PART I.

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THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS;

Or,

Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed.

by

HUGH MILLER

* * * * *

WORKS BY HUGH MILLER,

PUBLISHED BY

GOULD AND LINCOLN,

59 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON.

I.

THE OLD RED SANDSTONE;

OR, NEW WALKS IN AN OLD FIELD.

Illustrated with Plates and Geological Sections. 12mo, cloth. Price

$1.00.

"It is withal one of the most beautiful specimens of English

composition to be found, conveying information on a most difficult

and profound science, in a style at once novel, pleasing and

elegant."--DR. SPRAGUE, ALBANY SPECTATOR.

II.

MY FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND AND ITS PEOPLE.

With a fine Engraving of the Author. 12mo, cloth. Price $1.00.

A thrillingly interesting and instructive book of travels;

presenting the most perfectly life-like views of England and its

People to be found in the language.

III.

THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE CREATOR;

OR, THE ASTEROLEPIS OF STROMNESS.

With numerous Illustrations. With a Memoir of the Author, by Louis

Agassiz. 12mo, cloth. Price $1.00.

Dr. Buckland said HE WOULD GIVE HIS LEFT HAND TO POSSESS SUCH

POWERS OF DESCRIPTION AS THIS MAN.

IV.

MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS;

OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

With a full length Portrait of the Author. 12mo, cloth. Price $1.25.

This is a personal narrative of a deeply interesting and

instructive character, concerning one of the most remarkable men of

the age. It should be read and studied by every young man in the

land.

V.

TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS;

OR, GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES,

NATURAL AND REVEALED.

"Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field."--JOB.

With numerous elegant Illustrations. One volume, royal 12mo. Price $1.25.

This is the largest and most comprehensive geological work of this

distinguished author. It exhibits the profound learning, the

felicitous style, and the scientific perception, which characterize

his former works, while it embraces the latest results of

geological discovery. But the great charm of the book lies in those

passages of glowing eloquence, in which, having spread out his

facts, the author proceeds to make deductions from them of the most

striking and exciting character.

* * * * *

--> The above works may be had in sets of uniform size and style of

binding.

VALUABLE WORKS.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER: A VIEW OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES OF MODERN SOCIETY,

and the Result of Labor, Capital, and Skill. By CHARLES KNIGHT. American

edition, with Additions, by DAVID A. WELLS, Editor of "Annual of

Scientific Discovery," &c. With numerous Illustrations. 12mo, cloth.

$1.25.

This work is eminently entitled to be ranked in that class, styled,

"BOOKS FOR THE PEOPLE." The author is one of the most popular

writers of the day. "Knowledge is Power" treats of those things

Which "come home to the business and bosoms" of every man. It is

remarkable for its fullness and variety of information, and for the

felicity and force with which the author applies his facts to his

reasoning. The facts and illustrations are drawn from almost every

branch of skilful industry. It is a work which the mechanic and

artizan of every description will be sure to read with a RELISH.

This is a work of rare merit, and touches many strings of

importance with which society is linked together. No work we have

ever seen is better calculated to inspire and awaken inventive

genius in man than this. Almost every department of human labor is

represented, and it contains a large fund of useful information,

condensed in a volume, every chapter of which is worth the cost of

the book. It would be an act of manifest injustice to the community

for any editor to feel an indifference about commending this volume

to a reading public.--N.Y. CH. HERALD.

The style is admirable, and the book itself is as full of

information as an egg is of meat.--JOURNAL.

As teachers we know no better remuneration, than for them FIRST to

buy this book and diligently read it themselves; SECOND, to teach

to their pupils the principles of industrial organization which it

contains, and of the facts by which it is illustrated. It is one of

the merits of this book that its facts will interest youthful minds

and be retained to blossom hereafter into theories of which they

are now incapable. THIRD, endeavor to have a copy procured for the

district library, that the parents may read it, and the teachers

reap fruit in the present generation.--N.Y. TEACHER.

Contains a great amount of information, accompanied with numerous

illustrations, rendering it a compendious history of the subjects

upon which it treats.--N.Y. COURIER AND INQUIRER.

We commend the work as one of real value and profitable

reading.--ROCHESTER AMERICAN.

This work is a rich repository of valuable information on various

subjects, having a bearing on the industrial end social interests

of a community.--PURITAN RECORDER.

MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS; OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. BY HUGH

MILLER, author of "Old Red Sandstone," "Footprints of the Creator," "My

First Impressions of England," etc. 12mo, cloth. $1.25.

"This autobiography is quite worthy of the renowned author. His

first attempts at literature, and his career until he stood forth

an acknowledged power among the philosophers and ecclesiastical

leaders of his native land, are given without egotism, with a power

and vivacity which are equally truthful and

delightsome."--PRESBYTERIAN.

"Hugh Miller is one of the most remarkable men of the age. Having

risen from the humble walks of life, and from the employment of a

stone-cutter, to the highest rank among scientific men, everything

relating to his history possesses an interest which belongs to that

of few living men. There is much even in his school-boy days which

points to the man as he now is. The book has all the ease and

graphic power which in characteristic of his writings."--NEW YORK

OBSERVER.

"This volume is a book for the ten thousand. It is embellished with

an admirable likeness of Hugh Miller, the stone mason--his coat off

and his sleeves rolled up--with the implements of labor in

hand--his form erect, and his eye bright and piercing. The

biography of such a man will interest every reader. It is a living

thing--teaching a lesson of self-culture of immense

value."--PHILADELPHIA CHRISTIAN OBSERVER.

"It is a portion of autobiography exquisitely told. He is a living

proof that a single man may contain within himself something more

than all the books in the world, some unuttered word, if he will

look within and read. This is one of the best books we have had of

late, and must have a hearty welcome and a large circulation in

America."--LONDON CORRESP. N.Y. TRIBUNE.

"It is a work of rare interest; at times having the fascination of

a romance, and again suggesting the profoundest views of education

and of science. The ex-mason holds a graphic pen; a quiet humor

runs through his pages; he tells a story well, and some of his

pictures of home life might almost be classed with Wilson's."--NEW

YORK INDEPENDENT.

"This autobiography is THE book for poor boys, and others who are

struggling with poverty and limited advantages; and perhaps it is

not too much to predict that in a few years it will become one of

the poor man's classics, filling a space on his scanty shelf next

to the Autobiography of Franklin."--NEW ENGLAND FARMER.

"Lovers of the romantic should not neglect the book, as it contains

a narrative of tender passion and happily reciprocated affection,

which will be read with subdued emotion and unfailing

interest."--BOSTON TRAVELLER.

* * * * *

[Illustration: SPHENOPTERIS AFFINIS.

A Fern of the Lower Coal Measures.

(_Restored._)]

THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS;

Or,

Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed.

by

HUGH MILLER,

Author of "The Old Red Sandstone," "Footprints of the

Creator," Etc., Etc.

With Memorials of the Death and Character of the Author.

"Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field."--JOB.

Boston:

Gould and Lincoln,

59 Washington Street.

New York: Sheldon, Blakeman & Co.

Cincinnati: George S. Blanchard.

1857.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by GOULD AND

LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of

Massachusetts.

Electro-Stereotyped

by Geo. J. Stiles,

23 Congress St., Boston.

TO

JAMES MILLER, ESQ., F.R.S.E.

PROFESSOR OF SURGERY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.

MY DEAR SIR,

This volume is chiefly taken up in answering, to the best of its

author's knowledge and ability, the various questions which the old

theology of Scotland has been asking for the last few years of the

newest of the sciences. Will you pardon me the liberty I take in

dedicating it to you? In compliance with the peculiar demand of the

time, that what a man knows of science or of art he should freely

communicate to his neighbors, we took the field nearly together as

popular lecturers, and have at least so far resembled each other in our

measure of success, that the same class of censors have been severe upon

both. For while you have been condemned as a physiologist for asserting

that the human framework, when fairly wrought during the week, is

greatly the better for the rest of the Sabbath, I have been described by

the same pen as one of the wretched class of persons who teach that

geology, rightly understood, does not conflict with revelation. Besides,

I owe it to your kindness that, when set aside by the indisposition

which renders it doubtful whether I shall ever again address a popular

audience, you enabled me creditably to fulfil one of my engagements by

reading for me in public two of the following discourses, and by doing

them an amount of justice on that occasion which could never have been

done them by their author. Further, your kind attentions and advice

during the crisis of my illness were certainly every way suited to

remind me of those so gratefully acknowledged by the wit of the last

century, when he bethought him of

"kind Arbuthnot's aid,

Who knew his art, but not his trade."

And so, though the old style of dedication has been long out of fashion,

I avail myself of the opportunity it affords me of expressing my entire

concurrence in your physiological views, my heartfelt gratitude for your

good services and friendship, and my sincere respect for the

disinterested part you have taken in the important work of elevating and

informing your humbler countryfolk,--while at the same time maintaining

professionally, with Simpson and with Goodsir, the reputation of that

school of anatomy and medicine for which the Scottish capital has been

long so famous.

I am,

MY DEAR SIR,

With sincere respect and regard,

Yours affectionately,

HUGH MILLER.

TO THE READER.

Of the twelve following Lectures, four (the First, Second, Fifth, and

Sixth) were delivered before the members of the Edinburgh Philosophical

Institution (1852 and 1855). One (the Third) was read at Exeter Hall

before the Young Men's Christian Association (1854), and the substance

of two of the others (the Eleventh and Twelfth) at Glasgow, before the

Geological Section of the British Association (1855). Of the five

others,--written mainly to complete and impart a character of unity to

the volume of which they form a part,--only three (the Fourth, Seventh,

and Eighth) were addressed viva voce to popular audiences. The Third

Lecture was published both in this country and America, and translated

into some of the Continental languages. The rest now appear in print for

the first time. Though their writer has had certainly no reason to

complain of the measure of favor with which the read or spoken ones have

been received, they are perhaps all better adapted for perusal in the

closet than for delivery in the public hall or lecture-room; while the

two concluding Lectures are mayhap suited to interest only geologists

who, having already acquainted themselves with the generally ascertained

facts of their science, are curious to cultivate a further knowledge

with such new facts as in the course of discovery are from time to time

added to the common fund. In such of the following Lectures as deal with

but the established geologic phenomena, and owe whatever little merit

they may possess to the inferences drawn from these, or on the

conclusions based upon them, most of the figured illustrations, though

not all, will be recognized as familiar: in the two concluding Lectures,

on the contrary, they will be found to be almost entirely new. They are

contributions, representative of the patient gleanings of years, to the

geologic records of Scotland; and exhibit, in a more or less perfect

state, no inconsiderable portion of all the forms yet detected in the

rocks of her earlier Palæozoic and Secondary floras.

It will be seen that I adopt, in my Third and Fourth Lectures, that

scheme of reconciliation between the Geologic and Mosaic Records which

accepts the six days of creation as vastly extended periods; and I have

been reminded by a somewhat captious critic that I once held a very

different view, and twitted with what he terms inconsistency. I

certainly did once believe with Chalmers and with Buckland that the six

days were simply natural days of twenty-four hours each,--that they had

compressed the entire work of the existing creation,--and that the

latest of the geologic ages was separated by a great chaotic gap from

our own. My labors at the time as a practical geologist had been very

much restricted to the Palæozoic and Secondary rocks, more especially

to the Old Red and Carboniferous Systems of the one division, and the

Oolitic System of the other; and the long extinct organisms which I

found in them certainly did not conflict with the view of Chalmers. All

I found necessary at the time to the work of reconciliation was some

scheme that would permit me to assign to the earth a high antiquity, and

to regard it as the scene of many succeeding creations. During the last

nine years, however, I have spent a few weeks every autumn in exploring

the later formations, and acquainting myself with their peculiar

organisms. I have traced them upwards from the raised beaches and old

coast lines of the human period, to the brick clays, Clyde beds, and

drift and boulder deposits of the Pleistocene era, and again from these,

with the help of museums and collections, up through the mammaliferous

crag of England, to its Red and its Coral crags. And the conclusion at

which I have been compelled to arrive is, that for many long ages ere

man was ushered into being, not a few of his humbler contemporaries of

the fields and woods enjoyed life in their present haunts, and that for

thousands of years anterior to even their appearance, many of the

existing molluscs lived in our seas. That day during which the present

creation came into being, and in which God, when he had made "the beast

of the earth after his kind, and the cattle after their kind," at length

terminated the work by moulding a creature in his own image, to whom he

gave dominion over them all, was not a brief period of a few hours'

duration, but extended over mayhap millenniums of centuries. No blank

chaotic gap of death and darkness separated the creation to which man

belongs from that of the old extinct elephant, hippopotamus, and hyæna;

for familiar animals such as the red deer, the roe, the fox, the wild

cat, and the badger, lived throughout the period which connected their

times with our own; and so I have been compelled to hold, that the days

of creation were not natural, but prophetic days, and stretched far back

into the bygone eternity. After in some degree committing myself to the

other side, I have yielded to evidence which I found it impossible to

resist; and such in this matter has been my inconsistency,--an

inconsistency of which the world has furnished examples in all the

sciences, and will, I trust, in its onward progress, continue to furnish

many more.

EDINBURGH, DECEMBER, 1856.

[The last proofs of this preface were despatched by the Author to his

printer only the day before that melancholy termination of his life, the

details of which will be found in the "MEMORIALS" following.--AM.

PUBLISHERS.]

CONTENTS.

PAGE

MEMORIALS OF THE DEATH AND CHARACTER OF HUGH MILLER, 7

LECTURE FIRST.

THE PALÆONTOLOGICAL HISTORY OF PLANTS, 33

LECTURE SECOND.

THE PALÆONTOLOGICAL HISTORY OF ANIMALS, 86

LECTURE THIRD.

THE TWO RECORDS, MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL, 141

LECTURE FOURTH.

THE MOSAIC VISION OF CREATION, 179

LECTURE FIFTH.

GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. PART I. 211

LECTURE SIXTH.

GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. PART II. 237

LECTURE SEVENTH.

THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. PART I. 283

LECTURE EIGHTH.

THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. PART II. 320

LECTURE NINTH.

THE DISCOVERABLE AND THE REVEALED, 362

LECTURE TENTH.

THE GEOLOGY OF THE ANTI-GEOLOGISTS, 392

LECTURE ELEVENTH.

ON THE LESS KNOWN FOSSIL FLORAS OF SCOTLAND. PART I. 429

LECTURE TWELFTH.

ON THE LESS KNOWN FOSSIL FLORAS OF SCOTLAND. PART II. 463

List of Illustrations

PAGE

A Restoration of Sphenopteris affinis (_Frontispiece_)

1. The Genealogy of Plants, 40

2. Cyclopteris Hibernicus, 42

3. Conifer of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, 43

4. The Genealogy of Animals, 45

5. Oldhamia antiqua (_oldest known Zoophyte_), 48

6. Palæochorda minor, 49

7. Lycopodium clavatum, 51

8. Equisetum fluviatile, 51

9. Osmunda regalis (_Royal Fern_), 52

10. Pinus sylvestris (_Scotch Fir_), 53

11. Calamite? of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, 55

12. Lycopodite? of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, 55

13. Fern? of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, 56

14-19. Ferns of the Coal Measures, 58

20. Altingia excelsa (_Norfolk Island Pine_), 59

21. East Indian Fern (_Asophila perrotetiana_), 60

22. Section of Stem, of Tree-Fern (_Cyathea_), 60

23-25. Lepidodendron Sternbergii, 62

26. Calamites Mougeotii, 63

27. Sphenophyllum dentatum, 63

28. Sigillaria reniformis, 64

29. Sigillaria reniformis (_nat. size_), 65

30. Sigillaria pachyderma, 66

31. Stigmaria ficoides, 67

32. Favularia tessellata, 68

33. Lepidodendron obovatum, 68

34. Cycas revoluta, 69

35. Zamia pungens, 69

36. Zamia Feneonis, 69

37. Mantellia nidiformis, 70

38. Equisetum columnare, 71

39. Carpolithes conica, 72

40. Carpolithes Bucklandii, 72

41. Acer trilobatum, 73

42. Ulmus Bronnii (_leaf of a tree allied to the Elm_), 74

43. Palmacites Lamanonis (_a Palm of the Miocene of Aix_), 75

44. Cyclophthalmus Bucklandii (_a Fossil Scorpion of the Coal

Measures of Bohemia_), 81

45. Fossil Dragon-Fly, 83

46. Cyathaxonia Dalmani, 88

47. Glyptocrinus decadactylus, 88

48. Calymene Blumenbachii, 89

49. Orthisina Verneuili, 89

50. Lituites cornu-arietis, 89

51. Lingula Lowisii, 89

52. Fort Jackson Shark (_Cestracion Philippi_), 91

53. The Genealogy of Fishes, 93

54. Amblypterus macropterus (_a Ganoid of the Carboniferous

System_), 94

55. Lebias cephalotes (_Cycloids of Aix_), 94

56. Platax altissimus (_a Ctenoid of Monte Bolca_), 95

57. Pterichthys oblongus, 98

58. Pleuracanthus lævissimus, 100

59. Carcharias productus (_Cutting Tooth_), 101

60. Placodus gigas (_Crushing Teeth_), 101

61. Vespertilio Parisiensis (_a Bat of the Eocene_), 106

62. Ichthyosaurus communis, 106

63. Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus, 108

64. Pterodactylus crassirostris, 108

65. Chelonia Benstedi, 109

66. Palæophis Toliapicus (_Ophidian of the Eocene_), 110

67. Bird-tracks of the Connecticut, 113

68. Fossil Footprint, 114

69. Thylacotherium Prevosti, 117

70. Anoplotherium commune, 120

71. Animals of the Paris Basin, 121

72. Dinotherium giganteum, 122

73. Elephas primigenius (_Great British Elephant_), 127

74. Trogontherium Cuvieri (_Gigantic Beaver_), 128

75. Ursus spelæus (_Cave Bear_), 128

76. Hyæena Spelæa (_Cave Hyæna_), 129

77. Asaphus caudatus, 134

78. Orthoceras laterale, 134

79. Spirigerina reticularis, 134

80. Ammonites margaritatus, 134

81. Ammonites bisulcatus, 134

82. Belemnitella mucronata, 134

83. Belemnites sulcatus, 134

84. Murex alveolatus, 135

85. Astarte Omalli, 135

86. Balanus crassus, 136

87. Astarte arctica, 152

88. Tellina proxima, 152

89. Norwegian Spruce (_Abies excelsa_), 153

90. Lepidodendron Sternbergii, 164

91. Calamites cannæformis, 165

92. Megatherium Cuvieri, 167

93. Skull of Dinotherium giganteum 168

94. Ammonites Humphriesianus, 242

95. Encrinites moniliformis, 243

96. Cupressocrinus crassius, 243

97. Pentacrinus fasciculosus, 245

98. Chamfered and Imbricated Scales, 246

99. Scale of Holoptychius giganteus, 247

100. Section of Scale of Holoptychius, 248

101. Sigillaria Groeseri, 255

102-104. Whorled Shells of the Old Red Sandstone, 256

105. Murchisonia bigranulosa, 258

106. Conularia ornata, 258

107. Calico pattern (_Manchester_), 259

108. Smithia Pengellyi, 259

109. Apamæean Medal, 298

110. Old Mexican Picture, 299

111. Megaceros Hibernicus (_Irish Elk_), 331

112. Mylodon robustus, 346

113. Glyptodon clavipes, 346

114. The Geography of Cosmas, 376

115. The Heavens and Earth of Cosmas, 377

116. Nummulites lævigata (_Pharaoh's Beans_), 421

117. Silurian Organism, Graptolite, etc., 431

118. Fucoid, 433

119. Fucoids, 434

120. Plant resembling Lycopodium clavatum, 437

121. Parka decipiens, 449

122. Fossil Fern (_probably_), 450

123. Unnamed Fossil Plant, 450

124. Cyclopterus Hibernicus, 458

125. New and peculiar Fern from Airdrie coal field, 464

126. Stigmaria, 465

127. The same, magnified, 465

128. Stigmaria, 466

129. Sphenopteris bifida, 470

130. Conifers? 475

131. Conifer Twigs, 476

132. Unnamed Fossil Plant, 478

133. Zamia, 479

134. Zamia, 480

135. Zamia of the Lias, 481

136. Zamia of the Oolite, 481

137. Zamia resembling Z. lanceolata, 482

138. Fossil Cone, 483

139. Fossil Cone, 484

140. Helmsdale Fossil Plants, 485

141. Fossil Ferns in Helmsdale Deposits, 486

142. Unnamed Fossil Plant, 488

143. Pecopteris obtusifolia, 489

144. Apparent Fern (_new_), 490

145. Pachypteris, 490

146. Phlebopteris, 491

147. Unnamed Fossil Plant, 492

148. Pentagon, illustrative of Fern allies, 493

149. Imbricated Stem, 494

150. Fossil Plant (_Helmsdale_), 495

151. Dicotyledonous Leaf of the Oolite, 496

152. Fern, 497

MEMORIALS

OF

HUGH MILLER.

Unknown he came. He went a Mystery--

A mighty vessel foundered in the calm,

Her freight half-given to the world. To die

He longed, nor feared to meet the great "I AM."

Fret not. God's mystery is solved to him.

He quarried Truth all rough-hewn from the earth,

And chiselled it into a perfect gem--

A rounded Absolute. Twain at a birth--

Science with a celestial halo crowned,

And Heavenly Truth--God's Works by His Word illumed--

These twain he viewed in holiest concord bound.

Reason outsoared itself. His mind consumed

By its volcanic fire, and frantic driven,

He dreamed himself in hell and woke in heaven.

EDINBURGH, December, 1856.

MEMORIALS

OF THE

DEATH AND CHARACTER OF HUGH MILLER,

WITH AN

ACCOUNT OF HIS FUNERAL OBSEQUIES.

Near the end of last autumn the American publishers of Hugh Miller's

works received from him, through his Edinburgh publishers, the offer of

a new work from his pen. The offer was accepted and a contract was at

once closed. Soon the advance sheets began to come; and as successive

portions were received and perused, it became more and more evident that

the work was destined not only to extend his fame, but to establish for

him new and special claims to the admiration and gratitude of mankind.

In the midst of these anticipations, and ere more than half the sheets

had been received, the publishers and the public here were startled by

the news that Mr. Miller had come to a violent death. The paragraph

conveying the intelligence was such as to leave the mind in a state of

painful suspense. But the next steamer from Europe brought full details

of the lamentable event. It appeared that in a momentary fit of mental

aberration he had died by his own hand, on the night of December 23d,

1856. The cause was over much brain-work. He had been long and

incessantly engaged in preparing the present work for the press, when,

just as he had given the last touches to the eloquent, the immortal

record, reason abandoned her throne, and in the brief interregnum, that

great light of science was quenched forever.

The event caused universal lamentation throughout the British Isles. It

was treated as a public calamity. The British press, from the _London

Times_ to the remotest provincial newspaper, gave expression to the

general sorrow in strains of unwonted eloquence; and in so doing

recounted his great services to the cause of science, and paid homage to

his genius.

Some of the articles which the event thus called forth have seemed to

the American publishers worthy of preservation, from the authentic facts

which they embody, the judgments which they express, and the literary

excellence by which they are marked. They have therefore determined to

print them in connection with this work as permanent Memorials of its

distinguished and lamented author.

The first piece appeared in the _Edinburgh Witness_ of December 27th,

1856,--the paper of which Mr. Miller had been the editor from its

establishment in 1840. It presents an authentic account of the

circumstances attending his death, and is understood to be from the pen

of the REV. WILLIAM HANNA, L.L.D., the son-in-law and biographer of Dr.

Chalmers, and sometime editor of the _North British Review_.

In the belief that nothing touching the character and memory of

such a man can be regarded with other than the deepest interest,

the friends of Mr. Hugh Miller have thought it due at once to his

great name and to the cause of truth, to lay fully before the

public a statement of the most mournful circumstances under which

he has departed from this life. For some months past his

over-tasked intellect had given evidence of disorder. He became the

prey of false or exaggerated alarms. He fancied--if, indeed, it was

a fancy--that occasionally, and for brief intervals, his faculties

quite failed him,--that his mind broke down. He was engaged at this

time with a treatise on the "Testimony of the Rocks," upon which he

was putting out all his strength,--working at his top-most pitch of

intensity. That volume will in a few weeks be in the hands of many

of our readers; and while they peruse it with the saddened

impression that his intellect and genius poured out their latest

treasures in its composition, they will search through it in vain

for the slightest evidence of feebleness or decaying power. Rather

let us anticipate the general verdict that will be pronounced upon

it, and speak of it as one of the ablest of all his writings. But

he wrought at it too eagerly. Hours after midnight the light was

seen to glimmer through the window of that room which within the

same eventful week was to witness the close of the volume, and the

close of the writer's life. This over-working of the brain began to

tell upon his mental health. He had always been somewhat moodily

apprehensive of being attacked by footpads, and had carried loaded

firearms about his person. Latterly, having occasion sometimes to

return to Portobello from Edinburgh at unseasonable hours, he had

furnished himself with a revolver. But now, to all his old fears as

to attacks upon his person, there was added an exciting and

over-mastering impression that his house, and especially that

Museum, the fruit of so much care, which was contained in a

separate outer building, were exposed to the assault of burglars.

He read all the recent stories of house robberies. He believed that

one night, lately, an actual attempt to break in upon his Museum

had been made. Visions of ticket-of-leave men, prowling about his

premises, haunted him by day and by night. The revolver, which lay

nightly near him, was not enough; a broad-bladed dagger was kept

beside it; whilst behind him, at his bed head, a claymore stood

ready at hand. A week or so ago, a new and more aggravated feature

of cerebral disorder showed itself in sudden and singular

sensations in his head. They came only after lengthened intervals.

They did not last long, but were intensely violent. The terrible

idea that his brain was deeply and hopelessly diseased,--that his

mind was on the verge of ruin,--took hold of him, and stood out

before his eye in all that appalling magnitude in which such an

imagination as his alone could picture it. It was mostly at night

that these wild paroxysms of the brain visited him; but up till

last Monday he had spoken of them to no one. A friend who had a

long conversation with him on the Thursday of last week, never

enjoyed an interview more, or remembers him in a more genial mood.

On the Saturday forenoon another friend from Edinburgh found him in

the same happy frame. As was his wont when with an old friend with

whom he felt particularly at ease, he read or recited some favorite

passages, repeating, on this occasion, with great emphasis, that

noble prayer of John Knox,[1] which, he told his friend, it had

been his frequent custom to repeat privately during the days of the

Disruption. On the forenoon of Sunday last he worshipped in the

Free Church at Portobello; and in the evening read a little work

which had been put into his hands, penning that brief notice of it

which will be read with melancholy interest as his last

contribution to this journal. About ten o'clock on Monday morning

he took what with him was an altogether unusual step. He called on

Dr. Balfour, in Portobello, to consult him as to his state of

health. "On my asking," says Dr. Balfour, in a communication with

which we have been favored, "what was the matter with him, he

replied, 'My brain is giving way. I cannot put two thoughts

together to-day. I have had a dreadful night of it; I cannot face

another such. I was impressed with the idea that my Museum was

attacked by robbers, and that I had got up, put on my clothes, and

gone out with a loaded pistol to shoot them. Immediately after that

I became unconscious. How long that continued, I cannot say; but

when I awoke in the morning I was trembling all over, and quite

confused in my brain. On rising I felt as if a stiletto was

suddenly, and as quickly as an electric shock, passed through my

brain from front to back, and left a burning sensation on the top

of the brain just below the bone. So thoroughly convinced was I

that I must have been out through the night, that I examined my

trousers to see if they were wet or covered with mud, but could

find none.' He further said,--'I may state that I was somewhat

similarly affected through the night twice last week, and I

examined my trousers in the morning to see if I had been out. Still

the terrible sensations were not nearly so bad as they were last

night; and I may further inform you, that towards the end of last

week, while passing through the Exchange in Edinburgh, I was seized

with such a giddiness that I staggered, and would, I think, have

fallen, had I not gone into an entry, where I leaned against the

wall, and became quite unconscious for some seconds.'" Dr. Balfour

stated his opinion of the case; told him that he was over-working

his brain, and agreed to call on him on the following day to make a

fuller examination. Meanwhile the quick eye of affection had

noticed that there was something wrong, and on Monday forenoon Mrs.

Miller came up to Edinburgh to express her anxiety to Professor

Miller, and request that he would see her husband. "I arranged,"

says Professor Miller, "to meet Dr. Balfour at Shrub Mount (Mr.

