it has this additional
advantage, it embraces all that is possible in other theories. Coal,
lignite, sulphur, petroleum, hydrogen gas, and fermenting pyrites,
may all contribute their quota of power to the production of vol
canoes, although the united effect of all these must, if it be ope
rative at all, be very trivial. Heat, light, electricity, and magne
tism, may produce endless decompositions and recompositions ;
burnt substances by galvanie energy returning again to their
combustible condition, will burn anew; elastic fluids will be
evolved in unlimited quantities, and all the violent mechanical
effects which their action is known to produce will succeed ;
these are among the known and familiar effects of this power,
and all the materials necessary to render it active are existing in
the earth on a scale of immense extent. The present hypothesis
does not exclude the subsequent action of water, in dissolving
chemically, or disintegrating mechanically, the crust of the globe ;
for water, fire, and all the great chemical and mechanical agents
mutually cooperate.
The cause now indicated is sufficient for all the phenomena,
and this cannot be said of any other that has been, or, in the pres
ent state of our knowledge, can be named. We may venture a
step farther ; it is certainly possible, — perhaps it is not improba
ble, that the light and heat of the sun and of the fixed stars may
have a similar origin. To the eye of philosophy, as well as to
vulgar apprehension, the sun is an ignited body, and we know
not of any power but the electrical that can perpetuate this con
dition. It is not necessary to speculate as to the mode of excite
ment, but we may remark, that fluids are not indispensable ; the
power may be evolved from dry substances, and even between
good conductors, if heat be applied in the beginning ; electricity
may produce heat, and heat may excite electricity, and both have
the most intimate and reciprocal relations to magnetism. Thus
a circle of agencies is provided which being mutually causes and

40
effects may continue to operate in an endless cycle whose ter
mination will not be fixed by the exhaustion of phyical power,
which never tires nor grows old, and will cease to act only when
the Creator shall fix its limit and annul the fiat that called it into
being. XTV. Relation of Geology to the early Scripture His
tory. — In this country, the cultivation of scientific geology is of
so recent a date, that many of our most intelligent and well edu
cated people are strangers even to its elements ; are unacquainted
with its amazing store of facts, and are startled, when any other
geological epochs are spoken of than the creation and the deluge.
But, it is beyond a doubt, that there are innumerable and decisive
proofs of successive revolutions, and of a gradual progress in the
course of geological events, implying, on the whole, a regular
order in the formation of the crust of the planet, which events
necessarily imply much time, and cannot be referred, exclusively,
to any course of diluvial action. It is impossible, to refer to this
cause, rocks containing consolidated water-worn ruins and frag
ments, and organized remains, entombed in the firm strata and
mountains. The fossil organic kingdom presents a vast field of
observation and instruction, and it is less known, even to the
greater number of intellectual persons, than almost any depart
ment of knowledge. None but geologists study it with diligence,
and none who have not made themselves masters of the facts, are
qualified to judge of their importance, and of their bearing. To
understand the subject, we must study -in the fields, in the mines
and mountains, or, as an imperfect substitute, in the cabinet.
Persons who are entirely ignorant of this species of information,
are destitute of the means of forming a correct judgment, they
neither know the facts, nor can they compare one truth in geol
ogy with another, so as to estimate their mutual relation. On
this subject, it is, therefore, very difficult to find access, to many
minds, otherwise enlightened, and habituated to receive and
weigh evidence, with candor and intelligence. The obvious
reason is, that they are not in possession of the first elementary
conceptions ; and when the facts are stated, if they are not de
nied, they are neglected, because they are inconsistent with their
habits of thought, and because they make no distinct impression,

41
they are supposed to be dreams or pictures of the imagination ;
thus they fail to bring that conviction to the mind, which must
always be the result, when they are fully understood and realized.
In this country, where the moral feeling of the people is iden
tified with reverence for the Scriptures, the questions are often
agitated by intelligent persons, — When did the great series of
geological events happen ? If the six days of the creation were
insufficient in time, and the facts cannot all be referred to the del
uge of Noah, to what period, and to what state of things shall we
assign them?
This is a fair topic of enquiry, and demands a satisfactory an
swer ; an answer, which is given by the whole series of geologi
cal discoveries, and the question will never remain of doubtful
issue in the mind of any one who has fully studied and mastered
them : but they must be studied profoundly and not superficially.
The subject of geology is possessed of such high interest, that it
will not be permitted to slumber ; it will proceed with increasing
energy and success ; a great number of powerful minds and im
mense research are now employed upon it, and many collateral
branches of science are made tributary to its progress. Its con
clusions have been supposed to jar with the Scripture history ; this
is contemplated with alarm by many — with displeasure by some,
and possibly, by a few with satisfaction ; but there is no cause for
either state of feeling : the supposed disagreement is not real ; it is
only apparent. It is founded upon the popular mistake, that since
the creation, the deluge and volcanic eruptions, with the convul
sions of earthquakes, are the only causes that have produced impor-*
tant geological changes ; they believe that this world was formed
substantially as we now see it, and if they have any knowledge
of its immense and various deposits, they suppose that they were
made ih a very short period of time. Both these are fundamen
tal errors, which have misled both the learned and the unlearned,
and they are still extensively prevalent.
Although the materials were created by almighty power, they
were evidently left to the operation of physical laws, which laws
also affected, more or less, the fate of the various races of plants
and animals that were successively called into existence. But as
already remarked, there is no reason to believe, that any part of

42
the crust of the earth, reaching even to a fathomless depth, is now
in the condition in which it was originally made ; every portion
has been wrought over and brought into new forms, and these
changes have arisen from the action of those physical laws which
the Creator established, and which are as truly his work, as "the
materials upon which they operate. The amount of time is the
only difficulty, and this will vanish before an enlarged and rea
sonable view of the whole subject, comprehending also a just
estimate of the evidence.
Nature of the evidence. — The evidence is the same which is
readily admitted as satisfactory in the case of historical antiquities.
Roman coins, weapons, personal ornaments, utensils, baths,
roads, camps and military walls, and defences of various kinds,
have been frequently discovered in Britain. They are ascertained
to be Roman, by their resemblance to, or identity with, the ac
knowledged productions of that remarkable people, as still existing
in Italy and the adjacent countries, the ancient seat of their do
minion. Had Julius Cesar and the other historians and writers
been silent as to the invasion of Britain, and as to the dominion,
which, for more than four centuries the Romans sustained in that
island ; still, could any one, acquainted with the facts, hesitate to
believe, that they had not only visited Britain, but also remained
there, for a great length of time, as conquerors and masters. Had
all historical knowledge of these events been lost, would not the
antiquary who examined the relics, and who also extended his
observations to other countries where similar things are found,
with perhaps the addition of splendid aqueducts, temples, and
amphitheatres, pronounce that they had all evidently originated
from one and the same people, and would he not, without hesi
tation, pronounce them to have been highly civilized, warlike
and powerful ; and that their epoch was one of considerable an
tiquity. At this moment, there exist in some parts of England, and in
various parts of Europe and Asia, ancient barrows or sepulchral
mounds, some of them of stupendous size ; similar structures are
found in North America, and also stupendous forts, which, in
Ohio and Kentucky, and other western states, amaze and con
found the observer.'

43
These structures enable us to realize the supposition just made
respecting the Romans, and compel us to say, that all these massy
mounds and forts, were the work of unknown races of men, on
whose history even tradition sheds not a ray of light, and we are
left in profound ignorance, as to their origin.
In relation to geology, it is easy to make the case still stronger.
When, in 1738, the workmen, in excavating a well,* struck upon
the theatre of Herculaneum, which had reposed, for more than six
teen centuries, beneath the lava of Vesuvius ; when, subsequently,
(1748,) Pompeii was disencumbered of its volcanic ashes and
cinders, and thus two cities were brought to light ; had history
been quite silent respecting their existence, as it was respecting
their destruction ;f would not all observers say, and have not all
actually said, — here are the works of man, his temples, his forums,
his amphitheatres, his tombs, his shops of traffic and of arts, his
houses, furniture, pictures, and personal ornaments, his streets,
with their pavements and wheel-marks, worn in the solid stone,
his coins, his grinding mills, his wine, food, and medicines, his
dungeons, and stocks, with the skeletons of the prisoners chained
in their awful solitudes, and here and there the bones of a victim,
who, although at liberty, was overtaken by the fiery storm, while
others were quietly buried in their domestic retreats ; the falling
cinders and ashes even copied, as they fell, the delicate outline of
female forms, and having concreted, they thus remain true vol
canic casts to be seen by remote generations.
Because the soil had formed, and grass and trees had grown,
and successive generations of men had unconsciously walked,
tilled the ground, or built their houses, over the entombed cities ;
and because they were covered by lava or cinders, does any one
hesitate to admit, that they were once real cities, that at the time
of their destruction they stood upon what was then the upper
surface, that their streets once rang with the noise of business,
their halls and theatres with the voice of pleasure : that, in an
evil hour, they were overwhelmed by a volcanic tempest from

* Earlier excavations had been made and three female statues discovered.
t In the histories of those times, it is only said, in general terms, lhat cities and
villages were overwhelmed.

41
Vesuvius, and their name and place, for almost seventeen centu
ries, blotted out from the earth and forgotten.
The tragical story is legibly perused by every observer, and all
alike, whether learned or unlearned, agree in the conclusions to
be drawn. When moreover, the traveller of the present day sees
'the cracks in the walls of the houses of Pompeii, and observes
that some of them have been thrown out of the perpendicular,
and have been repaired, and shored up, he learns that the fatal
convulsion was not the first, and that the doomed cities, must
have been before shaken on their foundations, by the throes of
the laboring earth.
To establish all this, it is of no decisive importance that schol
ars have gleaned, here and there, a fragment from ancient Roman
classics, to show that such cities once existed ; and that they were
overthrown by the eruption of the year 79 of the Christian era,
which gave occasion for the interesting letter of the younger
Pliny, describing the death of his uncle, while observing the vol
canic phenomena, his philosophical curiosity having cost him his
life. In such cases, the coincidences of historical and other wri
tings, and the gleanings of tradition, are indeed valuable and grati
fying ; they are even of great utility, not in proving the events,
for of them there is a record, which cannot deceive, but in fixing
the order, and the time of the occurrences. The nature of the
catastrophe, which buried the devoted cities, is however perfectly
intelligible, from the appearances themselves, and needs no histor
ical confirmation. No man ever imagined that Herculaneum and
Pompeii, were created where we now find their ruins ; no one
hazards the absurd conjecture that they are a lusus naturae, but
all unite in giving an explanation consistent alike with geology,
history, and common sense.
Application of the Evidence. — In the same manner then, we
reason respecting the physical phenomena of our planet, and here,
even at the hazard of some repetition, we shall make a statement
of facts, to illustrate this most important argument, which will
demonstrate that geological evidence is of the same nature with
that just cited, and that the most revered documents cannot be
more decisive in relation to civil history, than geological facts
are with reference to the natural history of the earth.

45
The earth then is full of crystals and crystallized rocks ; it is
replete with the entombed remains of animals and vegetables,
from entire trees to lichens, fuci and ferns — from coal beds to
mere impressions of plants ; it is stored with animals, from the
minutest shell fish, and microscopic animalculae, to gigantic rep
tiles ; it is chequered with fragments, from fine sand to enormous
blocks of stone ; it shews on the joining surfaces of many strata,
and especially of the sandstones, the delicate flexions, produced
by undulating water, when the materials were loose as they are
now on the sea-shore ; it exhibits in the materials of its solid
strata, every degree of attrition, from the slightest abrasion of a
sharp edge or angle, to the perfect rounding which produces globes
and spheroidal forms of exquisite finish ; it abounds with dislo
cations and fractures ; with injections and fillings up of fissures
with foreign rocky matter ; with elevations and depressions of
strata, in every position, from horizontal to vertical ; it is covered
with the wreck and ruins of its upper surface ; and finally, its
ancient fires, sometimes for variable periods, partially dormant and
relenting, have never been extinguished, but still struggle for exit,
through more than three hundred volcanic mouths. The present
crust is therefore only the result of the conflicting energies of
physical forces, governed by fixed laws ; its changes began, from
the dawn of the creation, and they will not cease till its materials
and its natural powers are annihilated.
Instances. — They are innumerable, and are every where at
hand; every system of geology unfolds them; our author's pre
ceding volume is rich in such Tacts, and it remains only to illus
trate our position by a few examples, duly connected, to sustain
the argument, for which purpose they are added.
Fossil Fish of Mount Bolca. — The beautiful fossil fish,* more
than 100 species of which are found in marly limestone, in Mount
Bolca, near Verona in Italy, inform us that they were once living
and active beings ; before those hills were deposited, and when
the waters stood over the place where, in the bottom of the sea,
the fish were entombed, the rock which contains their skeletons

"* Already cited in the general sketch ; from this celebrated locality there are
splendid specimens in the cabinet of Yale College.
7

46
was formed around them, doubtless in the state of a calcareous
and argillaceous sediment ; this calcareous stratum (perhaps itself
thrown up by a volcanic heave, and thus suddenly enclosing the
fishes) was then overwhelmed by a submarine eruption of molten
rock, and the heat was not communicated through the bad con
ducting substance of the marl, to the destruction of the organic
forms ; then again, and still on the bottom of the sea, the calca
reous rock was formed anew with its enclosed fish ; again the
molten rock flowed over the calcareous marl, and so on in several
successions. But this is not all ; this remarkable formation is
now 50 miles from the Adriatic, the nearest sea, and it rises 1200
feet above it. It is plain then, not only that the whole was suc
cessively formed beneath the ocean, but that the hill, with the
country to which it belongs, was afterwards raised by the power
of subterranean heat, thus emerging from the surrounding waters,
and ages since becoming dry land.
To illustrate this case, we will state that in the waters of the
harbor of Newport, in Rhode Island, there are one hundred and
thirty or more species of indigenous fishes ;* now suppose an irrup
tion, as from land torrents or a volcanic movement under the
waters, were to throw suddenly upon them, such a mass of sedi
mentary mud, that they were to become entangled and suffocated
on the spot; they would of course remain, and the materials
might, by pressure and time, become consolidated around them.
Were the bottom of the sea to be afterwards elevated into dry
land, on opening the bed, there would be found a true Bolca
quarry of fossil fish. Excepting the overflow of igneous rock and
the repetition of the fish deposit, and of the fire rock, the cases
appear exactly alike.
The Bolca fish present only one example among thousands in
Italy and Sicily, of the emergence of mountain ranges, whose
flanks for a thousand feet or more in height, as on the Apennines,
or two thousand as in Sicily, are replete with the shell fish and
other molluscous animals of the Mediterranean.
Organic Remains hi Early Rocks. — In very early, and often
deeply seated rocks, usually called the transition, coming imme-
* As ascertained, from the fishermen, at the instance of the late President
Dwight, by my brother Gold S. Silliman, then a citizen of Newport.

47
diately after the primary, we find the first traces of organized
beings ; the perfect impresses of plants, with the earliest coal, and
both the forms and the entire mineralized bodies of millions
of animals ; the deposition of these rocks was therefore cotempo-
rary with, or subsequent to, the creation and propagation of the
organized beings whose impresses or whose forms they contain,
and it is self-evident, that these rocks could not have been depos
ited prior to the date of the animals and vegetables included in
them. In many cases both the plants and animals lived and died at or
near the places where they are found entombed in the rocks ; for
often they present few or no marks of violence, or of accident ;
their delicate parts are often perfectly preserved ; animals, with
their organs entire, and plants with their fibres and leaves in full
expansion. Occasionally, however, we find one stratum with its included
mineralized organic bodies entire, and a contiguous one having
them more or less broken, mutilated and dispersed. It is there
fore evident, that in early ages, as now, organic relics were trans
ported and broken by currents and other aqueous movements,
and by atmospheric agitations, and that perfect repose was only
occasional and existed in peculiar circumstances, while between
the extremes of great movements and entire quiet, there were, as
at the present time, many intermediate stages.
Both the plants and animals belong to races which are no longer
found alive, or if analogous races exist, they are related to the
ancient ones only by class or genus, and not by species. Ortho-
ceras and trilobites are found among the most ancient animals,
and zoophytes, shell fish, and other molluscs are common. Mad
repores and crinoidea abound in the early rocks. Sometimes, strata
rich in entombed animals, occupy great districts of country. In
the transition marble for instance, animals reposing in the bowels
of mountains, miles from day-light, often form almost the entire
mass, and they are so firmly united to the rock, as to constitute a
part of its substance. Many of the architectural marbles owe much
of their beauty to imbedded animals, myriads of which lie almost
in absolute contact ; the matter of the rock between them, only fill
ing up the void occasioned by their angular and confused positions.

48
The trilobites had a jointed articulation, could bend their bodies
like a lobster, and we find them sometimes doubled, and sometimes
expanded, as they lie in the rocks. Dr. Buckland has shewn that
the eye of this animal was furnished with 400 lenses, adapted to
a wide range of vision in clear water, and consequently it was
not fitted to live in the turbid ocean formerly supposed to belong
to this geological period — the imaginary chaos. Dr. Buckland's
Bridgewater Treatise is a classic on organic remains, and no one
having the knowledge and giving the attention necessary to com
prehend his fine course of illustration and argument, can fail to
find in his book a moral and physical demonstration of the high
est order ; physical, as proving the progressive formation of the
crust of the earth through a long course of ages, and moral, as
evincing the wise and benevolent design which is irresistibly in
ferred from the work of progressive creation and arrangement.
We have already mentioned the fossil fishes below the coal,
and in the deep transition rocks still lower down. The former
opinion that the early animals were exclusively very simple in
their structure, appears therefore, no longer tenable. Still it is
true, that as the creation advanced, higher orders of both animals
and plants were called into being, while animals of simple struc
ture are also continued to the present time.
Possible Mode of Consolidation. — There is little difficulty in
understanding how the marine animals — for example, the crinoidea
and corals that fill, more or less, the transition limestone of the
Peak of Derbyshire, and the limestone of many portions of the
West in the United States, came to be thus entombed. We can
not doubt that the animals received their existence, and lived and
died in the ocean, and that, at least at the time of their death, it
was full of calcareous carbonate, either in solution or in mechanical
suspension, or both. When they died, they of course subsided to
the bottom, and were surrounded, as they lay, by the concreting
calcareous matter. Multitudes of them were present, at the same
time and place, in all the confusion of accidental position, and
therefore were enveloped, just as we find them, in every imagin
able posture ; the interstices were filled by the lime, and this be
ing more or less chemically dissolved, produced a firm sub-crys
talline mass, a section of which shews us the animals sawn
through, and admitting of a polish, like the rest of the rock.

