history altogether, and freely exult in the fields of untrammeled speculation. There seems in all this an impatience of monotonous truths, a desire of novelty, and a panting for singularity of opinion, regardless of all the more rigid rules of sound philosophy. A venerable author,* on this subject, thus writes, "It is now thirty-five years since my attention was first directed to these considerations. It was then the fashion for science and for a large part of the educated and inquisitive world, to rush into a disbelief of all written revelation, and several geological speculations were directed against it. But I have lived to see the most hostile of them destroyed by their as hostile successors, and to observe that nothing which was of this character, however plausible at the moment of its appearance, has had any duration in human estimation, not even among the sceptical."-" Hence I continue in the belief, that whatever is true in fact and correct in inference, on the subject of geology, will be, in the end, found to be not inconsistent with the account of Moses, nor with the common meaning of the expressions he uses. There is certainly no appearance as yet that any contradictory theory will long survive its public annunciation. Magna est Veritas et prevalebit is the everlasting axiom. Truth and * SHARON TURNER, Sacred History of the world. vol. i. p. 38. truth only will obtain any immortality in the intellectual, and, therefore, in the literary and social world." It cannot be denied, however, that if the propounders of theories have been unsuccessful in their attempts, those who have taken the field with the avowed intention of supporting the Mosaical record have no less signally failed. Perhaps there could not be a better proof of the difficulty—the almost impracticability of the subject-than the fact that so many learned, and able, and pious men have devoted much thought to its investigation, and yet have come to such different and often lame conclusions. It has not been with the presumption of devising any new or final solution of the dilemma that the foregoing pages have been written, but with a humble attempt to place the different parts of the subject within the view of the general inquirer and student of geology, and rather to enter a caveat against hasty conclusions, than to bring the reader to any secure and stable haven of certainty. "Accustomed to trace the operation of general causes, and the exemplification of general laws, where the uninformed and uninquiring eye perceives neither novelty nor beauty, the Geologist walks in the midst of wonders; every object which falls in his way elucidates some principle, affords some instruction, and impresses him with a sense of harmony and order; while the observation of the calm, energetic regularity of Nature, the immense scale of her operations, and the certainty with which her ends are attained, tends irresistibly to tranquillize and reassure the mind, and render it less accessible to repining, selfish, and turbulent emotions." SIR J. HERSCHELL on the Study of Natural Philosophy. 125 SECTION I. EARLY HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. GEOLOGY is a science of comparatively modern date, and does not seem to have occupied much of the attention of the early philosophers. The investigation of the earth had not that attraction to the first inquirers after knowledge which the kindred science of astronomy claimed. And this is not to be wondered at, for from the first hour when man cast his eyes upon the starry firmament, an intense desire to know something of the wonders of the undefined and magnificent scene before him must have taken possession of his mind; and it was not till after the curiosity had been somewhat satiated on this subject, and after considerable progress had been made in the investigation of the organized world of plants and animals, that philosophers began to turn their attention to the structure of the earth on which they dwelt. Accordingly, among the early nations of mankind we find few traces of Geological research. |