Hugh Miller's house), on the afternoon of next day. We met

accordingly at half-past three on Tuesday. He was a little annoyed

at Mrs. Miller's having given me the trouble, as he called it, but

received me quite in his ordinary kind, friendly manner. We

examined his chest and found that unusually well; but soon we

discovered that it was head symptoms that made him uneasy. He

acknowledged having been, night after night, up till very late in

the morning, working hard and continuously at his new book,

'which,' with much satisfaction, he said, 'I have finished this

day.' He was sensible that his head had suffered in consequence, as

evidenced in two ways: first, occasionally he felt as if a very

fine poignard had been suddenly passed through and through his

brain. The pain was intense, and momentarily followed by confusion

and giddiness, and the sense of being 'very drunk,'--unable to

stand or walk. He thought that a period of unconsciousness must

have followed this,--a kind of swoon,--but he had never fallen.

Second, what annoyed him most, however, was a kind of nightmare,

which for some nights past had rendered sleep most miserable. It

was no dream, he said; he saw no distinct vision, and could

remember nothing of what had passed accurately. It was a sense of

vague and yet intense horror, with a conviction of being abroad in

the night wind, and dragged through places as if by some invisible

power. 'Last night,' he said, 'I felt as if I had been ridden by a

witch for fifty miles, and rose far more wearied in mind and body

than when I lay down.' So strong was his conviction of having been

out, that he had difficulty in persuading himself to the contrary,

by carefully examining his clothes in the morning, to see if they

were not wet or dirty; and he looked inquiringly and anxiously to

his wife, asking if she was sure he had not been out last night,

and walking in this disturbed trance or dream. His pulse was quiet,

but tongue foul. The head was not hot, but he could not say it was

free from pain. But I need not enter into professional details.

Suffice it to say that we came to the conclusion that he was

suffering from an over-worked mind, disordering his digestive

organs, enervating his whole frame, and threatening serious head

affection. We told him this, and enjoined absolute discontinuance

of work, bed at eleven, light supper (he had all his life made that

a principal meal), thinning the hair of the head, a warm

sponging-bath at bed time, &c. To all our commands he readily

promised obedience, not forgetting the discontinuance of neck

rubbing, to which he had unfortunately been prevailed to submit

some days before. For fully an hour we talked together on these and

other subjects, and I left him with no apprehension of impending

evil, and little doubting but that a short time of rest and regimen

would restore him to his wonted vigor." It was a cheerful hour that

thus was passed, and his wife and family partook of the hopeful

feeling with which his kind friend, Professor Miller, had parted

with him. It was now near the dinner hour, and the servant entered

the room to spread the table. She found Mr. Miller in the room

alone. Another of the paroxysms was on him. His face was such a

picture of horror that she shrunk in terror from the sight. He

flung himself on the sofa, and buried his head, as if in agony,

upon the cushion. Again, however, the vision flitted by, and left

him in perfect health. The evening was spent quietly with his

family. During tea he employed himself in reading aloud Cowper's

"Castaway," the Sonnet on Mary Unwin, and one of his more playful

pieces, for the special pleasure of his children. Having corrected

some proofs of the forthcoming volume, he went up stairs to his

study. At the appointed hour he had taken the bath, but

unfortunately his natural and peculiar repugnance to physic had

induced him to leave untaken the medicine that had been prescribed.

He had retired into his sleeping-room,--a small apartment opening

out of his study, and which, for some time past, in consideration

of the delicate state of his wife's health, and the irregularity of

his own hours of study, he occupied at night alone,--and lain

sometime upon the bed. The horrible trance, more horrible than

ever, must have returned. All that can now be known of what

followed is to be gathered from the facts, that next morning his

body, half dressed, was found lying lifeless on the floor, the feet

upon the study rug, the chest pierced with the ball of the revolver

pistol, which was found lying in the bath that stood close by.[2]

The deadly bullet had perforated the left lung, grazed the heart,

cut through the pulmonary artery at its root, and lodged in the

rib in the right side. Death must have been instantaneous. The

servant by whom the body was first discovered, acting with singular

discretion, gave no alarm, but went instantly in search of the

doctor and minister; and on the latter the melancholy duty was

devolved of breaking the fearful intelligence to that now

broken-hearted widow, over whose bitter Borrow it becomes us to

draw the veil. The body was lifted and laid upon the bed. We saw it

there a few hours afterwards. The head lay back sideways on the

pillow. There was the massive brow, the firm-set, manly features,

we had so often looked upon admiringly, just as we had lately seen

them,--no touch nor trace upon them of disease,--nothing but that

overspread pallor of death to distinguish them from what they had

been. But the expression of that countenance in death will live in

our memory forever. Death by gunshot wounds is said to leave no

trace of suffering behind; and never was there a face of the dead

freer from all shadow of pain, or grief, or conflict, than that of

our dear departed friend. And as we bent over it, and remembered

the troubled look it sometimes had in life, and thought what must

have been the sublimely terrific expression that it wore at the

moment when the fatal deed was done, we could not help thinking

that it lay there to tell us, in that expression of unruffled,

majestic repose that sat upon every feature, what we so assuredly

believe, that the spirit had passed through a terrible tornado, in

which reason had been broken down; but that it had made the great

passage in safety, and stood looking back to us, in humble,

grateful triumph, from the other side.

On looking round the room in which the body had been discovered, a

folio sheet of paper was seen lying on the table. On the centre of

the page the following lines were written,--the last which that pen

was ever to trace:--

"DEAREST LYDIA,--My brain burns. I _must_ have _walked_; and a

fearful dream rises upon me. I cannot bear the horrible thought.

God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me. Dearest

Lydia, dear children, farewell. My brain burns as the recollection

grows. My dear, dear wife, farewell."

HUGH MILLER.

What a legacy of love to a broken-hearted family! and to us, and

all who loved him, how pleasing to observe, that in that

bewildering hour, when the horror of that great darkness came down

upon that noble spirit, and some hideous, shapeless phantom

overpowered it, and took from it even the capacity to discern the

right from the wrong, humility, and faith, and affection, still

kept their hold;--amid the ruins of the intellect, that tender

heart remaining still unbroken! These last lines remain as the

surest evidence of the mysterious power that laid his spirit

prostrate, and of the noble elements of which that spirit was

composed,--humble, and reverent, and loving to the last.

Yesterday, at the request of friends, and under the authority of

the Procurator-Fiscal, a _post mortem_ examination of the body took

place. We subjoin the result:--

"EDINBURGH, December 26, 1856.

"We hereby certify, on soul and conscience, that we have this day

examined the body of Mr. Hugh Miller, at Shrub Mount, Portobello.

"The cause of death we found to be a pistol-shot through the left

side of the chest; and this, we are satisfied, was inflicted by his

own hand.

"From the diseased appearances found in the brain, taken in

connection with the history of the case, we have no doubt that the

act was suicidal under the impulse of insanity."

JAMES MILLER, W.T. GAIRDNER,

A.H. BALFOUR, A.M. EDWARDS.

We must ask to be excused from attempting any analysis of Mr.

Miller's character and genius, or any estimate of the distinguished

services he has rendered to literature, science, and the Christian

faith. His loss is too heavy a one,--his removal has come upon us

too suddenly and too awfully for mind or hand to be steady enough

for such a task. The voice of the public press has already told

what a place he had won for himself in the admiration and affection

of his countrymen; and for the delicate and tender way in which the

manner of his departure has universally been alluded to, were we

permitted to speak in the name of Mr. Miller's friends, we should

express our deepest gratitude. It is a beautiful and worthy tribute

that his brother journalists have rendered to the memory of one who

was a laborer along with them in elevating the talent and tone of

our newspaper literature.

As Free Churchmen, however, it would be unpardonable were we to

omit all reference, at such a time as this, to what he did on

behalf of the church of his adoption. Dr. Chalmers did not err

when, self-oblivious, he spake of Mr. Miller, as he so often did,

as the greatest Scotchman alive after Sir Walter Scott's death, and

as the man who had done more than all others to defend and make

popular throughout the country the non-intrusion cause. We know

well what the mutual love and veneration was of those two great men

for one another whilst living; and now that both are gone,--and

hereafter we believe still more so than even now,--their two names

will be intertwined in the grateful and admiring remembrance of the

ministers and members of the Free Church. It was die high honor of

the writer of these hurried lines to record the part taken by his

venerated relative in that great ecclesiastical struggle which

terminated in the Disruption. At that lime it was matter to him of

great regret that, as his office was that of the biographer, and

not of the historian, there did not occur those natural

opportunities of speaking of the part taken by Mr. Miller in that

struggle, of which he gladly would have availed himself. And he

almost wishes now that he had violated what appeared to him to be

his duty, in order to create such an opportunity. He feels as if in

this he had done some injustice to the dead,--an injustice which it

would gratify him beyond measure if he could now in any way repair,

by expressing it as his own judgment, and the judgment of the vast

body of his Church, that, next to the writings and actings of Dr.

Chalmers, the leading articles of Mr. Miller in this journal did

more than anything else to give the Free Church the place it holds

in the affections of so many of our fellow-countrymen.

But Mr. Miller was far more than a Free Churchman, and did for the

Christianity of his country and the world a far higher service than

any which in that simple character and office was rendered by him.

There was nothing in him of the spirit and temper of the sectarian.

He breathed too broad an atmosphere to live and move within such

narrow bounds. In the heat of the conflict there may have been too

much occasionally of the partisan; and in the pleasure that the

sweep and stroke of his intellectual tomahawk gave to him who

wielded it, he may have forgotten at times the pain inflicted where

it fell; but let his writings before and after the Disruption be

now consulted, and it will be found that it was mainly because of

his firm belief, whether right or wrong, that the interests of

vital godliness were wrapped up in it, that he took his stand, and

played his conspicuous part, in the ecclesiastical conflict. It is

well known that for some time past,--for reasons to which it would

be altogether unseasonable to allude,--he has ceased to take any

active part in ecclesiastical affairs. He had retired even, in a

great measure, from the field of general literature, to devote

himself to the study of Geology. His past labors in this

department,--enough to give him a high and honored place among its

most distinguished cultivators,--he looked upon but as his training

for the great life-work he had marked out for himself,--the full

investigation and illustration of the Geology of Scotland. He had

large materials already collected for this work; and it was his

intention, after completing that volume which has happily been left

in so finished a state, to set himself to their arrangement. The

friends of science in many lands will mourn over the incompleted

project which, however ably it may hereafter be accomplished by

another, it were vain to hope shall ever be so accomplished as it

should have been by one who united in himself the power of accurate

observation, of logical deduction, of broad generalization, and of

pictorial and poetic representation. But the friends of

Christianity cannot regret, that since it was the mysterious decree

of Heaven that he should prematurely fall,--his work as a pure

Geologist not half done,--he should have been led aside by the

publication of the Vestiges of Creation to that track of

semi-theological, semi-scientific research to which his later

studies and later writings have been devoted. That, as it now seems

to us, was the great work which it was given him on earth to

do,--to illustrate the perfect harmony of all that science tells us

of the physical structure and history of our globe, with all that

the Bible tells of the creation and government of this earth by and

through Christ Jesus our Lord. The establishment and exhibition of

that harmony was a task to which is it too much to say that there

was no man living so competent as he? We leave it to the future to

declare how much he has done by his writings to fulfil that task;

but mourning, as we now can only do, over his sad and melancholy

death,--to that very death, with all the tragic circumstances that

surround it, we would point as the closing sacrifice offered on the

altar of our faith. His very intellect, his reason,--God's most

precious gift,--a gift dearer than life,--perished in the great

endeavor to harmonize the works and word of the Eternal. A most

inscrutable event, that such an intellect should have been suffered

to go to wreck through too eager a prosecution of such a work. But

amid the mystery, which we cannot penetrate, our love, and our

veneration, and our gratitude, toward that so highly gifted and

truly Christian man shall only grow the deeper because of the cloud

and the whirlwind in which he has been borne off from our side.

On the 31st of December, two days after the obsequies had been

performed, Dr. Hanna resumed the subject in the following elevated

strain:

We have still but little heart to dilate on any political or

literary topic. Our thoughts can dwell on but one thrice melancholy

event. Need we name that event? Alas, no! It had occurred but a few

hours when the tidings of it struck our city with stunning,

stupefying, and deeply saddening blow. It has already thrilled our

whole land; and is on its way, through a hundred channels, to the

west, to the east, and to the south, carrying with it mourning and

lamentation throughout the vast area which is covered by the

language in which Hugh Miller wrote. Writing, as it were, amid the

deep shadows of the funeral chamber, and brought in a manner into

the very presence of the dead, we are made strongly to feel, and we

daresay our readers to a large extent will feel, too, the

nothingness of those discussions which usually occupy and engross

men. The weightiest matter that ever occupied the wisdom of cabinet

or the pen of journalist appears verily but fleeting and

transitory, when brought thus into prominent contrast with the

awful realities of human existence and destiny; and it is only when

reflection shows us that these matters are yet parts of a grand

Providential scheme, embracing man's happiness now, and entering

deeply into the question of his future and eternal well-being, that

we can see in them that amount of significance and importance which

they really possess.

From the firmament of British literature and science a great light

has departed. But yesterday we rejoiced in its beams, and now it

has set all suddenly and forever; and to us there remains but the

melancholy task of bewailing its departure, and tracing very

hastily and imperfectly its track. The intellectual powers of Hugh

Miller had certainly not declined. He was marked to the very last

by that wonderful robustness of mind which had characterized him

all through life. His sense was as manly, his judgment as sound and

comprehensive, his penetration as discriminating and deep, his

imagination as vigorous and bold, and his taste as pure and trusty,

as they had ever been. The whole of his great powers were found

working together up to the last week of his earthly career, with

their usually calm, noiseless strength, and finely balanced and

exquisitely toned harmony. We have evidence of this fact under his

own hand in recent numbers of the _Witness_. His last two articles

were, the one on Russia, and the other on our modern poets. The

former,--that on the resources of the Russian empire,--is

characterized by the same wide range of thinking, the same skill in

analysis, and the same power of grouping and arranging details, and

making them to throw light on some great principle, which usually

marked and notified his hand when employed on such subjects. The

latter,--that on the poets,--is rich and genial as usual,

betokening a full and unclouded recollection of all his early

reading in that department of our literature, abounding in the

finest touches of pathos and beauty, and redolent with a most

generous sympathy with kindred genius. It is not inconsistent with

what we have now stated, and it is the fact, that latterly the

inroads of disease, which had entrenched itself deeply in a

constitution originally strong, and which kept steadily advancing

upon the vital powers, had come so near the seat of the mind, that

for short intervals the noble spirit was sadly beclouded, and its

moral and intellectual action momentarily suspended. But, apart

from this, there seemed ground to believe that there was yet before

Mr. Miller much honorable and noble labor. The strong man, after

all his tasks, appeared to be still strong. His powers were

mellowing into richness and calm, matured strength; his conceptions

of great principles were growing yet wider; his store of facts,

literary as well as scientific, was accumulating with every busy

and laborious year that passed over him; and there did seem ground

to expect from his pen, unrivalled among his contemporaries in its

exquisite purity and calm power, many a deep thoughted article, and

many a profoundly reasoned and richly illustrated volume. We looked

to him for the solution of many a dark question in science; and we

certainly hoped, from that fine union of science and theology which

dwelt in him above all men, for a yet fuller and more complete

adjustment of the two great records of Creation,--that of the

Rocks, and that of Moses. But alas! all these hopes have suddenly

failed us. It seemed right otherwise to the Great Disposer of all.

He has said to his faithful servant, "Enough."

Let us look back upon that work. We by no means aim at giving a

calm, well weighed, and deeply pondered estimate of it, but only

such a glance as the circumstances permit and require. His great

and special work was his advocacy of the principles of the Free

Church. Mr. Miller was _par excellence_ the popular expounder and

defender of these principles, whether in their embryotic state in

the Non-Intrusion party, or as embodied in the fully developed and

completely emancipated Free Protesting Church of Scotland. For this

service, in connection with which he would have best liked to be

remembered, as he best deserved it, he had unconsciously been

undergoing a course of preparation even when a boy. He himself has

told us with what eagerness he devoured, at that period of life,

the legendary histories of Wallace and Bruce; and the occupation

had its use. It gave him a capacity for admiring what was great

though perilous in exploit, and for truly and largely sympathizing

with what was patriotic and self-sacrificing in character; and so

it created a groundwork for his own future thinking and acting. The

admiration he then bore to these earliest of our "Scottish

Worthies," who vindicated on Bannockburn, and kindred fields,

Scotland's right to be an independent and free country, he

afterwards transferred to our later "Worthies," whom he revered as

greater still. Not that he ever lost his admiration of the former,

or ceased to value the incalculable services they rendered to the

Scottish nation; but that he regarded Knox and Melville as men

occupying a yet higher platform,--as gifted with a yet deeper

insight into their country's wants,--as, in short, carrying forward

and consummating the glorious task which Wallace and Bruce had but

begun. He saw that unless our reformers had come after our heroes,

planting schools, founding colleges, and, above all, imparting to

their countrymen a scriptural and rational faith, in vain had Bruce

unsheathed his sword,--in vain had Wallace laid down his life.

Wallace and Bruce had created an independent country; Knox and

Melville had created an independent people. They were the creators

of the Scottish nation,--the real enfranchisers of our people; and

it was this that taught Mr. Miller to venerate these men so

profoundly, and that made him in his inmost soul a devoted

follower, and to the utmost extent of his great faculties a

defender, of their cause. He was a soldier from love,--pure,

heroic, chivalrous devotion soaring infinitely above the partisan.

He saw that the Church of Scotland was the creator of the rights

and privileges of the people of Scotland,--that she was the grand

palladium of the country's liberties,--that while she stood an

independent and free institution, the people stood an independent

and free nation,--and that bonds to her meant slavery to them.

Therefore did he gird on the sword when he saw peril gathering

around her. The privileges,--the entire standing of the common

people, as given them by the Reformation,--he saw to be in danger:

he was "one of themselves;" and he felt and fought as if almost the

quarrel had been a personal one, and the question at issue his own

liberty or slavery. How richly equipped and nobly armed he came

into the field, we need not here state. What fulness yet precision

of ecclesiastical lore,--what strength and conclusiveness of

argument,--what flashes of humor, wit, and sarcasm,--and in what a

luminous yet profoundly philosophical light did he set the great

principles involved in the controversy, making them patent in the

very cottages of our land, and so fixing them in the understandings

of the very humblest of our people, that they never afterwards

could be either misunderstood or forgotten! It was thus that the

way was prepared for the great result of the 18th of May, 1843.

Of Mr. Miller, as a man of science and a public journalist, we

cannot speak at present at any length. In him the love of science

was deeply seated and early developed. The first arena on which he

appeared--obscure and humble as it was--afforded him special

opportunities of initiating himself into what to him was then, and

continued ever afterwards to be, a most fascinating study. The

study of geology was eagerly prosecuted amid the multifarious

duties, and during the brief pauses, of a busy life. Several

original discoveries rewarded his patient and laborious

investigations. He succeeded at length in placing his name in the

first rank of British scientific thinkers and writers. His works

are characterized by a fine union of strict science, classic

diction, and enchanting description, which rises not unfrequently

into the loftiest vein of poetry. The fruits of his researches were

ever made to bear upon the defence and elucidation of the Oracles

of Truth. Our common Christianity owes much to his pen. Viewing him

as a journalist, Mr. Miller not only excelled in article

writing,--the most difficult of all kinds of composition,--but, as

will be generally admitted, he has introduced a new era into

newspaper writing. If the moral tone of our newspaper press is

higher now than it was twenty-five years ago, we have Mr. Miller in

large degree to thank for it; and to him, too, is to be traced that

purer style and more philosophic spirit which begins to be

discernible in the columns of our public journals.

But the character in which his personal friends will deplore him

most, and will most frequently recall his memory, will be that of

the man. How meek and gentle he was!--how unpretending and modest,

even as a very child!--how true and steady in friendship!--how wise

and playful his mirth!--how ripened and chastened his wisdom!--how

ready to counsel!--how willing to oblige!--how generous and large

his sympathies! No little jealousies, no fretful envyings, had he!

Even in opposition, how noble and manly was he: if a powerful, he

was a fair and open antagonist; and whatever hard blows were

dealt, they were dealt in his own journal. We have seen him in

various moods and in all circumstances; but never did we hear him

utter an unkind or disparaging word of man. He was, too, a sincere

and humble Christian; and the lively faith which he cherished in

the adorable Redeemer and his all-efficacious sacrifice, bore

abundantly its good fruits in a life including no ordinary variety

of condition and trial, and running on to such term as to make

abundantly manifest what manner of man he was.

The article which follows is from the _Edinburgh News_. It is evidently

from the pen of one who was intimately acquainted with Hugh Miller, and

is worthy of attention, not only for its eloquent and discriminating

notices of his works, but also for its statements respecting his great

designs, never, alas, to be accomplished.

It is not many months since we chronicled the death of the greatest

of living Scotsmen, and the prince of modern philosophers--Sir

William Hamilton. These last few days have bereft us of another of

our countrymen not less illustrious, and known all over the world

as one of the princes of geology. We cannot well estimate the loss

which society sustains in the death of Mr. Miller. He occupied a

foremost place among us, and there is none on whom his mantle can

fall. In the world of letters his name takes high rank, for

undoubtedly he was one of the ablest writers in our literature. Who

can have read without delight his manly, vigorous language, soaring

sometimes into the highest eloquence, anon plunging into the depths

of metaphysical argument, or grappling with the dry technicalities

of science, yet ever rolling along with the same easy, onward flow?

His style has all the charm of Goldsmith's sweetness, with the

infusion of a rich vigor that gives it an air of great originality.

He is one of the few writers who have successfully conjoined the

graces of literature with the formal details of science, and whose

works are perused for their literary excellences, independently

altogether of their scientific merit. His writings will ever be

regarded among the classics of the English language. For obvious

reasons we pass over his editorial labors. It is on the republic of

science that his death will fall most heavily. There can be little

doubt that he has done more to popularize his favorite department

than any other writer. Of all geological works, his enjoy, perhaps,

the widest circulation--not in this country, merely, but all over

the world, and especially in the United States. His reputation,

however, does not rest solely on his standing as an exponent of

science to the people; he was himself an original and accurate

observer. When the infant science of geology was battling for

existence against the opposing phalanx of united Christendom, Hugh

Miller, then a mere lad, was quietly working as a stone-mason in

the north of Scotland, and employing his leisure time among the

fossil fishes of the Old Red Sandstone, and the ammonites and the

belemnites of the Lias, that abound in the neighborhood of

Cromarty. As years rolled slowly away, he continued his

observations, and when at length, in 1841, the results were given

to the world in his well known "Old Red Sandstone," every one was

charmed with the novelty and beauty of the style, and his

reputation as a writer was at once established. Men of science,

however, though acknowledging the graphic and elegant diction of

his descriptions, had some doubts as to their truthfulness. Indeed,

by some geologists they were cast aside as fanciful, and other

restorations of the Old Red fishes were proposed and adopted. Those

who are acquainted with Old Red ichthyolites, or who have had the

pleasure of examining the exquisite series in Mr. Miller's

collection, may well smile at the absurdity of the restorations

that were adopted. Yet some of these found their way into a work of

no little popularity,--Mantell's "Medals of Creation." It is

sufficient to state that the drawings there given bear no

resemblance to anything in the heavens above or on the earth

beneath, or in the waters under the earth, nor to any fossil

organism that has ever been discovered. At length the progress of

investigation led to the discarding of these monstrosities, and

Miller's restorations were returned to, as, after all, the true

ones. "The Old Red Sandstone" formed an era in the history of

fossil geology. That formation had hitherto been regarded as well

nigh barren of organic remains; but Mr. Miller demonstrated that it

contains at least three successive stages, each characterized by a

suite of uncouth and hitherto unknown fishes. A few years later he

published his "Footprints of the Creator." This is undoubtedly his

_chef-d'oeuvre_, exhibiting, as it does, the full powers of his

massive intellect and his poetic imagination. As a piece of

scientific investigation and research, it is of a very high order;

as a reply to the crudities of the development theory, it is

unanswerable; and as a contribution to our physico-theological

literature, it ranks, with Chalmers' "Astronomical Lectures," among

the finest in this or any other language. Some of the ideas are as

profound as they are original, opening up a new field of thought,

which it was doubtless the intention of the deceased himself to

cultivate. His published works, however, contain but a fraction, of

the labors of his lifetime. For many years past he has been, one of

the most energetic members of the Royal Physical Society, at whose

meetings he from time to time made known the progress of his

researches. Were these papers collected, they would form several

goodly volumes. But their author studiously refrained from

publishing them, save occasionally in the columns of the _Witness_

newspaper. It was his intention that they should each form a part

of the great work of his life, to which for many years his leisure

moments had been devoted. His design was to combine the results of

all his labors among the different rock formations of Scotland into

one grand picture of the geological history of our country. For

this end he had explored a large part of the Scottish counties,

anxious that his statements should rest as far as possible upon the

authority of his own personal investigations. His knowledge of the

geology of the country was thus far more extensive than was

generally supposed. We may refer particularly to that branch of it

on which he bestowed the unremitted attention of his closing

years,--the palæontological history of the glacial beds,--that

strange and as yet almost unknown period that ushered in the

existing creation. He studied it minutely along the shores of the

Moray Firth, on the east coast of Scotland, along the shores of

Fife and the Lothians, and on the coast of Ayrshire and the Firth

of Clyde. This last summer he made a tour through the centre of the

island, and obtained boreal shells at Buchlyvie in

Stirlingshire,--the _omphalos_ of Scotland. The importance of this

discovery, in connection with those he had previously made in

following out the same chain of evidence, can only be appreciated

by those who have paid some attention to geology. We may state

briefly that it proves the central area of Scotland to have been

submerged beneath an icy sea, and icebergs to have grated along

over what is now the busy valley of the Forth and Clyde, while the

waters were tenanted by shells at present found only in the

Northern Ocean. A large part of his work is written, though it is

to be feared that much knowledge, amassed in the course of its

preparation, has perished with him. In particular, there were whole

sections of his Museum understood only by himself. Every little

fragment had its story, and contributed its quota of evidence to

the truth of his descriptions. There is, perhaps, but another mind

in Britain,--that of Sir Philip Egerton,--that can catch up the

thread, and read off, though with difficulty, the meaning of those

carefully arranged fragments. Yet, even with such aid, much must

long, if not forever, remain dark and obscure. The work on which he

was more immediately engaged at the time of his death was partly

theological, partly scientific. It was to embrace the substance of

some lectures lately delivered, and a paper read last year before

the British Association at Glasgow on the fossil plants collected

by himself from the Oolite and Old Red Sandstone of Scotland. It

was likewise to contain the figures of some thirty or forty

hitherto undescribed species of vegetables. We hope that, as it was

all but ready for publication, it may yet be given to the world.

The name of Hugh Miller will ever stand forth as synonymous with

all that is honest and manly; as the impersonation of moral courage

and indomitable energy; as the true ideal of a self-educated man.

From the humblest sphere of life, and from the toils of a

stone-mason's apprentice, without means, without friends, without

other than the most rudimentary education, he rose, by his own

unaided and unwearied exertions, to fill one of the brightest pages

in the annals of our country. And when, in future years, an example

is sought of unconquerable perseverance, of fearless integrity, and

of earnest, ceaseless activity, the voice of universal approbation

shall proclaim--"_the stone-mason of Cromurty_." We have spoken of

this mournful event only as a public calamity; yet, to those who

were personally acquainted with the departed, it is invested with

no ordinary sadness. Long, long shall they remember the playful

fancy, the rich humor, the warm, genial heart of their friend. His

simple, open frankness endeared him to every one, though his

retiring disposition prevented him from making many intimate

friendships. To those who enjoyed this higher privilege, his death

must have caused the most poignant regret. Yet what can even their

sorrow be to that of the relatives of the departed? We lament the

death of one who was alike an honor to his profession, to

literature, to science, and to his country,--one of the most loved

and cherished of friends. Let us not forget to mingle our sympathy

and our sorrow with that deeper grief that mourns the loss of a

husband and a father.

As coming from a different quarter, and presenting a somewhat different

view, the following, from the _London Literary Gazette_, should have a

place here.

Hugh Miller was born at Cromarty in 1805. In his early life he

worked as a laborer in the Sandstone quarries in his native

district, and afterwards as a stone-mason in different parts of

Scotland. In a work published in 1854, "My Schools and

Schoolmasters, or the story of my Education," Mr. Miller gives a

most interesting account of his early history, and of the training

and self-culture by which he rose to honorable rank in literature

and science. Notwithstanding the unpretending statements of this

narrative, and the disavowal of any other elements of success than

are within ordinary reach, every reader of that book feels that

homage is due to a genius original and rare, as well as to natural

talents diligently and judiciously cultivated. While professedly

written for the benefit of the working classes of his own country,

there are few who may not derive pleasant and profitable lessons

from this most remarkable piece of autobiography. After being

engaged in manual labor for about fifteen years, Mr. Miller was for

some time manager of a bank that was established in his native

town. While in this position, a pamphlet that he published, on the

ecclesiastical controversies which then distracted Scotland,

attracted the attention of the leaders of the party who now form

the Free Church, and they invited him to be editor of the _Witness_

newspaper, then about to be established for the advocacy of their

principles. Mr. Miller had already published a volume of "Legendary

Tales of Cromarty," of which the late Baron Hume, nephew of the

historian, himself a man of much judgment and taste, said it was

"written in an English style, which he had begun to regard as one

of the lost arts." The ability displayed by Mr. Miller as editor of

the _Witness_, and the influence exerted by him on ecclesiastical

and educational events in Scotland, are well known. Mr. Miller did

not confine his newspaper to topics of local or passing interest.