49
If we could suppose that our common clams and oysters, that
lie in the mud of our harbors and inlets, were to become solidi
fied into one mass, along with the matter which envelopes them,
the case would not be dissimilar ; only they would be enveloped
in earthy, instead of crystalline matter, and the rock formed from
it would be referred to the most recent secondary, or to the ter
tiary, unless its texture were afterwards altered by igneous agen
cies, by infiltration of dissolved matter, or other causes, and even
then, its geological age would be decided rather by its organic
remains, than by its mineral texture.
It is easily understood, also, how a new stratum, either of the
same or of different constitution, may be deposited upon a pre
vious one, and with it, the bodies of the animals that lived and
died in the fluid, by wliich it was covered ; and these might be
the same animals with those of a previous stratum, or of a dif
ferent order, it being understood that, in the case of marine ani
mals, each successive stratum was, in its turn, the bottom of the
existing ocean, and also the upper or last consolidated layer of
the crust of the earth, as it then was at that place. A similar
course of reasoning will apply to fresh-water deposits.
With respect to marine and aquatic animals, the temperature,
and perhaps the mineral contents of the waters, appear to have
been, at different periods, adapted to the support of different races,
which were therefore called into existence, and thus, when they
died, their remains became successively solidified.
There was not, however, an entire extinction of all the ani
mals of a particular race ; a multitude were entombed, as is proved
by their remains, but the species often survived to another epoch
or to other epochs, sometimes through a cycle of changes ; in
the mean time, new races were created and became petrified in
the forming rocks : again perhaps, the diminished race peopled
the waters anew, and their relics were solidified in another de
position, and so on in succession.
Whether animals and vegetables were deposited in the ocean,
or in seas, in lakes, rivers or estuaries, it is easy to imagine, that
if all the causes necessary to produce the events were to be
brought into successive operation, they might follow each other
in the order supposed ; and that this was the fact, cannot be rea
sonably doubted, any more than that an edifice, having granite

50
for its foundation, sandstone for its basement, marble for its su
perstructure, wood for its roof, and lead, zinc or iron for its cov
ering, was actually constructed by the architect, and connected
in that order by his intelligent design.
The great truths of geology are few, simple and intelligible ;
needing nothing but the application of a sound judgment, en
lightened by science, to the accurate observation of facts ; the
order of their succession can be often ascertained, and not un
frequently the proximate causes and the immediate circumstances
can be discovered and satisfactorily explained.
It. is a supposition, altogether inadmissible, and unworthy of a
serious answer, that the animal and vegetable races, entombed in
such profusion, and buried often under entire mountain ranges, or
firmly cemented into their very bosom, were created as we find
them; and still more preposterous is the suggestion sometimes
made, by those ignorant of geology, that there are no real organic
relics, but only illusory resemblances to animals and plants. Both
suggestions are absurd, and evince only profound ignorance. To
any person well informed in geology, it is quite superfluous to as
sert that organic relics were once living beings, performing the
part belonging to their respective races, and that at their death,
or soon after, they were consolidated, in the then concreting and
forming rocky strata, or that they were, in various instances,
overwhelmed by igneous or diluvial catastrophes.
Animal Remains in Secondary and other Rocks. — The older
secondary rocks often abound in shells of molluscous animals,
principally of extinct genera, and there is a progression through
the more recent strata, exhibiting a greater and greater approxi
mation towards the more complicated structure of the most per
fect animals ; while the newer rocks of this class, and of the
strata that lie upon them, including the tertiary, contain reptiles,
fish, and even birds, and terrestrial quadrupeds.
Saurians and Lizards. — The extinct saurians or lizards, men
tioned already in our general sketch, appear to have been mainly
coeval with the period between the coal and the chalk, or the
early tertiary. They were the most conspicuous animals of that
time, and were evidently very numerous. Several genera, inclu
ding many species, and a great number of individuals, have been
discovered, and among them are the most colossal bones that have

51
hitherto been found, anterior to the middle tertiary, or perhaps to
any periods.
These ancient saurian families, namely, the crocodiles, the
ichthyosauri or fish lizards, the megalosauri or great lizards,
the plesiosauri or animals resembling lizards, and several more,
have been found in the middle and recent secondary tertiary
rocks, especially of England and France, and some of them have
been discovered in' this country.
The megalosaurus is found in limestones and sandstones lying
higher than the lias, and the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus, in
many of the strata above, and in some of those below that rock.
The fossil crocodile appears to have been, anciently, as at pre
sent, an inhabitant of fresh water, and of rivers. In the West
Indies, according to De la Beche, the crocodiles frequent muddy,
and sometimes brackish ponds ; and in shallows, they often re
main for hours, with the tips of their noses out of water. The
crocodile has been continued, perhaps, from the new red sand
stone — certainly from the lias, to the present time — and as its re
mains often occur in the interval, it appears to have been a toler
ably constant inhabitant of our globe.
The organization and habits of crocodiles do not enable them
to contend with the agitations of the sea, which they shun. It
would seem, however, that the organization of the ichthyosauri,
and perhaps of the plesiosauri, would enable them to swim in
the waves.
With the solitary exception of two species of the opossum, found
in the Stonesfield slate near Oxford, England, no viviparous ver-
tebrated animal has been found below the chalk. The Stones-
field slate belongs to the older rocks of the oolitic series, and lies
above the lias.
The remains of the saurians indicate animals of various size,
from a yard or two to twenty, forty, fifty, and seventy feet or
more in length. Being generally amphibious, there is every rea
son to believe, that when only portions of England, in the form
of islands, stood above the water, these animals swam and sported
about in the interlocking waters of early Britain, or basked upon
the beaches of -its seas and estuaries, while the terrestrial lizards,
some of which were of gigantic dimensions, either preyed on
other animals, or cropped the exuberant tropical vegetation of

52
a glowing climate, that flourished either on the dry land or along*
the fenny and sedgy shores.
The iguanodon, (so called from the resemblance of his teeth
and form to those ofthe iguana of the West Indies,) was an her
bivorous reptile, and appears to have attained the length of sev
enty or eighty feet or more, with a height of nine or ten feet.
Still, his remains are interred in solid ferruginous sandstone, far
below the chalk, and probably more than two thousand feet be
neath the upper strata of chalk and tertiary, that were subse
quently formed over him, most of which have been swept away
by diluvial action or by other causes.
In July, 1832, another saurian was discovered in the sandstone
of Tilgate Forest* It is described and figured by Dr. Mantell
in the Geology of the South East of England. The reptile is
named the hylceosaurus, or Wealden lizard. Vertebras, ribs, co-
racoids, and other bones were found, either in connexion or in
juxta position, making an imposing mass, and very firmly ce
mented in the sandstone. The animal is supposed to have been
twenty five feet long.
The vegetable remains, as well as the fishes and shells, and
rolled stones, that are found entombed in the same strata, prove
that they were once the upper surface, and formed part of a vast
estuary, which was subsequently buried by the marine formation
of the chalk and its attendant strata.
Early Animals, Vegetables, and Coal. — Among the primary
rocks there are no traces of vegetation any more than of animal
life. According to De la Beche, wood and terrestrial plants are
found in most rocks, not only from the old red sandstone upwards,
but in the transition beneath ; proving, that dry land must have
existed, more or less, previous to, or at the time of the formation
of most of these rocks. We may suppose, therefore, that ponds,
lakes and rivers, existed also.
It would appear, from the relics of the periods immediately suc
ceeding the transition rocks, that vegetation had increased prodi
giously upon the earth, and that there were even trees and for
ests upon those parts of the surface that had become sufficiently dry.
* Subsequently at a later geological period, that of the green sand beneath the
chalk at Maidstone.

513
i Bituminous coal was formed from submerged and inhumed
vegetables, among which, cryptogamous plants, whose vestiges
cire numerous in the coal mines, were conspicuous.
Coal, with all its alternating and attendant strata of shales,
sandstones, limestones, clays, iron ores, puddingstones, &c, is
often found repeated several times in the same coal basin or coal
field ; in extreme cases fifty, sixty, or seventy times or more ; and
the mines are occasionally worked to a great depth, (even to a
thousand feet in some places in England.) It is plain, therefore,
that no sudden and transient event, like a deluge, could have
produced such deposits, although it might bury wood and trees,
which, in the course of time, might approximate to the condition
of lignite or bituminized, or partially mineralized wood, which is
often found under circumstances indicating a diluvial origin.
Two very interesting facts have been recently observed in this
country, illustrating the origin of coal from vegetables. Peat
has been found in Maine, converted into coal ; large trees have
been discovered buried beneath the alluvial sand and clay of the
Mississippi ; some of them retain the marks of the axe, but are
changed in part into coal, and still present perfect wood in parts
of the same log. — Amer. Journal, Vol. xxxv, Dr. C. T. Jackson —
Prof. Carpenter.
Arborescent plants, and their branches and roots, are often
found in the coal formations, and in their sandstones, &c, thus
proving that the gigantic vegetables were sometimes embraced in
those deposits.
Early existence of Trees. — It had been supposed, that the
plants which have contributed to the formation of coal were gen
erally succulent, with little or no firm woody fibre. It appears,
however, from two memoirs by H. Witham, Esq., of Edinburgh,
that large trees, strongly resembling the Norway fir and the yew
tree, existed, even anterior to the deposition of the great bitumi
nous coal field of the Lothians, around Edinburgh. Near that
city, in 1826, a fossil tree was discovered, three feet in diameter
at its base and thirty six feet long, lying nearly horizontally be
tween the strata of sandstone. Its composition was carbonate of
lime 60, oxide of iron 18, carbon 9, alumina 10.
8

54
In the quarry of Craigleith, near Edinburgh, another fossil tree
has been recently uncovered, whose geological position is in the
mountain limestone, and considerably below the great coal basin
of the Lothians. Its elevation is, seventy five feet above the level
of the sea, and its roots were in the bottom of the quarry. The
length of the stem was forty seven feet — a large branchless trunk,
— in some parts much flattened, so as to afford an elliptical section.
At the largest place, its diameter was five feet by two, and at the
smallest, nineteen inches by sixteen. Its branches, and many
feet of its top, are gone ; it was probably sixty feet long, and the
incumbent mass of sandstone appears to have been one hundred
feet thick ; the bark is converted into coal. The composition of
this tree is, carbonate of lime 62, carbonate of iron 33, carbon 5,
with the specific gravity 2.87. It was a conifer.
In the great coal field of the North, in Britain, fossil plants are
usually found lying parallel to the strata, but much broken and
compressed, and their parts scattered ; but some vigorous plants,
generally Sigillariae, appear to have been so strong as to resist the
torrents and to remain in their natural position.
It results from Mr. Witham's discoveries, that gymnospermous
phanerogamic plants are much more frequent in the coal forma
tions than has been imagined, and that proper trees, of true lig
neous fibre, and of great size, existed even earlier than the bitu
minous coal.*
Fossil Forest of Portland. — In quarrying in the oolite lime
stone of the island of Portland in the English channel, the work
men discovered an ancient soil, which they called the dirt-bed,
and it still bears that name, or sometimes dirt and black dirt. It
is from twelve to eighteen inches thick, and darkened by lignite.
It contains numerous rounded stones from three to nine inches
in diameter. In this dirt bed are buried many silicified trunks
of coniferous and tropical trees, the latter, palm-like in character,
and allied to the Zamia and Cycas. They were evidently fossil
ized where they grew, as the stumps of the trees stand erect for
a height of from one foot to three, and in a single instance even six,
with their roots attached to the soil, and about as near to each other
* American Journal, Vol. xxv, p. 109.

55
as in modern forests. The carbonaceous matter is most abundant
around the stumps and around the remains of the fossil Cycadeae.
The dirt bed contains also prostrate silicified stems of trees, partly
buried by the black earth and partly by a calcareo-siliceous slate
that covers the dirt bed.
Although the fragments of the prostrate trees are rarely more
than three or four feet in length, still by uniting many pieces,
trunks have been restored to the length of twenty to twenty three
feet, or, as Dr. Mantell states, upwards of thirty feet, the stems
being imbedded from seventeen to twenty feet, and then forked ;
the diameter of these near the root is about one foot, and the de
scent of the roots into the subjacent Portland stone, shows that
its strata were soft and impressible when these trees grew. The
calcareous slate which covers the trees, was deposited with tran
quillity, and forms swelling masses over the tops of the stumps.
These strata are found elsewhere : at Lullworth cave, in Dorset
shire, they are inclined at an angle of 45°, and still sustaining the
trees in an inclined position, but at right angles to the strata.
From these facts it is inferred that the oolite, full of marine
shells, became dry land — its upper surface then became covered by
a forest in which grew the tropical plants, the Zamia and Cycas ;
that the land, with its forests, sank and was submerged beneath a
body of fresh water, which deposited a calcareous sediment, with
fluviatile limestones, (the Purbeck beds, ) deposited quietly, as the
water was not disturbed. Two other carbonaceous beds have been
found below, and one of these containing Cycadeae. Mr. Lyell
has summed up these changes thus :* " There must have been
first, the sea, in which the corals and shells of the oolite grew ;
then land, which supported a vegetable soil with Cycadeae ; then
a lake, or estuary, in which fresh-water strata were deposited ;
then again land on which other Cycadeae and a forest of dicoty
ledonous trees flourished ; then a second submergence under fresh
water, in which the Wealden strata were gradually formed ; and
finally, in the cretaceous period a return over the same space of
the ocean." * Elements, p. 358.

56
Then might be added the tertiary strata, both marine and fresh
water, and finally the alluvial and diluvial.
To imagine, adds Mr. Lyell, such a series of events, will ap
pear visionary and extravagant to some who are not aware that
similar changes occur in the ordinary course of nature ; and that
large areas near the sea are now subject to be laid dry, and then
submerged, after remaining for years covered with houses and trees.
More recent Fossil Trees and Plants. — Among the more re
cent secondary rocks, vegetables increase in quantity and variety
as we approach the tertiary, in which we find inhumed wood in
the form of lignite, or bituminized wood, or wood slightly min
eralized ; eventually we find wood unchanged, although inhu
med, and finally peat and living plants ; and thus we trace the
vegetable families, from their commencement on the borders of
the primary, quite down to our own times. In the loose sand,
gravel, and detritus, we often find trees, at every depth, between
the surface of the ground and the fixed rocks below ; the surface
is often covered by boulders of travelled stones, and the deposi
tion is evidently diluvial.
Organized Remains deposited from Water, but not from a
Transient Deluge. — It is scarcely possible to doubt, that the pro
cess of animal and vegetable decomposition in a mineralized state,
described above, was that which really happened. Whatever
may have been the operations of fire at preceding or subsequent
periods, it is impossible that it should have been concerned in the
immediate formation of the mineral strata, which contain numer
ous organized remains. Animals or vegetables could never be
produced or sustained in the midst of fire ; and indeed, it is quite
incredible, that strata, containing their relics, were ever melted ;
nor is it easy to imagine, that they could be even softened, in
any great degree, without destroying or materially deranging the
organized structure.
Strata of shale or clay might, indeed, be baked without fusion,
so as to assume a stony hardness, and still preserve organic im
pressions. Thus we have observed a common hard baked brick,
lying in a pavement, bearing a distinct and beautiful impression of
a scallop shell, (Pecten;) the shell was gone, being doubtless de
stroyed by the fire, while its impress remained. Strata that have

57
been ignited may, therefore, retain the forms of organic bodies,
which would of course be destroyed by the heat.
This fact is indeed fully illustrated by every ornamental im
pression made by a mould or die upon the clay of unbaked pot
tery or porcelain ; it remains indelible and unalterable after pass
ing through the furnace.
It appears evident also, that the mineralized plants and animals
of the solid strata have not been collected in these situations by
any sudden and local, or even general catastrophe ; for, as an au
thor remarks, " among the immense number of fossil shells, many
are remarkable for their extreme thinness, delicacy and minute
ness of parts, few of which have been injured, but on the con
trary they are, in general, most perfectly preserved." Among
the plants of the coal formation, situated sometimes hundreds
and thousands of feet below the surface, and covered by many
beds of solid rocks, their leaves, many of which are of the most
tender and delicate structure, are often found fully expanded, in
their natural position, in regard to the rest of the plant, and laid
out with as much precision as in the hortus siccus of a botanist.
It is often true that the minutest parts do not appear to have suf
fered attrition or injury of any kind.
Fragmentary Rocks. — The rocks composed of fragments and
rounded water-worn pebbles afford us the strongest evidence of
progressive destruction, deposition and consolidation.
Among the transition rocks we find, in general, for the first
time, fragments both rounded and angular of all the previous
rocks ; sometimes these fragments are united by crystalline mat
ter of a different nature, forming the paste or cement which holds
them together ; or the paste is composed of nearly or quite the
same materials with the fragments, but in a state of much finer
division, and at other times there is little interposed matter.
Many of the rocks of this class are most palpably fragmentary,
the fragments being of all sizes, either scarcely visible to the na
ked eye, or several inches or feet in diameter.
Instances. — We have seen and carefully examined/in place, all
the following instances of fragmentary rocks, namely : — The
brecciated marble of the Potomac, employed in the public buildings
at Washington ; this is a remarkably firm rock, composed of angu-

58
Iar and ovoidal pebbles, the latter of which have evidently received
their shape from friction in water. The cement is a more mi
nutely divided substance of the same kind ; but calcareous matter
is not exclusively the material either of the pebbles or of the
cement. The fragmentary rocks of Rhode Island, extending by Provi
dence to Boston, and which are very conspicuous in Dorchester,
Roxbury, Brooklyn, and other neighboring towns, are fine exam
ples of early formations of this kind. They are very interesting
five miles east of Newport, at a place called Purgatory, where a
large mass of the rock is separated by the natural seams, that ap
pear to have been produced by a subterranean heave. The seams
run parallel for a great distance, cutting the pebbles in two, and
thus the included mass has fallen out, having been undermined by
the sea, whose waves, when impelled by storms, break and roar
frightfully in this deep chasm.
The pebbles are here chiefly quartz ; they are ovoidal in form
and of every size, from that of a bird's egg to that of a barrel, and
they lie generally with their transverse diameters parallel. They
are frequently invested by numerous crystals of the magnetic ox
ide of iron, perhaps sublimed by the heat that elevated the strata.
The pebbles of the fragmentary rocks about Boston are very
various in their composition, but are obviously the ruins chiefly
of primary rocks. The pebbles, which there lie in the roads and
fields, have proceeded from the disintegration of this puddingstone.
The great sandstone deposit of the valley of the Connecticut
presents every variety in the size and form of the parts that have
been broken up from previous rocks, transported, more or less
rolled, and cemented into rock again.
In East Haven, near New Haven, the rocks often contain massy
pebbles of granite, gneiss, mica slate and clay slate, and of the
individual minerals of which they are composed. Water-worn
pebbles are in some places as common in these rocks as on the
sea shore : they form mighty strata, which have been tilted out
of the horizontal position, into an inclination of 15 or 20 degrees
from the horizon ; their successive parallel ridges resemble the
waves of the sea, and between them are the long-drawn troughs,
extending with great regularity in the direction of the strata.

