SECTION I.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE EARTH'S STRATA, AND THEIR

AGGREGATE THICKNESS.

THE creation of the world, and the planetary system of which it forms a part, is an exercise of the Divine power so utterly beyond the conception of man, that, in speculating upon it, he is glad to throw around the whole the envelopment of infinitude, and filling his imagination with ideas of boundless space and indefinite duration, he endeavours to bring up his mind in some degree commensurate with the subject. It is in this way, perhaps, as well as from that innate love of novelty implanted in the breast, that the prevailing opinions of the present time seem to tend so much to the idea of an extreme antiquity of the globe beyond that definite period within which tradition and common belief has hitherto confined it.

Yet if it be pleasing for the mind to forego the trammels of authority, and, starting with a few striking phenomena, to track creation through a

revolving series of worlds till it is lost in the vague and indistinct boundaries of time; it is a no less singular, and perhaps as sublime, speculation, to think that this earthly scene of things, involving so much that is vast and important both in the moral and physical world, and occupying but a brief moment and a mere point of space in the great theatre of eternity, should yet have these points and limits accurately defined and indicated to the mental intelligences, for whose aid and use they are declared to have been created.

The very nature of the study, too, is such as to have a continual tendency to carry the mind beyond the sober boundaries of facts into the airy regions of hypothesis. For, laying aside the speculations of the cosmogonists, who have formed worlds out of red hot masses severed from the sun, or from fluid spheres of saturated water, or condensed nebulæ, which had hitherto floated as shapeless flocculi in space, there is in the study of the visible phenomena of the earth's strata, sufficient of wonderful interest to excite and warm the imagination. The remains of unknown plants and animals, which have been entombed for ages in the hard rocks, and which present themselves only in fragments and disjointed members, yet sufficiently distinct to indicate many kinds of being which no longer have an existence on the earth the exhumation of skeletons of unknown monsters, and the impressions

of the footmarks of others, which have glided like ghosts from this visible scene, but left indelible marks in our sandstones of their actual existence, at a remote period, on our coasts and marshes,—form a species of exciting antiquarianism, compared to which the relics of Herculanææum and Pompeii are but as a tale of yesterday.

It is from these circumstances that perhaps somewhat exaggerated views have been adopted regarding the size, structure, and relative antiquity of these organic bodies, and from thence that many discordant deductions have been made respecting the formation of the strata in which they have been discovered. We must also recollect that another source of perplexity in investigating the history of these strata is, that only a part is now visible to us; that, in the changes which have taken place on the earth's surface, much, if not the whole, of the original dry land has disappeared, and those portions which come under our inspection have evidently, for a considerable period, formed the bottom of the sea, and the successive layers have been accumulated, in a great measure, from the fragmentary portions or disintegration of earlier formed continents. Thus a very important chain of evidence in determining the earth's antiquity is lost to us. We can only now extend our investigations to―or, at least, geological investigations have only hitherto embraced those portions of strata

which have been formed successively from older existing strata; the outskirts, as it were, of former continents, which had gradually gone on extending their boundaries into the surrounding ocean.

Hence, facts connected with these circumstances early gave rise to theories of the successive appearance of the various classes and genera of plants and animals on the earth, beginning with the simplest, and ascending gradually to the more complicated; while more enlarged experience has shewn these theories to be quite unfounded. Indeed, reasoning à priori, and without regard to the indications presented in the fossiliferous strata, we would be inclined, on a review of the present system of things, to pronounce that the creation of all had been a coincident and simultaneous event. Thus, a general and minute harmony appears to subsist among all parts of nature: the relative proportion of land to water seems to be modified so as to produce the necessary amount of evaporation and rain; the composition of the gases of the atmosphere seems to be regulated by the nice balance of interchange which subsists between the proportion of animal respiration and vegetable absorption, so that the necessary amount of oxygen is not diminished, nor carbonic acid too largely accumulated. Thus, too, every vegetable has its own insects and other animals that feed on it; some peculiar to the root, others to the stem and leaves, while minute

animalcules, mounting along with the juices through the porous vessels, make lodgments for their eggs and their young in the seeds; thus completely identifying themselves with the germination and growth of the plants. Every animal, too, has its own appropriate parasites,-entozoa, which can live only within the bodies of larger animals, and whose origin and existence seem coeval with, and entirely dependent on, the bodies in which they are lodged.

And if we look beyond our terrestrial globe, we shall find that other links of connection bind it to the great solar system of which it forms a part; where its position, its laws of rotation, and attractive forces, all so intimately adjusted to meet and accommodate those of the other spheres, lead us at once to conclude that all had a simultaneous origin.

The opinions of those geologists who maintain the great antiquity of the earth, are formed from an inspection of its strata, which they find of such thickness as would indicate the lapse of millions of in its accumulation; and that, moreover, years through the successive layers of these strata, are found the remains of plants and animals, in such positions as would shew that successive kinds of them had lived and become extinct during the long intervals between the deposition of the first and last orders of strata.