In its columns he made public his geological observations and

researches; and most of his works originally appeared in the form

of articles in that newspaper. It was in 1840, the year at which

the autobiographical memoir closes, that the name of Hugh Miller

first became widely known beyond his own country.

At the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of

Science at Glasgow that year, Sir Roderick, then Mr. Murchison,

gave an account of the striking discoveries recently made in the

Old Red Sandstone of Scotland. M. Agassiz, who was present, pointed

out the peculiarities and the importance of these discoveries; and

it was on this occasion that he proposed to associate the name of

Mr. Miller with them, by the wonderful fossil, the _Pterichthys

Milleri_, specimens of which were then under the notice of the

section. Dr. Buckland, following M. Agassiz, said that "he had

never been so much astonished in his life by the powers of any man

as he had been by the geological descriptions of Mr. Miller. He

described these objects with a felicity which made him ashamed of

the comparative meagreness and poverty of his own descriptions in

the 'Bridgewater Treatise,' which had cost him hours and days of

labor. He (Dr. Buckland) _would give his left hand to possess such

powers of description as this man_; and if it pleased Providence to

spare his useful life, he, if any one, would certainly render the

science attractive and popular, and do equal service to theology

and geology." At the meetings of the Association, the language of

panegyric and of mutual compliment is not unfrequent, and does not

signify much; but these were spontaneous tributes of praise to one

comparatively unknown. The publication of the volume on the "Old

Red Sandstone," with the details of the author's discoveries and

researches, more than justified all the anticipations that had been

formed. It was received with highest approbation, not by men of

science alone, for the interest of its facts, but by men of

letters, for the beauty of its style. Sir Roderick Murchison, in

his address to the Geological Society that year, "hailed the

accession to their science of such a writer," and said that "his

work is, to a beginner, worth a thousand didactic treatises." The

_Edinburgh Review_ spoke of the book being "as admirable for the

clearness of its descriptions, and the sweetness of its

composition, as for the purity and gracefulness that pervade it."

The impression made by such a testimony was the more marked, that

the reviewer spoke of the writer as a fellow countryman,

"meritorious and self-taught."

In 1847 appeared "First Impressions of England and its People," the

result of a tour made during the previous year. Some parts of this

book, especially the account of the pilgrimages to

Stratford-on-Avon, and the Leasowes, and Olney, and other places

memorable for their literary associations, are as fine pieces of

descriptive writing as the English language possesses. This magic

of style characterized all his works, whether those of a more

popular kind, or his scientific treatises, such as the "Old Red

Sandstone," and "Footprints of the Creator," a volume suggested by

the "Vestiges of Creation," and subversive of the fallacies of that

superficial and plausible book. Not one of the authors of our day

has approached Hugh Miller as a master of English composition, for

the equal of which we must go back to the times of Addison, Hume,

and Goldsmith. Other living writers have now a wider celebrity, but

they owe it much to the peculiarities of their style or the

popularity of their topics. Mr. Miller has taken subjects of

science, too often rendered dry and repulsive, and has thrown over

them an air of attractive romance. His writings on literature,

history, and politics, are known to comparatively few, from having

appeared in the columns of a local newspaper. A judicious selection

from his miscellaneous articles in the _Witness_ would widely

extend his fame, and secure for him a place, in classic English

literature, as high as he held during his life as a periodical

writer and as a scientific geologist.

The personal appearance of Mr. Miller, or "Old Red," as he was

familiarly named by his scientific friends, will not be forgotten

by any who have seen him. A head of great massiveness, magnified by

an abundant profusion of sub-Celtic hair, was set on a body of

muscular compactness, but which in later years felt the undermining

influence of a life of unusual physical and mental toil. Generally

wrapped in a bulky plaid, and with a garb ready for any work, he

had the appearance of a shepherd from the Rosshire hills rather

than an author and a man of science. In conversation or in

lecturing, the man of original genius and cultivated mind at once

shone out, and his abundant information and philosophical acuteness

were only less remarkable than his amiable disposition, his

generous spirit, and his consistent, humble piety. Literature and

science have lost in him one of their brightest ornaments, and

Scotland one of its greatest men.

* * * * *

On the Sabbath following Mr. Miller's death, sermons referring to the

event were preached in many of the churches in Edinburgh. Some of these

were reported in the newspapers, among which may be mentioned those by

the Rev. Drs. Hanna, Guthrie, Hetherington, Begg, and Tweedie.

On Monday, December the 29th, the Funeral Obsequies were performed. The

following account of the imposing ceremonial is from the _Edinburgh

Witness_.

FUNERAL OF MR. HUGH MILLER.

The mortal remains of this truly great man were consigned to the

grave on Monday, amid the most marked demonstrations of sorrow on

the part of the entire community.

The private company, numbering about sixty individuals, met at

Shrub Mount, the residence of the deceased at Portobello, about a

quarter to one in the afternoon. Amongst those present were the

Lord Provost of Edinburgh; A.M. Dunlop, Esq., M.P.; A. Black, Esq.,

M.P.; Professors Simpson, Balfour, and Fraser; Rev. Principal

Cunningham; Professor James Buchanan; Rev. Drs. Guthrie, Candlish,

Hanna, Bruce, Begg, Hetherington, and Wylie; Rev. Messrs. M'Kenzie

of Dunfermline, Cameron and Hunter of Nagpoor; Maurice Lothian,

Esq.; Geo. Dalziell, Esq., W.S.; W. Wood, Esq.; R. Paul, Esq.;

Francis Russell, Esq., advocate; M. Torrance, Esq.; Dr. Russell;

Dr. Geo. Bell; J.F. Macfarlan, Esq.; Archibald Gibson, Esq.; and

Councillor Johnston. The devotional exercises were conducted by Dr.

Guthrie, who was deeply affected during the prayer, and whose

feelings at times threatened to overcome him.

Thirteen two-horse mourning coaches were here in waiting to convey

the company to the place of sepulture in the Grange Cemetery,

preceded by the hearse, which had four horses.

The melancholy event, as might have been expected, cast a gloom

over the whole of Portobello; and the Provost and Magistrates,

anticipating the general feeling of the inhabitants, to whom Mr.

Miller had endeared himself by his genius and the modesty of his

demeanor, and also by the readiness which he ever displayed to

contribute to their intellectual elevation, by taking part in

several courses of popular lectures in the town, recommended the

closing of the different shops,--a request which was at once

readily complied with. Another striking proof of the general desire

to pay the last tribute of respect to the remains of the deceased,

was furnished by the circumstance that upwards of one hundred

gentlemen, many of whom had, so recently as the previous Tuesday,

listened to the reading of one of the ablest of his lectures, by

the Rev. Mr. Wight, the Congregational minister, met at half-past

twelve in the Free Church, in order to accompany the funeral,

either on foot or in carriages, to the burial place,--a distance of

about four miles. After a short, impressive religious service,

conducted by the Rev. Mr. Philip and the Rev. Mr. Wight, they

proceeded to join the private company, who had by this time taken

their places in the mourning carriages, on their way to Edinburgh.

On reaching the General Post-Office, in Waterloo Place, the ranks

of the funeral procession were largely augmented, there being here

as many as from twenty to thirty private carriages in waiting,

filled with the leading citizens, and a large body of the

inhabitants, of all ranks, classes, and denominations, drawn up in

line three or four abreast.

The Kirk-Session of Free St. John's, of which Mr. Miller was an

office-bearer, headed by the Rev. Dr. Guthrie and the Rev. Dr.

Hanna, who left the carriage at the Post-Office, occupied the front

of the procession, immediately followed by the Royal Physical

Society, of which the lamented deceased was a leading member, the

_employes_ in the _Witness_ office, and a large body of the general

public. A still more numerous body of the citizens, as well as of

parties from Glasgow, Liverpool, Stirling, Bridge of Allan, and

other parts of the country, drew up in the rear of the long line of

carriages, while the sides of the streets were also lined with

mourners, who accompanied the procession to the Cemetery. Besides

the large concourse of people who here joined the procession, the

whole front of the Register Office and the corners of the North

Bridge were densely occupied by some thousands of spectators; and

it may be safely said, that no event since the death of Dr.

Chalmers has caused such deep-felt sorrow and regret in Edinburgh.

The numbers present in the funeral _cortege_ must have amounted to

from one to two thousand; indeed, one paper states that "at one

time there could not have been many less than four thousand people

in the procession;" whilst another journal says, that although the

inclemency of the weather, the day being one of the dreariest of

the season, "kept back many who would otherwise have swelled the

line of mourners, even with this drawback, it has been informed

that the attendance was even greater than on the occasion of the

funeral of Dr. Chalmers in 1847."

After a short delay, caused by these accessions to the procession,

the whole moved up the North Bridge. It was gratifying to observe

that nearly all the shops on the North and South Bridges, and in

Nicolson and Clerk streets, along which the _cortege_ passed, were

closed; and along the whole route many a saddened countenance and

tearful eye could be seen, all testifying to the deep respect

entertained for him whose manly form had so often traversed these

same streets.

On reaching the entrance of the Grange Cemetery, the coffin was

removed from the hearse, and borne shoulder high to the tomb,

followed by the pall-bearers and the general company. The ground

selected for the burial-place is the westmost space but one on the

northern side of the Cemetery, and in a line with the graves of Dr.

Chalmers, Sir Andrew Agnew, and Sheriff Speirs, with which it is in

close proximity. As many of our readers are aware, the situation is

one of surpassing scenic beauty, and was described by the

deceased's own matchless pen but a few years ago, on the occasion

of the burial of Chalmers; and certainly in the grave of Hugh

Miller a new feature of attraction has been added to the spot.

The pall-bearers were Mr. Miller's oldest son,--a boy about

fourteen years of age,--who was accompanied by his younger brother,

six or seven years old; Mr. A. Williamson, his half-brother and

nearest kinsman; Mr. Fairly, his partner in business; Rev. Dr.

Guthrie, Rev. Dr. Hanna, Mr. Dunlop, M.P., Mr. R. Paul, and

Principal Cunningham.

The mournful ceremony was now near its close. As the heavy, dull

sound, caused by the fall of the damp earth upon the coffin, fell

upon the ear, a sad and painful sensation crept over the frame,

increased as this was by the wintry aspect of the day and the heavy

leaden sky, which, like a pall, was spread over the face of nature,

in striking harmony with the solemnity of the scene. A few minutes

more, and all was over; and the vast company, uncovered, paid the

closing mark of respect to the ashes of the mighty dead. A touching

scene occurred at the close of all. After the whole of the company

had retired, a laboring man, clad in humble habiliments, seized

hold of a handful of ivy or laurel leaves, and gently strewed them

upon the grave, while the tearful eye eloquently spoke of the

strength of his feelings.

So passed away one of whom Dr. Chalmers made the remark that "since

Scott's death he was the greatest Scotchman that was left." "The space

his name occupied in the literary and scientific world," says another,

"could hardly have been conjectured, but for the blank he leaves behind

him now that he has left it. Other men may have extended the domain of

science wider; but no man has done more to extend the circle of its

votaries by the magic of his style and the life-like power of his

descriptions; nor has any man done more to keep together the claims, too

often made to appear divergent, of Science and Religion, and to blend

them into one intelligent and reasonable service. It was worth while to

have lived to effect this, even at the cost of the clouds which saddened

and darkened the close. But

----'glory without end

Scatters the clouds away; and on that name attend

The thanks and praises of all time.'"

A PRAYER

BY JOHN KNOX,

MADE AT THE FIRST ASSEMBLIE OF THE CONGREGATION, WHEN THE

CONFESSION OF OUR FAITHE AND WHOLE ORDERS OF THE CHURCH WAS THERE

RED AND APPROVED.[3]

O Lord God Almightie, and Father moste mcrcifull, there is none lyke

thee in heaven nor in earthe, which workest all thinges for the glorie

of thy name and the comfort of thyne elect. Thou dydst once make man

ruler over all thy creatures, and placed hym in the garden of all

pleasures; but how soone, alas, dyd he in his felicitie forget thy

goodness? Thy people Israel also, in their wealth dyd evermore runne

astray, abusinge thy manifold mercies; lyke as all fleshe contynually

rageth when it hath gotten libertie and external prosperitie. But such

is thy wisdome adjoyned to thy mercies, deare Father, that thou sekest

all means possible to brynge thy chyldren to the sure sense and lyvely

feelinge of thy fatherly favour. And therefore when prosperitie wyll not

serve, then sendest thow adversitie, graciously correctinge all thy

chyldren whome thou receyvest into thy howshold. Wherfore we, wretched

and miserable synners, render unto thee most humble and hartie thankes,

that yt hath pleased thee to call us home to thy folde by thy Fatherly

correction at this present, wheras in our prosperitie and libertie we

dyd neglect thy graces offered unto us. For the which negligence, and

many other grevous synnes whereof we now accuse our selves before thee,

thow mightest moste justly have gyven us up to reprobate mynds and

induration of our hartes, as thow haste done others. But such is thy

goodnes, O Lord, that thou semest to forget alt our offences, and haste

called us of thy good pleasure from all idolatries into this Citie most

Christianlye refourmed, to professe thy name, and to suffer some crosse

amongest thy people for thy truth and Gospell's sake; and so to be thy

wytnesses with thy Prophets and Apostles, yea, with thy dearely beloved

Sonne Jesus Christ our head, to whome thow dost begynne here to fashion

us lyke, that in his glorie we may also be lyke hym when he shall

appear. O Lord God, what are we upon whome thowe shuldest shewe this

great mercye? O moste lovynge Lord, forgyve us our unthankfulnes, and

all our synnes, for Jesus Christ's sake. O heavenly Father, increase thy

Holy Spirit in us, to teache our heartes to cry Abba, deare Father! to

assure us of our eternal election in Christ; to revele thy wyll more and

more towards us; to confirme us so in thy trewthe, that we may lyve and

dye therein; and that by the power of the same Spirit we may boldlely

gyve an accompts of our faith to all men with humblenes and mekenes,

that whereas they backbyte and slaunder us as evyll doers, they may be

ashamed and once stopp their mowthes, seinge our good conversation in

Christ Iesu, for whose sake we beseche thee, O Lord God, to guide,

governe, and prosper this our enterprise in assemblinge our bretherne,

to prayse thy holie name. And not only to be here present with us thy

children according to thy promesse, but also mercifullie to assist thy

like persecuted people, our Bretherne, gathered in all other places,

that they and we, consentinge together in one spirite and truethe, may

(all worldly respectes set a part) seke thy onely honor and glorie in

all our and their Assemblies.

SO BE IT.

THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS.

LECTURE FIRST.

THE PALÆONTOLOGICAL HISTORY OF PLANTS.

Palæontology, or the science of ancient organisms, deals, as its

subject, with all the plants and animals of all the geologic periods. It

bears nearly the same sort of relation to the _physical_ history of the

past, that biography does to the civil and political history of the

past. For just as a complete biographic system would include every name

known to the historian, a complete palæontologic system would include

every fossil known to the geologist. It enumerates and describes all the

organic existences of all the extinct creations,--all the existences,

too, of the present creation that occur in the fossil or semi-fossil

form; and, thus coextensive in space with the earth's surface,--nay,

greatly more than coextensive with the earth's surface,--for in the vast

hieroglyphic record which our globe composes, page lies beneath page,

and inscription covers over inscription,--coextensive, too, in time,

with every period in the terrestrial history since being first began

upon our planet,--it presents to the student a theme so vast and

multifarious, that it might seem but the result, on his part, of a

proper modesty, conscious of the limited range of his powers, and of

the brief and fleeting term of his life, were he to despair of being

ever able effectually to grapple with it. "But," to borrow from one of

the most ingenious of our Scottish metaphysicians, "in this, as in other

instances in which nature has given us difficulties with which to cope,

she has not left us to be wholly overcome." "If," says Dr. Thomas Brown,

in his remarks on the classifying principle,--"if she has placed us in a

labyrinth, she has at the same time furnished us with a clue which may

guide us, not, indeed, through all its dark and intricate windings, but

through those broad paths which conduct us into day. The single power by

which we discover resemblance or relation in general, is a sufficient

aid to us in the perplexity or confusion of our first attempts at

arrangement. It begins by converting thousands, and more than thousands,

into one; and, reducing in the same manner the numbers thus formed, it

arrives at last at the few distinctive characters of those great

comprehensive tribes on which it ceases to operate, because there is

nothing left to oppress the memory or the understanding."

But, is this all? Can the Palæontologist but say that that classifying

principle, which in every other department of science yields such

assistance to the memory, is also of use in his, or but urge that it

enables him to sort and arrange his facts; and that, by converting one

idea into the type and exemplar of many resembling ones, it imparts to

him an ability of carrying not inadequate conceptions of the mighty

whole in his mind? If this were all, you might well ask, Why obtrude

upon us, in connection with your special science, a common

semi-metaphysical idea, equally applicable to all the sciences,--in

especial, for example, to that botany which is the science of existing

plants, and to that zoology which is the science of existing animals?

Nay, I reply, but it is not all. I refer to this classifying principle

because, while it exists in relation to all other sciences as a

principle--to use the words of the metaphysician just quoted--"given to

us by nature,"--as a principle of _the mind within_,--it exists in

Palæontological science as a principle of nature itself,--as a principle

palpably _external to the mind_. It is a marvellous fact, whose full

meaning we can as yet but imperfectly comprehend, that myriads of ages

ere there existed a human mind, well nigh the same principles of

classification now developed by man's intellect in our better treatises

of zoology and botany, were developed on this earth by the successive

geologic periods; and that the by-past productions of our planet, animal

and vegetable, were chronologically arranged in its history, according

to the same laws of thought which impart regularity and order to the

works of the later naturalist and phytologists.

I need scarce say how slow and interrupted in both provinces the course

of arrangement has been, or how often succeeding writers have had to

undo what their predecessors had done, only to have their own

classifications set aside by _their_ successors in turn. At length,

however, when the work appears to be well nigh completed, a new science

has arisen, which presents us with a very wonderful means of testing it.

Cowley, in his too eulogistic ode to Hobbes,--smit by the singular

ingenuity of the philosophic infidel, and unable to look through his

sophisms to the consequences which they involved,--could say, in

addressing him, that

"only God could know

Whether the fair idea he did show

Agreed entirely with God's own or no."

And he then not very wisely added,--

"This, I dare boldly tell,

'T is so like truth, 't will serve our turn as well."

We now know, however, that no mere resemblance to truth will for any

considerable length of time serve its turn. It is because the

resemblances have, like those of Hobbes, been mere resemblances, that so

much time and labor have had to be wasted by the pioneers of science in

their removal; and, now that a wonderful opportunity has occurred of

comparing, in this matter of classification, the human with the Divine

idea,--the idea embodied by the zoologists and botanists in their

respective systems, with the idea embodied by the Creator of all in

geologic history,--we cannot perhaps do better, in entering upon our

subject, than to glance briefly at the great features in which God's

order of classification, as developed in Palæontology, agrees with the

order in which man has at length learned to range the living

productions, plant and animal, by which he is surrounded, and of which

he himself forms the most remarkable portion. In an age in which a class

of writers not without their influence in the world of letters would

fain repudiate every argument derived from _design_, and denounce all

who hold with Paley and Chalmers as anthropomorphists, that labor to

create for themselves a god of their own type and form, it may be not

altogether unprofitable to contemplate the wonderful parallelism which

exists between the Divine and human systems of classification,

and--remembering that the geologists who have discovered the one had no

hand in assisting the naturalists and phytologists who framed the

other--soberly to inquire whether we have not a new argument in the fact

for an identity in constitution and quality of the Divine and human

minds,--not a mere fanciful identity, the result of a disposition on the

part of man to imagine to himself a God bearing his own likeness, but an

identity real and actual, and the result of that creative act by which

God formed man in his own image.

The study of plants and animals seems to have been a favorite one with

thoughtful men in every age of the world. According to the Psalmist,

these great "works of the Lord are sought out of all them that have

pleasure therein." The Book of Job, probably the oldest writing in

existence, is full of vivid descriptions of the wild denizens of the

flood and desert; and it is expressly recorded of the wise old king,

that he "spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even

unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; and also of beasts, and

of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." Solomon was a zoologist

and botanist; and there is palpable classification in the manner in

which his studies are described. It is a law of the human mind, as has

been already said, that, wherever a large stock of facts are acquired,

the classifying principle steps in to arrange them. "Even the rudest

wanderer in the fields," says Dr. Brown, "finds that the profusion of

blossoms around him--in the greater number of which he is able himself

to discover many striking resemblances--may be reduced to some order of

arrangement." But, for many centuries, this arranging faculty labored

but to little purpose. As specimens of the strange classification that

continued to obtain down till comparatively modern times, let us select

that of two works which, from the literary celebrity of their authors,

still possess a classical standing in letters,--Cowley's "Treatise on

Plants," and Goldsmith's "History of the Earth and Animated Nature." The

plants we find arranged by the poet on the simple but very inadequate

principle of size and show. Herbs are placed first, as lowest and least

conspicuous in the scale; then flowers; and, finally, trees. Among the

herbs, at least two of the ferns--the true maidenhair and the

spleenwort--are assigned places among plants of such high standing as

sage, mint, and rosemary: among the flowers, monocotyledons, such as the

iris, the tulip, and the lily, appear among dicotyledons, such as the

rose, the violet, the sunflower, and the auricula: and among trees we

find the palms placed between the plum and the olive; and the yew, the

fir, and the juniper, flanked on one side by the box and the holly, and

on the other by the oak. Such, in treating of plants, was the

classification adopted by one of the most learned of English poets in

the year 1657.

Nor was Goldsmith,-who wrote more than a century later, much more

fortunate in dealing with the animal kingdom. Buffon had already

published his great work; and even he could bethink him of no better

mode of dividing his animals than into wild and tame. And in Goldsmith,

who adopted, in treating of the mammals, a similar principle, we find

the fishes and molluscs placed, in advance of the sauroid, ophidian, and

batrachian reptiles,--the whale united in close relationship to the

sharks and rays,--animals of the tortoise kind classed among animals of

the lobster kind, and both among shell fish, such as the snail, the

nautilus, and the oyster. And yet Goldsmith was engaged on his work

little more than eighty years ago. In fine, the true principles of

classification in the animal kingdom are of well nigh as recent

development as geologic science itself, and not greatly more ancient in

even the _vegetable_ kingdom. It would, of course, be wholly out of

place to attempt giving a minute history here of the progress of

arrangement in either department; but it can scarce be held that the

natural system of plants was other than very incomplete previous to

1789, when Jussieu first enunciated his scheme of classification; nor

did it receive its later improvements until so late as 1846, when, after

the publication, in succession, of the schemes of De Candolle and

Endlicher, Lindley communicated his finished system to the world. And

there certainly existed no even tolerably perfect system of zoology

until 1816, when the "Animal Kingdom" of Cuvier appeared. Later

naturalists,--such as Agassiz, in his own special department, the

history of fishes, and Professor Owen in the invertebrate

divisions,--have improved on the classification of even the great

Frenchman; but for purposes of comparison between the scheme developed

in geologic history and that at length elaborated by the human mind, the

system of Cuvier will be found, for at least our present purpose,

sufficiently complete. And in tracing through time the course of the

vegetable kingdom, let us adopt, as our standard to measure it by, the

system of Lindley.

Commencing at the bottom of the scale, we find the Thallogens, or

flowerless plants which lack proper stems and leaves,--a class which

includes all the algæ. Next succeed the Acrogens, or flowerless plants

that possess both stems and leaves,--such as the ferns and their allies.

Next, omitting an inconspicuous class, represented by but a few

parasitical plants incapable of preservation as fossils, come the

Endogens,--monocotyledonous flowering plants, that include the

palms, the liliaceæ, and several other families, all characterized

by the parallel venation of their leaves. Next, omitting another

inconspicuous tribe, there follows a very important class,--the

Gymnogens,--polycotyledonous trees, represented by the conifers; and

cycadaceæ. And, last of all, come the Dicotyledonous Exogens,--a class

to which all our fruit, and what are known as our "forest trees,"

belong, with a vastly preponderating majority of the herbs and flowers

that impart fertility and beauty to our gardens and meadows. This last

class, though but one, now occupies much greater space in the vegetable

kingdom than all the others united.

Such is the arrangement of Lindley, or rather an arrangement the slow

growth of ages, to which this distinguished botanist has given the last

finishing touches. And let us now mark how closely it resembles the

geologic arrangement as developed in the successive stages of the

earth's history.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.[4]

-+-------------------------

| Thallogens.

Silurian. |

| Acrogens.

-+-----+-------------------

| | | Gymnogens.

Old Red. | | |

| | |

-+-----+-----+-------------

| | | | Monocotyledons.

Carboniferous. | | | |

| | | |

-+-----+-----+-----+-------

Permian. | | | |

-+-----+-----+-----+-------

Triassic. | | | |

-+-----+-----+-----+-------

| | | | : Dicotyledons.

Oolitic. | | | | :

| | | | |

-+-----+-----+-----+-----+-

| | | | |

Cretaceous. | | | | |

| | | | |

-+-----+-----+-----+-----+- Dicotyledonous Trees.

| | | | |

Tertiary. | | | | |

| | | | |

-+-----+-----+-----+-----+-

Geologic [Thal. Ac. Gy. Mon. Dic.] arrangement.

Lindley's [Thal. Ac. Mon. Gy. Dic.] arrangement.

THE GENEALOGY OF PLANTS.]

The most ancient period of whose organisms any trace remains in the

rocks seems to have been, prevailingly at least, a period of

Thallogens. We must, of course, take into account the fact, that it has

yielded no land plants, and that the sea is everywhere now, as of old,

the great habitat of the algæ,--one of the four great orders into which

the Thallogens are divided. There appear no traces of a terrestrial

vegetation until we reach the uppermost beds of the Upper Silurian

System. But, account for the fact as we may, it is at least worthy of

notice, that, alike in the systems of our botanists and in the

chronological arrangements of our geologists, the first or introductory

class which occurs in the ascending order is this humble Thallogenic

class. There is some trace in the Lower Silurians of Scotland of a

vegetable structure which may have belonged to one of the humbler

Endogens, of which, at least, a single genus, the _Zosteraceæ,_ still

exists in salt water; but the trace is faint and doubtful, and, even

were it established, it would form merely a solitary exception to the

general evidence that the first known period of vegetable existence was

a period of Thallogens. The terrestrial remains of the Upper Silurians

of England, the oldest yet known, consist chiefly of spore-like bodies,

which belonged, says Dr. Hooker, to Lycopodiaceæ,--an order of the

second or acrogenic class. And, in the second great geologic

period,--that of the Old Red Sandstone,--we find this second class not

inadequately represented. In its lowest fossiliferous beds we detect a

Lycopodite which not a little resembles one of the commonest of our club

mosses,--_Lycopodium clavatum_,--with a minute fern and a large striated

plant resembling a calamite, and evidently allied to an existing genus

of Acrogens, the equisetaceæ. In the Middle Old Red Sandstone there also

occurs a small fern, with some trace of a larger; and one of its best

preserved vegetable organisms is a lepidodendron,--an extinct ally of

the Lycopodiums; while in the upper beds of the system, especially as

developed in the south of Ireland, the noble fern known as _Cyclopteris

Hibernicus_ is very abundant. This fern has been detected also in the

Upper Old Red of our own country, mingled with fragments of contemporary

calamites. With, however, these earliest plants of the land yet known,

there occurs a true wood, which belonged, as shown by its structure, to

a gymnospermous or polycotyledonous tree, and which we find associated

with remains of Coccosteus and Diplacanthus.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.

CYCLOPTERIS HIBERNICUS.

(Nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 3.

CONIFER OF THE LOWER OLD RED SANDSTONE.

Cromarty.

(Mag. forty diameters.)]