59
The Catskills, are conspicuous monuments of geological revo
lutions, for not only at the base, but at the summit, from two to
four thousand feet above the level of the Hudson River, we find
them composed extensively of fragmentary rocks, rounded and
angular ; their rude piles inform us, that the materials of which
they are built were once loose and rolling about, in the waves
of an early ocean, encountering friction and violence in their
various modes of action, and it admits of not the smallest doubt
that these mountains, after consolidation, have been raised from
the depths of the sea into their present position — lifted doubt
less with the continent of which they form a conspicuous feature.
Origin. — We must look for an adequate cause whence arose
the mighty masses of ruins of every shape and variety, composing
not merely accidental fragments, or here or there a stratum or a
hill, but covering myriads of square miles, the foundation of
countries, and rising occasionally even into high mountains.
Such are the effects and proofs of crystallization, as exhibited in
the primary rocks, that the contrast afforded by the fragmentary
piles, must appear very striking ; and connected with their rela
tive position, can leave no doubt on the mind, that they arose
from a subsequent and totally different state of things.
What were the causes that broke up portions of the primary
rocks and left their ruins the sport of the waves, destined in the
progress of time, to be cemented again into firm masses ?
Causes which appear very feeble in their action produce, by
long continuance, results which we are sometimes inclined to
attribute to more violent agents. Such are the wearing effects of
the weather and the seasons, and of the vicissitudes of tempera
ture, powers constantly in operation, and to these we can add the
convulsions of earthquake, tempest, flood, and fire, by which our
planet is still as it has ever been agitated. These causes would,
in the course of ages, perform the work, great as the results may
now appear.
The breaking up of primary and other rocks by ordinary causes,
as well as by violent convulsioris, and the transportation of their
ruins, often to distant places ; the frequently rounded form of the
fragments, presenting pebbles of every size, from that of a pea, to
that of a hen's egg, a human head, or a barrel — quartz being not

60
unfrequently the material ; the reconsolidation of these masses
into firm rocks — their stratification at first horizontal and then
rising, at various angles of inclination ; the alternation of such
strata with slate and coal and other deposits, their extraneous con
tents of innumerable organized beings, and the elevation of the
whole, sometimes hundreds or thousands of feet above the ocean
level ; all these facts leave not a doubt that the fragmentary rocks
required much time for their formation, consolidation and eleva
tion, and could never have been the work of a short period, or of
a transient deluge. It is evident also, that some of the brecciated
rocks were deposited before the granite mountains broke through
them, tilted them up, and threw them into positions of high in
clination, as may be seen in various places among the Alps.
Diluvial Deposits. — As regards the wreck and ruins with which
the surface of our planet is every where covered ; their extraor
dinary position, and to some extent their production, have been
usually, but as is now thought too generally and exclusively,
attributed to diluvial agency ; to mighty floods and rushing tor
rents of water.
Diluvium is found every where. The almost universal depo
sits of rolled pebbles, and boulders of rocks, not only on the mar
gin of the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers ; but their existence,
often in enormous quantities, in situations quite removed from
large waters ; inland, imbedded in high banks, or scattered, occa
sionally in profusion, on the face of almost every region, and
sometimes on the tops and declivities of mountains, as well as in
the valleys between them ; their entire difference, in many cases,
from the rocks in the country where they lie — rounded masses,
and pebbles of primary rocks, being deposited in secondary and
tertiary regions, and vice versa ; these, and a multitude of similar
facts, are among the most interesting of geological occurrences.
Curvilinear stones may possibly, in given instances, be formed by
decomposition of the angular portions, and by various chemical
agencies, aiding those of a mechanical nature ; but pebbles present
unquestionable evidence of having been brought to their rounded
form by friction in water, aided by sand and gravel and by mu
tual collision, and they can scarcely be confounded with those
produced in any other way.

61
The attrition of the common waters of the earth, within the
limited period of our observation, aided by transient and occa
sional floods, or even by the deluge described in Genesis, would
do very little towards producing so mighty a result ; and we
must assign the effects not only to our own times, but to an
earlier and much more extended course of mechanical agencies,
produced by agitated waters, through successive ages.
We must charge to moving waters the undulating appearance of
stratified sand and gravel, often observed in every country, and very
conspicuously in the plain of New Haven ; in remarkable beauty
and delicacy in many places in the valley of the Connecticut Riv
er, aud especially at Mink Brook, a mile or two below Dartmouth
College ; exhibiting frequently a delicacy of flexion in the layers,
which makes them appear as if they had, but a moment before,
received their impulse and position from undulating currents, and
as if they had copied the very eddies and gyrations of the wave.*
Indeed nothing in geology strikes the observer with more in
terest, than these beautiful arrangements in strata, of the beds of
sand, gravel, clay, loam and pebbles.f A section of a bank of any
of these deposits — or better still, an avulsion or fall, which leaves
the stratification exposed, without being obscured by the rubbish,
produced by digging, or by the sliding of loose sand — never fails
to exhibit the effects of sedimentary deposition ; sometimes hori
zontal — sometimes inclined at various angles, great or small —
sometimes undulatory, and recording, in a language that cannot
be misunderstood, the effects of subsiding water. The beds are
not always arranged in the order of the magnitude of the parts.
Sometimes coarser gravel, or even pebbles, will form a layer above
fine sand, and then perhaps the order will be reversed, indicating
that there were currents, and these, relenting and increasing
alternately, as they were impelled prafcably by tides or storms, so
that coarser or finer materials were transported and deposited, as
the waters and currents were more or less agitated and rapid.

* These strata would perhaps be now arranged with the tertiary.
t For our present purpose it is immaterial whether these depositions be referred
to tertiary deposits, or to those that are strictly diluvial.
9

62
Bowlder stones, consisting of fragments of primary rocks, pro
bably from the regions north of the great lakes, are found abun
dantly on the secondary regions of Ohio, New York, and other
states ; the fragments of the primary Alps, on the Jura chain, the
ruins of the Scandinavian Mountains on the secondary and dilu
vial plains of Prussia and Northern Germany, (the Baltic inter
vening,) and the fragments of the northern counties of England,
cover the southern and middle regions.
In many cases bowlders and pebbles can be traced to their na
tive beds, and frequently they are strangers to the regions where
they are found.*
Deserts of sand, covering tracts more or less extensive, such as
those in South Africa, in the Zahara, stretching in a vast belt,
from the Atlantic ocean to the desert of Lybia ; the sandy plains
of Arabia, Germany, and Russia ; the great desert at the foot of
the Rocky Mountains, and all similar deposits, in situations where
no obvious existing causes could leave them, are usually referred
to diluvial agency. It is suggested however by Dr. MacCulloch,
that the sands may in various cases have been derived from the
decomposition of rocks in situ.
Diluvial Torrents — Lakes — Valleys. — That diluvial torrents,
especially when aided by convulsions and by ice, have had suffi
cient power to roll even bowlder stones and disjointed columns!
to great distances, or to precipitate them from their native ledges
into the valleys, is sufficiently evident, from what we know of the
energy of torrents in our own time.
Beds of sand, gravel, clay, loam, pebbles, and bowlders, com
pose the loose materials of every country, and they invariably ex
hibit the appearance of deposition from water, sometimes tranquil,
sometimes more or less agitated.

* Erratic bowlders are rarely found in lower latitudes than about 40° in either
hemisphere, and they become more abundant as the latitude increases, thus indi
cating transports by currents of floating ice, freighted with rocks, from the polar
regions. — Lyell's Elements, (p. 173,J quoting Darwin.
t Such as the columns of trap, sometimes of enormous size, which are found
scattered, up and down, through the great Connecticut valley, often at a great dis
tance from their parent ridges. The most remarkable case in this range is ten
miles west of Hartford, on the Albany turnpike. — See Tour to Quebec.

63
Moving waters appear to have first transported, and then, in a
state of comparative quietude, to have arranged these masses by
sedimentary deposition.
The effects of diluvial devastation are in a considerable degree
veiled, by the gradual depositions of sedimentary matter, during
the decline of the velocity of the moving waters.
Granting that the crust of the earth has been covered by water,
which has been in any way withdrawn, or that the land has been
lifted from a state of submersion in an ocean, there must evidently
have resulted a multitude of local lakes, determined in their form
and position by the basin shape so often traced by contiguous hills
and high grounds; in these, separate and independent deposits
might have been going on for a length of time. Those lakes
that had no permanent supply of water, would, of course, be ex
hausted by soakage and by evaporation : others would burst their
barriers, or gradually wear them down, and during their escape,
produce diluvial ravages ; while those only would be perennial,
which were fed by streams and springs.
Many valleys of denudation, as they are called by Prof. Buck-
land, were probably produced by diluvial action, aided by convul
sions. Such valleys are conspicuously seen in the South of Eng
land, on the channel coast, where similar strata are found capping
contiguous hills, projecting at their sides, and running beneath
their foundations; a curve or hollow having been scooped out
between, thus indicating the effects of great rushing torrents, pre
ceded or attended perhaps by earthquakes that, more or less, broke
up the superficial strata.*
Many valleys were doubtless produced in this manner; and
others by great diversity of causes.
Extraneous Contents ofthe Diluvium. — In all countries, where
curiosity and intelligence exist, single bones, and entire skeletons
of the larger animals, often of extinct species, but chiefly of known
genera, are found abundantly in the diluvium.
Whales, sharks, and other fishes ; crocodiles, and other amphibia ;
the mastodon, the mammoth or extinct elephant, and other species
of elephants, approaching to or quite like those of modern times ;
* Reliquiae Diluvianse.

64
the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus ; hyenas, tigers, deer, horses ;
various species of the bovine family, and a multitude more, are
found in the diluvium, or in the tertiary, at a greater or less depth ;
and in all the variety of circumstances in which they may be sup
posed to have been buried, either by ordinary occurrences, or by a
catastrophe such as a sudden and violent deluge.
It appears, from Dr. H. H. Hayden's Geological Essays, that
under the diluvium of the Atlantic portion of the middle and
southern states, there lie buried great quantities of the bones of
whales, sharks, porpoises, mastodons, Asiatic elephants, and other
large animals, along with numerous trees, sometimes retaining
their fruit. Layers of marine mud are also found, deep in the
diluvium, beneath the present low water mark.
There are also vast deposits of shells, and especially of a gigan
tic oyster, in many parts of the southern states. They are found,
not only in digging for wells, but they form great beds in various
places.* Near Tours, in France, is a stratum of oyster shells twenty
seven miles long and twenty feet thick.
But the collections in the southern states far exceed this. A
stratum on the whole continuous, although mixed more or less,
with the general diluvium and other materials of the country, has
been traced from the Eutaw Springs, in South Carolina, to the
Chickasaw country ; six hundred miles in length, by ten, or from
that to one hundred in breadth.f
There can be no doubt that many of the beds of oyster shells,
which have been attributed to the aboriginal Indians of this coun
try are diluviul or tertiary deposits.
The bones and skeletons of large animals, especially ofthe mas
todon and mammoth, are found in wide dispersion, and in very re
mote countries, in both Americas, in Europe, and in Asia. In north
ern Asia, the tusks of the extinct elephant or mammoth are discov
ered in the banks of almost every river, and the ivory is found
in such abundance, as to be a regular article of commerce. An
enormous carcase of the northern or extinct Asiatic elephant, by
the gradual thawing of the frozen bank in which it was imbedded,

* Many ofthe cases cited are doubtless in the tertiary.
t We suppose these to belong rather to the tertiary.

65
high above the water, fell down a few years since, and exhibited the
flesh in full preservation ; the long bristly hair and vast massy hide,
requiring a large number of men to carry it, afforded proof irrefra
gable, of the existence of the animal in those rigorous climates,
and of his sudden extinction, inhumation and congelation, with
so little interval of time, that putrefaction had not commenced,
and has not since taken place, during a succession of ages.
It has been a favorite view with the religious world, that the
deluge of the Bible was the cause of the wide dispersion and sep
ulture of the extinct gigantic races, whose remains are found in
diluvium in the various quarters of the world, and that whole races
of animals were thus extinguished, and their bodies buried in the
wreck of the planet. Such a scene of devastation was thought
to be well fitted to produce these effects, as it was certainly ill
adapted to the comparatively tranquil life and death of the suc
cessive generations of marine and aqueous animals, that peopled
the earlier oceans.
A more extended and careful examination, and a more scrupu
lous weighing of evidence has, however, induced most geologists,
including those who have the greatest reverence for the Scriptures,
greatly to modify these opinions. While all agree that the ex
tinction of races of animals, in various cases, by deluges, is not
only possible but probable, it is admitted that a multitude of the
animals whose remains are found, perished by ordinary events, by
miring, by accidental drowning, by mutual warfare, by disease,
by old age, and by the prowess of the hunter, while the natural
and usual movement of the waters of the earth, aided by the ac
cumulations of time, may have effected their sepulture.
That all lands have been elevated from beneath the waters, and
that some parts of the world have been repeatedly submerged and
raised is, on grounds strictly geological, believed by all geologists ;
nor can we hesitate to admit also that flowing if not rushing wa
ters, have passed over the surface of all countries ; hence such
effects as are appropriate to a general deluge are noticed in every
region. Shall we add to this roll the following facts, cited on
credible authority ? The skeleton of a whale lies on the top of
the mountain Sandhorn, three thousand feet high, on the coast
of the Northern Sea.

66
So late as June, 1824, the remains of a whale were found on
the westernmost Stappen, a mountain in Finmarck, at an eleva
tion of eight hundred feet above the ocean. The bones, reported
to be vertebrae, were lost by shipwreck on their passage to Eng
land. Similar remains are said to exist also in North Fugeloe,
another mountain in those regions. — Penn.
While it may be supposed that there is no cause, except a de
luge, that could have conveyed the whales to those elevations, it
may perhaps be admitted by some, that the rising of the land may
have brought up the skeletons, as Mr. Lyell supposes that bowlder
stones may have fallen from sea cliffs, and being rounded in the
ocean, have been then lifted into daylight.
If the elevation of land from the deep be admitted — and the
fact is unquestionable — then it follows of course, that when the
bottom of the sea, with its varieties of surface, of plains, valleys,
hills, and mountains, is raised above the water so as to become
dry land, then every thing that was lying in the abyss must be
brought into view, or within the reach of exploration, and in this
manner most interesting disclosures may in future eras be made.
Contrast between Diluvial, and Tranquil Aqueous Agency. —
The agency of water, whether fresh or salt, in sustaining, depos
iting, and burying organized bodies in solid rock, (except the ef
fects of occasional convulsions,) was, evidently, tranquil and long
continued ; giving time for many generations of the same or of
different races, and for all the alternations and successions of the
strata with different organized bodies.
The occasional intervention of igneous irruption, whether sub
marine or subterrene, below, or among, or upon the strata of
aqueous origin, only increases the necessity of time, and when
these coincidences occur, they add to the evidence of grand geo
logical cycles.
But diluvial agency is usually violent, sudden, and of short du
ration. If the universal deluge recorded in Genesis, be taken as a type
of diluvial action, and the time and the elevation stated in the his
tory, as measured by existing mountains, be taken into the ac?
count, nothing could be more violent, destructive, and overwhelm
ing ; and certainly upon the face of the earth are every where

67
recorded in legible characters, the necessary physical effects of such
a debacle. It has entered but little into the views of any except geologists
to discriminate between these two classes of effects. They are
as wide apart as possible, and nothing in science is more unskilful
or more unhappy than to confound them, as is constantly done by
the unlearned in geology, who are intent on attributing all geolo
gical effects to the deluge.
The surface of our planet has, either at one period or many,
been swept by violent, agitated torrents of water, which cov
ered the earth every where with its own ruins, but probably cata
clysms did not form any of the firm strata filled with organized
remains. Volcanoes. — Their probable causes have been already men
tioned in our view of elementary action, and it is sufficient for
our present purpose briefly to advert to volcanoes as striking phys
ical features of the earth. Active volcanoes are well known ;
their causes are now, as they have ever been, in operation, and
lava beds and currents are constantly forming in many countries,
so that, in one region or another, the earth is never free from vol
canic action cognizable by the senses. The products of volca
noes often bear, in their very texture and features, palpable marks
of the agency of fire, and thus they inform us, in very intelligible
language, that they are indeed ignigenous : even when these fea
tures are not distinctly legible, it often happens that the geographi
cal and geological position of the masses does not permit us to en
tertain a doubt of their volcanic origin. Although they may form
beds of solid rock, which have no appearance of scoriae, cinders,
glass, or gaseous inflation, except, perhaps, on their upper surfaces,
we still observe their currents, and recognize their birth by fire.
Volcanic currents overflow whatever lies in their way, and there
fore we find them covering, occasionally, every geological forma
tion, and every work of man.
The superincumbent mass is, therefore, of more recent origin
than that upon which it lies. The evidence presented by the
eruptions of active volcanoes, and the igneous formations which
they produce, goes then to establish the truth of geological suc
cession, but does not imply that its events are more ancient than
the masses which are covered.