And here let me remark, that the facts of Palæontological science compel

us to blend, in some degree, with the classification of our modern

botanists, that of the botanists of an earlier time. In a passage

already quoted, Solomon is said to have discoursed of plants, "from the

cedar tree that is in Lebanon, to the hyssop that springeth out of the

wall,"--from the great tree to the minute herb; and Cowley rose, in his

metrical treatise, as has been shown, from descriptions of herbs and

flowers to descriptions of fruit and forest trees. And as in every age

in which there existed a terrestrial vegetation there seem to have been

"trees" as certainly as "herbs," the palæontological botantist finds that

he has, in consequence, to range his classes, not in one series, but in

two,--the Gymnogens, or cone-bearing trees, in a line nearly parallel

with the Acrogens, or flowerless, spore-bearing herbs. But the

arrangement is in no degree the less striking from the circumstance that

it is ranged, not in one, but in two lines. It is, however, an untoward

arrangement for the purposes of the Lamarckian, whose peculiar

hypothesis would imperatively demand, not a double, but a single column,

in which the ferns and club mosses would stand far in advance, in point

of time, of the Coniferæ. In the Coal Measures, so remarkable for the

great luxuriance of their flora, both the Gymnogens and Acrogens are

largely developed, with a very puzzling intermediate class, that, while

they attained to the size of trees, like the former, retained in a

remarkable degree, as in the Lepidodendra and the Calamites, the

peculiar features of the latter. And with these there appear, though

more sparingly, the Endogens,--monocotyledonous plants, represented by a

few palm-like trees (Palmacites), a few date-like fruits

(Trigonocarpum), and a few grass-like herbs (Poacites). In the great

Secondary division, the true dicotyledonous plants first appear; but, so

far as is yet known, no dicotyledonous wood. In the earlier formations

of the division a degree of doubt attaches to even the few leaves of

this class hitherto detected; but in the Lower Cretaceous strata they

become at once unequivocal in their character, and comparatively

abundant, both as individuals and species; and in the Tertiary deposits

they greatly outnumber all the humbler classes, and appear not only as

herbs, but also as great trees. Not, however, until shortly before the

introduction of man do some of their highest orders, such as the

Rosaceæ, come upon the scene, as plants of that great garden--including

the fields of the agriculturist--which it has been part of man's set

task upon earth to keep and to dress. And such seems to be the order of

classification in the vegetable kingdom, as developed in creation, and

determined by the geologic periods.

[Illustration:

Fig. 4.[5]

-+-----+-----+-------------------------------

| | | Rad. Art. Mol.

Silurian. | | |

| | | | Fishes.

-+-----+-----+-----+-------------------------

| | | |

Old Red. | | | |

| | | | | Reptiles.

-+-----+-----+-----+-----+-------------------

| | | | |

Carboniferous. | | | | |

| | | | |

-+-----+-----+-----+-----+-------------------

Permian. | | | | |

-+-----+-----+-----+-----+-------------------

Triassic. | | | | |

-+-----+-----+-----+-----+-------------------

| | | | | | Birds.

Oolitic. | | | | | | : Mammals.

| | | | | | :

-+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-------

| | | | | | :

Cretaceous. | | | | | | :

| | | | | | :

-+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-------

| | | | | | | Pla. Mam.

Tertiary. | | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

| | | | | | |

-+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-

Recent. | | | | | | | | Man.

-+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-

Geologic [Rad. Art. Mol. Fish. Rep. Bird. Mam. Man.] Arrangement.

Cuvier's [Rad. Art. Mol. Fish. Rep. Bird. Mam. Man.] Arrangement.

THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS.]

The parallelism which exists between the course of creation, as

exhibited in the animal kingdom, and the classification of the greatest

zoologist of modern times, is perhaps still more remarkable. Cuvier

divides all animals into vertebrate and invertebrate; the invertebrates

consisting, according to his arrangement, of three great

divisions,--mollusca, articulata, and radiata; and the vertebrates, of

four great classes,--the mammals, the birds, the reptiles, and the

fishes. From the lowest zone at which organic remains occur, up till

the higher beds of the Lower Silurian System, all the animal remains yet

found belong to the invertebrate divisions. The numerous tables of stone

which compose the leaves of this first and earliest of the geologic

volumes correspond in their contents with that concluding volume of

Cuvier's great work in which he deals with the mollusca, articulata, and

radiata; with, however, this difference, that the three great divisions,

instead of occurring in a continnous series, are ranged, like the

terrestrial herbs and trees, in parallel columns. The chain of animal

being on its first appearance is, if I may so express myself, a

threefold chain;--a fact nicely correspondent with the further fact,

that we cannot in the present creation range _serially_, as either

higher or lower in the scale, at least two of these divisions,--the

mollusca and articulata. In one of the higher beds of the Upper Silurian

System,--a bed which borders on the base of the Old Red Sandstone,--the

vertebrates make their earliest appearance in their fourth or ichthyic

class; and we find ourselves in that volume of the geologic record which

corresponds to Cuvier's volume on the fishes. In the many-folded pages

of the Old Red Sandstone, till we reach the highest and last, there

occur the remains of no other vertebrates than those of this fourth

class; but in its uppermost deposits there appear traces of the third or

reptilian class; and in passing upwards still, through the

Carboniferous, Permian, and Triassic Systems, we find reptiles

continuing the master existences of the time. The geologic volume in

which these great formations are included corresponds to the Cuvierian

one devoted to the Reptilia. Early in the Oolitic System, birds,

Cuvier's second class of the vertebrata, make their first appearance,

though their remains, like those of birds in the present time, are rare

and infrequent; and, for at least the earlier periods of their

existence, we know that they were,--that they haunted for food the

waters of the period, and waded in their shallows,--only from marks

similar to those by which Crusoe became first aware of the visits paid

to his island by his savage neighbors,--their footprints, left impressed

on the sands over which they stalked of old. This early Oolitic volume

corresponds in its contents to the section devoted by Cuvier, in his

great work, to his second class, the birds. And in the Stonisfield

slate,--a deposit interposed between the "Inferior" and "Great

Oolites," we detect the earliest indications of his first or

mammaliferous class, apparently represented, however, by but one

order,--the Marsupiata, or pouched animals, to whose special place in

the scale I shall afterwards have occasion to refer. Not until we reach

the times of the Tertiary division do the mammals in their higher orders

appear. The great Tertiary volume corresponds to those volumes of Cuvier

which treat of the placental animals that suckle their young. And

finally,--last born of creation,--man appears upon the scene, in his

several races and varieties; the sublime arch of animal being at length

receives its keystone; and the finished work stands up complete, from

foundation to pinnacle, at once an admirably adjusted occupant of space,

and a wonderful monument of Divine arrangement and classification, as it

exists in time. Save at two special points, to which I shall afterwards

advert, the particular arrangement unfolded by geologic history is

exactly that which the greatest and most philosophic of the naturalists

had, just previous to its discovery, originated and adopted as most

conformable to nature: the arrangements of geologic history as exhibited

in time, if, commencing at the earliest ages, we pursue it downwards, is

exactly that of the "Animal Kingdom" of Cuvier read backwards.

Let us then, in grappling with the vast multiplicity of our subject,

attempt reducing and simplifying it by means of the classifying

principle; not simply, however,--again to recur to the remark of the

metaphysician,--as an internal principle given us by nature, but as an

external principle _exemplified_ by nature. Let us take the organisms of

the old geologic periods in the order in which they occur in time;

secure, as has been shown, that if our chronology be correct, our

classification will, as a consequence, be good. It will be for the

natural theologians of the coming age to show the bearing of this

wonderful fact on the progress of man towards the just and the solid,

and on the being and character of man's Creator,--to establish, on the

one hand, against the undue depreciators of intellect and its results,

that in certain departments of mind, such as that which deals with the

arrangement and development of the scheme of organic being, human

thought is not profitlessly revolving in an idle circle, but progressing

Godwards, and gradually unlocking the order of creation. And, on the

other hand, it will be equally his proper business to demand of the

Pantheist how,--seeing that only _persons_ (such as the Cuviers and

Lindleys) could have wrought out for themselves the real arrangement of

this scheme,--how, I say, or on what principle, it is to be held that it

was a scheme originated and established at the beginning, not by a

_personal_, but by an impersonal God. But our present business is with

the _fact_ of the parallel arrangements, Divine and human,--not with the

inferences legitimately deducible from it.

[Illustration: Fig. 5.

OLDHAMIA ANTIQUA;--the oldest known Zoophyte.

Wrae Head, Ireland.]

[Illustration: Fig. 6.

PALÆOCHORDA MINOR.

(One half nat. size.)]

Beginning with the plants, let us, however, remark, that they do not

precede in the order of their appearance the humbler animals. No more

ancient organism than the _Oldhamia_ of the Lowest Irish Silurians, a

plant-like zoophyte somewhat resembling our modern sertularia, has yet

been detected by the geologist; though only a few months ago the

researches of Mr. Salter in the ancient rocks of the Longmynd,

Shropshire, previously deemed unfossiliferous, have given, to it what

seem to be contemporary vegetable organisms, in a few ill-preserved

fucoids. So far as is yet known, plants and animals appear together. The

long upward march of the animal kingdom takes its departure at its

starting point from a thick forest of algæ. In Bohemia, in Norway, in

Sweden, in the British Islands, in North America, wherever, in fine,

what appears to be the lowest, or at least one of the lowest, zones of

life has yet been detected, the rocks are found to be darkened by the

remains of algæ, so abundantly developed in some cases, that they

compose, as in the ancient Lower Silurians of Dumfriesshire, impure beds

of anthracite several feet in thickness. Apparently, from the original

looseness of their texture, the individual plants are but indifferently

preserved; nor can we expect that organisms so ancient should exhibit

any _very_ close resemblance to the plants which darken the half-tide

rocks and skerries of our coasts at the present time. We do detect,

however, in some of these primordial fossils, at least a noticeable

likeness to families familiar to the modern algæologist. The cord-like

plant, _Chorda filum_, known to our children as "dead men's ropes,"

from its proving fatal at times to the too adventurous swimmer who gets

entangled in its thick wreaths, had a Lower Silurian representative,

known to the Palæontologist as the _Palæochorda_, or ancient chorda,

which existed apparently in two species,--a larger and smaller. The

still better known _Chondrus crispus_, the Irish moss or carrageen of

our cookery-books, has likewise its apparent though more distant

representative in _Chondritis_, a Lower Silurian algæ, of which there

seems to exist at least three species. The fucoids, or kelp weeds,

appear to have had also their representatives in such plants as

_Fucoides gracilis_ of the Lower Silurians of the Malverns; in short,

the Thallogens of the first ages of vegetable life seem to have

resembled, in the group, and in at least their more prominent features,

the algæ of the existing time. And with the first indications of land we

pass direct from the Thallogens to the Acrogens,--from the sea weeds to

the fern allies. The Lycopodiaceæ;, or club mosses, bear in the axils of

their leaves minute circular cases, which form the receptacles of their

spore-like seeds. And when, high in the Upper Silurian System, and just

when preparing to quit it for the Lower Old Red Sandstone, we detect our

earliest terrestrial organisms, we find that they are composed

exclusively of those little spore receptacles. The number of land plants

gradually increases as we ascend into the overlying system. Still,

however, the Flora of even the Old Red is but meagre and poor; and you

will perhaps permit me to lighten this part of my subject, which

threatens too palpably to partake of the poverty of that with which it

deals, by a simple illustration.

[Illustration: Fig. 7.

LYCOPODIUM CLAVATUM.]

[Illustration: Fig. 8.

EQUISETUM FLUVIATILE.]

We stand, at low ebb, on the outer edge of one of those iron-bound

shores of the Western Highlands, rich in forests of algæ, from which,

not yet a generation bygone, our Celtic proprietors used to derive a

larger portion of their revenues than from their fields and moors. Rock

and skerry are brown with sea weed. The long cylindrical lines of

_Chorda filum_, many feet in length, lie aslant in the tideway; long

shaggy bunches of _Fucus serratus_ and _Fucus nodosus_ droop heavily

from the rock sides; while the flatter ledges, that form the uneven

floor upon which we tread, bristle thick with the stiff, cartilaginous,

many-cleft fronds of at least two species of chondrus,--the common

carrageen, and the smaller species, _C. Norvegicus_. Now, in

the thickly-spread fucoids of this Highland shore we have not a

_very_ inadequate representation of the first, or thallogenic

vegetation,--that of the great Silurian period, as exhibited in the

rocks, from the base to nearly the top of the system. And should we add

to the rocky tract, rich in fucoids, a submarine meadow of pale shell

sand, covered by a deep green swathe of zostera, with its jointed

saccharine roots and slim flowers, unfurnished with petals, we would

render it perhaps more adequately representative still.

[Illustration: Fig. 9.

OSMUNDA REGALIS. (Royal Fern.)]

We cross the beach, and enter on a bare brown moor, comparatively

fertile, however, in the club mosses. One of the largest and finest of

the species, _Lycopodium clavatum_, with its long scaly stems and

upright spikes of lighter green,--altogether a graceful though

flowerless plant, which the herd-boy learns to select from among its

fellows, and to bind round his cap,--goes trailing on the drier spots

for many feet over the soil; while at the edge of trickling runnel or

marshy hollow, a smaller and less hardy species, _Lycopodium inundatum_,

takes its place. The marshes themselves bristle thick with the deep

green horse tail, _Equisetum fluviatile_, with its fluted stem and

verticillate series of linear brandies. Two other species of the same

genus, _Equisetum sylvaticum_ and _Equisetum arvense_, flourish on the

drier parts of the moor, blent with two species of minute ferns, the

moonwort and the adder's tongue,--ferns that, like the magnificent royal

fern (_Osmunda regalis_), though on a much humbler scale, bear their

seed cases on independent stems, and were much sought after of old for

imaginary virtues, which the modern schools of medicine refuse to

recognize. Higher up the moor, ferns of ampler size occur, and what

seems to be rushes, which bear atop conglobate panicles on their smooth

leafless stems; but at its lower edge little else appears than the

higher Acrogens,--ferns and their allies. There occurs, however, just

beyond the first group of club mosses,--a remarkable exception in a

solitary pine,--the advance guard of one of the ancient forests of the

country, which may be seen far in the background, clothing with its

shaggy covering of deep green the lower hill-slopes. And as we found in

the Thallogens of that littoral zone over which we have just passed,

representatives of the marine flora of the Silurian System, from the

first appearance of organisms in its nether beds, to its bone-bed of the

Upper Ludlow rocks, in which the Lycopodites first appear, so in the

Acrogens of that moor, with its solitary coniferous tree, we may

recognize an equally striking representative of the terrestrial flora

which existed during the deposition of these Ludlow rocks, and of the

various formations of the Old Red Sandstone, Lower, Middle, and Upper.

[Illustration: Fig. 10.

PINUS SYLVESTRIS. (Scotch Fir.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 11.

CALAMITE? Of the Lower Old Red Sandstone. Shetland. (One eighth nat.

size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 12.

LYCOPODITE? Of the Lower Old Red Sandstone. Thurso. (Mag. two

diameters.)]

In the upper beds of the Upper Silurian, as has been already remarked,

Lycopodites are the only terrestrial plants yet found. In the Lower Old

Red Sandstone we find added to these, with Thallogens that bear at least

the same _general_ character as in the system beneath, minute ferns, and

a greatly larger plant, allied to the horse tails. The Old Red flora

seems to have been prevailingly an acrogenic flora; and yet with almost

its first beginnings,--contemporary with at least the earlier fossils of

the system in Scotland, we find a true polycotyledonous tree, not lower

in the scale than the araucarites of the Coal Measures,--which in

structure it greatly resembles,--or than the pines or cedars of our own

times (see Fig. 3). In the Middle Old Red Sandstone there occurs, with

plants representative apparently of the ferns and their allies, a

somewhat equivocal and doubtful organism, which may have been the

panicle or compound fruit of some aquatic rush; while in the Upper Old

Red, just ere the gorgeous flora of the Coal Measures began to be, there

existed in considerable abundance a stately fern, the _Cyclopteris

Hibernicus_ (see Fig. 2), of mayhap not smaller proportions than our

monarch of the British ferns, _Osmunda regalis_, associated with a

peculiar lepidodendron, and what seems to be a lepidostrobus,--possibly

the fructiferous spike or cone of the latter, mingled with carbonaceous

stems, which, in the simplicity of their texture, and their abundance,

give evidence of a low but not scanty vegetation. Ere passing to the

luxuriant carboniferous flora, I shall make but one other remark. The

existing plants whence we derive our analogies in dealing with the

vegetation of this early period, contribute but little, if at all, to

the support of animal life. The ferns and their allies remain untouched

by the grazing animals. Our native club mosses, though once used in

medicine, are positively deleterious; the horse tails, though harmless,

so abound in silex, which wraps them round with a cuticle of stone, that

they are rarely cropped by cattle; while the thickets of fern which

cover our hill-sides, and seem so temptingly rich and green in their

season, scarce support the existence of a single creature, and remain

untouched in stem and leaf, from their first appearance in spring, until

they droop and wither under the frosts of early winter. Even the insects

that infest the herbaria of the botanist almost never injure his ferns.

Nor are our resin-producing conifers, though they nourish a few beetles,

favorites with the herbivorous tribes in a much greater degree. Judging

from all we yet know, the earliest terrestrial flora may have covered

the dry land with its mantle of cheerful green, and served its general

purposes, chemical and others, in the well-balanced economy of nature;

but the herb-eating animals would have fared but ill even where it

throve most luxuriantly; and it seems to harmonize with the fact of its

non-edible character, that up to the present time we know not that a

single herbivorous animal lived among its shades. From all that

appears, it may be inferred that it had not to serve the purposes of the

floras of the passing time, in which, according to the poet,

"The world's bread depends on the shooting of a seed."

[Illustration: Fig. 13.

FERN? of Lower Old Red Sandstone. Orkney.

(Nat. Size.)]

The flora of the Coal Measures was the richest and most luxuriant, in at

least individual productions, with which the fossil botanist has formed

any acquaintance. Never before or since did our planet bear so rank a

vegetation as that of which the numerous coal seams and inflammable

shales of the carboniferous period form but a portion of the

remains,--the portion spared, in the first instance, by dissipation and

decay, and in the second by the denuding agencies. Almost all our

coal,--the stored up fuel of a world,--forms but a comparatively small

part of the produce of this wonderful flora. Amid much that was so

strange and antique of type in its productions as to set the analogies

of the botanist at fault, there occurred one solitary order, not a few

of whose species closely resembled their cogeners of the present time. I

refer, of course, to its ferns. And these seem to have formed no small

proportion of the entire flora of the period. Francis estimates the

recent dorsiferous ferns of Great Britain at thirty-five species, and

the species of all the other genera at six more,--forty-one species in

all; and as the flowering plants of the country do not fall short of

fourteen hundred species, the ferns bear to them the rather small

proportion of about one to thirty-five; whereas of the British Coal

Measure flora, in which we do not yet reckon quite three hundred species

of plants, about a hundred and twenty were ferns. Three sevenths of the

entire carboniferous flora of Britain belonged to this familiar class;

and for about fifty species more we can discover no nearer analogies

than those which connect them with the fern allies. And if with the

British Coal Measure we include those also of the Continent of America,

we shall find the proportions in favor of the ferns still greater. The

number of carboniferous plants hitherto described amounts, says M. Ad.

Brogniart, to about five hundred, and of these two hundred and

fifty,--one half of the whole,--were ferns.

[Illustration: Fig. 14.]

[Illustration: Fig. 15.]

[Illustration: Fig. 16.]

[Illustration: Fig. 17.]

[Illustration: Fig. 18.]

[Illustration: Fig. 19.]

[Illustration: FERNS OF THE COAL MEASURES.[6]]

[Illustration: Fig. 20.

ALTINGIA EXCELSA.

Norfolk Island Pine. (Young Specimen.)]

Rising in the scale from the lower to the higher vegetable forms of the

system,--from its ferns to its trees,--we find great conifers,--so great

that they must have raised their heads more than a hundred feet over the

soil; and such was their abundance in this neighborhood, that one can

scarce examine a fragment of coal beside one's household fire that is

not charged with their carbonized remains. Though marked by certain

peculiarities of structure, they bore, as is shown by the fossil trunks

of Granton and Craigleith, the familiar outlines of true coniferous

trees; and would mayhap have differed no more in appearance from their

successors of the same order that now live in our forests, than these

differ from the conifers of New Zealand or of New South Wales. We have

thus, in the numerous ferns and numerous coniferous trees of the Coal

Measures, known objects by which to conceive of some of the more

prominent features of the flora of which they composed so large a part.

We have not inadequate conceptions of at once the giants of its forests

and the green swathe of its plains and hill-sides,--of its mighty trees

and its dwarf _underwood_,--of its cedars of Lebanon, so to speak, and

its hyssop of the wall. But of an intermediate class we have no

existing representatives; and in this class the fossil botanist finds

puzzles and enigmas with which hitherto at least he has been able to

deal with only indifferent success. There is a view, however,

sufficiently simple, which may be found somewhat to lessen, if not

altogether remove, the difficulty. Nature does not dwell willingly in

mediocrity; and so in all ages she as certainly produced trees, or

plants of tree-like proportions and bulk, as she did minute shrubs and

herbs. In not a few of the existing orders and families, such as the

Rosaceæ, the Leguminosæ, the Myrtaceæ, and many others, we have plants

of all sizes, from the creeping herb, half hidden in the sward, to the

stately tree. The wild dwarf strawberry and minute stone-bramble are of

the same order as our finer orchard trees,--apple, pear, and plum,--or

as those noble hawthorn, mountain ash, and wild cherry trees, that

impart such beauty to our lawns and woods; and the minute spring vetch

and everlasting pea are denizens of the same great family as the tall

locust and rosewood trees, and the gorgeous laburnum. Did there exist no

other plants than the Rosaceæ or the Leguminosæ, we would possess,

notwithstanding, herbs, shrubs, and trees, just as we do now. And in

plants of a greatly humbler order we have instances of similar variety

in point of size. The humblest grass in our meadows belongs to the same

natural order as the tall bamboo, that, shooting up its panicles amid

the jungles of India to the height of sixty feet, looks down upon all

the second class trees of the country. Again, the minute forked

spleenwort of Arthur Seat, which rarely exceeds three inches in length,

is of the same family as those tree-ferns of New Zealand and Tasmania

that rise to an elevation of from twenty to thirty feet. And we know how

in the ferns provision is made for the attainment and maintenance of the

tree-like size and character. The rachis, which in the smaller species

is either subterranean or runs along the ground, takes in the tree-fern

a different direction, and, rising erect, climbs slowly upwards in the

character of a trunk or stem, and sends out atop, year after year, a

higher and yet higher coronal of fronds. And in order to impart the

necessary strength to this trunk, and to enable it to war for ages with

the elements, its mass of soft cellular tissue is strengthened all round

by internal buttresses of dense vascular fibre, tough and elastic as the

strongest woods. Now, not a few of the more anomalous forms of the Coal

Measures seem to be simply fern allies of the types Lycopodiaceæ,

Marsileaceæ, and Equisetum, that, escaping from the mediocrity of mere

herbs, shot up into trees,--some of them very great trees,--and that had

of necessity to be furnished with a tissue widely different from that of

their minuter contemporaries and successors. It was of course an

absolute mechanical necessity, that if they were to present, by being

tall and large, a wide front to the tempest, they should also be

comparatively solid and strong to resist it; but with this simple

mechanical requirement there seems to have mingled a principle of a more

occult character. The Gymnogens or conifers were the highest vegetable

existences of the period,--its true trees; and all the tree-like fern

allies were strengthened to meet the necessities of their increased

size, on, if I may so speak, a _coniferous_ principle. Tissue resembling

that of their contemporary conifers imparted the necessary rigidity to

their framework; nay, so strangely were they pervaded throughout by the

coniferous characteristics, that it seems difficult to determine whether

they really most resembled the acrogenous or gymnogenous families. The

Lepidodendra,--great plants of the club moss type, that rose from fifty

to seventy feet in height,--had well nigh as many points of resemblance

to the coniferæ as to the Lycopodites. The Calamites,--reed-like,

jointed plants, that more nearly resemble the Equisetaceæ than aught

else which now exists, but which attained, in the larger specimens, to

the height of ordinary trees, also manifest very decidedly, in their

internal structure, some of the characteristics of the conifers. It has

been remarked by Lindley and Hutton of even Sphenophyllum,--a genus of

plants with verticillate leaves, of which at least six species occur in

our Coal Measures, and which Brogniart refers to one of the humblest

families of the fern allies,--that it seems at least as nearly related

to the Coniferæ as to its lowlier representatives, the Marsileaceæ. And

it is this union of traits, pertaining to what are now widely separated

orders, that imparts to not a few of the vegetables of the Coal Measures

their singularly anomalous character.

[Illustration: Fig. 21.

EAST INDIA TREE-FERN.[7]

(_Asophila perrotetiana._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 22.

SECTION OF STEM OF TREE-FERN.[8]

(_Cyathea._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 23.]

[Illustration: Fig. 24.]

[Illustration: Fig. 25.]

[Illustration: LEPIDODENDRON STERNBERGII.[9]]

[Illustration: Fig. 26.

CALAMITES MOUGEOTII.]

[Illustration: Fig. 27.

SPHENOPHYLLUM DENTATUM.]

[Illustration: Fig. 28.

SIGILLARIA RENIFORMIS.]

Let me attempt introducing you more intimately to one of those plants

which present scarce any analogy with existing forms, and which must

have imparted so strange a character and appearance to the flora of the

Coal Measures. The Sigillaria formed a numerous genus of the

Carboniferous period: no fewer than twenty-two different species have

been enumerated in the British coal fields alone; and such was their

individual abundance, that there are great seams of coal which seem to

be almost entirely composed of their remains. At least the ancient soil

on which these seams rest, and on which their materials appear to have

been elaborated from the elements, is in many instances as thickly

traversed by their underground stems as the soil occupied by our densest

forests is traversed by the tangled roots of the trees by which it is

covered; and we often find associated with them in these cases the

remains of no other plant. The Sigillaria were remarkable for their

beautifully sculptured stems, various in their pattern, according to

their species. All were fluted vertically, somewhat like columns of the

Grecian Doric; and each flute or channel had its line of sculpture

running adown its centre. In one species (_S. flexuosa_) the sculpture

consists of round knobs, surrounded by single rings, like the heads of

the bolts of the ship carpenter; in another (_S. reniformis_) the knobs

are double, and of an oval form, somewhat resembling pairs of

kidneys,--a resemblance to which the species owes its name. In another

species (_S. catenulata_) what seems a minute chain of distinctly

formed elliptical links drops down the middle of each flute; in yet

another (_S. oculata_) the carvings are of an oval form, and, bearing

each a round impression in its centre, they somewhat resemble rows of

staring goggle-eyes; while the carvings in yet another species (_S.

pachyderma_) consist chiefly of crescent-shaped depressions. The roots,

or rather underground stems, of this curious genus attracted notice,

from their singularity, long ere their connection with the carved and

fluted stems had been determined, and have been often described as the

"stigmaria" of the fossil botanist. They, too, have their curious

carvings, consisting of deeply marked stigmata, quincuncially arranged,

with each a little ring at its bottom, and, in at least one rare

species, surrounded by a sculptured star. Unlike true roots, they

terminate abruptly; each rootlet which they send forth was jointed to

the little ring or dimpled knob at the bottom of the stigmata; and the

appearance of the whole, as it radiated from the central mass, whence

the carved trunk proceeded, somewhat resembled that of an enormous

coach-wheel divested of the rim. Unfortunately we cannot yet complete

our description of this strange plant. A specimen, traced for about

forty feet across a shale bed, was found to bifurcate atop into two

great branches,--a characteristic in which, with several others, it

differed from most of the tree-ferns,--a class of plants to which

Adolphe Brogniart is inclined to deem it related; but no specimen has

yet shown the nature of its foliage. I am, however, not a little

disposed to believe with Brogniart that it may have borne as leaves some

of the supposed ferns of the Coal Measures; nowhere, at least, have I

found these lie so thickly, layer above layer, as around the stems of

Sigillaria; and the fact that, even in our own times, plants widely

differing from the tree-ferns,--such, for instance, as one of the

Cycadeæ,--should bear leaves scarce distinguishable from fern fronds,

may well reconcile us to an apparent anomaly in the case of an ancient

plant such as Sigillaria, whose entire constitution, so far as it has

been ascertained, appears to have been anomalous. The sculpturesque

character of this richly fretted genus was shared by not a few of its

contemporaries. The Ulodendra, with their rectilinear rows of circular

scars, and their stems covered with leaf-like carvings, rivalled in

effect the ornately relieved torus of a Corinthian column: Favularia,

Knorria, Halonia, many of the Calamites, and all the Lepidodendra,

exhibited the most delicate sculpturing. In walking among the ruins of

this ancient flora, the Palæontologist almost feels as if he had got

among the broken fragments of Italian palaces, erected long ages ago,

when the architecture of Rome was most ornate, and every moulding was

roughened with ornament; and in attempting to call up in fancy the old

Carboniferous forests, he has to dwell on this peculiar feature as one

of the most prominent, and to see, in the multitude of trunks darkened

above by clouds of foliage, that rise upon him in the prospect, the slim

columns of an elder Alhambra, roughened with arabesque tracery and

exquisite filagree work.

[Illustration: Fig. 29.

SIGILLARIA RENIFORMIS.

(Nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 30.

SIGILLARIA PACHYDERMA.

(One fourth nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 31.

STIGMARIA FICOIDES.

(One fourth nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 32.

FAVULARIA TESSELLATA.

(One fifth nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 33.

LEPIDODENDRON OBOVATUM.

(Nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 34.

CYCAS REVOLUTA.

(_Recent._)]

[Illustration: Fig.35.

ZAMIA PUNGENS.

(_Recent._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 36.

ZAMIA FENEONIS (PORTLAND OOLITE.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 37.

MANTELLIA NIDIFORMIS.

(Portland Dirt-bed.)]

In the Oolitic flora we find a few peculiar features introduced. The

Cyeadeæ,--a family of plants allied to the ferns on the one hand, and to

the conifers on the other, and which in their general aspect not a

little resemble stunted palms,--appear in this flora for the first time.

Its coniferous genera, too, receive great accessions to their numbers,

and begin to resemble, more closely than at an earlier period, the

genera which still continue to exist. The cypresses, the yews, the

thujas, the dammaras, all make their earliest appearance in the flora of

the Oolite. Among our existing woods there seem to be but two conifers

(that attain to the dignity of trees) indigenous to Britain,--the common

yew, _Taxus baccata_, and the common Scotch fir, _Pinus sylvestris_; and

yet we know that the latter alone formed, during the last few centuries,

great woods, that darkened for many miles together the now barren moors

and bare hill-sides of the Highlands of Scotland,--moors and hill-sides

that, though long since divested of their last tree, are still known by

their old name of _forests_. In the times of the Oolite, on the other

hand, Britain had from fourteen to twenty different species of conifers;

and its great forests, of whose existence we have direct evidence in the

very abundant lignites of the system, must have possessed a richness and

variety which our ancient fir woods of the historic or human period

could not have possessed. With the Conifers and the Cycadeæ there were

many ferns associated,--so many, that they still composed nearly two

fifths of the entire flora; and associated with these, though in reduced

proportions, we find the fern allies. The reduction, however, of these

last is rather in species than in individuals. The Brora Coal, one of

the most considerable Oolitic seams in Europe, seems to have been formed

almost exclusively of an equisetum,--_E. columnare_. In this flora the

more equivocal productions of the Coal Measures are represented by what

seems to be the last of the Calamites; but it contains no

Lepidodendra,--no Ulodendra,--no Sigillaria,--no Favularia,--no Knorria

or Halonia. Those monsters of the vegetable world that united to the

forms of its humbler productions the bulk of trees, had, with the

solitary exception of the Calamites, passed into extinction; and ere the

close of the system they too had disappeared. The forms borne by most of

the Oolitic plants were comparatively familiar forms. With the Acrogens

and Gymnogens we find the first indication of the Liliaceæ, or lily-like

plants,--of plants, too, allied to the Pandanaceæ or screw pines, the

fruits of which are sometimes preserved in a wonderfully perfect state

of keeping in the Inferior Oolite, together with Carpolithes,--palm-like

fruits, very ornately sculptured,--and the remains of at least one other

monocotyledon, that bears the somewhat general name of an Endogenite.

With these there occur a few disputed leaves, which I must persist in

regarding as dicotyledonous. But they formed, whatever their true

character, a very inconspicuous feature in the Oolitic flora; and not

until the overlying Cretaceous System is ushered in do we find leaves in

any considerable quantity decidedly of this high family; nor until we

enter into the earlier Tertiaries do we succeed in detecting a true

dicotyledonous tree. On such an amount of observation is this order of

succession determined,--though the evidence is, of course, mainly

negative,--that when, some eight or ten years ago, Dr. John Wilson, the

learned Free Church missionary to the Parsees of India, submitted to me

specimens of fossil woods which he had picked up in the Egyptian Desert,

in order that I might if possible determine their age, I told him, ere

yet the optical lapidary had prepared them for examination, that if they

exhibited the coniferous structure, they might belong to any geologic

period from the times of the Lower Old Red Sandstone downwards; but that

if they manifested in their tissue the dicotyledonous character, they

could not be older than the times of the Tertiary. On submitting them in

thin slices to the microscope, they were found to exhibit the peculiar

dicotyledonous structure as strongly as the oak or chestnut. And

Lieutenant Newbold's researches in the deposit in which they occur has

since demonstrated, on stratigraphical evidence, that not only does it

belong to the great Tertiary division, but also to one of the

comparatively modern formations of the Tertiary.

[Illustration: Fig. 38

EQUISETUM COLUMNARE.

(Nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 39.

CARPOLITHES CONICA.

(Reduced one third.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 40.

CARPOLITHES BUCKLANDII.[10]

(Reduced one third.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 41.

ACER TRILOBATUM.[11]

(Miocene of OEningen.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 42.

ULMUS BRONNII.[12]

(Miocene of Bohemia.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 43.

PALMACITES LAMANONIS.

(A Palm of the Miocene of Aix.)]

The earlier flora of this Tertiary division presents an aspect widely

different from that of any of the previous ones. The ferns and their

allies sink into their existing proportions; nor do the coniferæ,

previously so abundant, occupy any longer a prominent place. On the

other hand, the dicotyledonous herbs and trees, previously so

inconspicuous in creation, are largely developed. Trees of those

Amentiferous orders to which the oak, the hazel, the beech, and the

plane belong, were perhaps not less abundant in the Eocene woods than in

those of the present time: they were mingled with trees of the Laurel,

the Leguminous, and the Anonaceous or custard apple families, with many

others; and deep forests, in the latitude of London (in which the

intertropical forms must now be protected, as in the Crystal Palace,

with coverings of glass, and warmed by artificial heat), abounded in

graceful palms. Mr. Bowerbank found in the London clay of the island of

Sheppey alone the fruits of no fewer than thirteen different species of

this picturesque family, which lends so peculiar a feature to the

landscapes in which it occurs; and ascertained that the undergrowth

beneath was composed, in large proportion, of creeping plants of the

gourd and melon order. From the middle or Miocene flora of the Tertiary

division,--of which we seem to possess in Britain only the small but

interesting fragment detected by his Grace the Duke of Argyll among the

trap-beds of Mull,--most of the more exotic forms seem to have been

excluded. The palms, however, still survive in no fewer than thirty-one

different species, and we find in great abundance, in the place of the

other exotics, remains of the plane and buckthorn families,--part of a

group of plants that in their general aspect, as shown in the Tertiary

deposits of the Continent, not a little resembled the vegetation of the

United States at the present day. The nearer we approach to existing

times, the more familiar in form and outline do the herbs and trees

become. We detect, as has been shown, at least one existing _order_ in

the ferns of the Coal Measures; we detect at least existing _genera_

among the Coniferæ, Equisetaceæ, and Cycadaceæ of the Oolite; the

acacias, gourds, and laurels of the Eocene flora, and the planes,

willows, and buckthorns of the Miocene, though we fail to identify their

species with aught that now lives, still more strongly remind us of the

recent productions of our forests or conservatories; and, on entering,

in our downward course, the Pleistocene period, we at length find

ourselves among familiar _species_. On old terrestrial surfaces, that

date before the times of the glacial period, and underlie the boulder

clay, the remains of forests of oak, birch, hazel, and fir have been

detected,--all of the familiar species indigenous to the country, and

which still flourish in our native woods. And it was held by the late

Professor Edward Forbes, that the most ancient of his five existing

British floras,--that which occurs in the south-west of Ireland, and

corresponds with the flora of the northwest of Spain and the

Pyrenees,--had been introduced into the country as early, perhaps, as

the times of the Miocene. Be this, however, as it may, there can rest no

doubt on the great antiquity of the prevailing trees of our indigenous

forests.

The oak, the birch, the hazel, the Scotch fir, all lived, I repeat, in

what is now Britain, ere the last great depression of the land. The

gigantic northern elephant and rhinoceros, extinct for untold ages,

forced their way through their tangled branches; and the British tiger

and hyæna harbored in their thickets. Cuvier framed an argument for the

fixity of species on the fact that the birds and beasts embalmed in the

catacombs were identical in every respect with the animals of the same

kinds that live now. But what, it has been asked, was a brief period of

three thousand years, compared with the geologic ages? or how could any

such argument be founded on a basis so little extended? It is, however,

to no such narrow basis we can refer in the case of these woods. All

human history is comprised in the nearer corner of the immense period

which they measure out; and yet, from their first appearance in creation

till now they have not altered a single fibre. And such, on this point,

is the invariable testimony of Palæontologic science,--testimony so

invariable, that no great Palæontologist was ever yet an asserter of the

development hypothesis. With the existing trees of our indigenous woods

it is probable that in even these early times a considerable portion of

the herbs of our recent flora would have been associated, though their

remains, less fitted for preservation, have failed to leave distinct

trace behind them. We at least know generally, that with each succeeding

period there appeared a more extensively useful and various vegetation

than that which had gone before. I have already referred to the sombre,

unproductive character of the earliest terrestrial flora with which we

are acquainted. It was a flora unfitted, apparently, for the support of

either graminivorous bird or herbivorous quadruped. The singularly

profuse vegetation of the Coal Measures was, with all its wild

luxuriance, of a resembling cast. So far as appears, neither flock nor

herd could have lived on its greenest and richest plains; nor does even

the flora of the Oolite seem to have been in the least suited for the

purposes of the shepherd or herdsman. Not until we enter on the Tertiary

periods do we find floras amid which man might have profitably labored

as a dresser of gardens, a tiller of fields, or a keeper of flocks and

herds. Nay, there are whole orders and families of plants of the very

first importance to man which do not appear until late in even the

Tertiary ages. Some degree of doubt must always attach to merely

negative evidence; but Agassiz, a geologist whose statements must be

received with respect by every student of the science, finds reason to

conclude that the order of the Rosaceæ,--an order more important to the

gardener than almost any other, and to which the apple, the pear, the

quince, the cherry, the plum, the peach, the apricot, the victorine, the

almond, the raspberry, the strawberry, and the various brambleberries

belong, together with all the roses and the potentillas,--was introduced

only a short time previous to the appearance of man. And the true

grasses,--a still more important order, which, as the corn-bearing

plants of the agriculturist, feed at the present time at least two

thirds of the human species, and in their humbler varieties form the

staple food of the _grazing_ animals,--scarce appear in the fossil state

at all. They are peculiarly plants of the human period.

Let me instance one other family of which the fossil botanist has not

yet succeeded in finding any trace in even the Tertiary deposits, and

which appears to have been specially created for the gratification of

human sense. Unlike the Rosaceæ, it exhibits no rich blow of color, or

tempting show of luscious fruit;--- it does not appeal very directly to

either the sense of taste or of sight: but it is richly odoriferous;

and, though deemed somewhat out of place in the garden for the last

century and more, it enters largely into the composition of some of our

most fashionable perfumes. I refer to the _Labiate_ family,--a family to

which the lavenders, the mints, the thymes, and the hyssops belong, with

basil, rosemary, and marjoram,--all plants of "gray renown," as

Shenstone happily remarks in his description of the herbal of his

"Schoolmistress."

"Herbs too she knew, and well of each could speak,

That in her garden sipped the silvery dew,

Where no vain flower disclosed a gaudy streak,

But herbs for use and physic not a few,

Of gray renown within those borders grew.

The tufted basil, pun-provoking thyme,

And fragrant balm, and sage of sober hue.

"And marjoram sweet in shepherd's posie found,

And lavender, whose spikes of azure bloom

Shall be erewhile in arid bundles bound,

To lurk amid her labors of the loom,

And crown her kerchiefs clean with meikle rare perfume.

"And here trim rosemary, that whilom crowned

The daintiest garden of the proudest peer,

Ere, driven from its envied site, it found

A sacred shelter for its branches here,

Where, edged with gold, its glittering skirts appear,

With horehound gray, and mint of softer green."

All the plants here enumerated belong to the labiate family; which,

though unfashionable even in Shenstone's days, have still their products

favorably received in the very best society. The rosemary, whose

banishment from the gardens of the great he specially records, enters

largely in the composition of eau de Cologne. Of the lavenders, one

species (_Lavendula vera_) yields the well known lavender oil, and

another (_L. latifolio_) the spike oil. The peppermint (_Meantha

viridus_) furnishes the essence so popular under that name among our

confectioners; and one of the most valued perfumes of the East (next to

the famous _Attar_, a product of the Rosaceæ) is the oil of the

_Patchouly_ plant, another of the labiates. Let me indulge, ere quitting

this part of the subject, in a single remark. There have been classes of

religionists, not wholly absent from our own country, and well known on

the Continent, who have deemed it a merit to deny themselves every

pleasure of sense, however innocent and delicate. The excellent but

mistaken Pascal refused to look upon a lovely landscape; and the Port

Royalist nuns remarked, somewhat simply for their side of the argument,

that they seemed as if warring with Providence, seeing that the favors

which he was abundantly showering upon them, they, in obedience to the

stern law of their lives, were continually rejecting. But it is better,

surely, to be on the side of Providence against Pascal and the nuns,

than on the side of Pascal and the nuns against Providence. The great

Creator, who has provided so wisely and abundantly for all his

creatures, knows what is best for us, infinitely better than we do

ourselves; and there is neither sense nor merit, surely, in churlishly

refusing to partake of that ample entertainment, sprinkled with delicate

perfumes, garnished with roses, and crowned with the most delicious

fruit, which we now know was not only specially prepared for us, but

also got ready, as nearly as we can judge, for the appointed hour of our

appearance at the feast. This we also know, that when the Divine Man

came into the world,--unlike the Port Royalists, he did not refuse the

temperate use of any of these luxuries, not even of that "ointment of

spikenard, very precious" (a product of the labiate family), with which

Mary anointed his feet.

[Illustration: Fig. 44.

CYCLOPHTHALMUS BUCKLANDI.

(A Fossil Scorpion of the Coal Measures of Bohemia.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 45.

FOSSIL DRAGON-FLY.

Solenhofen.]

Though it may at first seem a little out of place, let us anticipate

here, for the sake of the illustration which it affords, one of the

sections of the other great division of our subject,--that which treats

of the fossil animals. Let us run briefly over the geologic history of

insects, in order that we may mark the peculiar light which it casts on

the character of the ancient floras. No insects have yet been detected

in the Silurian or Old Red Sandstone Systems. They first appear amid the

hard, dry, flowerless vegetation of the Coal Measures, and in genera

suited to its character. Among these the scorpions take a prominent

place,--carnivorous arachnidæ of ill repute, that live under stones and

fallen trunks, and seize fast with their nippers upon the creatures on

which they prey, crustaceans usually, such as the wood-louse, or

insects, such as the earth-beetles and their grubs. With the scorpions

there occur cockroaches of types not at all unlike the existing ones,

and that, judging from their appearance, must have been foul feeders, to

which scarce anything could have come amiss as food. Books, manuscripts,

leather, ink, oil, meat, even the bodies of the dead, are devoured

indiscriminately by the recent _Blatta gigantea_ of the warmer parts of

the globe,--one of the most disagreeable pests of the European settler,

or of war vessels on foreign stations. I have among my books an

age-embrowned copy of Ramsay's "Tea Table Miscellany," that had been

carried into foreign parts by a musical relation, after it had seen hard

service at home, and had become smoke dried and black; and yet even it,

though but little tempting, as might be thought, was not safe from the

cockroaches; for, finding it left open one day, they ate out in half an

hour half its table of contents, consisting of several leaves.

Assuredly, if the ancient _Blattæ_ were as little nice in their eating

as the devourers of the "Tea Table Miscellany," they would not have

lacked food amid even the unproductive flora and meagre fauna of the

Coal Measures. With these ancient cockroaches a few locusts and beetles

have been found associated, together with a small _Tinea_,--a creature

allied to the common clothes-moth, and a _Phasmia_,--a creature related

to the spectre insects. But the group is an inconsiderable one; for

insects seem to have occupied no very conspicuous place in the

carboniferous fauna. The beetles appear to have been of the wood and

seed devouring kinds, and would probably have found their food among the

conifers; the _Phasmidæ_ and grasshoppers would have lived on the tender

shoots of the less rigid plants their contemporaries; the _Tinea_,

probably on ligneous or cottony fibre. Not a single insect has the

system yet produced of the now numerous kinds that seek their food among

flowers. In the Oolitic ages, however, insects become greatly more

numerous,--so numerous that they seemed to have formed almost

exclusively the food of the earliest mammals, and apparently also of

some of the flying reptiles of the time. The magnificent dragon-flies,

the carnivorous tyrants of their race, were abundant; and we now know,

that while they were, as their name indicates, dragons to the weaker

insects, they themselves were devoured by dragons as truly such as were

ever yet feigned by romancer of the middle ages. Ants were also common,

with crickets, grasshoppers, bugs both of the land and water, beetles,

two-winged flies, and, in species distinct from the preceding

carboniferous ones, the disgusting cockroaches. And for the first time

amid the remains of a flora that seems to have had its few

flowers,--though flowers could have formed no conspicuous feature in

even an Oolitic landscape,--we detect in a few broken fragments of the

wings of butterflies, decided trace of the flower-sucking insects. Not,

however, until we enter into the great Tertiary division do these become

numerous. The first bee makes its appearance in the amber of the Eocene,

locked up hermetically in its gem-like tomb,--an embalmed corpse in a

crystal coffin,--along with fragments of flower-bearing herbs and trees.

The first of the Bombycidæ too,--insects that maybe seen suspended over

flowers by the scarce visible vibrations of their wings, sucking the

honied juices by means of their long, slender trunks,--also appear in

the amber, associated with moths, butterflies, and a few caterpillars.

Bees and butterflies are present in increased proportions in the latter

Tertiary deposits: but not until that terminal creation to which we

ourselves belong was ushered on the scene did they receive their fullest

development. There is exquisite poetry in Wordsworth's reference to "the

soft murmur of the vagrant bee,"--

"A slender sound, yet hoary Time

Doth to the soul exalt it with the chime

Of all his years; a company

Of ages coming, ages gone,

Nations from before them sweeping."

And yet, mayhap, the naked scientific facts of the history of this busy

insect are scarcely less poetic than the pleasing imagination of the

poet regarding it. They tell that man's world, with all its griefs and

troubles, is more emphatically a world of flowers than any of the

creations that preceded it, and that as one great family--the

grasses--were called into existence, in order, apparently, that he

might enter in favoring circumstances upon his two earliest avocations,

and be in good hope a keeper of herds and a tiller of the ground; and as

another family of plants--the Rosaceæ--was created in order that the

gardens which it would be also one of his vocations to keep and to dress

should have their trees "good for food and pleasant to the taste;" so

flowers in general were profusely produced just ere he appeared, to

minister to that sense of beauty which distinguishes him from all the

lower creatures, and to which he owes not a few of his most exquisite

enjoyments. The poet accepted the bee as a sign of high significance:

the geologist also accepts her as a sign. Her entombed remains testify

to the gradual fitting up of our earth as a place of habitation for a

creature destined to seek delight for the mind and the eye as certainly

as for the grosser senses, and in especial marks the introduction of the

stately forest trees, and the arrival of the delicious flowers. And,

"Thus in their stations lifting toward the sky

The foliaged head in cloud-like majesty,

The shadow-casting race of trees survive:

Thus in the train of spring arrive

Sweet flowers: what living eye hath viewed

Their myriads? endlessly renewed

Wherever strikes the sun's glad ray,

Where'er the subtile waters stray,

Wherever sportive zephyrs bend

Their course, or genial showers descend."

LECTURE SECOND.

THE PALÆONTOLOGICAL HISTORY OF ANIMALS.

Amid the unceasing change and endless variety of nature there occur

certain great radical ideas, that, while they form, if I may so express

myself, the groundwork of the change,--the basis of the variety,--admit

in themselves of no change or variety whatever. They constitute the

aye-enduring tissue on which the ever-changing patterns of creation are

inscribed: the patterns are ever varying; the tissue which exhibits them

for ever remains the same. In the animal kingdom, for instance, the

prominent ideas have always been uniform. However much the faunas of the

various geologic periods may have differed from each other, or from the

fauna which now exists, in their general aspect and character, they were

all, if I may so speak, equally underlaid by the great leading ideas

which still constitute the master types of animal life. And these

leading ideas are four in number. _First_, there is the _star-like_ type

of life,--life embodied in a form that, as in the corals, the

sea-anemones, the sea-urchins, and the star-fishes, radiates outwards

from a centre; _second_, there is the _articulated_ type of life,--life

embodied in a form composed, as in the worms, crustaceans, and insects,

of a series of rings united by their edges, but more or less moveable on

each other; _third_, there is the bilateral or _molluscan_ type of

life,--life embodied in a form in which there is a duality of

corresponding parts, ranged, as in the cuttle-fishes, the clams, and

the snails, on the sides of a central axis or plane; and _fourth_, there

is the _vertebrate_ type of life,--life embodied in a form in which an

internal skeleton is built up into two cavities placed the one over the

other; the upper for the reception of the nervous centres, cerebral and

spinal,--the lower for the lodgment of the respiratory, circulatory, and

digestive organs. Such have been the four central ideas of the faunas of

every succeeding creation, except perhaps the earliest of all, that of

the Lower Silurian System, in which, so far as is yet known, only three

of the number existed,--the radiated, articulated, and molluscan ideas

or types. That Omnipotent Creator, infinite in his resources,--who, in

at least the details of his workings, seems never yet to have repeated

himself, but, as Lyell well expresses it, breaks, when the parents of a

species have been moulded, the dye in which they were cast,--manifests

himself, in these four great ideas, as the unchanging and unchangeable

One. They serve to bind together the present with all the past; and

determine the unity of the authorship of a wonderfully complicated

design, executed on a groundwork broad as time, and whose scope and

bearing are deep as eternity.

The fauna of the Silurian System bears in all its three great types the

stamp of a fashion peculiarly antique, and which, save in a few of the

mollusca, has long since become obsolete. Its radiate animals are

chiefly corals, simple or compound, whose inhabitants may have somewhat

resembled the sea-anemones; with zoophites, akin mayhap to the sea-pens,

though the relationship must have been a remote one; and numerous

crinoids, or stone lilies, some of which consisted of but a sculptured

calyx without petals, while others threw off a series of long, flexible

arms, that divided and subdivided like the branches of a tree, and were

thickly fringed by hair-like fibres. There is great variety and beauty

among these Silurian crinoids; and, from the ornate sculpture of their

groined and ribbed _capitals_ and slender _columns_, the Gothic

architect might borrow not a few striking ideas.

[Illustration: Fig. 46.

CYATHAXONIA DALMANI.]

The difference between the older and newer fashions, as exemplified in

the cup-shaped corals, may be indicated in a single sentence. The

ancient corals were stars of four rays, or of multiples of four; the

modern corals are stars of six rays, or of multiples of six. But though,

at a certain definite period,--that during which the great Palæozoic

division ended and the Secondary division began--nature, in forming

this class of creatures, discarded the number four, and adopted instead

the number six, the great leading idea of the star itself was equally

retained in corals of the modern as in those of the more ancient type.

[Illustration: Fig. 47.

GLYPTOCRINUS DECADACTYLUS.

(Hudson River Group, Lower Silurian.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 48.

CALYMENE BLUMENBACHII.]

[Illustration: Fig. 49.

ORTHISINA VERNEUILI.]

[Illustration: Fig. 50.

LITUITES CORNU-ARIETIS.]

[Illustration: Fig. 51.

LINGULA LOWISII.]

The articulata of the Silurian period bore a still more peculiar

character. They consisted mainly of the Trilobites,--a family in whose

nicely-jointed shells the armorer of the middle ages might have found

almost all the contrivances of his craft, anticipated, with not a few

besides which he had failed to discover; and which, after receiving so

immense a development during the middle and later times of the Silurian

period, that whole rocks were formed almost exclusively of their

remains, gradually died out in the times of the Old Red Sandstone, and

disappeared for ever from creation after the Carboniferous Limestone had

been deposited. The Palæontologist knows no more unique family than that

of the Trilobites, or a family more unlike any which now exists, or a

family which marks with more certainty the early rocks in which they

occur. And yet, though formed in a fashion that perished myriads of

ages ago, how admirably does it not exhibit the articulated type of

being, and illustrate that unity of design which, amid endless

diversity, pervades all nature. The mollusca of the Silurians ranged

from the high cephalopoda, represented in our existing seas by the

nautili and the cuttle-fishes, to the low brachipods, some of whose

congeners may still be detected in the terebratula of our Highland lochs

and bays, and some in the lingulæ of the southern hemisphere. The

cephalopods of the system are all of an obsolete type, that disappeared

myriads of ages ago,--a remark which, with the exceptions just

intimated, and perhaps one or two others, applies equally to its

brachipods; but of at least two of its intermediate families,--the

gasteropoda and lamellibranchiata,--several of the forms resemble those

of recent shells of the temperate latitudes. In its general aspect,

however, the Silurian fauna, antiquely fashioned, as I have said, as

became its place in the primeval ages of existence, was unlike any other

which the world ever saw; and the absence of the vertebrata, or at least

the inconspicuous place which they occupied if they were at all present,

must have imparted to the whole, as a group, a humble and mediocre

character. It seems to have been for many ages together a creation of

molluscs, corals, and Crustacea. At length, in an upper bed of the

system, immediately under the base of the Old Red Sandstone, the remains

of the earliest known fishes appear, blent with what also appears for

the first time,--the fragmentary remains of a terrestrial vegetation.

The rocks beneath this ancient bone-bed have yielded, as I have already

said, no trace of any plant higher than the Thallogens, or at least not

higher than the Zosteracea,--plants whose proper habitat is the sea;

but, through an apparently simultaneous advance of the two kingdoms,

animal and vegetable,--though of course the simultaneousness may be but

merely apparent,--the first land plants and the first vertebrates

appear together in the same deposit.

What, let us inquire, is the character of these ancient fishes, that

first complete the scale of animated nature in its four master ideas, by

adding the vertebrate to the invertebrate divisions? So far as is yet

known, they all consist of one well marked order,--that placoidal order

of Agassiz that to an internal framework of cartilage adds an external

armature, consisting of plates, spines, and shagreen points of solid

bone. Either of the two kinds of dog-fishes on our coasts,--the spiked

or spotted,--maybe accepted as not inadequate representatives of this

order as it now exists. The Port Jackson shark, however,--a creature

that to the dorsal spines and shagreen-covered skin of the common

dog-fish adds a mouth terminal at the snout, not placed beneath, as in

most other sharks, and a palate covered with a dense pavement of

crushing teeth,--better illustrates the order as it first appeared in

creation than any of our British placoids.

[Illustration: Fig. 52.

PORT JACKSON SHARK.

(Cestracion Phillippi.)]

[Illustration:

Fig. 53.[13]

-----------------------

Silurian.

-----+-----------------Placoid.

| | Ganoid.

Old Red. | |

-----+----+------------

| |

Carboniferous. | |

-----+----+------------

Permian. | |

-----+----+------------

Triassic. | |

-----+----+------------

| |

Oolitic. | |

-----+----+----+----+--

Cretaceous. | | | | Ctenoid and Cycloid.

| | | |

-----+----+----+----+--

Tertiary. | | | |

| | | |

-----+----+----+----+--

Geologic [Pla. Gan. Cte. Cyc.] arrangement.

Agassiz's [Pla. Gan. Cte. Cyc.] arrangement.

THE GENEALOGY OF FISHES.]

[Illustration: Fig. 54.

AMBLYPTERUS MACROPTERTUS.

From the Coal at Saarbruck.

(A Ganoid of the Carboniferous System.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 55.

LEBIAS CEPHALOTES.

Cycloids of Aix. (_Miocene._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 56.

PLATAX ALTISSIMUS.