68
Extinct Volcanoes.— Formerly extinct volcanoes were vaguely
referred to, but without decisive proof of their real igneous origin.
Many uninstructed persons were formerly ready to find extinct
volcanoes in conical hills, especially if they had a hollow on the
summit ; and porous stones, of whatever kind, were referred to a
similar origin. It was a very captivating and sublime idea, that
volcanic fire, still bursting forth, in many places, with destructive
energy, had, in times long past, exerted agencies still more exten
sive — covering provinces with ruins, and operating even in the
bed of the primeval oceans. Still the speculation was regarded
as somewhat visionary till the middle of the last century, when
the subject of extinct volcanoes began to be investigated with
accuracy and skill.
It will be sufficient to name the so much disputed country of
Auvergne, Velay, and Viverais, in France, which has been often
examined by able geologists ; and now no one visits that region
without being convinced that it is of volcanic origin. This dis
trict lies upon the river Rhone, nearly in the angle formed by it
with the Mediterranean, and covers a square area of forty or fifty
leagues in diameter.
Craters, regularly formed, often entire, sometimes with the
thin and scorified edge of the lip in fine preservation, and oc
casionally of vast dimensions ; here, black, rugged and scathed
with fire — there, overgrown with trees, and there, filled with
water ; dykes of solid rock cutting through the volcanic cones ;
currents of lava, lying where they flowed from the crater, or
where they burst from the sides or foot of the ruptured mountain,
extending many miles and many leagues, traceable directly to
their source, winding along the gorges and the sinuosities of the
valleys, now and then diverted from their course by rocks, hills,
and other obstacles ; sometimes damming up rivers, whose beds
they have crossed or obstructed, and thus forming lakes of con
siderable dimensions ; exhibiting all the varieties of lithoid lava,
from that which is compact like rock, to that which is, in a greater
or less degree, porous and vesicular ; crowned or mixed with slag,
scoriae, pumice, olivine, and other products of known and active
volcanoes ; displaying frequently a structure, now spherical, ovoi
dal and concentric ; now prismatic and columnar, and fronting

69
streams, and bounding valleys, with ranges of columns, equalling
or rivalling the regularity of the basaltic colonnades of Fingal's
Cave and the Giant's Causeway : such are a few of the most
striking features of these countries, which are so affluent in proofs
of igneous origin, that there is nothing needed but to select, care
fully and judiciously, those facts which will be the most decisive,
especially with respect to minds not familiar with geological sub
jects. The volcanoes of the Auvergne, <fcc, are regarded as of differ
ent ages ; some appear to have been active before the formation
of the present valleys, and some since ; where the currents of
lava have been cut through, by those causes which formed the
present valleys, they are then obviously older than the valleys,
and where these currents have flowed into valleys, beds of rivers,
<fcc, they are as evidently of a more recent date.
Although the formation of these volcanic regions was anterior
to the records of history, still their epoch was evidently subse
quent to the creation of organized beings, which are found im
bedded in the volcanic tufa.
The recent researches of Humboldt, " have greatly extended
our knowledge of the volcanic tracts of our globe ; he has shown
the whole country round the Caspian to be a vast district of this
nature, a ' pays cratere,' exactly resembling, in its general out
lines, the telescopic appearance of the moon ; he has also pointed
out another great seat of volcanic action, the chain of Thion
Chou, south of the Altai, and running about lat. 42° N. and be
tween 70° and 80° E. long, from London. This vast ignigenous
district extends over two thousand five hundred square leagues,
and being generally remote from every sea, it evinces that marine
contiguity, although a common, is by no means an indispensable
concomitant of volcanic action."*
For our purpose it is not necessary to go any farther into detail
with respect to this class of rocks. All that is true of modern
eruptions from active volcanoes, considered as proofs of succession
in geological events, is true in the present case. Every thing
was occasionally covered by the currents that issued from the an-
* Discourse of Prof. Conybeare on Geology, at Oxford University, 1832.
10

70
cient volcanoes, and there is no reason to doubt, that, as happens
in connexion with modern volcanic convulsions, destructive earth
quakes preceded and attended their eruptions.
Having already thrown out some suggestions with respect to
the theory of volcanoes, we shall only remark with Conybeare,
that " it is impossible to propose any probable theory of volcanic
phenomena which does not, at the same time, embrace the entire
structure of the globe, in all its generality."*
The truth of this remark is already realized, for, not only trap,
porphyry, and pitchstone, but serpentine and soapstone, and even
granite, are now universally admitted to be of igneous origin.
The intrusion of the igneous rocks among those that are su
perincumbent, producing dykes and veins, often much ramified
and frequently metalliferous ; the elevation and disruption of the
upper strata ; the confusion often induced among them ; the
chemical changes produced upon the contiguous masses, and the
profuse and rich crystallization of many of the primary rocks,
both in their own proper minerals and in foreign imbedded
ones : all these afford decisive proofs of geological order, event,
succession, and time sufficient for the phenomena.
Crystallization in Rocks. — No person in the least acquainted
with the subject, hesitates to admit that crystallization implies a
previous state of corpuscular freedom, either in fluidity, in fusion,
in vapor, or at least in a state of softness or diminished cohe
sion. Although crystallization is not confined to any one geolo
gical period, it is eminently conspicuous in the primary rocks.
It presents to a practiced eye and an instructed mind, very de
cisive proofs that the particles have been in that state of mobil
ity which left them at liberty to unite according to fixed laws ;
the heterogeneous masses being connected by chemical, and the
homogeneous by mechanical attraction. Thus in feldspar, (if we
include both its necessary and occasional constituents, ) oxygen is
an element in all the binary compounds that enter into its consti
tution ; in the silica it is united to silicium ; in the potassa to po
tassium ; in the soda to sodium ; in the lime to calcium, and in
the usual contaminating oxide, to iron. Supposing these to be
the ultimate elements of the mineral, the proximate principles

* Discourse at Oxford, 1832.

71
would be produced, first by their uniting, chemically, and in de
finite weights, to form these binary compounds ; which would
still farther unite, but still chemically, to form the integrant par
ticles of the mineral, and these particles united mechanically by
cohesion, would form the mineral itself.
The same reasoning may be applied to every variety of crystal
lized rocks and minerals. Limestone, consisting for its immediate
principles, of lime, carbonic acid and water, contains, for its ulti
mate elements, according to the present state of our. knowledge,
calcium, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen ; the latter principle being
united with each of the former ones, so as to produce the lime,
(oxygen and calcium,) the carbonic acid, (carbon and oxygen,)
and the water, (oxygen and hydrogen.) If the limestone were a
magnesian one, then we must add oxygen and magnesium, and
so of other earths, as silica, or alumina, if they were present.
In our introductory remarks we have observed, that how far
back, and how near to the isolated, independent state, we are to
trace the elements, we cannot determine. Whether they were
created in perfect freedom, or whether combined in pairs, and
those pairs again united to form complex results, we can never
know with certainty, and all our suggestions on this subject are
necessarily hypothetical. But the principles are true, and the
statements might easily be extended to the most complex rocks,
and to all their imbedded minerals ; but without going into all
these details, we may reason both intelligibly and conclusively
upon the act or process, which, according to physical laws, may
have preceded the concretion of the materials of the primary
rocks. Suppose a previous state of chemical mobility by fire to have
rendered it possible that the elements of granite should unite ; a
simultaneous formation of the different minerals must of course
happen ; the quartzy particles must find their fellows, those of
feldspar and mica would do the same, and the three minerals, born
at the same moment, might repose in the same cradle. In the
same manner, their ornamental companions, (not essential to the
rock, butoften studding it like gems set in royal robes) — the eme
ralds, the topazes, the garnets, the tourmalines, and other crystal
lized minerals, which sparkling in the bosom of the primary rocks
declare a coeval birth, may have had a similar origin.

72
True it is, that creative power could call the rocks into being,
without any arranging process in their parts, but no analogy
countenances the truth of such a supposition, and neither moral nor
physical reasons oblige us to admit so improbable a supposition.
Who has contemplated the stupendous garnets of Fahlun — the
equally gigantic quartz and feldspar crystals of the Alps — the
more delicate emeralds of Brazil and Ethiopia — the variously
colored tourmalines of Chesterfield and Goshen, Mass., and of
Paris in Maine — the idocrases of Vesuvius — the rubies and sap
phires of Ceylon and other regions of India — the bubbles of air
included with water and other fluids in quartz — the fibres of
amianthus — the crystals of titanium — the filaments of native
copper and silver shut up in the same mineral — the successive
crystallizations of galena, sulphate of barytes, calcareous spar,
quartz and fluor spar, especially of Derbyshire and Cumberland,
often included in one group — the splendid amethystine and other
geodes — little grottoes lined with polished and beautiful geomet
rical figures — who with a skilful -eye and an enlightened mind
has seen such things, the ornaments of our cabinets, and has
doubted that they were as truly the products of crystallization as
any of those of art which are formed in our laboratories, and
that both result from the operation of the physical laws estab
lished by the Creator.
Crystallization is indeed not exclusively the attribute of pri
mary regions, but in them it is eminently conspicuous ; and if
we find crystals in every geological age, we are thus furnished
with proof that these agencies continued to operate, although
with less frequency and energy, through all succeeding periods,
and that they have not ceased even in our own times,* for mine-
* I have obtained crystals of calcareous spar, of sulphate of barytes, and of
sulphate of lime, and some of them repeatedly, as accidental results in chemical
processes : I have seen even quartz crystals form rapidly under my eye, and others
have cited them as slowly produced with regularity and beauty from the fluoric
solution of silex. Crystals of pyroxene, specular iron, titanium, and other mine
rals have been produced by volcanic and furnace heat; more than forty species of
minerals have been observed in the slags of furnaces, and white pyroxene has been
produced by the action of fire upon the constituents of this mineral, and after fu
sion, it has re-crystallized in the same form. — Am. Jour. Vol. 10, p. 190.

73
ral crystals are every moment forming around us from solution,
from fusion, from gas and vapor, and from the unceasing energy
of galvanic power.
Still we do not find in the upper secondary rocks, much less
in the tertiary, the numerous and grand crystals that are common
in the primary, and even to a degree in the transition and early
secondary formations, nor do we expect to find grand crystal
cavities, fours a cristaux, as they have been fancifully called by
Patrin, except in the ancient mountains and in the veins and
beds by which they are intersected.
No person who has been conversant with chemical effects can
easily confound them with those of mere mechanical deposition.
Take a piece of the most beautiful granite — its quartz is translu
cent, if not transparent ; its feldspar is foliated in structure, pre
senting two regular cleavage planes united at definite angles ;
its mica is perfectly foliated, and splits into innumerable thin
laminae, each of which is transparent and has a high lustre, and
this last property is common (sometimes in a less degree) to the
quartz and the feldspar. Gneiss and mica slate and saccharoidal
limestone are distinguished, in a greater or less degree, by similar
characteristics. Now translucency, transparency, lustre, cleavage-
planes, and regular structure, are known and established results
of chemical deposition, and are never the effect of mechanical
aggregation. Compare the above properties with those found in
a piece of clay, and no person, however unskilled in physical
characteristics, can possibly attribute them to a similar origin.
The latter has as obviously sprung from mechanical as the for
mer from chemical laws ; mechanical suspension must have pre
ceded the one, and solution, fusion, sublimation, or galvanic
secretion the other.
Crystallization is the most exalted agency of the mineral king
dom, and it answers to organization in the animal and vegetable.
It results in the production of regular solids, often of beautiful
figures, bounded almost always by plane faces, which constitute
the outline of beauty in the mineral world, as the curve line does
in the organized kingdoms. — Haiiy.
Proximate Causes of Crystallization in the Earth. — As crys
tallization by natural laws is constantly going on around us, so

74
we can at pleasure form crystals of many substances ; ih some
cases, we produce those that never have been discovered in
nature, and in others we can surpass them in size and beauty ;
nor is there any reason to doubt that we could always imitate
natural crystals, provided we were acquainted with all the powers
and circumstances which operated in the original crystallization
of mineral bodies. The discovery of Mr. Crosse, by which gal
vanic power has been made efficient in producing various crystal
lized minerals and metallic bodies, affords us a precious light on
this subject, and as the galvanic power resides within the earth
we feel assured that in all ages it has proved an efficient agent in
crystallization. In all the geological epochs after granite, there
is decisive evidence of great mechanical changes, operating first
on the primary rocks, to produce the materials for the derivative
rocks, which are again worn and broken and their ruins are
aggregated in rocks still more recent ; all such formations exhibit
unquestionable proofs of mechanical destruction and mechan
ical formation ; in a word, of changes from the pristine state of
the materials, greater than crystallization implies in relation to
the constituent or integrant particles, which we may presume to
have been originally created.
Werner supposed that the crust of the earth had been dissolved
in water, but the solution theory, once almost universally preva
lent, has now given way to the igneous, which not stopping with
actual or extinct volcanoes, or with trap, porphyry, and pitchstone,
has taken possession of the granite mountains and of the very
center of the earth. Still, it is admitted generally by geologists
that the ocean has for a long time occupied all countries ; and it
is now evident also, that ignition and fusion on a great scale have
always existed in the earth ; this is conceded even by those who
do not believe in the fusion of the central nucleus. The deep in
ternal fires of our planet have been the most energetic, as would
appear from the admitted fusion of granite, and they appear to have
been most extensive in the earliest periods. Both in ancient and
modern times volcanic mountains and islands have risen from the
bosom of the ocean, and volcanic islands are still existing where in
former ages the sea raged uncontrolled. The submarine volcanoes
also occasionally project smoke, flames, and red hot stones through

75
the ocean, thus informing us that water cannot always subdue fire,
that even now, there are strata at the bottom of the sea where
extreme ignition and extreme hydrostatic pressure operate con
jointly upon the firm materials, and that both, aided by the prin
cipal chemical agents which we know to exist in the constitution
of our globe, may unite to produce results of which our trifling
experiments can give us but a feeble conception. An attempt,
for instance, to dissolve granite by boiling it in water, is just as
rational as the effort to melt it in a common fire ; neither experi
ment can possibly succeed ; but the former would not prove that
granite was never dissolved, nor the latter that granite was never
melted; because, the circumstances which may have operated in
the interior of the earth are not under our control, and our experi
ments are therefore inconclusive. We can melt a little granite by
the compound blowpipe, and could we command this heat on an
extensive scale, we might melt the granite mountains.
We should accept with equal readiness the aid of fire or water,
or other agents, as they may appear best adapted to explain the
phenomena. In volcanic countries, silica is certainly dissolved by hot alka
line water under great hydrostatic and steam pressure, and granite
is as certainly fused in the intense heat of deep seated fire.
There is the best reason to believe, that in the lavas not only
granite but all rocks are occasionally melted. If this be true of
the proper crystals of granite, it may be also true of the imbedded
crystals which it contains, and therefore of all other crystals.
Those which contain much water of crystallization may present
a serious difficulty, but perhaps pressure may have retained the
water and as the parts of the mineral concreted, in cooling, the
molecules of water may have taken their place in the regular
solid. Still we can see no reason for excluding water and other
dissolving agents, acting with intense energy, under vast pressure
and at the heat of even high ignition, from playing a very im
portant part in crystallization.
If we give granite to igneous fusion it is hardly possible to
avoid admitting the conjoined action of water and fire on the crys
tallized slaty rocks that usually cover it ; the rocks that are now
called metamorphic by Mr. Lyell, because he supposes that their

76
materials may have been first deposited mechanically and then
chemically crystallized by heat acting under vast pressure.
Nature and Application of the Argument. — It is we trust ob
vious that we have been occupied, not in the superfluous labor of
giving a system, a work which is ably done by our author, but in
selecting a few facts from the principal geological classes and
epochs, to evince that our planet, before it was inhabited by man,
was subjected to a long course of formation and arrangement, the
object of which evidently was, to fit it for the reception, first of
plants and animals, and finally of the human race. This is the
sole object which we have had in view in our citations of geolo
gical facts, all of which go to prove that the world is not eternal.
For in that remote period of which he who recorded the fact pro
bably knew not the date : — In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth, and established the physical laws, the
ordinances of heaven, by which the material world was to be
governed. The earliest condition of the surface of the planet appears to
have been that of a dark abyss of waters of unknown depth and
continuance, which repressed the deep seated forces of internal
fires. The structure of the crust affords decisive evidence of a long
series of events, in relation both to the formation of rocks, and to
the creation and succession of organized bodies, which exist in the
strata and mountains in such astonishing quantities.
I Succession and revolution are plainly recorded in the earth ;
/ and sacred history expressly states that the events involved both
I order and extent of time.
Geology cannot decide on the amount of years or ages, but it
assures us that there was enough to cover all the events connect
ed with the formation of the mineral masses, and with the suc
cession of the generations of living beings, whose remains are
found preserved in them.
It is obvious that ages must have passed while the various ge
ological events, which are recorded, in the structure ofthe earth,
were happening, and particularly while the innumerable organic
beings that had been created, lived, perpetuated their race, died,
were entombed and preserved in the rocks, and this through a

77
vast succession of generations of an immense number of families,
genera and species.
As already suggested, (page 510,) we will not inquire whether
almighty power iuserted plants and animals in mineral masses, and
was thus exerted, without design or end, in working a long series
of useless and therefore incredible miracles. Can any rational
man believe, for example, that many genera of fishes, with verte
bras and fins, and therefore created to live in water, like those of
the present day, were placed by mere sovereign power in the
slates and other rocks beneath the coal and therefore (as these
formations exist in England and supposing all to be present that
belong above) nearly two miles below the present surface ; or
that the iguanodon, with his gigantic form, seventy to eighty feet
in length, ten in height, and fifteen in girth, was created in the
midst of consolidated sandstone, and placed down one or two
thousand feet from the surface of the earth, in a rock composed
of ruins and fragments, and containing fish, vegetables, shells, and
rolled pebbles ! With such persons we can sustain no discussion,
since there is no common ground on which we can meet : we
must leave them to their own reflections, for they cannot be in
fluenced by reason and sound argument, and can, with or without
evidence, believe any thing that accords with their prepossessions.
And yet we have known such individuals — those who either de
ny the best established facts, or endeavor to avoid their effect by
making the most absurd suppositions, inconsistent alike with the
truths of science, and with candor and fair dealing in argument.
Persons there are, also, who endeavor to do away the argument
derived from organic remains, by denying their reality. They
affect to regard them, as a lusus naturae, which phrase, if it has
any meaning, would imply, that the relics are not real, but only
bear an accidental resemblance to plants or animals. This resort
is too ridiculous to deserve refutation, and no individual would
hazard such an explanation, who had been in the slightest degree
acquainted with fossils, those beautiful medals of past ages. They
have been, by the operation of natural laws, laid by, and preserved
in the solid strata of the earth, as authentic and imperishable mon
uments both of the progress of the mineral formations, and of the
numerous creations of animals and plants that occupied the suc-
11

cessive surfaces of the planet before man was called into being ;
nor did the record cease to be enrolled when man appeared — it
was, and is, and will be continued, as long as the earth shall
exist. The order of the physical events, discovered by geology, is
substantially the same as that recorded by the sacred historian ;
that is, as far as the latter has gone, for it was evidently no part
of his object to enter any farther into details than to state that
the world was the work of God, and thus he was led to mention
the principal divisions of natural things, as they were successively
created. It is sufficient therefore that there is a general corres
pondence, which is indeed, in the great features, exceedingly
striking, and deficient only in less important particulars not to
be expected in so general a narrative, written chiefly for moral
purposes ; but it is in no respect contradictory to facts.
The Bible is not a book of physical science, and its allusions
to physical subjects are necessarily adapted to common apprehen
sions. Still, the creation and the deluge, although they have a
momentous moral bearing, were, in their nature, entirely physical
operations. Why should any one refuse to attend to a history of
these two stupendous events, merely because that history professes
to have proceeded from the same author as the work itself ; and
why should we suppose that the brief notices of the great physical
facts, connected with a physical creation and a physical destruc
tion, are not correctly stated, in this earliest and most venerable
of histories ?
If all our discoveries regarding the surface and interior of the
planet tend, when properly understood, to confirm the credibility
of both these events, and to enable us to discriminate between
the circumstances and evidence which belong to them respec
tively, what moral consideration can, in this case, forbid a happy
application of the discoveries of science, and why should science
refuse to lend its aid to the support of moral truth ?
The question then recurs, how can the amount of time be
found, consistently with the Mosaic history, for the order of the
facts and of the history is the same. The solution of this diffi
culty has been attempted in the following modes.