A Ctenoid of Monte Bolca. (_Eocene._)]

And here let me adduce another and very remarkable instance of the

correspondence which obtains between the sequence in which certain

classes of organisms were first ushered into being, and the order of

classification adopted, after many revisions, by the higher

naturalists. Cuvier, with not a few of the ichthyologists who preceded

him, arranged the fishes into two distinct series,--the Cartilaginous

and Osseous; and these last he mainly divided into the hard or

spiny-finned fishes, and the soft or joint-finned fishes. He placed the

sturgeon in his Cartilaginous series; while in his soft-finned order he

found a place for the Polypterus of the Nile and the Lepidosteus of the

Ohio and St. Lawrence. But the arrangement, though it seemed at the time

one of the best and most natural possible, failed to meet any

corresponding arrangement in the course of geologic history. The place

assigned to the class of fishes as a whole corresponded to their place

in the Palæontological scale;--- first of the vertebrate division in the

order of their appearance, they border, as in the "_Animal Kingdom_" of

the naturalist, on the invertebrate divisions. But it was not until the

new classification of Agassiz had ranged them after a different fashion

that the correspondence became complete in all its parts. First, he

erected the fishes that to an internal cartilaginous skeleton unite an

external armature of plates and points of bone, into his Placoid order;

next, gathering together a mere handful of individuals from among the

various orders and families over which they had been scattered,--the

sturgeons from among the cartilaginous fishes, and the lepidosteus and

polypterus from among the Clupia or herrings,--he erected into a small

ganoid order all the fishes that are covered, whatever the consistency

of their skeleton, by a continuous or nearly continuous armor of

enamelled bone, or by great bony plates that lock into each other at

their edges. Out of the remaining fishes,--those covered with scales of

a horny substance, and which now comprise nearly nine tenths of the

whole class,--he erected two orders more,--a Ctenoid order, consisting

of fishes whose scales, like those of the perch, are pectinated at

their lower edges like the teeth of a comb, and a Cycloid order,

composed of fishes whose scales, like those of the salmon, are defined

all around by a simple continuous margin; and no sooner was the division

effected than it was found to cast a singularly clear light on the early

history of the class. The earliest fishes--firstborn of their

family--seem to have been all placoids. The Silurian System has not yet

afforded trace of any other vertebral animal. With the Old Red Sandstone

the ganoids were ushered upon the scene in amazing abundance; and for

untold ages, comprising mayhap millions of years, the entire ichthyic

class consisted, so far as is yet known, of but these two orders.

During the times of the Old Red Sandstone, of the Carboniferous, of the

Permian, of the Triassic, and of the Oolitic Systems, all fishes, though

apparently as numerous individually as they are now, were comprised in

the ganoidal and placoidal orders. The period of these orders seems to

have been nearly correspondent with the reign, in the vegetable kingdom,

of the Acrogens and Gymnogens, with the intermediate classes, their

allies. At length, during the ages of the Chalk, the Cycloids and

Ctenoids were ushered in, and were gradually developed in creation until

the human period, in which they seem to have reached their culminating

point, and now many times exceed in number and importance all other

fishes. We do not see a sturgeon (our British representative of the

ganoids) once in a twelvemonth; and though the skate and dog-fish (our

representatives of the placoids) are greatly less rare, their number

bears but a small proportion to that of the fishes belonging to the two

prevailing orders, of which thousands of boat-loads are landed on our

coasts every day.

The all but entire disappearance of the ganoids from creation is surely

a curious and not unsuggestive circumstance. In the human family there

are races that have long since reached their culminating point, and are

now either fast disappearing or have already disappeared. The Aztecs of

Central America, or the Copts of the valley of the Nile, are but the

inconsiderable fragments of once mighty nations, memorials of whose

greatness live in the vast sepulchral mounds of the far West, or in the

temples of Thebes or Luxor, or the pyramids of Gizah. But in the rivers

of these very countries,--in the Polypterus of the Nile, or the

Lepidosteus of the Mississippi,--we are presented with the few surviving

fragments of a dynasty compared with which that of Egypt or of Central

America occupied but an exceedingly small portion of either space or

time. The dynasty of the ganoids was at one time coextensive with every

river, lake, and sea, and endured during the unreckoned _eons_ which

extended from the times of the Lower Old Red Sandstone until those of

the Chalk. I may here mention, that as there are orders of plants, such

as the Rosaceæ and the Grasses, that scarce preceded man in their

appearance, so there are families of fishes that seem peculiarly to

belong to the human period. Of these, there is a family very familiar on

our coasts, and which, though it furnishes none of our higher ichthyic

luxuries, is remarkable for the numbers of the human family which it

provides with a wholesome and palatable food. The delicate Salmonidæ and

the Pleuronectidæ,--families to which the salmon and turbot

belong,--were ushered into being as early as the times of the Chalk; but

the Gadidæ or cod family,--that family to which the cod proper, the

haddock, the dorse, the whiting, the coal-fish, the pollock, the hake,

the torsk, and the ling belong, with many other useful and wholesome

species,--did not precede man by at least any period of time appreciable

to the geologist. No trace of the family has yet been detected in even

the Tertiary rocks.

[Illustration: Fig. 57

PTERICHTHYS OBLONGUS.

(One half nat. size.)]

Of the ganoids of the second age of vertebrate existence,--that of the

Old Red Sandstone,--some were remarkable for the strangeness of their

forms, and some for constituting links of connection which no longer

exist in nature, between the ganoid and placoid orders. The Acanth

family, which ceased with the Coal Measures, was characterized,

especially in its Old Red species, by a combination of traits common to

both orders; and among the extremer forms, in which Palæontologists for

a time failed to detect that of the fish at all, we reckon those of the

genera Coccosteus, Pterichthys, and Cephalaspis. The more aberrant

genera, however, even while they consisted each of several species, were

comparatively short lived. The Coccosteus and Cephalaspis were

restricted to but one formation apiece; while the Pterichthys, which

appears for the first time in the lower deposits of the Old Red

Sandstone, becomes extinct at its close. On the other hand, some of the

genera that exemplified the general type of their class were extremely

long lived. The Celacanths were reproduced in many various species, from

the times of the Lower Old Red Sandstone to those of the Chalk; and the

Cestracions, which appear in the Upper Ludlow Rocks as the oldest of

fishes, continue in at least one species to exist still. It would

almost seem as if some such law influenced the destiny of genera in this

ichthyic class, as that which we find so often exemplified in our

species. The dwarf, or giant, or deformed person, is seldom a long

liver;--all the more remarkable instances of longevity have been

furnished by individuals cast in the ordinary mould and proportions of

the species. Not a few of these primordial ganoids wore, however, of the

highest rank and standing ever exemplified by their class; and we find

Agassiz boldly assigning a reason for their superiority to their

successors, important for the fact which it embodies, and worthy, as

coming from him, of our most respectful attention. "It is plain," we

find him saying, "that before the class of reptiles was introduced upon

our globe, the fishes, being then the only representatives of the type

of vertebrata, were invested with the characters of a higher order,

embodying, as it were, a prospective view of a higher development in

another class, which was introduced as a distinct type only at a later

period; and from that time the reptilian character, which had been so

prominent in the oldest fishes, was gradually reduced, till in more

recent periods, and in the present creation, the fishes lost all this

herpetological relationship, and were at last endowed with characters

which contrast as much, when compared with those of reptiles, as they

agreed closely in the beginning. Lepidosteus alone reminds us in our

time of these old-fashioned characters of the class of fishes as it was

in former days."

[Illustration: Fig. 58

PLEURACANTHUS LÆVISSIMUS.

(_Coal Measures._)

(Half nat. size.)]

The ancient fishes seem to have received their fullest development

during the Carboniferous period. Their number was very great: some of

them attained to an enormous size, and, though the true reptile had

already appeared, they continued to retain, till the close of the

system, the high reptilian character and organization. Nothing, however,

so impresses the observer as the formidable character of the offensive

weapons with which they were furnished, and the amazing strength of

their defensive armature. I need scarce say, that the Palæontologist

finds no trace in nature of that golden age of the world, of which the

poets delighted to sing, when all creatures lived together in unbroken

peace, and war and bloodshed were unknown. Ever since animal life began

upon our planet, there existed, in all the departments of being,

carnivorous classes, who could not live but by the death of their

neighbors, and who were armed, in consequence, for their destruction,

like the butcher with his axe and knife, and the angler with his hook

and spear. But there were certain periods in the history of the past,

during which these weapons assumed a more formidable aspect than at

others; and never were they more formidable than in the times of the

Coal Measures. The teeth of the Rhizodus--a ganoidal fish of our coal

fields--were more sharp and trenchant than those of the crocodile of the

Nile, and in the larger specimens fully four times the bulk and size of

the teeth of the hugest reptile of this species that now lives. The

dorsal spine of its contemporary, the Gyracanthus, a great placoid, much

exceeded in size that of any existing fish: it was a mighty spear head,

ornately carved like that of a New Zealand chief, but in a style that,

when he first saw a specimen in my collection, greatly excited the

admiration of Mr. Ruskin. But one of the most remarkable weapons of the

period was the sting of the Pleuracanthus, another great placoid of the

age of gigantic fishes. It was sharp and polished as a stiletto, but,

from its rounded form and dense structure, of great strength; and along

two of its sides, from the taper point to within a few inches of the

base, there ran a thickly-set row of barbs, hooked downwards, like the

thorns that bristle on the young shoots of the wild rose, and which must

have rendered it a weapon not merely of destruction, but also of

torture. The defensive armor of the period, especially that of its

ganoids, seems to have been us remarkable for its powers of resistance

as the offensive must have been for their potency in the assault; and

it seems probable that in the great strength of the bony and enamelled

armature of this order of fishes we have the secret of the extremely

formidable character of the teeth, spines, and stings that coexisted

along with it.

[Illustration: Fig. 59.

CARCHARIAS PRODUCTUS.

Cutting Tooth. (_Miocene._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 60.

PLACODUS GIGAS.

Crushing Teeth. (_Trias._)]

Such of the fishes of the present time as live on crustacea and the

shelled molluscs,--such as the Wrasse or rock-fish family, and at least

one of the Goby family, the sea-wolf,--have an apparatus of crushing

teeth greatly more solid and strong than the teeth of such of their

contemporaries as are either herbivorous or feed on the weaker families

of their own class. A similar remark applies to the ancient sharks, as

contrasted with those of later times. So long as the strongly-armed

ganoidal order prevailed in nature, the sharks were furnished with

massive crushing teeth; but when the ganoids waned in creation, and the

soft-scaled cycloid and ctenoid orders took and amply filled the place

which they had left vacant, the well known modern form of sharks' teeth

was introduced,--a form much rather suited for cutting soft bodies than

for crushing hard ones. In fine, the offensive weapons of the times of

the Coal Measures seem very formidable, just as those personal weapons

of the middle ages seem so that were borne at a time when every soldier

took the field cased in armor of proof. The slim scimitar or slender

rapier would have availed but little against massive iron helmets or

mail coats of tempered steel. And so the warriors of the period armed

themselves with ponderous maces, battle-axes as massive as hammers, and

double-handed swords of great weight and strength.

Before passing onwards to other and higher classes and orders, as they

occurred in creation, permit me to make the formidable armor of the

earlier fishes, offensive and defensive, the subject of a single remark.

We are told by Goethe, in his autobiography, that he had attained his

sixth year when the terrible earthquake at Lisbon took place,--"an

event," he says, "which greatly disturbed" his "peace of mind for the

first time." He could not reconcile a catastrophe so suddenly

destructive to thousands, with the ideas which he had already formed for

himself of a Providence all-powerful and all-benevolent. But he

afterwards learned, he tells us, to recognize in such events the "_God

of the Old Testament._" I know not in what spirit the remark was made;

but this I know, that it is the God of the Old Testament whom we see

exhibited in all nature and all providence; and that it is at once

wisdom and duty in his rational creatures, however darkly they may

perceive or imperfectly they may comprehend, to hold in implicit faith

that the Adorable Monarch of all the past and of all the future is a

King who "can do no wrong." This early exhibition of tooth, and spine,

and sting,--of weapons constructed alike to cut and to pierce,--to unite

two of the most indispensable requirements of the modern armorer,--a

keen edge to a strong back,--nay, stranger still, the examples furnished

in this primeval time, of weapons formed not only to kill, but also to

torture,--must be altogether at variance with the preconceived opinions

of those who hold that until man appeared in creation, and darkened its

sympathetic face with the stain of moral guilt, the reign of violence

and outrage did not begin, and that there was no death among the

inferior creatures, and no suffering. But preconceived opinion, whether

it hold fast, with Lactantius and the old Schoolmen, to the belief that

there can be no antipodes, or assert, with Caccini and Bellarmine, that

our globe hangs lazily in the midst of the heavens, while the sun moves

round it, must yield ultimately to scientific truth. And it is a truth

as certain as the existence of a southern hemisphere, or the motion of

the earth round both its own axis and the great solar centre, that,

untold ages ere man had sinned or suffered, the animal creation

exhibited exactly its present state of war,--that the strong, armed with

formidable weapons, exquisitely constructed to kill, preyed upon the

weak; and that the weak, sheathed, many of them, in defensive armor

equally admirable in its mechanism, and ever increasing and multiplying

upon the earth far beyond the requirements of the mere maintenance of

their races, were enabled to escape, as species, the assaults of the

tyrant tribes, and to exist unthinned for unreckoned ages. It has been

weakly and impiously urged,--as if it were merely with the geologist

that men had to settle this matter,--that such an economy of warfare and

suffering,--of warring and of being warred upon,--would be, in the words

of the infant Goethe, unworthy of an all-powerful and all-benevolent

Providence, and in effect a libel on his government and character. But

that grave charge we leave the objectors to settle with the great

Creator himself. Be it theirs, not ours, according to the poet, to

"Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,

Rejudge his justice, be the god of God."

Be it enough for the geologist rightly to interpret the record of

creation,--to declare the truth as he finds it,--to demonstrate, from

evidence no clear intellect ever yet resisted, that he, the Creator,

from whom even the young lions seek their food, and who giveth to all

the beasts, great and small, their meat in due season, ever wrought as

he now works in his animal kingdom,--that he gave to the primeval fishes

their spines and their stings,--to the primeval reptiles their trenchant

teeth and their strong armor of bone,--to the primeval mammals their

great tusks and their sharp claws,--that he of old divided all his

creatures, as now, into animals of prey and the animals preyed

upon,--that from the beginning of things he inseparably established

among his non-responsible existences the twin laws of generation and of

death,--nay, further, passing from the established truths of _Geologic_

to one of the best established truths of _Theologic_ science,--God's

eternal justice and truth,--let us assert, that in the Divine government

the matter of fact always determines the question of right, and that

whatever has been done by him who rendereth no account to man of his

matters, he had in all ages, and in all places, an unchallengeable right

to do.

The oldest known reptiles appear just a little before the close of the

Old Red Sandstone, just as the oldest known fishes appeared just a

little before the close of the Silurian System. What seems to be the

Upper Old Red of our own country, though there still hangs a shade of

doubt on the subject, has furnished the remains of a small reptile,

equally akin, it would appear, to the lizards and the batrachians; and

what seems to be the Upper Old Red of the United States has exhibited

the foot-tracks of a larger animal of the same class, which not a little

resemble those which would be impressed on recent sand or clay by the

alligator of the Mississippi, did not the alligator of the Mississippi

efface its own footprints (a consequence of the shortness of its legs)

by the trail of its abdomen. In the Coal Measures, the reptiles hitherto

found,--and it is still little more than ten years since the first was

detected,--are all allied, though not without a cross of the higher

crocodilian or lacertian nature, to the batrachian order,--that lowest

order of the reptiles to which the frogs, newts, and salamanders belong.

These reptiles of the carboniferous era, though only a few twelvemonths

ago we little suspected the fact, seem to have been not very rare in our

own neighborhood. My attention was called some time since by Mr. Henry

Cadell,--an intelligent practical geologist,--to certain appearances in

one of the Duke of Buccleuch's coal pits near Dalkeith, which lie

regarded as the tracks of air-breathing quadrupeds; and, after examining

a specimen, containing four footprints, which he had brought above

ground, and which not a little excited my curiosity, we visited the pit

together. And there, in a side working about half a mile from the pit

mouth, and about four hundred feet under the surface, I found the roof

of the coal, which rose at a high angle, traversed by so many

foot-tracks, upwards, downwards, and athwart, that it cost me some

little care to trace the individual lines. At least one of the number,

however,--consisting of eleven footprints of the right and as many of

the left foot--I was able to trace from side to side of the working, a

distance of four yards; and several of the others for shorter spaces.

The prints, which were reverses or casts in a very coarse sandstone,

were about thirtecn inches apart across the creature's chest, and rather

more than a foot apart from its fore to its hinder limbs. They were

alternately larger and smaller,--the smaller (those of the fore feet)

measuring about four inches in length, and the larger (those of the

hinder feet) about six inches. The number of toes seemed to be

alternately four and five; but from the circumstance that the original

matrix on which the tracks had been impressed,--a micaceous clay

resolved into a loose fissile sandstone,--had fallen away in the working

of the pit, leaving but the boldly-relieved though ill-defined casts on

the coarse sandstone, I could not definitely determine the point.

Enough, however, remained to show that at that spot,--little more than a

mile from where the Duke of Buccleuch's palace now stands,--large

reptiles had congregated in considerable numbers shortly after the great

eight feet coal seam of the Dalkeith basin had been formed. In another

part of the pit I found foot-tracks of apparently the same animal in

equal abundance, but still less distinct in their state of keeping. But

they bore testimony with the others to the comparative abundance of

reptilian life at an early period, when the coal-bearing strata of the

empire were little more than half deposited. It was not, however, until

the Permian and Triassic Systems had come to a close, and even the

earlier ages of the Oolitic System had passed away, that the class

received its fullest development in creation. And certainly very

wonderful was the development which it then did receive. Reptiles became

everywhere the lords and masters of this lower world. When any class of

the air-breathing vertebrates is very largely developed, we find it

taking possession of all the three old terrestrial elements,--earth,

air, and water. The human period, for instance, like that which

immediately preceded it, is peculiarly a period of mammals; and we find

the class, _free_, if I may so express myself, of the three elements,

disputing possession of the sea with the fishes, in its Cetaceans, its

seals, and its sea-lions, and of the air with the birds, in its numerous

genera of the bat family. Further, not until the great mammaliferous

period is fairly ushered in do either the bats or the whales make their

appearance in creation. Remains of Oolitic reptiles have been mistaken

in more than one instance for those of Cetacea; but it is now generally

held that the earliest known specimens of the family belong to the

Tertiary ages, while those of the oldest bats occur in the Eocene of the

Paris Basin, associated with the bones of dolphins, lamantines, and

morses. Now, in the times of the Oolite it was the reptilian class that

possessed itself of all the elements. Its gigantic enaliosaurs, huge

reptilian _whales_ mounted on paddles, were the tyrants of the ocean,

and must have reigned supreme over the already reduced class of fishes;

its pterodactyles,--dragons as strange as were ever feigned by romancer

of the middle ages, and that to the jaws and teeth of the crocodile

added the wings of a bat and the body and tail of an ordinary mammal,

had "the power of the air," and, pursuing the fleetest insects in their

flight, captured and bore them down;[14] its lakes and rivers abounded

in crocodiles and fresh water tortoises of ancient type and fashion; and

its woods and plains were the haunts of a strange reptilian fauna, of

what has been well termed "fearfully great lizards,"--some of which,

such as the iguanodon, rivalled the largest elephant in height, and

greatly more than rivalled him in length and bulk. Judging from what

remains, it seems not improbable that the reptiles of this Oolitic

period were quite as numerous individually, and consisted of well nigh

as many genera and species, as all the mammals of the present time. In

the cretaceous ages, the class, though still the dominant one, is

visibly reduced in its standing; it had reached its culminating point in

the Oolite, and then began to decline; and with the first dawn of the

Tertiary division we find it occupying, as now, a very subordinate place

in creation. Curiously enough, it is not until its times of humiliation

and decay that one of the most remarkable of its orders appears,--an

order itself illustrative of extreme degradation, and which figures

largely, in every scheme of mythology that borrowed through traditional

channels from Divine revelation, as a meet representative of man's great

enemy the Evil One. I of course refer to the ophidian or serpent family.

The earliest ophidian remains known to the Palæontologist occur in that

ancient deposit of the Tertiary division known as the London Clay, and

must have belonged to serpents, some of them allied to the Pythons, some

to the sea-snakes, which, judging from the corresponding parts of recent

species, must have been from fourteen to twenty feet in length.

[Illustration: Fig. 61.

VESPERTILIO PARISIENSIS.

A Bat of the Eocene.]

[Illustration: Fig. 62

ICHTHYOSAURUS COMMUNIS.

(_Lias._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 63.

PLESIOSAURUS DOLICHODEIRUS.

(_Lias._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 64.

PTERODACTYLUS CRASSIROSTRIS.

(_Oolite._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 65.

CHELONIA BENSTEDI.

(_Chalk._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 66.

PALÆOPHIS TOLIAPICUS.

(_Ophidian of the Eocene._)]

And here let us again pause for a moment, to remark how strangely these

irascible, repulsive reptiles,--creatures lengthened out far beyond the

proportions of the other members of their class by mere vegetative

repetitions of the vertebræ,--condemned to derive, worm-like, their

ability of progressive motion from the ring-like scutes of the

abdomen--venomous in many of their species,--formidable in others to

even the noblest animals, from their fascinating powers and their great

craft,--without, fore or hinder limbs, without thoracic or pelvic

arches,--the very types and exemplars (our highest naturalists being the

judges) of the extreme of animal degradation,--let us, I say, remark how

strangely their history has been mixed up with that of man and of

religion in all the older mythologies, and in that Divine Revelation

whence the older mythologies were derived. It was one of the most

ancient of the Phoenician fables, that the great antagonist of the

gods was a gigantic serpent, that had at one time been their subject,

but revolted against them and became their enemy. It was a monstrous

serpent that assailed and strove to destroy the _mother_ of Apollo ere

yet the birth of the god, but which, long after, _Apollo_ in turn

assaulted and slew. It was a great serpent that watched over the apples

of the Hesperides, and that Hercules, ere he could possess himself of

the fruit, had to combat and kill. It was a frightful serpent that

guarded the golden fleece from Jason, and which the hero had to destroy

in the first instance, and next to exterminate the strange brood of

armed men that sprang up from its sown teeth. In short, the old

mythologies are well nigh as full of the serpent as those ancient Runic

obelisks of our country, whose endless knots and complicated fretwork

are formed throughout of the interlacings of snakes. Let us, however,

accept as representative of this innumerable class of legends, the

classical story, rendered yet more classical by the profound and

reverend comment given by Bacon in his "Wisdom of the Ancients."

"Jupiter and the other gods," says the philosopher, in his simple

version of the tradition, "conferred upon men a most acceptable and

desirable boon,--the gift of perpetual youth. But men, foolishly

overjoyed hereat, laid this present of the gods upon an ass, who, in

returning back with it, being extremely thirsty, and coming to a

fountain, the serpent who was guardian thereof would not suffer him to

drink but upon condition of receiving the burden he carried, whatever it

should be. The silly ass complied; and thus the perpetual renewal of

youth was for a sup of water transferred from men to the race of

serpents." "That this gift of perpetual youth should pass from men to

serpents," continues Bacon, "seems added, by way of ornament and

illustration, to the fable." And it certainly _has_ much the appearance

of an after-thought. But how very striking the resemblance, borne by the

story, as a whole, to that narrative in the opening page of human

history which exhibits the first parents of the race as yielding up to

the temptation of the serpent the gift of immortality; and further, how

remarkable the fact, that the reptile selected as typical here of the

great fallen spirit that kept not his first estate, should be at once

the reptile of latest appearance in creation, and the one selected by

philosophical naturalists as representative of a reversed process in the

course of being,--of a downward, sinking career, from the vertebrate

antetype towards greatly lower types in the invertebrate divisions! The

fallen spirit is represented in revelation by what we are now taught to

recognize in science as a _degraded_ reptile.

[Illustration: Fig. 67.

BIRD TRACKS OF THE CONNECTICUT.

(_Lias or Oolite._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 68.

FOSSIL FOOTPRINT.

Connecticut.]

Birds make their first appearance in a Red Sandstone deposit of the

United States in the valley of the Connecticut, which was at one time

supposed to belong to the Triassic System, but which is now held to be

at least not older than the times of the Lias. No fragments of the

skeletons of birds have yet been discovered in formations older than the

Chalk: the Connecticut remains are those of footprints exclusively; and

yet they tell their extraordinary story, so far as it extends, with

remarkable precision and distinctness. They were apparently all of the

Grallæ or stilt order of birds,--an order to which the cranes, herons,

and bustards belong, with the ostriches and cassowaries, and which is

characterized by possessing but three toes on each foot (one species of

ostrich has but two), or, if a fourth toe be present, so imperfectly is

it developed in most of the cases, that it fails to reach the ground.

And in almost all the footprints of the primeval birds of the

Connecticut there are only three toes exhibited. Peculiar, ill

understood laws regulate the phalangal divisions of the various animals.

It is a law of the human kind, for instance, that the thumb should

consist of but three phalanges; while the fingers, even the smallest,

consist of four. And, in the same way, it is a law generally exemplified

among birds, that of the three toes which correspond to the fingers, the

inner toe should be composed of three phalanges, the middle or largest

toe of four phalanges, and the outer toe, though but second in point of

size, of five phalanges. Such is the law now, and such was equally the

law, as shown by the American footprints, in the times of the Lias. Some

of the impressions are of singular distinctness. Every claw and phalange

has left its mark in the stone; while the trifid termination of the

tarso-metatarsal bone leaves three marks more,--fifteen in all,--the

true ornithic number. In some of the specimens even the pressure of a

metatarsal brush, still possessed by some birds, is distinctly

traceable; nay, there are instances in which the impress of the dermoid

papillæ has remained as sharply as if made in wax. But the immense size

of some of these footprints served to militate for a time against belief

in their ornithic origin. The impressions that are but secondary in

point of size greatly exceed those of the hugest birds which now exist;

while those of the largest class equal the prints of the bulkier

quadrupeds. There are tridactyle footprints in the red sandstones of

Connecticut that measure eighteen inches in length from the heel to the

middle claw, nearly thirteen inches in breadth from the outer to the

inner toe, and which indicate, from their distance apart in the straight

line, a stride of about six feet in the creature that impressed them in

these ancient sands,--measurements that might well startle zoologists

who had derived their experience of the ornithic class from existing

birds exclusively. Comparatively recent discoveries have, however, if

not lessened, at least familiarized us to the wonder. In a deposit of

New Zealand that dates little if at all in advance of the human period,

there have been detected the remains of birds scarce inferior in size to

those of America in the Liassic ages. The bones of the _Dinornus

giganteus_, exhibited by the late Dr. Mantell in Edinburgh in the autumn

of 1850, greatly exceeded in bulk those of the largest horse. A thigh

bone sixteen inches in length measured nearly nine inches in

circumference in the middle of the shaft: the head of a tibia measured

twenty-one inches in circumference. It was estimated that a foot entire

in all its parts, which formed an interesting portion of the exhibition,

would, when it was furnished with nails, and covered by the integuments,

have measured about fifteen inches in length; and it was calculated by a

very competent authority, Professor Owen, that of the other bones of the

leg to which it belonged, the tibia must have been about two feet nine

inches, and the femur about fourteen and a half inches long. The larger

thigh bone referred to must have belonged, it was held, to a bird that

stood from eleven to twelve feet high,--the extreme height of the great

African elephant. Such were the monster birds of a comparatively recent

period; and their remains serve to render credible the evidence

furnished by the great footprints of their remote predecessors of the

Lias. The huge feet of the greatest Dinornus whose bones have yet been

found would have left impressions scarcely an inch shorter than those of

the still huger birds of the Connecticut. Is it not truly wonderful,

that in this late age of the world, in which the invention of the poets

seems to content itself with humbler and lowlier flights than of old, we

should thus find the facts of geology fully rivalling, in the strange

and the _outré_, the wildest fancies of the romancers who flourished in

the middle ages? I have already referred to flying dragons,--real

existences of the Oolitic period,--that were quite as extraordinary of

type, if not altogether so huge of bulk, as those with which the Seven

Champions of Christendom used to do battle; and here are we introduced

to birds of the Liassic ages that were scarce less gigantic than the roc

of Sinbad the Sailor. They are fraught with strange meanings these

footprints of the Connecticut. They tell of a time far removed into the

by-past eternity, when great birds frequented by myriads the shores of a

nameless lake, to wade into its shallows in quest of mail-covered fishes

of the ancient type, or long-extinct molluscs; while reptiles equally

gigantic, and of still stranger proportions, haunted the neighboring

swamps and savannahs; and when the same sun that shone on the tall

moving forms beside the waters, and threw their long shadows across the

red sands, lighted up the glades of deep forests, all of whose fantastic

productions,--tree, bush, and herb,--have even in their very species

long since passed away. And of this scene of things only the footprints

remain,--"footprints on the sands of time," that tell us, among other

matters, whence the graceful American poet derived his quiet but

singularly effective and unmistakeably indigenous figure:--

"Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

_And, departing, leave behind us_

_Footprints on the sand of time._

Footprints that perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again."

[Illustration: Fig. 69.

THYLACOTHERIUM PREVOSTI.