79
1. The present crust of the planet has been regularly formed
between the first creation "in the beginning,"* and the commence
ment of the first day. — It appears to be generally admitted by
critics, that the period alluded to in the first verse of Genesis,
"in the beginning," is not necessarily connected with the first
day. It may therefore be regarded as standing by itself, and as
it is not limited, it admits of any extension backward in time
which the facts may require.f
Dr. Chalmers says : " Does Moses ever say, that when God cre
ated the heavens and the earth, he did more at the time alluded
to than transform them out of previously existing materials ? Or
does he ever say, that there was not an interval of many ages
betwixt the first act of creation, described in the first verse of
the book of Genesis, and said to have been performed in the be
ginning, and those more detailed operations, the account of which
commences at the second verse, and which are described to us as
having been performed in so many days ? Or, finally, does he
ever make us understand, that the generations of man went fur
ther than to fix the antiquity of the species, and of consequence
that they left the antiquity of the globe a free subject for the
speculations of philosophers." — Evid. Christ. Rev. in Ed. Encyc.
By asserting that there was a beginning, it is declared that the
world is not eternal, and the declaration that God made the heav
ens and the earth, is a bar equally against atheism and material
ism. The world was, therefore, made in time by the omnipotent
Creator. The creation of the planet was no doubt instantaneous, as re
gards the materials, bnt the arrangement, at least of the crust,
was gradual. As a subject either of moral or physical contem
plation, we can say nothing better, than that it was the good
pleasure of God not only that this world should be called into
existence ; but, that the arrangement by which it was to become
a fit habitation for man, should be gradually progressive through
many ages.
* " Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the
work of thy hands." — Ps. cii : 25. " And thou, Lord, in the beginning, hast laid
the foundations of the earth." — Heb. i : 10.
t " This statement appears to be entirely distinct from all that follows." — IV. M.
Higgins, F. G. S. ; the Mosaic and Mineral Geologies : London, 1833.

su
This is in strict analogy with the regular course of things in
the physical, moral and intellectual world. Every thing, except
God, has a beginning, and every thing else is progressive. The
human mind and our bodily powers, the growth of the animal
and vegetable races, the seasons, seed time and harvest, science
and arts, wealth, civilization, national power and character, and a
thousand things more, evince that progression is stamped upon
every thing, and that nothing reaches its perfection by a single
leap. The gradual preparation of this planet for its ultimate des
tination, presents therefore no anomaly, and need not excite our
surprise. It is of no importance to us, whether our home was in a course
of preparation during days or ages, for the moral dispensations of
God towards our world could not begin until the creation of man.
The abyss of waters which existed before the emergence of
the land, which preceded the creation of man, and continued
for an unknown period of time, is just such a state of things, in
coincidence with the operation of internal fire, as is demanded
for the formation of the central rocks, and for their elevation, as
far as facts may justify us in supposing that it took place before
the formation of the derivative rocks, and of those containing
organic remains.
The supposition now before us is equally consistent with" both
igneous and aqueous action ; and indeed it would be impossible
to account for the appearance of things without the conjoined
agency of internal fire, and of an incumbent ocean ; the latter
repressing the expansive and explosive power of the former, caus
ing its heat greatly to accumulate, even to the fusion of the most
refractory materials ; preventing the escape of gaseous matter,
as for instance of carbonic acid gas from the limestones, and by
its pressure and slow cooling, from the small conducting power of
water, preventing melted rocks from assuming the appearance of
volcanic cinders, slags, scoriae, and other inflated masses.
The incumbent ocean is therefore indispensable, equally so with
the agency of internal fire, to the correct deductions of the theo
retical geologist.
With these views, then, the historical record happily agrees,
and geology coincides with the sacred history.

81
During the period when this dark abyss of waters prevailed,
the earth was without form, and void, or better, as Hebricians
say — " the earth was invisible and unfurnished ;" we may pre
sume that then the early operations of geological formation and
arrangement began, by producing the fundamental rocks, and
thus providing materials for all the derivative strata, which, in the
course of their consolidation, were destined to embosom such an
endless diversity of extraneous contents.
This theory is satisfactory as far as it goes : it fairly recognizes
and encounters the real difficulty in the case, and it would be
quite sufficient to reconcile geology and the Mosaic history, as
usually understood, did not the latter assign particular events to
each of the successive periods called days ; the most important
of these events are, the first emergence of the mountains, and
the creation of organized and living beings. It seems necessary
therefore to embrace the days in the series of geological periods ;
and the difficulties of our subject will not be removed, unless we
can show that there is time enough included in those periods
called days, to cover the organic creation, and the formation of
the rocks, in which the remains of these bodies are contained.
2. The present crust was formed from the ruins and fragments
of an earlier world, re-arranged and set in order during the six
days of the creation. — This explanation has been given by men
of powerful minds, both theologians and geologists — men strongly
impressed with the overwhelming evidence which the earth pre
sents of innumerable events, and of progressive development
through successive ages. It therefore honestly meets the diffi
culty, and fully grants the necessity of allowing sufficient time
for the series of geological formations. This theory assigns the
crystallization and consolidation of the primary rocks to a period of
indefinite geological antiquity, and it also admits that they have
undergone more recent modifications, particularly in being up
heaved by subterranean force, which elevated not only them
selves but the superincumbent strata.
The hypothesis has great merit, inasmuch as it admits, in the
long gone-by ages, of just such events and successions as geology
has proved to- have taken place ; but it demands general catastro
phes, which do not appear to have happened, and it implies a recon-

82
struction of the crust of the planet entirely out of its own ruins, a
supposition which is inconsistent with the state of facts. It is
therefore unsatisfactory, because it does not provide at all for the
regular successions of entombed animal and vegetable races, and for
the progressive consolidation, often in long continued tranquillity,
of the strata which are formed around the organic bodies, and
also for the numerous alternations and repetitions of these strata,
frequently, as in the coal fields, in a regular order. All this de
mands time, and seasons of protracted repose, interrupted indeed
by occasional elevations, .subsidences, and other violent move
ments. In order that this solution may prove satisfactory, it is
necessary that the earth should really be what it actually is not,
a confused pile of ruins, not only of loose fragments, such as are
now found on its surface, but they must be consolidated, to form
the mountains and the strata. Ruins, the mountains and strata
do indeed in many places contain, but they form only a portion of
a vast structure, in which ruins have no part.
The earth is unlike Memphis, Thebes, Persepolis, Babylon,
Balbec or Palmyra, which present merely confused and mutilated
masses of colossal and beautiful architecture, answering no pur
pose except to gratify curiosity, and to awaken a sublime and
pathetic moral feeling ; it is rather like modern Rome, replete
indeed with the ruins of the ancient city, in part rearranged for
purposes of utility and ornament, but also covered by the regular
and perfect constructions of subsequent centuries.
The period is not far distant, when all thinking and reasonable
men who make themselves acquainted with the structure of the
earth, will come to the conclusion that the formation and arrange
ment of the crust, as we now see it, must have occupied many
ages. This is already the conviction of all geologists, and of
many who are not so by their pursuits ; and nothing can prevent
its becoming universal but ignorance of the facts, or a blind or
perverse rejection of them in opposition equally to sound science
and common sense. It is now generally admitted that the begin
ning was in remote antiquity, at a period whose date is unknown ;
and we are at liberty in consistency with sacred history to assume
as much time anterior to the first day, as the events recorded in
the structure of the earth may require. This appears at first

83
view to remove the difficulties, as they are supposed to exist be- j
tween geology and revelation, and therefore this solution has i
been eagerly adopted by those who receive equally the truth of
revelation as recorded in the Bible, and the truths of nature as
registered in the earth. This extension of time may answer
sufficiently for the primary rocks, and for those composed of frag
ments and ruins, so far as they do not contain organic remains or
contain them accidentally. It is true, however, that among the
fragmentary and brecciated rocks there are those that contain
ruins charged with the remains of animals and plants ; pieces of
limestone, for example, enclosing corals, shells, or crinoidea, are
found as parts of calcareous breccias, and in the same manner,
plants embraced in argillaceous iron, or in slates and sandstones,
may enter into the puddingstones and breccias, and it would be
true of such rocks that they are formed from the ruins, if not of
a previous world, at least of an earlier state of this world. But
it must be observed, that by the supposition the organic remains
now alluded to are not in the situation in which they were origi
nally enclosed.
We wiU illustrate this by examples. Suppose a country occu
pied by the encrinal and coralline limestone. The rocks exhibit
those beautiful forms either as they grew in the ocean, with all
their exuberant and curious joints and branches standing upon
their proper columns or stems and gently wrapped in the cal
careous carbonate as it concreted around them ; or perhaps they
were fallen upon the floor of that early ocean, and their members
perchance scattered around, but in the end they were equally
enclosed in the delicate pabulum which was to preserve them
without father alteration to distant ages.
Suppose also the fossils of the chalk formation — the echini with
or without their spines, the alcyonia and sponges, the innumera
ble testacea, the vertebrated fishes, and, as we are now instructed,
myriads of microscopic corallines and shell fish ; let these and
the other fossils of this chalk series be imagined as living in their
native seas at the time when they were so exquisitely folded in
their white chalky mantle as to insure the perfect preservation
of their delicate forms, often with their minutest processes, spines,
or other frail parts uninjured ; still farther, let the flint, dissolved

84
perhaps in thermal alkaline waters, thrown up and issuing from
the bottom of the chalk, now seek the organic forms and convert
many of them into its own substance, but copying their organi
zation so as to present silicified sponges, echini, alcyonia, &c.
Now these are instances of geological formations which, in
such or in some other analogous modes, have certainly taken
place, and innumerable repetitions of similar events have occurred
from the time of the earliest organized beings down through suc
cessive ages, and are still going on. No one will however contend
that these things are to be referred to the ruins of a former world ;
they are regular formations, and the animals and plants that may
have been enclosed in the forming rocks have had no previous
existence ; where they are found petrified there they were born,
and there they were interred in their stony tombs. Should any
of these rocks, still retaining the enclosed organic bodies, be bro
ken up into fragments, and should these fragments become united
so as to form a breccia or conglomerate, this might with some
propriety be called a formation from the ruins of a former world,
or at least of an earlier stage of the present.
Regular and extensive formations, which enclose organized
beings in immense numbers and in high preservation, must have
demanded great time, prevailing tranquillity, and all the circum
stances necessary both to sustain organic beings and to furnish
the pabulum by which they were to be enclosed. The astonish
ing diversity of petrified and fossilized forms, found in strata of
different kinds, of wide geographical extent, and in many instances
of vast thickness, with their distinct and sometimes sudden alter
nations, successions, interventions and repetitions, demonstrate
that physical laws of great energy reigned and produced their
proper effects through vast periods of time.
It does not militate against the argument, that there were occa
sional convulsions, lacerating and dispersing in ruins portions of
the fair fabrics that had been raised ; or that less violent opera
tions, carried on from age to age, tended more slowly but not less
surely to the same result ; the intercalated or concomitant processes
of destruction served only to prove that there previously existed
solid structures which the tooth of time or the crash of catastrophes
had invaded, and therefore the regular mineral formations, the

85
entombed organized bodies, and the partial demolitions are thus
linked into a harmonious system, furnishing a true geological
chronometer and an authentic chronicle of physical events.
Now if the long range of time included between the beginning
and the first day recorded in the Genesis is to cover not only the
period in which those rocks were formed, that preceded the dawn
of life, but also those that include organized beings and the for
mations composed of fragments, then it is obvious that the Mo
saic history contains no notice of these events, as belonging
to that epoch. But if it is still contended that the events really
belonged to that period, although they are passed over in silence
by the historian, and that six common days were allotted to re
arrange and fit up the ruins of this ancient world, not only of
rocks, but of animals and plants, so as to prepare the earth for the
reception of the human race, then we feel justified in saying, that
upon this supposition, the furniture of our present world could not
possibly be what it now is, nor by any operation of physical laws
could the arrangements be effected in so brief a period of time.
The design would be most inappropriate, the appearances widely
different from what we behold, and the work, except as a miracle,
impossible. No supposition consistent alike with the work and
the history will meet the exigencies of the case but a progress in
the mineral formations coincident with the periods called days,
in which life, in both organic kingdoms, is first announced in the
Genesis, as the result of creative power.
Some eminent geologists, with whom reverence for the Scrip
tures and reverence for natural truth are only different modes of
the same religious sentiment, both having for their basis venera
tion for the all-wise and benificent Creator, and proposing for their
object, the promotion of confidence in him, and of obedience to
his laws, have adopted this, as it appears to me, imperfect, if not
inconsistent solution of the geological difficulties. As regards the
coincidence of mineral formations with organic beings, it is just
such a solution as would be satisfactory, were there no divisions
of time in the Mosaic narrative, and nothing more announced in it
than the order of events as actually narrated, the whole range be
tween the beginning and the creation of man being left unembar
rassed by the limitation of days, and perfectly free to be appropri-
12

86
ated in ample eras, as the events may seem to require. As the
earth is really constituted, it will however answer no valuable pur
pose to imagine the collected ruins of a former world, brought
together, to be remodelled ; as the mariner who has survived the
tempest, refits, with broken spars and sails, his wrecked and ruined
ship. If the ruins and fragments of the present world are to be
regarded as mere materials which are again to be concocted ; in
part dissolved or melted, and elaborately and skilfully wought over
anew, to produce our present world, then this is equivalent to a
new creation, and thus we introduce a double operation by al
mighty power, when one is-quite sufficient, and after all, we leave
our difficulties where we found them, without solution and with
out mitigation. This we must conclude is far from the truth, and
our convictions are confirmed by surveying, with Mr. Lyell, the
causes that are still in full operation, the geological events that
are now in progress, and the effects that are proceeding without
impediment or delay, and we thus discover, that since the crea
tion, as regards geological causes, except their varying if not di
minished intensity of action, all things remain as they were; no
new code of physical laws has been enacted ; while the beginning
was with God, the continuation of events is with us, and a dis
tant posterity may not witness their termination.
3. It has been supposed that the succession of geological events
may have happened in the first ages of the world, after the cre
ation of man, and before the general deluge. — This supposition
is wholly irreconcilable with facts. The universal prevalence of
the waters, rendered it indispensable that the first geological move
ment should elevate some portion of the land above the ocean.
The great series of geological events by which the continents
and islands were raised, was incompatible with the residence of
man upon the earth : they precluded even the existence of terres
trial quadrupeds, which both geology and the scripture history
assign to a late period in the order of things, the same period in
the close of which man himself first appears ; these movements
were, until the period immediately preceding, hostile to the wel
fare of any beings that required more land than amphibious rep
tiles ; and the vast deposits of fossilized and of crystallized rocks
that preceded the era of reptiles, demanded an alternate and con-

87
comitant prevalence of water on the surface, and of fire beneath,
which were ill adapted to produce and insure the quiet and firm
state of the surface, such as we see it now. Although the great
agents are still in operation, fire, water, storms, volcanoes, earth
quakes, «fcc, their ultimate effects, if not mitigated in force, are
spread through such a range of time, that human life is too limi
ted to cover an extensive cycle of geological changes ; the entire
period since man was created is, in comparison, with geological
eras, but a brief space, and does not begin to bear any proportion
to eternity. We have therefore, no reason to suppose that the
earth has undergone any such changes, as to affect materially the
integrity of its entire crust, since man appeared in the world.
It is true that events are in progress by which a series of
fragmentary and fossilized if not of crystallized rocks is forming
anew, and they may in time be elevated above the waters of the
existing seas, while fresh-water deposits may in turn be drained ;
this world may last so long, that new continents may arise, where
there is now a wild waste of waters, and far more ample space of
redeemed land may be provided for the human family, without
materially abridging the great highway of nations over the seas.
There is no intimation in Sacred History, that any such events
happened between the creation and the deluge, and it is obvious
that the sparse population of the antediluvian world did not require
more territory, especially when the existing races, with the excep
tion of a few individuals, were soon to be consigned to the bosom
of the deep, and all the continents and islands when again re
deemed from water, were about to be given, in full dominion, to
a single family. Although but one fourth part of the land of our
world is, to this hour, reclaimed from the ocean, the population ot
the human family is far from occupying it all. Few countries are
as yet peopled to the extent of their means of support, and it will
require ages of peace and pure morals and effective industry, before
more room will be demanded. We cannot therefore suppose, that
a new continent would be elevated, until there should be a neces
sity for its appearance, and as nothing in sacred or profane history
or in the structure of the earth intimates that such an event has
happened, we feel quite certain that the great geological arrange
ments were accomplished before the human era,

88
4. It has been supposed that a general deluge will account for
all geological events. — In the progress of the preceding remarks
we have already had occasion to express a decided opinion on this
subject, and it now remains only to sum up the argument.
This view is entirely inadmissible, except as to those superficial
ruins which are commonly spoken of as diluvial. In using this
term, geologists do not intend to imply, that these ruins are, of
course, attributable to the deluge of the Scriptures.
In geology, a deluge is a rise .and overflow of water. It has
no exact limit in time, altitude or violence. A rain, a snow thaw,
an outburst of a lake, a tide, a gale, or a whirlwind, may pro
duce an overflow, but it is not usual to call the event a deluge
unless the elevation has been both sudden and considerable.
Were the barrier which forms the falls of Niagara to be suddenly
ruptured, Lower Canada, New England and New York would be
deluged ; but the remarkable accumulation of water in the late
seasons in the great lakes, in consequence of which they over
flowed many buildings and many square miles of territory was
not called a deluge.
The facts revealed by geology demand many partial deluges,
and they are admitted by all geologists, with greater or less ex
tent, to account for the transport and deposition of those things
which water alone, or water aided by ice could convey. It is
necessary also to suppose, that both fresh and salt water, either by
their rising or by the subsidence of land, have alternately prevailed
and retired, after continuing an indefinite period ; sufficiently
long, however, to give time for the various animals and plants,
marine, littoral, pelagian, fluviatile, or lacustrine, which we find
in successive strata, to be deposited and entombed. Igneous
action, giving rise, in its vicissitudes, to subterranean expansion
and shrinking, heaving and collapses, was the probable cause of
these alternate movements.
Our concern, however, in the discussion under this head, is not
with those regular formations which demand long continued en
ergy of physical powers, and corresponding time to produce the
effects ; but it is with the general deluge, described in the book
of Genesis, because we are writing for the sake of those who
believe in the genuineness and authenticity of that history.

89
From the whole course of our argument, it is obvious, that the
regular geological formations cannot be ascribed to that short and
transient catastrophe. Its genuine effects are exactly those
which all geologists ascribe to diluvial action ; namely, the trans
portation of the loose ruins of mineral masses, and of the organic
world, which are found strewed every where over the surface of
the earth, or buried in its diluvium.
Professor Buckland, in his Reliquiae Diluvianae, has most ably
illustrated the nature and effects of diluvial action ; and it is ob
vious, that the former practice of attributing the organized re
mains found in the solid strata of the earth to this catastrophe, is
founded entirely in an imperfect acquaintance with the subject,
and that no man, who had studied geology thoroughly, would, at
the present period, fall into such an error.
As the impression has gone abroad that Professor Buckland has
deserted the opinions which he formerly maintained, we give him
an opportunity to speak for himself. " The evidence (says he)
which I have collected in my Reliquiae Diluvianae, 1823, shows,
that one ofthe last great physical events that have effected the sur
face of our globe was a violent inundation, which overwhelmed
a great part of the northern hemisphere, and that this event was
followed by the sudden disappearance of a large number of the
species of terrestrial quadrupeds which had inhabited these re
gions in the period immediately preceding it. I also ventured to
apply the name Diluvial, to the superficial beds of gravel, clay
and sand, which appear to have been produced by this great ir
ruption of water.
" The description of the facts that form the evidence presented
in this volume, is kept distinct from the question of the identity
of the event attested by them with any deluge recorded in his
tory. Discoveries which have been made since the publication
of this work, show, that many of the animals therein described, ex
isted during more than one geological period preceding the catas
trophe by which they were extirpated. Hence it seems more
probable that the event in question was the last of the many geo
logical revolutions that have been produced by violent irruptions
of water, rather than the comparatively tranquil inundation de
scribed in the inspired narrative.

90
" It has been justly argued, against the attempt to identify these
two great historical and natural phenomena, that as the rise and
fall of the waters of the Mosaic deluge are described to have been
gradual and of short duration, they would have produced com
paratively little change on the surface of the country they over
flowed. The large preponderance of extinct species among the
animals we find in caves, and in superficial deposits of diluvium,
and the non-discovery of human bones along with them, afford
other strong reasons for referring these species to a period anterior
to the creation of man. This important point, however, cannot
be considered as completely settled, till more detailed investiga
tions of the newest members of the Pliocene, and of the diluvial
and alluvial formations, shall have taken place."*
It appears then, that there is no other change in Prof. Buck-
land's views than what is common to the geological world, viz.
that amidst the vast exuberance of diluvial remains, it is impos
sible to appropriate to the general deluge, those that belong to it,
rather than to more local debacles, and to those of a different era.
It is not to be supposed that all deposits of gravel, sand, peb
bles, <fcc. are attributable to the deluge of the Scriptures, for
it is beyond our power to identify the particular piles and scat
tered ruins. It is sufficient to say, that as the earth bears
every where, marks of diluvial action, and is in every country
strewed with diluvial ruins, each observer will, for himself, assign
to local deluges, or to a general debacle, as great a portion of the
effects as may in his view belong to each. Scepticism cannot
nullify or set aside the evidence, while the most reverent mind
need not desire it to be more ample, nor is he who attributes di
luvial remains, in many instances, to other diluvial events, to be
censured, or regarded as an enemy to religious truth.
To those who would assign to the agency of a general deluge
the vast work of depositing the immense consolidated geological
formations, with all their varied stores of animals, and plants, and
fragments, and diversified successions, we can only repeat the
opinion already expressed, that such effects, from such a cause,
* Bridgewater Treatise, 2d Lond. edit., p. 93, note.

91
are physically impossible, especially within the limits of time and
under the circumstances assigned in the Mosaic account. It is
not necessary to go again into the induction of particulars.
We are however still of the opinion, that the actual disposition
and arrangement of no small portion of the loose materials is to be
attributed mainly to a diluvial ocean — no other probable cause
being capable of reaching the regions remote from, and elevated
above the present great waters of the globe, while the outline, and
in many instances the mass of these deposits, must have been
often disturbed by subsequent events.
The arrangement of the loose materials, on shores and in out
lets, and in regions occasionally flooded, is to be referred to agen
cies now in operation.
It is also true, that water-worn pebbles are produced at the
present time. No one who, on the sea shore, has observed the
incessant lashing of the waves, and has listened to the hollow
hum of the stones and pebbles rubbing against each other, with
ceaseless friction, can doubt, that rounded, water-worn pebbles,
are now every moment forming ; and were they found no where
else, except on the shores, and in moving waters, tbere would
generally be no difficulty in assigning their origin to this cause.
But rounded stones, water-worn pebbles, and bowlders, are found
in every country, on the surface and in the soil, and in regions
the most remote from the ocean. This of course proves the uni
versal prevalence, sooner or later, at once or successively, of agi
tated waters.
Why not, says an inquirer, attribute the rounding, as well as
the position of the inland water- worn stones to the diluvial ocean ?
The obvious answer is, that the time allotted to the deluge de
scribed in Genesis is too short for the process of grinding down
hard stones, which would necessarily occupy a very long period.
A deluge attended by rapid currents and by floating ice could
transport immense masses of these ruins, and deposit them where,
to a great extent, we now find them ; but it was not possible that
it could, in so limited a period, have effected much, in abrading
the angular fragments of quartz, topaz,* and other hard stones,
* Found on a beach in New Holland. We have a topaz pebble from these
shores which is perfectly ovoidal.

92
into ovoidal and globular pebbles and bowlders. That effect ap
pears to have been, principally, the work of the earlier oceans.
The form of the loose materials that cover the rocks, more or
less, in every country, is attributable chiefly to the wearing ef
fects of agents, operating, in all time, to produce disintegration
and decomposition ; their present position may, in many cases,
be fairly attributed to diluvial agency.
An ingenious author, Mr. Penn, convinced that the deluge
could not account for the geological successions, has supposed
them to be formed in the ocean, between the creation of man
and the deluge, at which time the then existing land was, as he
thinks, sunk, and the bed of the ocean raised, to form our pres
ent continents, bringing up, of course, all the marine deposits of
sixteen centuries.
It is not necessary to discuss this theory. It is disproved by the
discovery in caverns, and in the loose wreck, on the surface of the
ground, of immense deposits of the bones of terrestrial animals,
which have not, within the limits of human knowledge, lived in
those countries where they are now found, and many of which
could not exist in the present climates of those regions ; for in
stance, the tropical animals, elephants, tigers, hyenas, hippopotami,
rhinoceros, &c, are found now abundantly in the diluvium of Eng
land, and consequently England was dry land before the deluge
that buried these remains, and therefore the existing continents
have not been raised from the ocean since the creation of terrestrial
quadrupeds, unless they were submersed after that epoch and then
raised again. Of this there is not only no proof but the opposite
is proved, because the diluvium is not covered by marine strata.
Nor is it possible that the drowned quadrupeds of tropical regions
should, by drifting, have reached England, and other countries
still farther north, without decomposition and falling to pieces.
The coal beds also present indubitable proofs of having been
formed from terrestrial vegetables, and therefore the regions where
they are could not have been submarine, although the occurrence
in coal-fields of some marine shells or plants may prove, that at
the coal period there were islands and estuaries, where the sea had
at least occasional access. Had the continents been again sub
mersed and the bottom of the sea raised, after the creation of man,

93
we should find in the surface of the present crust, nothing but
marine remains, which is contrary to the fact.
The existence of scratches and furrows* upon many rocks, (pro
bably upon all when the diluvium is first removed from them,) ap
pears to prove, that they have been subjected to movements of heavy
bodies passing over them, either rolling down inclined surfaces, or
forced along by floods, or pushed by glaciers, or dragged by moving
ice, in which stones and rocks are very often frozen. The direc
tion of these scratches on this continent, as well as in Europe, is
such as to give the idea of a current or irruption from the north.
If the general deluge were a gentle movement, as Dr. Buckland
now supposes, it could, as he justly observes, have produced very
little alteration on the surface of the earth. If violent and rapid,
then the effects would not have been forming, but destroying.
This is not the place to discuss the question of its literal uni
versality. Many theologians have supposed that it was no far
ther universal than to accomplish its great object, the destruc
tion of the existing races, except the reserved few. If it were
strictly universal, and the highest mountains now known were
literally covered to a considerable depth, it will be found that
its rise must have been fearfully rapid, far transcending the
most violent tides and bores with which we are acquainted, and
that it would then be well adapted to harrow up the surface of
the ground, and to transport and disperse its ruins, far and wide,
over distant countries.
Upon either view, however, the deluge could never have pro
duced the regular formations of the crust of the earth, and there
fore, as regards this question, we may dismiss it from our con
templations. We conclude this head by observing, that the remains of
the human family, if buried in the diluvium of that period,
may, in most instances, have been covered too deep for discov
ery, or have been swept into the sea ; or if found in any instan
ces, it is not probable that they would be distinguished from
* See an interesting paper by Mr. T. A. Conrad on the subject of the transfer of
bowlders, &c. in the Am. Jour., Vol. xxxv, p. 237. Also an admirable memoir by
Prof. Agassiz on glaciers, moraines, and erratic blocks. — Jameson's Edini. Jour.,
Vol. xxiv, p. 364. 13

94
bones buried in any other way, especially in countries like those
which were then the principal seats of the human population ;
countries in which there has been since, no enlightened curiosity
to prompt an intelligent research. We are not, at present, con
cerned to remove sceptical objections to the Scripture account of
the deluge ; we take it for granted that it is true, but the friends
of the Bible sometimes suggest a question with respect to the in
humed human bones of that period, and this difficulty we wish
to remove. 5. The divisions of time called days in the Ge?iesis are not ne
cessarily restricted to twenty four hours, but may be understood to
be periods of indefinite length. — This view was supported, a few
years since, by that eminent geologist, Professor Jameson, of the
University of Edinburgh, in a comment upon the lectures of the
illustrious Cuvier. We quoted the observations of Prof. Jameson,*
in discussing the subject, in connexion with our edition of Mr.
Bakewell's Geology, in 1833, and we shall make use of some of
them on the present occasion. Cuvier remarks : —
" The books of Moses show us, that he had very perfect ideas
respecting several of the highest questions of natural philosophy.
His cosmogony especially, considered in a purely scientific view,
is extremely remarkable, inasmuch as the order which it assigns
to the different epochs of creation, is precisely the same as that
which has been deduced from geological considerations."
" This, then, is the issue, in the opinion of Baron Cuvier, of that
science, which has been held by many persons to teach conclu
sions at variance with the Book of Genesis, — when at last more
matured by a series of careful observations and legitimate induc
tion, it teaches us precisely what Moses had taught more than
three thousand years ago."
We have already remarked, that the coincidences in the Mosaic
account of the creation with the truths of geology, are the more
valuable, because they are merely incidental to the main object of
the history, which was to show that the world had a beginning,
and was not eternal, to vindicate the claims of the Creator, as its
author and governor, to point out the original state of the globe,
and its progress towards a habitable condition, by the emergence
* Am. Jour. Vol. xxv, p. 26.

95
of the land, — to indicate the commencement of life, the order in
which the principal classes of animated beings first appeared, and
the final redemption of so much of it from the waters as was
necessary to prepare it for man, whose creation consummated
these astonishing displays of almighty power. Perhaps the claims
to a perfect coincidence between geology and the sacred history,
have been sometimes made in terms rather too unqualified. It
is sufficient that there is a perfect coincidence in the great points,
and inconsistency in nothing. A want of agreement has been
stated as regards the priority of the animals of the transition
rocks, in as much as they are found in deeper strata than the vege
tation of the great coal period, whereas the vegetables are first
named in the Mosaic account, and the earliest fossilized animals,
actually found, are not mentioned at all. In regard to the vegeta
bles, there is good reason to believe that they were at least as
early as any animals ; vegetables are found, more or less, through
the whole transition series, in which the trilobites, orthocerae, en-
crinites, corallines and mollusca, first appear ; and we may pro
bably regard plumbago as the result of vegetable matter, so per
fectly carbonized as to have entirely expelled all the gases, and to
have destroyed the traces of vegetable structure, — an opinion
which is entertained by many geologists. Upon this view, vege
tables will take the highest rank in organic antiquity, since plum
bago, and even anthracite, are found in some of the slaty rocks of
the granite family, anterior to the first appearance of any animals.
With respect to the silence of the history as to the very first
animals, it may be said, that a brief narrative concerning the stu
pendous work of the creation, comprised within the limits of a
single page, could not be expected to contain the minute details
of natural history, and less important families would therefore
naturally be omitted. Where in the history, is there mention
made of infusorial animalculae, any more than of the animals of
the transition rocks ? But as we cannot dispute the existence of
these beings, both fossil and recent, there can be no doubt that
their originals were really created. If in every other particular,
this surprising history is consistent almost with the letter of the
facts, and for so general a sketch, remarkably complete, it may
well excite our admiration and gratitude. Professor Jameson
proceeds : —

96
" The first chapter of Genesis is written in a pure Hebrew.
This was the language spoken, and afterwards extensively writ
ten, by the people whom Moses conducted to Palestine from the
land of Goshen. That it differed greatly from the language of
the Egyptians, we have full proof in the Coptic remains of the
latter, iu the Egyptian proper names preserved in the Hebrew
writings, and also in the circumstance that. Joseph, when pretend
ing to be an Egyptian, conversed with his brethren by means of
an interpreter. Yet in the chapter in question, we find no foreign
terms, no appearance of its being translated from any other tongue ;
but, on the contrary, it bears every internal mark of being purely
original, for the style is condensed and idiomatical in the very
highest degree. Had Moses derived his science from Egypt, ei
ther by oral communication or the study of Egyptian writings,
it is inconceivable that some of his terms, or the style of his com
position, should not, in some point or other, betray the plagiary or
copyist. " But the conjecture that Moses borrowed his cosmogony from
the Egy tians, must rest, moreover, on a supposition that the order
which he assigns for the different epochs of creation, had been de
termined by a course of observation and induction, and the cor
rect application of many other highly perfected sciences to the
illustration of the subject, equal at least in their accuracy and
philosophical precision, to those by which our present geological
knowledge has been obtained. Nothing less than this can account
for Moses' teaching us precisely what the modern geology teaches,
if we allow his knowledge to be merely human. How comes it to
pass, then, that while he has given us the perfect and satisfactory
results, he has been enabled so totally to exclude from his record
every trace of the steps by which they were obtained? The
supposition of such perfection of geological knowledge in ancient
Egypt, implies a long series of observation by many individuals,
having the same object in view. It implies of necessity, also, the
invention and use of many defined terms of science, without
which there could have been no mutual understanding among
the different observers, and of course no progress in their pursuit.
These- terms have all totally disappeared in the hands of Moses.
He translated, with precision, the whole science of geology into

97
the language of shepherds and husbandmen, leaving no trace
whatever of any one of its peculiar terms, any more than of the
curious steps in its progress.
"But there is a phenomenon in his record still more unaccount
able, upon any supposition that his science is merely human. His
geology, acknowledged by the highest authority in this age of
scientific improvement, to be thus accurate, dwindles down in his
hands to be a merely incidental appendage of the most rational
and sublime theology. This latter he did not learn in Egypt, for
it was in the possession of his ancestors while they were yet in
habitants of Canaan.
" Shall we then conjecture, that Moses borrowed theology from
the Hebrews on the one hand, and geological science from the
Egyptians on the other, to compound out of them that brief, but
unique and perfect system of both, which is presented to us in
the first chapter of Genesis ; or, is it possible that we could adopt
any conjecture more absurd, and this, too, in utter destitution of
all proof that the Egyptians possessed any knowledge of geology
in the sense in which we use the term ?
" The result of our inquiry is, that the geology of Moses has
come down to us out of a period of remote antiquity, before the
light of human science arose ; for, to suppose that it was bor
rowed from, or possessed by any other people than the remarka
ble race to which Moses himself belonged, involves us, on all
hands, in the most inextricable difficulties and palpable absurdi
ties. Of that race, it has been long since justly remarked, that
while in religion they were men, in human learning and science
they were children ; and if we find in their records any perfect
system of an extensive and difficult science, we know they have
not obtained it by the regular processes of observation and induc
tion, which in the hands of European philosophers, have led to a
high degree of perfection , in many sciences."
Professor Jameson proceeds to remark : —
" The term, the meaning of which we shall first investigate, is
' day'' (in the Hebrew, yom. ) The interpretation of this, in the
sense ' epoch' or 'period,' has been a subject of animadversion,
of unnecessary severity in some cases. A careful examination of
the first chapter of Genesis itself, leads unavoidably to the con-

98
elusion, that our natural day of one revolution of the sun cannot
be meant by it, for we find that no fewer than three of the six
days had passed before the measure of our present day was estab
lished. It was only on the fourth day, or epoch of the creation,
that " God made two great lights to divide the day from the
night, and to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for
years.' The very first time that the term occurs in the Hebrew
text, after the history of the six days' work, and of the rest of the
seventh, as if to furnish us with definite information regarding its
true import, we find it employed in a similar manner to that in
which we must understand it here ; for, in Gen. ii, 4, we have,
' These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, in the
day (beyom) that the Lord God made the earth and heavens.'
The use of the term in this indefinite sense is so common in the
Hebrew writings, that it would be a great labor to quote all the
passages in which it is found ; and we shall satisfy ourselves by
at present referring to Job xviii, 20, where it is put for the whole
period of a man's life, ' They that come after him shall be aston
ished at his day,' (yomu,) speaking of the life of the wicked;
and Isaiah xxx, 8, where it is put for all future time, ' Now go
note it in a book, that it may be for the latter day (leyom) for
ever and ever.' "
We will here cite the following passages to the same intent.
Luke xvii, 24. — So also shall the son of man be in his day.
John viii, 56. — Your father, Abraham, rejoiced to see my day ;
and he saw it and was glad,
2 Peter iii, 8. — One day is" with the Lord as a thousand years,
and a thousand years as one day.
Job xiv, 6. — Turn from him, that he may rest till he shall ac
complish as an hireling his day.
Ezekiel xxi, 25. — And thou profane wicked prince of Israel,
whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end.
Proverbs vi, 34. — For jealousy is the rage of a man ; therefore
he will not spare in the day of vengeance.
" It is quite obvious, from these examples, that the Hebrews used
the term (yom) to express long periods of time. The very con
ditions of the history in this chapter, prove that it must be here
so understood."

99
" They who object to this interpretation of the term here, imme
diately quote against it the reason added to the fourth command
ment, ' For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea,
and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day, wherefore the
Lord blessed the Sabbath-day and sanctified it.' This is, how
ever, no more than a brief reference, and the terms of it must
therefore be strictly interpreted in accordance with those of the
detail to which the reference is made."*
" It has been said that such an interpretation goes to nullify the
reasons assigned for the sanctification of every seventh revolution
of the sun ; but this does not follow. In point of fact, the rest
from the work of creation (we use this form of speech from the
example before us) did not endure for only one revolution of the
sun, but has continued since the creation of man ; and we have
no grounds on which to establish even a conjecture of the time of
its coming to a close ; so that if we were urged to adopt a period
of twenty four hours as the meaning of yom, that the six days of
creation might literally correspond with our six working days, we
should then find the apparent disagreement, which, by this pro
cess, we would endeavor to avoid, transferred to our weekly pe
riod of rest, and the rest from the work of creation."
"It will surely be readily allowed, that the sanctification ofthe
Sabbath has respect to man and his duties ; and since his Creator
has been made known to him, and the order of the six successive
epochs in which the earth was rendered fit for his habitation ; if
we are to allow, what surely no reflecting mind will ever deny,
that it is his duty to reflect with gratitude on the blessing he has
received, and to maintain in his heart a sense of his dependence
upon, and responsibility to him, who made the heavens and the
earth, and all that they contain, no method could have been de
vised better calculated for preserving these feelings in constant
activity, than appointing some definite portion of time, returning
at short intervals, to be devoted to the contemplations that awaken
them, nor any interval more appropriate than that which so di
rectly recalls the order of the events of the creation."
* In accordance also with the popular acceptation of the length of the days of
the creation, to which the allusions in the Scriptures are, every where, necessarily
accommodated.