(_Stonisfield Slate._)]

With the Stonisfield slates,--a deposit which lies above what is known

as the Inferior Oolite,--the remains of mammaliferous animals first

appear. As, however, no other mammalian remains occur until after the

close of the great Secondary Division, and as certain marked

peculiarities attach to these Oolitic ones, it may be well to inquire

whether their place, so far in advance of their fellows, may not be

indicative of a radical difference of character,--a difference

considerable enough to suggest to the zoologist an improvement in his

scheme of classification. It has been shown by Professor Owen,--our

highest authority in comparative anatomy,--that while one Stonisfield

genus unequivocally belonged to the marsupial order, another of its

genera bears also certain of the marsupial traits; and that the group

which they composed,--a very small one, and consisting exclusively of

minute insect-eating animals,--exhibits in its general aspect the

characteristics of this pouched family. Even the genus of the group that

least resembles them was pronounced by Cuvier to have its nearest

affinities with the opossums. And let us mark how very much may be

implied in this circumstance. In the "_Animal Kingdom_" of the great

naturalist just named, the marsupiata, or pouched animals, are made to

occupy the fourth place among the nine orders of the Mammalia; but

should they not rather occupy a place intermediate between the placental

mammals and the birds? and does not nature indicate their true position

by the position which she assigns to them in the geologic scale? The

birds are oviparous; and between the extrusion of the egg and the

development of the perfect young bird they have to hatch it into life

during a long period of incubation. The marsupiata are not oviparous,

for their _eggs_ want the enveloping shell or skin; but they, too, are

extruded in an exceedingly rudimentary and foetal state, and have to

undergo in the pouch a greatly longer period of _incubation_ than that

demanded by nature for any bird whatever. The young kangaroo is

extruded, after it has remained for little more than a month in the

womb, as a foetus scarcely an inch in length by somewhat less than half

an inch in breadth: it is blind, exhibiting merely dark eye spots; its

limbs are so rudimentary, that even the hinder legs, so largely

developed in the genus when mature, exist as mere stumps; it is unable

even to suck, but, holding permanently on by a minute dug, has the

sustaining fluid occasionally pressed into its mouth by the mother. And,

undergoing a peculiar but not the less real process of incubation, the

creature that had to remain for little more than a month in the

womb,--strictly thirty-nine days,--has to remain in the mother's pouch,

ere it is fully developed and able to provide for itself, for a period

of eight months. It is found to increase in weight during this hatching

process, from somewhat less than an ounce to somewhat more than eight

pounds. Now, this surely is a process quite as nearly akin to the

incubation of egg-bearing birds as to the ordinary nursing process of

the placental mammals; and on the occult but apparently real principle,

that the true arrangement of the animal kingdom is that which we find

exemplified by the successive introduction of its various classes and

orders in the course of geologic history, should we not anticipate a

point of time for the introduction of the marsupiata, intermediate

between the widely-distant points at which the egg-bearing birds and the

true placental mammals appeared? Ranged at once chronologically, and by

their mode of reproduction, the various classes of the vertebrata would

run, did we accept the suggested reading, as follows:--First appear

cold-blooded vertebrates (fishes), that propagate by eggs or

spawn,--chiefly by the latter. Next appear cold-blooded vertebrates

(reptiles), that propagate by eggs or spawn,--chiefly by the former.

Then appear warm-blooded vertebrates (birds), that propagate by eggs

exclusively. Then warm-blooded vertebrates come upon the stage, that

produce _eggs_ without shells, which have to be subjected for months to

a species of extra-placental incubation. And last of all the true

placental mammals appear. And thus, tried by the test of perfect

reproduction, the great vertebral division receives its full development

in creation.

[Illustration: Fig. 70.

ANOPLTHERIUM COMMUNE.

(_Eocene._)]

The placental mammals make their appearance, as I have said, in the

earliest ages of the great Tertiary division, and exhibit in the group

an aspect very unlike that which they at present bear. The Eocene ages

were peculiarly the ages of the Palæotheres,--strange animals of that

pachydermatous or thick-skinned order to which the elephants, the

tapirs, the hogs, and the horses belong. It had been remarked by

naturalists, that there are fewer families of this order in living

nature than of almost any other, and that, of the existing genera, not a

few are widely separated in their analogies from the others. But in the

Palæotheres of the Eocene, which ranged in size from a large horse to a

hare, not a few of the missing links have been found,--links connecting

the tapirs to the hogs, and the hogs to the Palæotheres proper; and

there is at least one species suggestive of an union of some of the more

peculiar traits of the tapirs and the horses. It was among these extinct

Pachydermata of the Paris basin that Cuvier effected his wonderful

restorations, and produced those figures in outline which are now as

familiar to the geologist as any of the forms of the existing animals.

The London Clay and the Eocene of the Isle of Wight have also yielded

numerous specimens of those pachyderms, whose identity with the

Continental ones has been established by Owen; but they are more

fragmentary, and their state of keeping less perfect, than those

furnished by the gypsum quarries of Velay and Montmartre. In these the

smaller animals occur often in a state of preservation so peculiar and

partial as to excite the curiosity of even the untaught workmen. Only

half the skeleton is present. The limbs and ribs of the under side are

found lying in nearly their proper places; while of the limbs and ribs

of the upper side usually not a trace can be detected,--even the upper

side of the skull is often awanting. It-would almost seem as if some

pre-Adamite butcher had divided the carcasses longitudinally, and

carried away with him all the upper halves. The reading of the enigma

seems to be, that when the creatures lay down and died, the gypsum in

which their remains occur was soft enough to permit their under sides to

sink into it, and that then gradually hardening, it kept the bones in

their places; while the uncovered upper sides, exposed to the

disintegrating influences, either mouldered away piecemeal, or were

removed by accident. The bones of the larger animals of the basin are

usually found detached; and ere they could be reconstructed into perfect

skeletons, they taxed the extraordinary powers of the greatest of

comparative anatomists. Rather more than twenty different species of

extinct mammals have been detected in the Paris basin,--not a great

number, it may be thought; and yet for so limited a locality we may deem

it not a very small one, when we take into account the fact that all our

native mammals of Britain and Ireland amount (according to Fleming), if

we except the Cetaceæ and the seals, to but forty species.

[Illustration: Fig 71.

ANIMALS OF THE PARIS BASIN.[15]

(_Eocene._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 72.

DINOTHERIUM GIGANTEUM.

(_Miocene._)]

In the Middle or Miocene Tertiary, pachyderms, though of a wholly

different type from their predecessors, are still the prevailing forms.

The Dinotherium, one of the greatest quadrupedal mammals that ever

lived, seems to have formed a connecting link in this middle age between

the Pachydermata and the Cetaceæ. Each ramus of the under jaw, which in

the larger specimens are fully four feet in length, bore at the

symphysis a great bent tusk turned downwards, which appears to have been

employed as a pickaxe in uprooting the aquatic plants and liliaceous

roots on which the creature seems to have lived. The head, which

measured about three feet across,--a breadth, sufficient, surely, to

satisfy the demands of the most exacting phrenologist,--was provided

with muscles of enormous strength, arranged so as to give potent effect

to the operations of this strange tool. The hinder part of the skull

not a little resembled that of the Cetaceæ; while, from the form of the

nasal bones, the creature was evidently furnished with a trunk like the

elephant. It seems not improbable, therefore, that this bulkiest of

mammaliferous quadrupeds constituted, as I have said, a sort of uniting

tie between creatures still associated in the human mind, from the

circumstance of their massive proportions, as the greatest that swim the

sea or walk the land,--the whale and the elephant. The Mastodon, an

elephantoid animal, also furnished, like the elephant, with tusks and

trunk, but marked by certain peculiarities which constitute it a

different genus, seems in Europe to have been contemporary with the

Dinotherium; but in North America (the scene of its greatest numerical

development) it appears to belong to a later age. In height it did not

surpass the African elephant, but it considerably exceeded it in

length,--a specimen which could not have stood above twelve feet high

indicating a length of about twenty-five feet: it had what the elephants

want,--tusks fixed in its lower jaw, which the males retained through

life, but the females lost when young; its limbs were proportionally

shorter, but more massive, and its abdomen more elongated and slim; its

grinder teeth too, some of which have been known to weigh from seventeen

to twenty pounds, and their cusps elevated into great mammæ-like

protuberances, to which the creature owes its name, and wholly differ in

their proportions and outline from the grinders of the elephant. The

much greater remoteness of the mastodonic period in Europe than in

America is a circumstance worthy of notice, as it is one of many facts

that seem to indicate a general transposition of at least the later

geologic ages on the opposite sides of the Atlantic. Groups of

corresponding character on the eastern and western shores of this great

ocean were not contemporaneous in time. It has been repeatedly

remarked, that the existing plants and trees of the United States, with

not a few of its fishes and reptiles, bear in their forms and

construction the marks of a much greater antiquity than those of Europe.

The geologist who sets himself to discover similar types on the eastern

side of the Atlantic would have to seek for them among the deposits of

the later Tertiaries. North America seems to be still passing through

its later Tertiary ages; and it appears to be a consequence of this

curious transposition, that while in Europe the mastodonic period is

removed by two great geologic eras from the present time, it is removed

from it in America by only one. Even in America, however, that period

lies far beyond the reach of human tradition,--a fact borne out by the

pseudo-traditions retailed by the aborigines regarding the mastodon. By

none of at least the higher naturalists has there been a doubt

entertained respecting its herbivorous character; and the discovery of

late years of the stomach of an individual charged with decayed herbage

and fragments of the succulent branches of trees, some of them of

existing species, has demonstrated the solidity of the reasonings

founded on its general structure and aspect. The pseudo-traditions,

however, represent it in every instance as a carnivorous tyrant, that,

had it not been itself destroyed, would have destroyed all the other

animals its contemporaries. It is said by the red men of Virginia, "that

a troop of these tremendous quadrupeds made fearful havoc for some time

among the deer, the buffaloes, and all the other animals created for the

use of the Indians, and spread desolation far and wide. At last '_the

Mighty Man above_' seized his thunder and killed them all, with the

exception of the largest of the males, who presenting his head to the

thunderbolts, shook them off as they fell; but, being wounded in the

side, he betook himself to flight towards the great lakes, where he

still resides at the present day."

Let me here remind you in the passing, that that antiquity of type

which characterizes the recent productions of North America is one of

many wonders,--not absolutely geological in themselves, but which, save

for the revelations of geology, would have forever remained unnoted and

unknown,--which have been pressed, during the last half century, on the

notice of naturalists. "It is a circumstance quite extraordinary and

unexpected," says Agassiz, in his profoundly interesting work on Lake

Superior, "that the fossil plants of the Tertiary beds of Oeningen

resemble more closely the trees and shrubs which grow at present in the

eastern parts of North America, than those of any other parts of the

world; thus allowing us to express correctly the difference between the

opposite coasts of Europe and America, by saying that the present

eastern American flora, and, I may add, the fauna also, have a more

ancient character than those of Europe. The plants, especially the trees

and shrubs, growing in our days in the United States, are, as it were,

old-fashioned; and the characteristic genera Lagomys, Chelydra, and the

large Salamanders with permanent gills, that remind us of the fossils of

Oeningen, are at least equally so;--they bear the marks of former ages."

How strange a fact! Not only are we accustomed to speak of the eastern

continents as the Old World, in contradistinction to the great continent

of the west, but to speak also of the world before the Flood as the Old

World, in contradistinction to the post-diluvian world which succeeded

it. And yet equally, if we receive the term in either of its

acceptations, is America an older world still,--an older world than that

of the eastern continents,--an older world, in the fashion and type of

its productions, than the world before the Flood. And when the immigrant

settler takes axe amid the deep backwoods, to lay open for the first

time what he deems a new country, the great trees that fall before

him,--the brushwood that he lops away with a sweep of his tool,--the

unfamiliar herbs which he tramples under foot,--the lazy fish-like

reptile that scarce stirs out of his path as he descends to the

neighboring creek to drink,--the fierce alligator-like tortoise, with

the large limbs and small carpace, that he sees watching among the reeds

for fish and frogs, just as he reaches the water,--and the little

hare-like rodent, without a tail, that he startles by the way,--all

attest, by the antiqueness of the mould in which they are cast, how old

a country the seemingly new one really is,--a country vastly older, in

type at least, than that of the antediluvians and the patriarchs, and

only to be compared with that which flourished on the eastern side of

the Atlantic long ere the appearance of man, and the remains of whose

perished productions we find locked up in the _loess_ of the Rhine, or

amid the lignites of Nassau. America is emphatically the _Old_ World. If

we accept, however, as sound the ingenious logic by which Colton labors

to show, in not inelegant verse, that the _Moderns_ are the true

_Ancients_, we may continue to term it the New World still.

"We that on these late days are thrown

Must be the oldest Ancients known;

The _earliest_ Modern earth hath seen

Was Adam in his apron green.

He lived when young Creation pealed

Her morning hymn o'er flood and field,

Till all her infant offspring came

To that great christening for a name.

And he that would the Ancients know,

Must forward come, not backward go:

The learned lumber of the shelves

Shows nothing older than ourselves.

But who in older times than we

Shall live?--That infant on the knee,--

See sights to us were never shown,

And secrets known to us unknown."

[Illustration: Fig. 73.

ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS.

(_Mammoth._) Great British Elephant.]

[Illustration: Fig. 74.

TROGONTHERIUM CUVIERI.

Gigantic Beaver. (_Pleistocene._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 75.

URSUS SPELÆUS.

Cave Bear. (_Pleistocene._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 76.

HYENA SPELÆA.

Cave Hyæna. (_Pleistocene._)]

The group of mammals which, in Europe, at least, immediately preceded

the human period seems to have been everywhere a remarkable one; and

nowhere was it more so than in the British islands. Our present

mammaliferous fauna is rather poor; but the contents of the later

deposits show that we must regard it as but a mere fragment of a very

noble one. Associated with species that still exist in the less

cultivated parts of the country, such as the badger, the fox, the wild

cat, the roe and the red deer, we find the remains of great animals,

whose congeners must now be sought for in the intertropical regions.

Britain, during the times of the boulder clay, and for ages previous,

had its native elephant, its two species of rhinoceros, its

hippopotamus, its hyæna, its tiger, its three species of bears, its two

species of beavers, its great elk, and its gigantic deer. Forms now

found widely apart, and in very different climates, meet within the

British area. During at least the earlier times of the group, the

temperature of our island seems to have been very much what it is now.

As I have already had occasion to remark, the British oak flourished on

its plains and lower slopes, and the birch and Scotch fir on its hills.

And yet under these familiar trees the lagomys or tailless hare, a form

now mainly restricted to Siberia and the wilds of Northern America, and

the reindeer, an animal whose proper habitat at the present time is

Lapland, were associated with forms that are now only to be found

between the tropics, such as that of the hippopotamus and rhinoceros.

These last, however, unequivocally of extinct species, seem to have been

adapted to live in a temperate climate; and we know from the famous

Siberian specimen, that the British elephant, with its covering of long

hair and closely-felted wool, was fitted to sustain the rigors of a very

severe one. It is surely a strange fact, but not less true than strange,

that since hill and dale assumed in Britain their present configuration,

and the oak and birch flourished in its woods, there were caves in

England haunted for ages by families of hyænas,--that they dragged into

their dens with the carcasses of long extinct animals those of the still

familiar denizens of our hill-sides, and feasted, now on the lagomys,

and now on the common hare,--that they now fastened on the beaver or the

reindeer, and now upon the roebuck or the goat. In one of these caves,

such of the bones as projected from the stiff soil have been actually

worn smooth in a narrow passage where the hyænas used to come in contact

with them in passing out and in; and for several feet in depth the floor

beneath is composed almost exclusively of gnawed fragments, that still

exhibit the deeply indented marks of formidable teeth. In the famous

Kirkdale cave alone, parts of the skeletons of from two to three hundred

hyænas have been detected, mixed with portions of the osseous framework

of the cave-tiger, the cave-bear, the ox, the deer, the mammoth, and the

rhinoceros. That cave must have been a den of wild creatures for many

ages ere the times of the boulder clay, during which period it was shut

up from all access to the light and air by a drift deposit, and lay

covered over until again laid open by some workmen little more than

thirty years ago. Not only were many of the wild animals of the country

which still exist contemporary for a time with its extinct bears,

tigers, and elephants, but it seems at least highly probable that

several of our domesticated breeds derived their origin from progenitors

whose remains we find entombed in the bone-caves and other deposits of

the same age; though of course the changes effected by domestication in

almost all the tame animals renders the question of their identity with

the indigenous breeds somewhat obscure. Cuvier was, however, unable to

detect any difference between the skeleton of a fossil horse,

contemporary with the elephant, and that of our domestic breed: a fossil

goat of the same age cannot be distinguished from the domesticated

animal; and one of our two fossil oxen (_Bos longifrons_) does not

differ more from some of the existing breeds than these have, in the

course of time, been made, chiefly by artificial means, to differ among

themselves. But of one of our domestic tribes no trace has yet been

found in the rocks: like the cod family among fishes, or the Rosaceæ

among plants, it seems to have preceded man by but a very brief period.

And certainly, if created specially for his use, though the pride of the

herald might prevent him from selecting it as in aught typical of the

human race, it would yet not be easy to instance a family of animals

that has ministered more extensively to his necessities. I refer to the

sheep,--that soft and harmless creature, that clothes civilized man

everywhere in the colder latitudes with its fleece,--that feeds him with

its flesh,--that gives its bowels to be spun into the catgut with which

he refits his musical instruments,--whose horns he has learned to

fashion into a thousand useful trinkets,--and whose skin, converted into

parchment, served to convey to later times the thinking of the first

full blow of the human intellect across the dreary gulf of the middle

ages.

At length the human period begins. A creature appears upon the scene

unlike all that had preceded him, and whose nature it equally is to look

back upon the events of the past,--among other matters, on that

succession of beings upon the planet which he inhabits, with which we

are this evening attempting to deal,--and to anticipate at least one

succession more, in that still future state in which he himself is again

to appear, in happier circumstances than now, and in a worthier

character. We possess another history of the primeval age and subsequent

chronology of the human family than that which we find inscribed in the

rocks. And it is well that we do so. From various causes, the geologic

evidence regarding the period of man's first appearance on earth is

singularly obscure. That custom of "burying his dead out of his sight,"

which obtained, we know, in the patriarchal times, and was probably in

use ever since man came first under the law of death, has had the effect

of mingling his remains with those of creatures that were extinct for

ages ere he began to be. The cavern, once a haunt of carnivorous

animals, that in the first simple ages of his history had furnished him

with a shelter when living, became his burying-place when dead; and thus

his bones, and his first rude attempts in pottery and weapon-making,

have been found associated with the remains of the cave-hyæna and

cave-tiger, with the teeth of the ancient hippopotamus, and the tusks of

the primeval elephant. The evidence on the point, too,--from the great

paucity of human remains of a comparatively remote period, and from the

circumstance that they are rarely seen by geologists in the stratum in

which they occur,--is usually very imperfect in its details. Further, it

is an evidence obnoxious to suspicion, from the fact that a keen

controversy has arisen on the subject of man's antiquity, that such

fragments of man himself or of his works as manifest great age have been

pressed to serve as weapons in the fray,--that, occurring always in

superficial and local deposits, their true era may be greatly antedated,

under the influence of prejudice, by men who have no design wilfully to

deceive,--and that while, respecting the older formations, with their

abundant organisms, the conclusions of any one geologist may be tested

by all the others, the geologist who once in a lifetime picks up in a

stratified sand or clay a stone arrow-head or a human bone, finds that

the data on which he founds his conclusions may be received or rejected

by his contemporaries, but not re-examined. It may be safely stated,

however, that that ancient record in which man is represented as the

lastborn of creation, is opposed by no geologic fact; and that if,

according to Chalmers, "the Mosaic writings do not fix the antiquity of

the globe," they at least _do_ fix--making allowance, of course, for the

varying estimates of the chronologer--"the antiquity of the human

species." The great column of being, with its base set in the sea, and

inscribed, like some old triumphal pillar, with many a strange form,--at

once hieroglyphic and figure,--bears, as the ornately sculptured

capital, which imparts beauty and finish to the whole, reasoning,

responsible man. There is surely a very wonderful harmony manifested in

the proportions of that nice sequence in which the invertebrates--the

fishes, the reptiles, the birds, the marsupials, the placental mammals,

and, last of all, man himself--are so exquisitely arranged. It reminds

us of the fine figure employed by Dryden in his first Ode for St.

Cecilia's Day,--a figure which, viewed in the light cast on it by the

modern science of Palæontology, stands out in bolder relief than that in

which it could have appeared to the poet himself:--

"From harmony, from heavenly harmony,

This universal frame began;

From harmony to harmony,

Through all the compass of the notes it ran,

The _diapason_ closing full in man."

[Illustration: Fig. 77.

ASAPHUS CAUDATUS.

(_Silurian._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 78.

ORTHOCERAS LATERALE.

(_Mountain Limestone._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 79.

SPIRIGERINA RETICULARIS.

(_Old Red Sandstone._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 80.

A. MARGARITATUS.

(_Lias._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 81.

A. BISULCATUS.

(_Lias._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 82.

BELEMNITELLA MUCRONATA.

(_Chalk._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 83.

BELEMNITES SULCATUS.

(_Oolite._)]

In the limits to which I have restricted myself, I have been able to do

little more than simply to chronicle the successive eras in which the

various classes and divisions of the organic kingdom, vegetable and

animal, make their appearance in creation. I have produced merely a

brief record of the various births, in their order, of that great family

whose father is God. And in pursuing such a plan, much, of necessity,

must have been omitted. I ought perhaps to have told you, that very

rarely, if ever, do the master forms of a period constitute the

prevailing or typical organisms of its deposits. Of the three great

divisions of which the geologic scale consists,--Palæozoic, Secondary,

and Tertiary,--the first, or ichthyic period, is marked chiefly, not by

its great fishes, but by the peculiar character of its brachipodous and

cephalopodous mollusca, and in its earlier stages by its three-lobed

crustaceæ; the second or reptilian period was emphatically the period

of the ammonite and belemnite; while the third and last, or mammalian

period, was that of gastropodous and conchiferous molluscs, impressed,

generically at least, by all the features of the group which still

exists in our seas. Save in a few local deposits, fishes do not form the

prevailing organisms in the formations of the age of fishes; nor

reptiles in the formations of the age of reptiles; nor yet mammals in

the formations of the age of mammals. Nay, it is not improbable that the

recent or human period may be marked most prominently in the future,

when it comes to exist simply as a geologic system, by a still humbler

organism than most of these molluscs. On almost all rocky shores a line

of pale gray may be seen at low water, running for mile after mile along

the belt that has been laid bare at the bases of the cliffs by the fall

of the tide. It owes its pale color to millions of millions of a small

balanus (_B. balanoides_), produced in such amazing abundance in the

littoral zone as to cover with a rough crust every minute portion of

rock and every sedentary shell. Other species of the same genus (_B.

crenatus_ and _B. porcatus_) occupy the depths of the sea beyond; and

their remains, washed ashore by the waves, and mingled with those of the

littoral species, form often great accumulations of shell sand. I have

seen among the Hebrides a shell sand accumulated along the beach to the

depth of many feet, of which fully two thirds was composed of the valves

and compartments of balanidæ; and a similar sand on the east coast of

Scotland, a little to the south of St. Andrews, formed in still larger

proportions of the fragments of a single species,--_Balanus crenatus_.

Now, this genus, so amazingly abundant at the present time in every

existing sea, and whose accumulated remains bid fair to exist as great

limestone rocks in the future, had no existence in the Palæozoic or

Secondary ages. It first appears in the times of the earlier Tertiary,

in, however, only a single species; and, becoming gradually of more and

more importance as a group, it receives its fullest numerical

development in the present time. And thus the remains of a sub-class of

animals, low in their standing among the articulata, may form one of the

most prominent Palæontological features of the human period. But enough

for the present of circumstance and detail.

[Illustration: Fig. 84.

MUREX ALVEOLATUS.

(_Red Crag._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 85.

ASTARTE OMALII.

(_Red Crag._)]

[Illustration: Fig. 86.

BALANUS CRASSUS.

(_Red Crag._)]

Such, so far as the geologist has yet been able to read the records of

his science, has been the course of creation, from the first beginnings

of vitality upon our planet, until the appearance of man. And very

wonderful, surely, has that course been! How strange a procession! Never

yet on Egyptian obelisk or Assyrian frieze,--where long lines of figures

seem stalking across the granite, each charged with symbol and

mystery,--have our Layards or Rawlinsons seen aught so extraordinary as

that long procession of being which, starting out of the blank depths of

the bygone eternity, is still defiling across the stage, and of which we

ourselves form some of the passing figures. Who shall declare the

profound meanings with which these geologic hieroglyphics are charged,

or indicate the ultimate goal at which the long procession is destined

to arrive?

The readings already given, the conclusions already deduced, are as

various as the hopes and fears, the habits of thought, and the cast of

intellect, of the several interpreters who have set themselves,--some,

alas! with but little preparation and very imperfect knowledge,--to

declare in their order the details of this marvellous, dream-like

vision, and, with the dream, "the interpretation thereof." One class of

interpreters may well remind us of the dim-eyed old man,--the genius of

unbelief so poetically described by Coleridge,--who, sitting in his cold

and dreary cave, "talked much and vehemently concerning an infinite

series of causes and effects, which he explained to be a string of blind

men, the last of whom caught hold of the skirt of the one before him, he

of the next, and so on, till they were all out of sight, and that they

all walked infallibly straight, without making one false step, though

all were alike blind." With these must I class those assertors of the

development hypothesis who can see in the upward progress of being only

the operations of an incomprehending and incomprehensible law, through

which, in the course of unreckoned ages, the lower tribes and families

have risen into the higher, and inferior into superior natures, and in

virtue of which, in short, the animal creation has grown, in at least

its nobler specimens, altogether unwittingly, without thought or care on

its own part, and without intelligence on the part of the operating law,

from irrational to rational, and risen in the scale from the mere

promptings of instinct to the highest exercise of reason,--from apes and

baboons to Bacons and Newtons. The blind lead the blind;--the unseeing

law operates on the unperceiving creatures; and they go, not together

into the ditch, but direct onwards, straight as an arrow, and higher

and higher at every step.

Another class look with profound melancholy on that great city of the

dead,--the burial-place of all that ever lived in the past,--which

occupies with its ever-extending pavements of gravestones, and its

ever-lengthening streets of tombs and sepulchres, every region opened up

by the geologist. They see the onward procession of being as if but

tipped with life, and nought but inanimate carcasses all behind,--dead

individuals, dead species, dead genera, dead creations,--a universe of

death; and ask whether the same annihilation which overtook in turn all

the races of all the past, shall not one day overtake our own race also,

and a time come when men and their works shall have no existence save as

stone-pervaded fossils locked up in the rock forever? Nowhere do we find

the doubts and fears of this class more admirably portrayed than in the

works of perhaps the most thoughtful and suggestive of living poets:--

"Are God and Nature then at strife,

That Nature lends such evil dreams,

So careful of the type she seems,

So careless of the single life?

'So careful of the type!' but no,

From scarped cliff and quarried stone,

She cries, 'A thousand types are gone;

I care for nothing; all shall go:

Thou makest thine appeal to me;

I bring to life, I bring to death;

The spirit does but mean the breath.

I know no more.' And he,--shall he,

Man, her last work, who seemed so fair,

Such splendid purpose in his eyes,

Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies

And built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed,

And love creation's final law,

Though Nature, red in tooth and claw,

With ravine shrieked against his creed,--

Who loved, who suffered countless ills,

Who battled for the true, the just,--

Be blown about the desert dust,

Or sealed within the iron hills?

No more!--a monster then, a dream,

A discord. Dragons of the prime,

That tore each other in their slime,

Were mellow music matched with him.

O, life, as futile then as frail,--

O for thy voice to soothe and bless!

What hope of answer or redress,

Behind the vail, behind the vail!"

The sagacity of the poet here,--that strange sagacity which seems so

nearly akin to the prophetic spirit,--suggests in this noble passage the

true reading of the enigma. The appearance of man upon the scene of

being constitutes a new era in creation; the operations of a new

_instinct_ come into play,--that _instinct_ which anticipates a life

after the grave, and reposes in implicit faith upon a God alike just and

good, who is the pledged "rewarder of all who diligently seek Him." And

in looking along the long line of being,--ever rising in the scale from

higher to yet higher manifestations, or abroad on the lower animals,

whom instinct never deceives,--can we hold that man, immeasurably higher

in his place, and infinitely higher in his hopes and aspirations, than

all that ever went before him, should be, notwithstanding, the one grand

error in creation,--the one painful worker, in the midst of present

trouble, for a state into which he is never to enter,--the befooled

expectant of a happy future, which he is never to see? Assuredly no. He

who keeps faith with all his humbler creatures,--who gives to even the

bee and the dormouse the winter for which they prepare,--will to a

certainty not break faith with man,--with man, alike the deputed lord of

the present creation, and the chosen heir of all the future. We have

been looking abroad on the old geologic burying-grounds, and deciphering

the strange inscriptions on their tombs; but there are other

burying-grounds, and other tombs,--solitary churchyards among the hills,

where the dust of the martyrs lies, and tombs that rise over the ashes

of the wise and good; nor are there awanting, on even the monuments of

the perished races, frequent hieroglyphics, and symbols of high meaning,

which darkly intimate to us, that while _their_ burial-yards contain but

the debris of the past, we are to regard the others as charged with the

sown seed of the future.