100
" Since we have introduced the subject of the measure of our
present day, we would offer an observation regarding the work of
the fourth day, which includes the sun, moon and stars. Re
specting the period of their creation, geology, from its nature,
gives us no precisely definite indications. The history regarding
them is from the 14th to the 18th verses, and we would observe
of it, that the terms employed are such as do not absolutely im
ply that these bodies were at this epoch first created, but admit
of the interpretation that their motions were then first made the
measures of our present days and seasons. We had found it al
ready stated in the first verse, that the heavens and the earth
were created in the beginning, antecedently to the work of six
days, by which they were reduced to their present order, and the
earth was peopled with organized beings. It would seem an un
warrantable interpretation to exclude the sun, moon and stars from
among the objects expressed by the general terms, the heavens
and the earth. It is the most obvious interpretation, that they
were then created, and were lighted up on the first day, but that
it was only during the fourth epoch they were made, the greater
light to rule over the present day, and the lesser light to rule over
the present night, and to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days
and years, according to the measures of time, which we now find
established by them. This part of the history, then, when inter
preted in consistency with the first verse, and without any vio
lence to the terms, implies, (in the common language of men,
which, in all nations, refers the diurnal and annual revolutions of
the heavenly bodies to the motions of these bodies themselves,)
that the earth was, during this epoch, finally brought into its pres
ent orbit."
" The work of the third epoch was the appearance of the dry
land, and the creation of the vegetable kingdom."
In following Professor Jameson, we shall here omit his critical
remarks on the meaning of the Hebrew words in the original
history, of the correctness of which Hebrew scholars will judge,
and proceed at once to his conclusion, which is that it is very
probable the cryptogamous vegetation was the first created ; and
this corresponds sufficiently well with the prevailing character of
the earliest plants. This is a remarkable epoch, when the waters

101
were gathered together into one place, and the dry land began to
appear; or, in geological language, the first mountain top raised
its crest above the waters of that shoreless ocean. Before this
period, there could have been no terrestrial plants, for there was
neither soil nor fixture. Internal fire, doubtless, lifted the emerg
ing islands and continents, while the desolation of the universal
waters began to be cheered by the verdure of plants, the beauty of
flowers, and the fragrance of fruits. Not far from this period also,
as we learn from their fossilized remains, were created those early
animals, which being entirely immersed in the ocean, and destined
never to raise themselves above its surface, made no figure in the
drama of creation, and are therefore passed over in silence in the
brief roll-call of beings that were first called into life. In pro
ceeding to those animals which are next announced, our author
arrives at some important conclusions that appear worthy of great
confidence. Omitting his criticisms, as before, we give the results.
The creations of the fifth epoch are evidently not great whales,
as usually understood, but great reptiles ; and the entire work of
the fifth day appears to have included things that rapidly multi
plied in the waters, great reptiles, birds, and winged insects. This
corresponds wonderfully with the contents of the rocks* belonging
to this period, the animals being altogether oviparous, and none
of them viviparous.
Lastly, in the sixth period, the terrestrial animals, mammalia
and man, are called into being, and we know how well this agrees
with the contents of the upper strata, where alone (with a solitary
exception) viviparous animals are found, and man no where ex
cept at the surface. The following table of geological coinciden
ces, drawn up by Professor Jameson, may need a few additions and
alterations to accommodate it to more recent observations, but is
still mainly correct.

* In our remarks upon the successive rock formations, we have purposely omit
ted any allusion to the metamorphic theory espoused by the Huttonian school,
ably illustrated by Mr. Lyell, and carried to an incredible extreme by Prof. Keilhau
in his account of the rocks around Christiana, Norway, where, according to him,
granite passes, by insensible gradations, into slates replete with organic remains.
His observations are very curious, and many of them original, but they will de
mand a very strict revision. — See Jameson's Edinb. Jour. Vol. 25, pp . 80 — 203.
14

102

Table of Coincidences between the Order of Events as described in Genesis, and
that unfolded by Geological Investigation.

In Genesis.

Discovered by Geology.

Gen. I. 1,2. In the begin
ning Ood created the heav
ens and the earth. And the
earth was without form and
void ; and darkness was up
on the face ofthe deep ; and
the Spirit of God moved up
on the face of the waters.
3, 4, 5. Creation qf light
6, 7, 8. Creation of the ex
pansion or atmosphere.
9, 10. Appearance of the
dry land.

It is impossible to deny, that the waters of the
sea have formerly, and for a long time, covered
those masses of matter which now constitute our
highest mountains ;

and,
further, that these waters, during a long time, did
not support any living bodies. — Cuvier's Theory of
the Earth, sect. 7.

H, 12, 13. Creation of
shooting plants, and of seed
bearing herbs and trees.

1. Cryptogamous plants in the coal strata.* — Ma
ny observers.
2. Species of the most perfect developed class,
the Dicotyledonous, already appear in the period of
the secondary formations, and the first traces of
them can be shown in the oldest strata of the sec
ondary formation ; while they uninterruptedly in
crease in the successive formations. — Prof. Jame
son's remarks on the Ancient Flora of the Earth.

14 to 19. Sun, moon and
stars made to be for signs,
and for seasons, and for
days, and for years.

-Hum-

20. Creation of the inhab
itants of the waters.

Shellst in Alpine and Jura limestone.-
boldt's tables.
Fish in Jura limestone. — Do.
Teeth and scales of fish in Tilgate sandstone. —
Dr. Mantell.

Creation of flying things.

Bones of birds in Tilgate sandstone. — Dr. Man-
tell, Geological Transactions, 1826.
Elytra (sheaths) of winged insects in calcareous
slate at Stonesfield. — Dr. Mantell.

21. The creation of great
reptiles.

It will be impossible not to acknowledge as a cer
tain truth, the number, the largeness, and the vari
ety of the reptiles, which inhabited the seas or the
land at the epoch in which the strata of Jura were
deposited. — Cuvier' s Ossem. Foss.
There was a period when the earth was peopled
by oviparous quadrupeds ofthe most appalling mag
nitude. Reptiles were the lords of creation. — Dr.
Mantell.

* It would appear that the earliest animals not named by Moses were cotempo-
rary with, perhaps subsequent -to, the first plants. — Ed.
t Shells are found also in the earliest periods in the transition ; the Jura lime
stone is coeval with the chalk formation. Fish are found below the coal, and in
the transition rocks. Tracks of birds and reptiles in new red sandstone, in Con
necticut and Germany. — Ed.

103

In Genesis.

3

Discovered by Geology.

24, 25. Creation ofthe
mammalia.

7
8
9

Bones of mammiferous land quadrupeds,* found
only when we come up to the formations above the
coarse limestone, which is above tbe chalk. t — Cu
vier's Theory, sect. 20.

26, 27. Creation of man.

No human remains among extraneous fossils. —
Cuvier's Theory, sect. 32.
But found covered with mud in cavest of Bize. —
Journal.

Genesis, VII. The flood
of Noah, 4200 years ago.

The crust of the globe has been subjected to a great
and sudden revolution, which cannot be dated much
farther back than five or six thousand years ago. —
Cuvier's Theory, 32, 33, 34, 35, and Buckland' s
Reliq. Diluv.

The following remarks in illustration of this table as a sum
mary of the subject, are too interesting to be omitted.
" In the above table we have not taken advantage of the distinc
tion, which we conceive we have gone far to prove is expressed
in the Hebrew text, between the cryptogamous and the other
classes of plants, but have set downt he whole vegetable kingdom
as forming only one element in the table. We shall also allow1
that the 4th, 5th, and 6th numbers may be liable to be inter
changed among themselves in respect of place, and shall hinge
no argument upon them farther than what arises from the cir
cumstance that they are all placed in one group. Yet, after these
abatements from the number of particulars, the coincidences here
shown between the order of the epochs of creation assigned in
Genesis, and that discovered by geology, are calculated to excite
the deepest attention. Human science, in the probability of
 w 
* It has been objected to the geological account of the death of animals found
in the rocks, that as death came into the world by sin, there could have been no
death until after the fall of Adam. Most evidently the death referred to is the
spiritual death of the human race ; we do not object to its being explained so as to
include also their physical death, but plainly it has no reference whatever to the
death of animals. The carnivorous regimen established among particular genera
of all the classes of animals, sufficiently proves that the death of some was indis
pensable to the continuance of others in life ; and Dr. Buckland has shown that
it is on the whole a dispensation of mercy, as the amount of animal enjoymen" is
thereby much increased as well as by their natural death; otherwise the wnild
would be overrun with aged and infirm races andlndividuals. — Ed.
t One solitary exception is since discovered in the calcareous slate of Stores-
field, in the bones of adidelphis, an opossum, belonging to a tribe of animals whose
position may be held to be intermediate between the oviparous and mammiferous
races. } And in Guadaloupe and Brazil, in a recent concretionary limestone. — Ed.

104
chances, as illustrated by La Place, has put us in possession of an
instrument for estimating their value ; and we feel amply entitled
to take advantage of it for that purpose, for no case could well
be pointed out where it would be more correctly applicable than
in this, where the coincidences assume a definitely successive
numerical form. We are entitled to adopt even the very language
of La Place, and to say, ' By subjecting the probability of these
coincidences to computation, it is found that there is more than
sixty thousand to one against the hypothesis that they are the
effect of chance.'*
" It is thus then that the discoveries of geology, when more ma
tured, instead of throwing suspicion on the truths of revelation,
as the first steps in them led some persons to maintain, have fur
nished the most overpowering evidence in behalf of one branch
of these truths. The result of these discoveries has been in this
respect similar to those of the Chinese and Egyptian histories
and the Indian astronomy, but much more striking. Eminent
men had pledged their fame in setting up these histories, and that
astronomy, in opposition to the chronology of Genesis ; but far
ther and more careful inquiry into their true characters, discovered,
that when rightly understood, they only tended to confirm it."
" We are not afraid that we shall have here quoted against us
the words of Bacon, ' Tanto magis haec vanitas inhibenda venit,
et coercenda, quia ex divinorum et humanorum, male sana ad-
mixtione, non solum educitur, philosophia phantastica, sed etiam
religio haeretica.' We have only endeavored to illustrate and
point out the consequences of the statement of Baron Cuvier,
' that the order which the cosmogony of Moses assigns to the
different epochs of creation, is precisely the same as that which
has been deduced from geological considerations.' We ihave
been guilty of no improper mixing up of divine and human
things. We have examined the meaning of the terms" in the
first chapter of Genesis, in consistency with the acknowledged
rules of criticism, and only by the light contained within itself,
or that thrown upon it by the other books in the same lan
guage with which it is associated. The human science we
haye not extracted from any part of the Holy Scriptures ; we
* Syst. du Monde, book v, chap. 5.

105
have taken it simply as we find it in the works of eminent geol
ogists. As the latter is not a philosophia phantastica, but a deeply
interesting science, constructed by that method of careful obser
vation and cautious induction, which Bacon was himself the first
to recommend ; so neither can the sense of the Scriptures present
to us a religio haeretica. If our science, thus constructed, and
our religion speak so obviously the same language, as we see they
do on one important point, what else in the strictest application of
Bacon's philosophy, can we deduce from the circumstance, but
that both are certainly true ?"
" It does not come under our present subject to discuss the his
torical and moral evidences of the divine revelation of the Scrip
tures ; but both are so full, even to overflowing, and impose upon
us so many insuperable difficulties in the way of our being able
to account for the quality and consistency of these remarkable
books, excepting on the ground which has been all along assumed
by themselves, that they are of more than human origin, that in
estimating the accuracy of any part of the matters contained in
them, the fastidiousness of human science appears to be carried
to an unreasonable extent, not to take these evidences into calcu
lation. In this country,* where for a long period we have had the
Scriptures in our hands as a popular book, they among us who
have been the most eminent for human learning and science, and
whose fame has been in every view the most unsullied, have been
so convinced by the force of these evidences, that they have in
general been the most strenuous defenders of revelation."
" Will not human science, then, condescend to borrow some light
to direct the steps of its own inquiries, from a record the accuracy
of which it has itself proved, and which is supported by other
proofs of the highest order ? Or,f what should we say to the
illustrator of the relics of Pompeii and Herculaneum, who should
reject the light thrown on them by the letters of Pliny, authen
ticated as these are by the existing remains of the buried cities,
as well as the historical evidence which is proper to themselves."
* Scotland, but the author's remark applies with equal force in this country. —
Ed.
t This argument we attempted to illustrate in the early part of the present dis
cussion. — Ed.

106

RECAPITULATION.

The opinions of Professor Jameson illustrating the views of the
lamented Cuvier, being those that are satisfactory to ourselves,
we have quoted them with few omissions.
We now proceed to remark, that we are aware, from much
communication on this subject with eminent biblical critics and
divines, how tenacious they are, in common with the less en
lightened Christian world, of the common acceptation of the word
day. On points of verbal criticism we will not presume to speak
with great confidence, but from much consideration, aided by the
light both of criticism and geology, it does not appear to us ne
cessary to limit the word day, in this account, to the period of
twenty four hours.
1. This word could have no definite application before the
present measure of a day and night was established by the insti
tuted revolution of the earth on its axis, before an illuminated
sun, and this did not happen until the fourth period.
2. The word day, in accordance with the practice of all lan
guages, is used even in this short history, in three senses : for
light as distinct from darkness, for the light and darkness of a
single terrestrial revolution, or a natural day ; and, finally, for
time at large.
3. In the latter case then the account itself uses the word day
in the sense in which geology would choose to adopt it, that is,
for time or a period of time.
This latter fact appears to be overlooked or neglected by most
of those who have criticised the views of geologists, as Professor
Jameson justly remarks, "with an unnecessary severity ;" but
we have a right to hold them to this case, which is exactly in
point, being presented precisely where we should wish to find it,
and we shall therefore regard it as proving our point ; for in the
recapitulatory view of the creation in the beginning of the se
cond chapter of Genesis, allusion is made to the whole work, in
the expression "in the day that the Lord God made the heavens
and the earth."
4 If the canons of criticism require that one sense of the word
day should be adopted and preserved throughout the whole ac
count, how are we to understand this verse ? " These are the gen-

107
erations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in
the day that the Lord God made the heavens and the earth."
Which of the three senses shall we adopt ? If the most com
mon, then the whole work was performed not in six days, but in
one day — of twenty four horns in the popular sense ; but accord
ing to the geological views the work was done in a sufficient time,
be it more or less. The canons of criticism were made by man,
and may therefore be erroneous, or at least they may be errone
ously applied ; the world was made by God, and if the history
in question were dictated by him, it cannot be inconsistent with
the facts. Why then should we not prefer that sense of the word
used in the history itself, which is in harmony with the structure
of the globe ! It is said indeed by some critics, that the account
in the second chapter of Genesis is a different one from that in
the first ; but with this opinion the geologist, as such, can have
no concern ; and since he finds both accounts in a connected his
tory, he receives them as one.
It is agreed on all hands, that the Hebrew word here used for
day, although frequently used for time, usually signified a period
of twenty four hours ; and the addition of morning and evening
is supposed to render it certain that, in the present case, this is
the real sense and the only one that is admissible, especially as
this view is said to be supported by the peculiar genius of the
Hebrew language.
But, in all languages, whenever the subject requires, it is usual
to preserve this allusion to morning and evening, even when the
word day is used for time ; thus, when for instance we speak of
the life of a man as his day, in harmony with the rhetorical figure
we speak also of the morning and the evening of life.
In all ages, countries, and languages, as already remarked, this
sense of the word' day is fully sanctioned, and it is frequently so
used in the Scriptures.* Indeed, it might not be too much to
suppose that the arrangement by which the sun was to measure
time was not completed until the evening of the 4th day, and then
our difficulties will be confined to one day, namely, the 5th. The
first three days, obviously, could not have had the present measure
of time applied to them, and their morning and evening must there-
* See the instances already cited on page 558.

108
fore have been figurative ; an arbitrary division of time, accommo
dated to the advancing creation, and the work of arranging the crust
of the planet was so far finished by the evening of the 5th day, as
to fit it for the reception of terrestrial quadrupeds, which first ap
peared on the 6th day, and finally, man was created, as would
appear, at the conclusion of the same day ; of course, the great
geological revolutions, beneath the bed of the ancient ocean, must
have been so far finished on the 3d day that the continents be
gan to emerge, and thus dry land began to be provided not only
for vegetables, but for terrestrial quadrupeds and for man, neither
of which could, before this period, have existed on the earth.
All this was done before the present measure of time was applied ;
we do not say before there was light, for elementary light was
" the first born of the creation," nor even before the sun shone, but
before he was set " to rule over the day and over the night."
In the usual mode of understanding the account, all the im
mense deposits of coal, and of early vegetable remains and ma
rine animals, with their vast strata and mountains, the grand
mausoleums in which they lie entombed, must have been made
within seventy two hours, for there was no dry land until the 3d
day, and consequently no terrestrial vegetables ; they appeared on
that day, aquatic animals on the 5th, and land animals, with man,
on the 6th ; but the latter could not, as observed above, have
appeared until the continents had emerged.
According to the popular understanding, the transition and se
condary mountains with their coal beds, plants, and animals were
therefore formed, by physical laws, in two or three natural days,
which is incredible, because it is impossible.
We cannot conceive, therefore, that even the limitation of
morning and evening is decisive against the extension which we
would claim, and we are left at liberty to interpret the word day
in harmony with the facts of geology.
It is granted that Moses himself probably understood the word
day according to the popular signification, and as regards the his
tory in question, this sense is certainly the most obvious one to
every mind not informed as to the structure of the globe ; even
those who are learned on other subjects, but ignorant of geology,
always adopt, in this case, the literal and obvious meaning. This
however proves nothing ; for the truths of astronomy are in ex-

109
actly the same situation. Until the modern astronomy arose, no
one, whether learned or unlearned, entertained a doubt that the
earth is an extended plain ; that it stands on a firm foundation,
even on pillars, and that around it as a center, the sun and starry
heavens and the azure canopy, as a solid palpable firmament, re
volve, while the waters of the heavens descend through its win
dows.* Such is still the impression of barbarous nations, while few
even of the common people of enlightened countries would now
fall into so gross an error ; and no one in this age fears that he
shall, like Galileo, be thrown into prison for declining (on this
subject) to understand the Scriptures in their literal sense.f
It is objected as already stated, that as the sabbath is a common
day, and that as it is mentioned in the fourth commandment, and
in other parts of the Scriptures, in connection with the other six
days, they ought to be limited to the same time.
We cannot see that this consequence follows. The sabbath is
a moral enactment ; all that precedes was physical, relating merely
to the creation and arrangement of matter, and to irrational or
ganized beings ; the sabbath could have no relation to rocks and
waters, vegetables and animals : it was ordained for man, as a
rational being, to bring back his thoughts to his Creator by a day
which naturally recalls the great act of creation ; and in mercy as
a day of rest from labor both for him and for the animal races that
* For an admirable view of the inconsistencies of those who would adopt the
light of science as regards the firmament, the rains, and the starry host, and celes
tial space, and deny the same liberty to geology as regards extension of time, see
Am. Journ. of Science and Arts, Vol. xxx, p. 114, Sig. K.
t When the present system of astronomy was introduced, it met with the most,
violent opposition, and the following is the "Judgment pronounced at Rome, in
1622, only two hundred and seventeen years ago, on the Philosophy of Galileo, and
on the Philosopher himself, by the seven Cardinal Inquisitors." " To affirm that
the sun is in the center, absolutely immoveable, and without locomotion, is an
absurd proposition, false in sound philosophy, and moreover heretical, because it
is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture. To say that the earth is not placed in
the middle of the world, nor immoveable, is also a proposition absurd and false
in sound philosophy ; and considered theologically, is at least erroneous with re
spect to faith.'' " Whereupon Galileo so refuted, was compelled on his knees to
abjure, curse, and detest the absurdities, errors and heresies, which the sagacity of
the Cardinal Reviewers and Inquisitors had discovered in his writings." — Penn's
Compar. Estimate, fyc, 2d Ed. Vol. I, p. 37.
15

110
were to labor for him : it was a new dispensation, and although
the same word is applied both to this period and to those that pre
ceded, it does not appear to follow that the original periods were
then, as they are now, of the same length. As the first three
days that preceded the establishment of the relation between the
sun and the earth could have no measure of time in common with
our present experience, it appears to be no unwarrantable liberty
to suppose that they may have been of any length which the
subject matter may require, although those three days were also
verbally limited by morning and evening, and that at a period of
the creation when there could have been no morning and eve
ning, in the sense in which those words are now used. It is very
remarkable that the seventh day is not limited at all, either by
morning or evening, like the other days, and although it must
have been actually limited as to its beginning, it does not appear
that as a day of rest and cessation from the work of creation it is
even yet ended, after nearly 6000 years ; therefore as regards the
Supreme Being it has been already of that length, and we know
not when it will end.
The revolution of the earth on its axis in the presence of an
illuminated sun being necessary to constitute morning and eve
ning, it must also revolve with the same degree of rapidity as now,
in order to constitute such a natural day, with its morning and
evening, as we at present enjoy. But as already suggested, the
sun not being ordained to rule the day until the fourth of those
periods, it is not certain that even after this epoch, those early
revolutions of the earth on its axis were as rapid as now ; for
these might cease altogether, or be greatly increased in rapidity,
without affecting the planetary relations of the earth with the sun
and with the other members of the system. The historian, as he
must employ some term for his divisions of time, naturally adopt
ed one that he found in familiar use, but it appears, both from the
subject matter to which it is applied, and from the use made of it
in this very history, that the word day is not in the present case
necessarily restricted to its most common acceptation.
Is it asked whether Moses had any mental reservation, a double
sense for the word day — one for the common people and one for
men of science ; we answer that as it appears from his brief, sim-

Ill
pie and merely optical statement, that he had no astronomical
knowledge beyond what was current among the Egyptians of that
day, so it is almost certain that he had no geological knowledge
beyond the order of time and events in the creation which his
history exhibits. It is very probable that fossil and entombed
organized remains and fragmentary rocks, and indeed most of the
facts which geology has developed, were unknown to him, that
he had observed little on this subject beyond the annual sedi
mentary deposits of the Nile, and that, as he told a story for man
kind at large, he told it in the same spirit and with the same un
derstanding with which it is commonly received. This however
decides nothing more than in the case of all the sacred writers
who relate astronomical events, or who allude to astronomical ap
pearances in the vulgar sense, which is in direct contradiction to
the actual state of facts in astronomy ; whereas geology contra
dicts nothing contained in the Scripture account of the creation ;
on the contrary, it confirms the order of time and events, and re
quires only that the time should be sufficiently extended to render
it physically possible that the events should happen, without call
ing in the aid of miracles in a case where natural successions are
sufficient to account for all the facts.
It may be worthy of remark, that supposing that there are in
habitants at the poles of the earth, to them a day of light is six
months long, and a night of darkness is six months long, and the
day, made up of night and day, covers a year, and it is a day too,
limited by morning and evening.
So at the polar circles there is once in every year a continued
vision of the sun for 24 hours, and once in the year a continued
night of 24 hours ; while every where within the polar circles,
the days and the nights respectively are for six months, more than
24 hours long, extending even, as we advance towards the poles,
through the time of many of our days and nights. How are these
people to understand the week of the creation, if limited to the
popular view entertained in countries between the polar circles ?
In Mercury the day is 24£ hours long.
In Venus " over 23 " "
In Mars " 24h. 40m- "
In Jupiter " nearly 6 hours "

112
In Saturn the day is over 10 hours long.
In our Moon " a lunar month.
Thus it appears that the actual days of the planets differ con
siderably, and that of the earth* differs remarkably at and within
the polar circles, as those in lower latitudes differ very much from
each other.
The result of all our inquiries, then, is this.
We find that the geological formations are in accordance with
the Mosaic account of the creation ; but more time is required for
the necessary events of the creation than is consistent with the
common understanding of the days. The history therefore is
true, but it must be understood so as to be consistent with itself
and with the facts.
It is agreed on all hands, that there may be time enough for
the central rocks before the first day ; we have already given our
reason why we cannot throw back the creation of organized be
ings into the indefinite period that precedes the first day ; vege
tables and animals are introduced in connection with the days and
not before, and there is no reason to suppose that there has been
a double creation or merely a new arrangement of fragments and
ruins ; therefore if the days be regarded as periods of time, so as
to allow room for the events assigned to them, relating to organic
beings, and to the masses in which they are entombed, all diffi
culty is removed.
On the contrary, if they are restricted to the usual popular
sense, it is not physically possible that the events should have
happened within the time assigned ; but they did happen, and as
there was no call for miracles in cases where natural operations
alone were sufficient, there can be no doubt that sufficient time
was allowed.
It is scarcely necessary to remark, that when the order and ar
rangement of creation was fully finished, and man appeared on the
earth, the measures of time were, without doubt, finally estab
lished the same as now, and therefore we are not at liberty, as
* An eminent biblical critic and Hebraist, now in Europe, once remarked to me,
when speaking ofthe word day as used in the first chapter of Genesis, that the use
of the word in the three -first days was mere costume, (manner,) and if so in those
cases, why, added he, may they not be so considered in all ?

113
there is clearly no occasion, to regard them in any other than the
usually accepted sense.
It is no valid objection to the supposition of more time than is
commonly allotted to the week of the creation, that there were
no human beings to be spectators of the work. Even upon the
popular view they were excluded, because the human race did
not appear until the very last act of the creation. Had they,
however, been co-existent, they would scarcely have understood
what was passing, as most of the geological facts were veiled by
the ocean. But there were not wanting spectators ; God, and
angelic beings, far superior in intelligence and dignity to man,
looked on, while in the beautiful and highly figurative language
of the Scriptures — " the morning stars sang together, and all the
sons of God shouted for joy."*
Before closing these remarks, we will respectfully submit a few
suggestions for the consideration of two very different descriptions
of persons, namely, those who deny, and those who defend, the
truth of the Mosaic history.
To the former class, so far as they are geologists, we will say,
that, in relation to geology, any attempt to disprove the truth or
genuineness of the Pentateuch, and of Genesis in particular, is
wholly superfluous, and quite aside from any question that can,
in this age, be at issue between geologists. No geologist, at the
present day, erects any system upon the basis of Scripture history,
or any other history. Still, historical coincidences with natural
phenomena have always been regarded as interesting, because
they are mutually adjuvant and confirmatory. The letter of
Pliny, describing the death of his uncle, would have been true,
although Herculaneum and Pompeii had never been discovered ;
and it would have been true that those towns were overwhelmed
by a volcanic eruption, although the letter of Pliny had never
been written ; or being written, if it had been false as to the main
fact of the death of the elder Pliny, or of their having been an
eruption at the time assigned in that writing. But an authentic
letter exists describing the event, and as it coincides with the
facts revealed by the discovery of the buried cities, conviction
* In this summary we have found it necessary to repeat some remarks in a new
connexion.

114
flashes upon every mind, and the unexpected and beautiful co
incidence, like many of those that add strength to the evidence
in support of the sacred volume, affords one of those firm points
of reliance upon which our confidence reposes with delight. Now
if there is not sufficient proof in the appearance of the earth, that
it was for a long time covered by water, and that the waters de
posited, in the then forming strata and mountains, those organic
bodies, of aquatic origin, which we find entombed in them, then
no geologist of the present day would, in that character, on the
authority of the first chapter of Genesis alone, assume the fact of
terrene submersion, as the basis of his reasoning and as the foun
dation of a geological system.
In the same manner, if he find on the face of the earth no proofs
of diluvial devastation ; if there be nothing to evince, that mighty
rushing waters have torn up and transported to a distance the
movable materials of the surface ; then, as a geologist, he will
never assume the Mosaic account of the deluge as the basis of a
system of diluvial agency, any more than he will build similar
conclusions upon the poetry, fables, and mythology, or even upon
the history, of the ancients. But if he discover proofs, and those
too, generally admitted by well instructed geologists, of both the
stupendous events named above, or of a succession and diversity
of such events, sufficient, on the whole, to mark the entire earth
by the effects appropriate to each ; if then he finds a history of
high antiquity, and generally revered wherever known, describ
ing such a state of things as the condition of the planet reveals,
what rule of science or of philosophy can debar him from bringing
the two into comparison, for mutual illustration, as is always done
in the case of other antiquities. Why should any one object to
his applying the terms of the history, as he understands them, and
then measuring the phenomena by them, and them by the phe
nomena ? If they agree, surely, it is reasonable that conviction
should receive augmented strength in his mind. Should they,
however, disagree, the phenomena, if correctly observed and cor
rectly reported, will still be true, and the credit of the history will,
of course, be impaired. Should, moreover, the genuineness or
authenticity of the history be disproved, from other sources than
the phenomena, the latter will still remain in all the obstinacy of

115
immutable fact, which history may indeed illustrate, but cannot,
on the contrary, disprove. If the history, on the other hand, be
confirmed by the natural phenomena, it has then received the
greatest confirmation possible, and may well exult in so powerful
an ally.
Should it, in the case of the Pentateuch, be proved even, that
there was never any such person as Moses, or that the books that
pass under his name were written by others, or that they are com
pilations of ancient and vague traditions, or even of reputed or
real fables, this would not, in the least, affect the system of geo
logical truth that has been erected by an ample course of investiga
tion and induction. But, as long as the Mosaic history is admitted
to be both genuine and true, any geologist who receives the his
tory in that character, may, with strict historical and philosophical
propriety, illustrate the history by geology, and compare geology
with the history.
This he will do merely on the ground of historical and geolo
gical coincidence, and without drawing for the support of his sci
entific views upon any portion of his moral feeling, towards a
work which, as an individual, he may revere as a communication
from his Maker, for purposes far more important than the estab
lishment of physical truth.
To personal imputations on his motives, his science or his skill,
or on those of eminent philosophers with whom he has the honor
to think and to act, while he leaves the case, with the grand in
quest of the learned, the candid and the wise, he will reply in no
other manner than by expressing the hope that powerful and cul
tivated, but unbelieving minds, minds confiding implicitly in
physical, but sceptical with respect to moral truth, may be influ
enced to see the harmony of all truth, whether historical, moral
or physical, and to remember that man is, after all his acquire
ments in knowledge, a being, so darkly wise, although rudely
great, that he is constantly in danger of error, error against which
he should the more studiously guard when the physical subjects
which may be the objects of his study have also a high moral
relation. While, therefore, in geology, as well as in other scien
ces, we fully approve, and follow the course of rigid induction —
(the only safe and truly philosophical process of investigation, and

116
solid basis of physical truth,) we hold it to be entirely proper in
a scientific view, to avail ourselves of every apposite historical
fact, from whatever credible source it may be derived. Indeed,
no geologist hesitates to cite history, travels, personal narrative,
and even poetry and tradition, in confirmation or illustration of
earthquakes, floods, or volcanic eruptions ; of the rising or sinking
of islands ; of alluvial increase or destruction ; of ruptures of the
barriers of lakes ; of irruptions of the sea — or whatever other fact
may be the subject of his investigation. Why then should the
Scripture history form the only exception among historical au
thorities ?
Having made these suggestions to those geologists who are not
believers in divine revelation, we will now address a few remarks
to believers who are not geologists.
The subject before us is not one which can be advantageously
discussed with the people at large. A wide range of facts, a
familiarity with physical science, and an extensive course of in
duction, are necessary to the satisfactory exhibition of geological
truths, and especially to establish their connexion and harmony
with the Mosaic history. It is a subject exclusively for the
learned, or at least for the studious and the reflecting ; but as
regards their own mental furniture, it can no longer be neglected
with safety, by those whose province it is to illustrate and defend
the sacred writings. The crude, vague, unskilful, and unlearned
manner, in which it has been too often treated, when treated at
all, by those who are, to a great extent, ignorant of the structure
of the globe, or who have never studied it with any efficient
attention, can communicate only pain to those friends of the
Bible, who are perfectly satisfied, after full examination, that the
relation of geology to sacred history, is now as little understood
by many theologians, and biblical critics, as astronomy was in the
time of Galileo.
Non tali auxilio, non defensoribus istis, tempus eget !
There is but one remedy ; theologians must study geology, or
if they will not, or from peculiar circumstances, cannot do it, they
must be satisfied to receive its demonstrated truths from those who
have learned them in the most effectual way, not only in the cab
inet, but abroad on the face of nature, and in her deep recesses.

117
They will then be convinced that geology is not an enemy, but
an ally of revealed religion ; that the subject is not to be mastered
by mere verbal criticism; that faithful study must be applied
to facts, as well as to words, and that there is, at most, only an
apparent incongruity, an incongruity which vanishes before in
vestigation. The mode in which the subject is now treated, or rather neglect
ed or spurned by many theologians and critics, (not by all, for there
are honorable exceptions,) is not safe, as regards its bearing on the
minds of youth. If they go forth into the world in the stiffness of
the letter, and without the knowledge or proper application of the
facts, it is impossible that they should sustain themselves against
those who, with great knowledge, and no reverence, may too pow
erfully assail what they cannot defend. In the pulpit, however,
geology can be but very imperfectly explained, even by him who
understands it ; for it is impossible that he should there, intelligi
bly and adequately exhibit his proofs ; they rest on a multitude
of facts unknown to a common audience ; and they are too far
dependent on specimens, sections and other graphical illustrations,
to be understood in such circumstances, especially by those who
have enjoyed no mental preparation in kindred sciences, and in
courses of inductive reasoning. Since the subject has no other
connexion with our faith as Christians, than so far as it affects the
credibility of the early Scripture history, it is therefore wise, as
to the literal sense of the days, not to disturb the early and ha
bitual impressions of the common people, or even of the enlight
ened, who are ignorant of geology. Any discussion before such
audiences, and in such circumstances, will be misunderstood, or •
not understood at all, and will only prejudice the reputation of
the speaker without benefiting the hearer.
This, however, does not excuse the theologian from being fully
prepared to meet the subject in other places, and in situations
where it will be forced upon his attention. It is' a joart of the
panoply of truth, in which he should be fully clad, although he
may rarely draw his bow, and perhaps never let fly an arrow from
his appropriate watchtower.
As the case now stands, with respect to most theologians in
this country, the geological arguments in support of the Mosaic
16

118
history, although powerful and convincing, are unknown and
neglected, or they are denied, slighted and avoided ; and of course
they can be, and they actually are, by some few geologists, turn
ed, with too much success, against the sacred records ; it remains
with the defenders of those records to say, whether the purloined
weapons shall be returned to the armory whence they were stolen,
and from which they may be again drawn forth for efficient use
in support of the cause of truth.
Theologians who were trained before geology was understood,
and before it was possible to acquire, in our seminaries, an ade
quate knowledge of its elementary truths, are not included in
these remarks, and we are happy to observe the increasing atten
tion which is paid to the subject by some students in the sacred
science. After a long course of careful study on this subject, the study
of the earth in mines and mountains, as well as in books and
cabinets, we feel it our duty to declare, that this noble science
merits not the neglect with which it is frequently treated, nor
the reproaches and hostility with which it is too often assailed.
This mode of treatment will not destroy the facts, or for a mo
ment retard the progress of truth. Were the thunders of the
Vatican* now levelled at geology, as they were two centuries ago
at astronomy and some of its early cultivators, it would no more
avail than it then did. The march of truth is onward, and on
ward it will go. Denunciation, neglect or sneers, will not arrest
its course, nor can ignorance or misrepresentation long hold it in
dishonor. The Christian world must and will admit its estab
lished truths, and these truths teachers must learn, or their pupils
will leave them in the darkness which some appear to covet.
Kind communications and instructions will remove the doubts
and fears of those who are anxious lest old foundations of faith

* The Vatican stands acquitted on the present occasion, for it is a curious fact,
both in morals and science, that the lectures of the Rev. Dr. Nicholas Wiseman,
of the Catholic church, Principal of the English College, and Professor of the
University of Rpme, recently delivered in Rome itself, under the very eye if not
the listening ear of the Pontiff, contain a view of the connexion of geology with
the Scripture history, so truly catholic, and in the main, so just in science, that it
may well gratify a Christian geologist, and reprove many Protestant divines.

119
should be disturbed, and they will perceive that the*building does
not totter to its fall, but that new buttresses and props have fixed
it, more firmly than ever, on an immovable basis of physical as
well as moral demonstration.
These suggestions have been made with the sincere and earn
est hope of doing good, especially to those who greatly neglect a
subject of high interest, which it much concerns them to know.*
But it will be no new case, should a mediator between hostile
armies fail to conciliate either party, and only provoke the artil
lery of both ; nor would it create either surprise or displeasure,
should the writer of these remarks be regarded as an intruder on
consecrated ground. This ground, however, he considers as
common to all the friends of truth, and among geologists there
are not a few who regard the Scriptures with quite as high an
interest as physical science, and who are anxious to prove, that
where others discover only discord, there is a principle of har
mony, which a skilful hand may draw forth, in tones delightful
to all who have an ear to perceive and relish " the universal har
monies of nature."

* It is perhaps not improper to mention, that an eminent Hebrician and biblical
scholar, who had been trained up in the common opinions, which he had cherished
for many years, and had never doubted their correctness, was entirely convinced
on hearing a course of geological lectures, fully illustrated by specimens and draw
ings. With great candor he himself came out the next season, 1835, in a public
course of lectures on the subject of the creation, and in the same room, (that of
the Franklin Hall at New Haven,) avowing his conviction of the truth of our
geological views, fully vindicated the extension of time required by geology;
even in the days themselves, as well as in the antecedent period.
See also a very able and candid discussion of this subject in the comment of
Prof. Bush, late of the New York University, on the book of Genesis. We haz
ard nothing in predicting many conversions on this controverted subject, and ulti
mately perfect harmony between Christian geologists and Christian teachers.
The view taken by Prof. Bush corresponds, substantially, with that sustained
by Dr. Murdock, namely, that the long periods of the creation called days, may
have been made up of many shorter days, each having its morning and evening.
We are in no degree anxious as to the mode in which critics may furnish an ex
planation consistent with the requisite extension of time, provided the lime be asso
ciated with the successive creations and fossilization of the organic beings which
are truly medals of the ancient world.

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