LECTURE THIRD.

THE TWO RECORDS, MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL.

It is now exactly fifty years since a clergyman of the Scottish Church,

engaged in lecturing at St. Andrews, took occasion in enumerating the

various earths of the chemist, to allude to the science, then in its

infancy, that specially deals with the rocks and soils which these

earths compose. "There is a prejudice," he remarked, "against the

speculations of the geologist, which I am anxious to remove. It has been

said that they nurture infidel propensities. It has been alleged that

geology, by referring the origin of the globe to a higher antiquity than

is assigned to it by the writings of Moses, undermines our faith in the

inspiration of the Bible, and in all the animating prospects of the

immortality which it unfolds. This is a false alarm. _The writings of

Moses do not fix the antiquity of the globe._"

The bold lecturer on this occasion,--for it needed no small courage in a

divine of any Established Church to take up, at the beginning of the

present century, a position so determined on the geologic side,--was at

the time an obscure young man, characterized, in the small circle in

which he moved, by the ardor of his temperament and the breadth and

originality of his views; but not yet distinguished in the science or

literature of his country, and of comparatively little weight in the

theological field. He was marked, too, by what his soberer acquaintance

deemed eccentricities of thought and conduct. When the opposite view was

all but universal, he held and taught that free trade would be not only

a general benefit to the people of this country, but would inflict

permanent injury on no one class or portion of them; and further, at a

time when the streets and lanes of all the great cities of the empire

were lighted with oil burnt in lamps, he held that the time was not

distant when a carburetted hydrogen gas would be substituted instead;

and, on getting his snug parsonage-house repaired, he actually

introduced into the walls a system of tubes and pipes for the passage

into its various rooms of the gaseous fluid yet to be employed as the

illuminating agent. Time and experience have since impressed their stamp

on these supposed eccentricities, and shown them to be the sagacious

forecastings of a man who saw further and more clearly than his

contemporaries; and fame has since blown his name very widely, as one of

the most comprehensive and enlightened, and, withal, one of the most

thoroughly earnest and sincere, of modern theologians. The bold lecturer

of St. Andrews was Dr. Thomas Chalmers,--a divine whose writings are now

known wherever the English language is spoken, and whose wonderful

eloquence lives in memory as a vanished power, which even his

extraordinary writings fail adequately to represent. And in the position

which he took up at this early period with respect to geology and the

Divine Record, we have yet another instance of the great sagacity of the

man, and of his ability of correctly estimating the prevailing weight of

the evidence with which, though but partially collected at the time, the

geologist was preparing to establish the leading propositions of his

science. Even in this late age, when the scientific standing of geology

is all but universally recognized, and the vast periods of time which it

demands fully conceded, neither geologist nor theologian, could, in any

new scheme of reconciliation, shape his first proposition more skilfully

than it was shaped by Chalmers a full half century ago. It has formed

since that time the preliminary proposition of those ornaments of at

once science and the English Church, the present venerable Archbishop of

Canterbury, Dr. Bird Sumner, with Doctors Buckland, Conybeare, and

Professor Sedgwick; of eminent evangelistic Dissenters too, such as the

late Dr. Pye Smith, Dr. John Harris, Dr. Robert Vaughan, Dr. James

Hamilton, and the Rev. Mr. Binney,--enlightened and distinguished men,

who all came early to the conclusion, with the lecturer of St. Andrews,

that "the writings of Moses do not fix the antiquity of the globe."

In 1814, ten years after the date of the St. Andrews' lectures, Dr.

Chalmers produced his more elaborate scheme of reconciliation between

the Divine and the Geologic Records, in a "Review of Cuvier's Theory of

the Earth;" and that scheme, perfectly adequate to bring the Mosaic

narrative into harmony with what was known at the time of geologic

history, has been very extensively received and adopted. It may, indeed,

still be regarded as the most popular of the various existing schemes.

It teaches, and teaches truly, that between the first act of creation,

which evoked out of the previous nothing the _matter_ of the heavens and

earth, and the first act of the first day's work recorded in Genesis,

periods of vast duration may have intervened; but further, it insists

that the days themselves were but natural days of twenty-four hours

each; and that, ere they began, the earth, though mayhap in the previous

period a fair residence of life, had become void and formless, and the

sun, moon, and stars, though mayhap they had before given light, had

been, at least in relation to our planet, temporarily extinguished. In

short, while it teaches that the successive creations of the geologist

may all have found ample room in the period preceding that creation to

which man belongs, it teaches also that the record in Genesis bears

reference to but the existing creation, and that there lay between it

and the preceding ones a chaotic period of death and darkness. The

scheme propounded by the late Dr. Pye Smith, and since adopted by

several writers, differs from that of Chalmers in but one circumstance,

though an important one. Dr. Smith held, with the great northern divine,

that the Mosaic days were natural days; that they were preceded by a

chaotic period; and that the work done in them related to but that last

of the creations to which the human species belongs. Further, however,

he held in addition, that the chaos of darkness and confusion out of

which that creation was called was of but limited extent, and that

outside its area, and during the period of its existence, many of our

present lands and seas may have enjoyed the light of the sun, and been

tenanted by animals and occupied by plants, the descendants of which

still continue to exist. The treatise of Dr. Pye Smith was published

exactly a quarter of a century posterior to the promulgation, through

the press, of the argument of Dr. Chalmers; and this important

addition,--elaborated by its author between the years 1837 and

1839,--seems to have been made to suit the more advanced state of

geological science at the time. The scheme of reconciliation perfectly

adequate in 1814 was found in 1839 to be no longer so; and this mainly

through a peculiarity in the order in which geological fact has been

evolved and accumulated in this country, and the great fossiliferous

systems studied and wrought out; to which I must be permitted briefly to

advert.

William Smith, the "Father of English Geology," as he has been well

termed (a humble engineer and mineral surveyor, possessed of but the

ordinary education of men of his class and profession), was born upon

the English Oolite,--that system which, among the five prevailing

divisions of the great Secondary class of rocks, holds exactly the

middle place. The Triassic system and the Lias lie beneath it; the

Cretaceous system and the Weald rest above. Smith, while yet a child,

had his attention attracted by the Oolitic fossils; and it was observed,

that while his youthful contemporaries had their garnered stores of

marbles purchased at the toy shop, he had collected, instead, a hoard of

spherical fossil terebratulæ, which served the purposes of the game

equally well. The interest which he took in organic remains, and the

deposits in which they occur, influenced him in the choice of a

profession; and, when supporting himself in honest independence as a

skilful mineral surveyor and engineer, he travelled over many thousand

miles of country, taking as his starting point the city of Bath, which

stands near what is termed the Great Oolite: and from that centre he

carefully explored the various Secondary formations above and below. He

ascertained that these always occur in a certain determinate order; that

each contains fossils peculiar to itself; and that they run diagonally

across the kingdom in nearly parallel lines from north-east to

south-west. And, devoting every hour which he could snatch from his

professional labors to the work, in about a quarter of a century, or

rather more, he completed his great stratigraphical map of England. But,

though a truly Herculean achievement, regarded as that of a single man

unindebted to public support, and uncheered by even any very general

sympathy in his labors, it was found to be chiefly valuable in its

tracings of the Secondary deposits, and strictly exact in only that

Oolitic centre from which his labors began. It was remarked at an early

period that he ought to have restricted his publication to the

formations which lie between the Chalk and the Red Marl inclusive; or,

in other words, to the great Secondary division. The Coal Measures had,

however, been previously better known, from their economic importance,

and the number of the workings opened among them, than the deposits of

any other system; and ere the publication of the map of Smith, Cuvier

and Brogniart had rendered famous all over the world the older Tertiary

formations of the age of the London Clay. But both ends of the

geological scale, comprising those ancient systems older than the Coal,

and representative of periods in which, so far as is yet known, life,

animal and vegetable, first began upon our planet, and those systems of

comparatively modern date, representative of the periods which

immediately preceded the human epoch, were equally unknown. The light

fell strongly on only that middle portion of the series on which the

labors of Smith had been mainly concentrated. The vast geologic bridge,

which, like that in the exquisite allegory of Addison, strode across a

"part of the great tide of eternity," "had a black cloud hanging at each

end of it." And such was the state of geologic science when, in 1814,

Dr. Chalmers framed his scheme of reconciliation.

Since that time, however, a light not less strong than the one thrown by

William Smith on the formations of the Lias and the Oolite has been cast

on both the older and the newer fossiliferous systems. Two great gaps

still remain to be filled up,--that which separates the Palæozoic from

the Secondary division, and that which separates the Secondary from the

Tertiary one. But they occur at neither end of the geological scale.

Mainly through the labors of two distinguished geologists, who, finding

the geologic school of their own country distracted by a fierce and

fruitless controversy, attached themselves to the geologic school of

England, and have since received the honor of knighthood in

acknowledgment of their labors, both ends of the geologic scale have

been completed. Sir Roderick Murchison addressed himself to the

formations older than the Coal, more especially to the Upper and Lower

Silurian systems, from the Ludlow rooks to the Llandeilo flags. The Old

Red Sandstone too, a system which lies more immediately beneath the

Coal, has also been explored, and its various deposits, with their

peculiar organic remains, enumerated and described. And Sir Charles

Lyell, setting himself to the other extremity of the scale, has wrought

out the Tertiary formations, and separated them into the four great

divisions which they are now recognized as forming. And of these, the

very names indicate that certain proportions of their organisms still

continue to exist. It is a great fact, now fully established in the

course of geological discovery, that between the plants which in the

present time cover the earth, and the animals which inhabit it, and the

animals and plants of the later extinct creations, there occurred no

break or blank, but that, on the contrary, many of the existing

organisms were contemporary during the morning of their being, with many

of the extinct ones during the evening of theirs. We know further, that

not a few of the shells which now live on our coasts, and several of

even the wild animals which continue to survive amid our tracts of hill

and forest, were in existence many ages ere the human age began. Instead

of dating their beginning only a single natural day, or at most two

natural days, in advance of man, they must have preceded him by many

thousands of years. In fine, in consequence of that comparatively recent

extension of geologic fact in the direction of the later systems and

formations, through which we are led to know that the present creation

was not cut off abruptly from the preceding one, but that, on the

contrary, it dovetailed into it at a thousand different points, we are

led also to know, that any scheme of reconciliation which would

separate between the recent and the extinct existences by a chaotic gulf

of death and darkness, is a scheme which no longer meets the necessities

of the case. Though perfectly adequate forty years ago, it has been

greatly outgrown by the progress of geological discovery, and is, as I

have said, adequate no longer; and it becomes a not unimportant matter

to determine the special scheme that would bring into completest harmony

the course of creation, as now ascertained by the geologist, and that

brief but sublime narrative of its progress which forms a meet

introduction in Holy Writ to the history of the human family. The first

question to which we must address ourselves in any such inquiry is of

course a very obvious one,--_What are the facts scientifically

determined which now demand a new scheme of reconciliation?_

There runs around the shores of Great Britain and Ireland a flat terrace

of unequal breadth, backed by an escarpment of varied height and

character, which is known to geologists as the old coast-line. On this

flat terrace most of the seaport towns of the empire are built. The

subsoil which underlies its covering of vegetable mould consists usually

of stratified sands and gravels, arranged after the same fashion as on

the neighboring beach, and interspersed in the same manner with sea

shells. The escarpment behind, when formed of materials of no great

coherency, such as gravel or clay, exists as a sloping, grass-covered

bank,--at one place running out into promontories that encroach upon the

terrace beneath,--at another receding into picturesque, bay-like

recesses; and where composed, as in many localities, of rock of an

enduring quality, we find it worn, as if by the action of the surf,--in

some parts relieved into insulated stacks, in others hollowed into deep

caverns,--in short, presenting all the appearance of a precipitous

coast-line, subjected to the action of the waves. Now, no geologist can

or does doubt that this escarpment was at one time the coast-line of the

island,--the line against which the waves broke at high water in some

distant age, when either the sea stood from twenty to thirty feet higher

along our shores than it does now, or the land sat from twenty to thirty

feet lower. Nor can the geologist doubt, that along the flat terrace

beneath, with its stratified beds of sand and gravel, and its

accumulations of sea shells, the tides must have risen and fallen twice

every day, as they now rise and fall along the beach that at present

girdles our country. But, in reference to at least human history, the

age of the old coast-line and terrace must be a very remote one. Though

geologically recent, it lies far beyond the reach of any written record.

It has been shown by Mr. Smith of Jordanhill, one of our highest

authorities on the subject, that the wall of Antoninus, erected by the

Romans as a protection against the Northern Caledonians, was made to

terminate at the Firths of Forth and Clyde, with relation, not to the

level of the old coast-line, but to that of the existing one. And so we

must infer that, ere the year A.D. 140 (the year during which, according

to our antiquaries, the greater part of the wall was erected) the old

coast-line had attained to its present elevation over the sea. Further,

however, we know from the history of Diodorus the Sicilian, that at a

period earlier by at least two hundred years, St. Michael's Mount, in

Cornwall, was connected with the mainland at low water, just as it is

now, by a flat isthmus, across which, upon the falling of the tide, the

ancient Cornish miners used to carry over their tin in carts. Had the

relative levels of sea and land been those of the old coast-line at the

time, St. Michael's Mount, instead of being accessible at low ebb would

have been separated from the shore by a strait from three to five

fathoms in depth. It would not have been then as now, as described in

the verse of Carew,--

"Both land and island twice a day."

But even the incidental notice of Diodorus Siculus represents very

inadequately the antiquity of the existing coast-line. Some of its

caves, hollowed in hard rock in the line of faults and shifts by the

attrition of the surf, are more than a hundred feet in depth; and it

must have required many centuries to excavate tough trap or rigid gneiss

to a depth so considerable, by a process so slow. And yet, however long

the sea may have stood against the present coast-line, it must have

stood for a considerably longer period against the ancient one. The

latter presents generally marks of greater attrition than the modern

line, and its wave-hollowed caves are of a depth considerably more

profound. In determining, on an extensive tract of coast, the average

profundity of both classes of caverns from a considerable number of

each, I ascertained that the proportional average depth of the modern to

the ancient is as two to three. For every two centuries, then, during

which the waves have been scooping out the caves of the present

coast-line, they must have been engaged for three centuries in scooping

out those of the old one. But we know _historically_, that for at least

twenty centuries the sea has been toiling in these modern caves; and who

shall dare affirm that it has not been toiling in them for at least ten

centuries more? But if the sea has stood for but even two thousand six

hundred years against the present coast-line (and no geologist would

dare fix his estimate lower), then must it have stood against the old

line, ere it could have excavated caves one third deeper, three thousand

nine hundred years. And both periods united (six thousand five hundred

years) more than exhaust the Hebrew chronology. Yet what a mere

beginning of geologic history does not the epoch of the old coast-line

form! It is but a mere starting point from the recent period. Not a

single shell seems to have become extinct during the last six thousand

five hundred years! The shells which lie embedded in the subsoils

beneath the old coast-line are exactly those which still live in our

seas.

[Illustration: Fig. 87.

ASTARTE ARCTICA.]

[Illustration: Fig. 88.

TELLINA PROXIMA.]

Above this ancient line of coast we find, at various heights, beds of

shells of vastly older date than those of the low-lying terrace, and

many of which are no longer to be found living around our shores. I

spent some time last autumn in exploring one of these beds, once a sea

bottom, but now raised two hundred and thirty feet over the sea, in

which there occurred great numbers of shells now not British, though

found in many parts of Britain at heights varying from two hundred to

nearly fourteen hundred feet over the existing sea level. But though no

longer British shells, they are shells that still continue to live in

high northern latitudes, as on the shores of Iceland and Spitzbergen;

and the abundance in which they were developed on the submerged plains

and hill-sides of what are now England and Scotland, during what is

termed the Pleistocene period, shows of itself what a very protracted

period that was. The prevailing tellina of the bed which I last

explored,--a bed which occurs in some places six miles inland, in others

elevated on the top of dizzy crags,--is a sub-arctic shell (_Tellina

proxima_), of which only dead valves are now to be detected on our

coasts, but which may be found living at the North Cape and in

Greenland. The prevailing astarte, its contemporary, was _Astarte

arctica_, now so rare as a British species, that many of our most

sedulous collectors have never seen a native specimen, but which is

comparatively common on the northern shores of Iceland, and on the

eastern coasts of Norway, within the arctic circle. In this elevated

Scottish bed of the Pleistocene period I laid these boreal shells open

to the light by hundreds, on the spot evidently where the individuals

had lived and died. Under the severe climatal conditions to which

(probably from some change in the direction of the gulf stream) what is

now Northern Europe had been brought, this tellina and astarte had

increased and multiplied until they became prevailing shells of the

British area; and this increase must have been the slow work of ages,

during which the plains, and not a few of the table lands, of the

country, were submerged in a sub-arctic sea, and Great Britain existed

as but a scattered archipelago of wintry islands. But in a still earlier

period, of which there exists unequivocal evidence in the buried forests

of Happisburgh and Cromer, the country had not only its head above

water, as now, but seems to have possessed oven more than its present

breadth of surface. During this ancient time,--more remote by many

centuries than not only the times of the old coast-line, but than even

those of the partial submergence of the island,--that northern mammoth

lived in great abundance, of which the remains have been found by

hundreds in England alone, together with the northern hippopotamus, and

at least two northern species of rhinoceros. And though they have all

ceased to exist, with their wild associates in the forests and jungles

of the Pleistocene, the cave-hyæna, the cave-tiger, and the cave-bear,

we know that the descendants of some of their feebler contemporaries,

such as the badger, the fox, the wild cat, and the red deer, still live

amid our hills and brakes. The trees, too, under which they roamed, and

whose remains we find buried in the same deposits as theirs, were of

species that still hold their place as aboriginal trees of the country,

or of at least the more northerly provinces of the continent. The common

Scotch fir, the common birch, and a continental species of conifer of

the far north, the Norwegian spruce (_Abies excelsa_), have been found

underlying the Pleistocene drift, and rooted in the mammiferous crag;

and for many ages must the old extinct elephant have roamed amid these

familiar trees. From one limited tract of sea bottom on the Norfolk

coast the fishermen engaged in dredging oysters brought ashore, in the

course of thirteen years (from 1820 to 1833), no fewer than two thousand

elephants' grinders, besides great tusks and numerous portions of

skeletons. It was calculated that these remains could not have belonged

to fewer than five hundred individual mammoths of English growth; and,

various in their states of keeping, and belonging to animals of which

only a few at a time could have found sufficient food in a limited tract

of country, the inference seems inevitable that they must have belonged,

not to one or two, but to many succeeding generations. The further fact,

that remains of this ancient elephant (_Elephas primigenius_) occur all

round the globe in a broad belt, extending from the fortieth to near the

seventieth degree of north latitude, leads to the same conclusion. It

must have required many ages ere an animal that breeds so slowly as the

elephant could have extended itself over an area so vast.

[Illustration: Fig. 89.

NORWEGIAN SPRUCE.

(Abies excelsa.)]

Many of the contemporaries of this northern mammoth, especially of its

molluscan contemporaries, continue, as I have said, to live in their

descendants. Of even a still more ancient period, represented by the Red

Crag, seventy out of every hundred species of shells still exist; and of

an older period still, represented by the Coraline Crag, there survive

sixty out of every hundred. In the Red Crag, for instance, we find the

first known ancestors of our common edible periwinkle and common edible

mussel; and in the Coraline Crag, the first known ancestors of the

common horse-mussel, the common whelk, the common oyster, and the great

pecten. There then occurs a break in the geologic deposits of Britain,

which, however, in other parts of Europe we find so filled up as to

render it evident that no corresponding break took place in the chain of

existence; but that, on the contrary, from the present time up to the

times represented by the earliest Eocene formations of the Tertiary

division, day has succeeded day, and season has followed season, and

that no chasm or hiatus--no age of general chaos, darkness, and

death--has occurred, to break the line of succession, or check the

course of life. All the evidence runs counter to the supposition that

immediately before the appearance of man upon earth, there existed a

chaotic period which separated the previous from the present creation.

Up till the commencement of the Eocene ages, if even then, there was no

such chaotic period, in at least what is now Britain and the European

continent: the persistency from a high antiquity of some of the existing

races, of not only plants and shells, but of even some of the

mammiferous animals, such as the badger, the goat, and the wild cat,

prove there was not; and any scheme of reconciliation which takes such a

period for granted must be deemed as unsuited to the present state of

geologic knowledge, as any scheme would have been forty years ago which

took it for granted that the writings of Moses _do_ "fix the antiquity

of the globe."

The scheme of reconciliation adopted by the late Dr. Pye Smith, though,

save in one particular, identical, as I have said, with that of Dr.

Chalmers, is made, in virtue of its single point of difference, to steer

clear of the difficulty. Both schemes exhibit the creation recorded in

Genesis as an event which took place about six thousand years ago; both

describe it as begun and completed in six natural days; and both

represent it as cut off from a previously existing creation by a chaotic

period of death and darkness. But while, according to the scheme of

Chalmers, both the Biblical creation and the previous period of death

are represented as coextensive with the globe, they are represented,

according to that of Dr. Smith, as limited and local. They may have

extended, it is said, over only a few provinces of Central Asia, in

which, when all was life and light in other parts of the globe, there

reigned for a time only death and darkness amid the welterings of a

chaotic sea; which, at the Divine command, was penetrated by light, and

occupied by dry land, and ultimately, ere the end of the creative week,

became a centre in which certain plants and animals, and finally man

himself, were created. And this scheme, by leaving to the geologist in

this country and elsewhere, save mayhap in some unknown Asiatic

district, his unbroken series, certainly does not conflict with the

facts educed by geologic discovery. It virtually removes Scripture

altogether out of the field. I must confess, however, that on this, and

on some other accounts, it has failed to satisfy me. I have stumbled,

too, at the conception of a merely local and limited chaos, in which the

darkness would be so complete, that when first penetrated by the light,

that penetration could be described as actually a _making_ or creating

of light; and that, while life obtained all around its precincts, could

yet be thoroughly void of life, A local darkness so profound as to admit

no ray of light seems to have fallen for a time on Egypt, as one of the

ten plagues; but the event was evidently miraculous; and no student of

natural science is entitled to have recourse, in order to extricate

himself out of a difficulty, to supposititious, unrecorded miracle.

Creation cannot take place without miracle; but it would be a strange

reversal of all our previous conclusions on the subject, should we have

to hold that the dead, dark, blank out of which creation arose was

miraculous also. And if, rejecting miracle, we cast ourselves on the

purely natural, we find that the local darknesses dependent on known

causes, of which we have any record in history, were always either very

imperfect, like the darkness of your London fogs, or very temporary,

like the darkness described by Pliny as occasioned by a cloud of

volcanic ashes; and so, altogether inadequate to meet the demands of a

hypothesis such as that of Dr. Smith. And yet further, I am disposed, I

must add, to look for a broader and more general meaning in that grand

description of the creation of all things with which the Divine record

so appropriately opens, than I could recognize it as forming, were I

assured it referred to but one of many existing creations,--a creation

restricted to mayhap a few hundred square miles of country, and to

mayhap a few scores of animals and plants. What, then, is the scheme of

reconciliation which I would venture to propound?

Let me first remark, in reply, that I come before you this evening, not

as a philologist, but simply as a student of geological fact, who,

believing his Bible, believes also, that though theologians have at

various times striven hard to pledge it to false science, geographical,

astronomical, and geological, it has been pledged by its Divine Author

to no falsehood whatever. I occupy exactly the position now, with

respect to geology, that the mere Christian geographer would have

occupied with respect to geography in the days of those doctors of

Salamanca who deemed it unscriptural to hold with Columbus that the

world is round,--not flat; or exactly the position which the mere

Christian astronomer would have occupied with respect to astronomy in

the days of that Francis Turrettine who deemed it unscriptural to hold

with Newton and Galileo, that it is the earth which moves in the

heavens, and the sun which stands still. The mere geographer or

astronomer might have been wholly unable to discuss with Turrettine or

the doctors the niceties of Chaldaic punctuation, or the various

meanings of the Hebrew verbs. But this much, notwithstanding, he would

be perfectly qualified to say:--However great your skill as linguists,

your reading of what you term the scriptural geography or scriptural

astronomy must of necessity be a false reading, seeing that it commits

Scripture to what, in my character as a geographer or astronomer, I know

to be a monstrously false geography or astronomy. Premising, then, that

I make no pretensions to even the slightest skill in philology, I remark

further, that it has been held by accomplished philologists, that the

days of the Mosaic creation may be regarded, without doing violence to

the genius of the Hebrew language, as successive periods of great

extent. And certainly, in looking at my English Bible, I find that the

portion of time spoken of in the first chapter of Genesis as _six_ days,

is spoken of in the second chapter as _one_ day. True, there are other

philologers, such as the late Professor Moses Stuart, who take a

different view; but then I find this same Professor Stuart striving hard

to make the phraseology of Moses "fix the antiquity of the globe;" and

so, as a mere geologist, I reject his philology, on exactly the same

principle on which the mere geographer would reject, and be justified in

rejecting, the philology of the doctors of Salamanca, or on which the

mere astronomer would reject, and be justified in rejecting, the

philology of Turrettine and the old Franciscans. I would, in any such

case, at once, and without hesitation, cut the philological knot, by

determining that that philology cannot be sound which would commit the

Scriptures to a science that cannot be true. Waiving, however, the

question as a philological one, and simply holding with Cuvier,

Parkinson, and Silliman, that each of the _six_ days of the Mosaic

narrative in the first chapter were what is assuredly meant by the _day_

referred to in the second,--not natural days, but lengthened periods,--I

find myself called on, as a geologist, to account for but three of the

six. Of the period during which light was created,--of the period during

which a firmament was made to separate the waters from the waters,--or

of the period during which the two great lights of the earth, with the

other heavenly bodies, became visible from the earth's surface,--we need

expect to find no record in the rocks. Let me, however, pause for a

moment, to remark the peculiar character of the language in which we are

first introduced in the Mosaic narrative to the heavenly bodies,--sun,

moon, and stars. The moon, though absolutely one of the smallest lights

of our system, is described as secondary and subordinate to only its

greatest light, the sun. It is the apparent, then, not the actual, which

we find in the passage,--what _seemed_ to be, not what _was_; and as it

was merely what appeared to be greatest that was described as greatest,

on what grounds are we to hold that it may not also have been what

_appeared_ at the time to be made that has been described as made? The

sun, moon, and stars may have been created long before, though it was

not until this fourth period of creation that they became visible from

the earth's surface.

The geologist, in his attempts to collate the Divine with the geologic

record, has, I repeat, only three of the six periods of creation to

account for,--the period of plants, the period of great sea monsters and

creeping things, and the period of cattle and beasts of the earth. He is

called on to question his systems and formations regarding the remains

of these three great periods, and of these only. And the question once

fairly stated, what, I ask, is the reply? All geologists agree in

holding that the vast geological scale naturally divides into _three_

great parts. There are many lesser divisions,--divisions into systems,

formations, deposits, beds, strata; but the master divisions, in each of

which we find a type of life so unlike that of the others, that even the

unpractised eye can detect the difference, are simply three,--the

Palæozoic, or oldest fossiliferous division; the Secondary, or middle

fossiliferous division; and the Tertiary, or latest fossiliferous

division.

In the first, or Palæozoic division, we find corals, crustaceans,

molluscs, fishes, and, in its later formations, a few reptiles. But none

of these classes of organisms give its leading character to the

Palæozoic; they do not constitute its prominent feature, or render it

more remarkable as a scene of life than any of the divisions which

followed. That which chiefly distinguished the Palæozoic from the

Secondary and Tertiary periods was its gorgeous flora. It was

emphatically the period of plants,--"of herbs yielding seed after their

kind." In no other age did the world ever witness such a flora: the

youth of the earth was peculiarly a green and umbrageous youth,--a youth

of dusk and tangled forests, of huge pines and stately araucarians, of

the reed-like calamite, the tall tree-fern, the sculptured sigillaria,

and the hirsute lepidodendron. Wherever dry land, or shallow lake, or

running stream appeared, from where Melville Island now spreads out its

ice wastes under the star of the pole, to where the arid plains of

Australia lie solitary beneath the bright cross of the south, a rank and

luxuriant herbage cumbered every footbreadth of the dank and steaming

soil; and even to distant planets our earth must have shone through the

enveloping cloud with a green and delicate ray. Of this extraordinary

age of plants we have our cheerful remembrancers and witnesses in the

flames that roar in our chimneys when we pile up the winter fire,--in

the brilliant gas that now casts its light on this great assemblage, and

that lightens up the streets and lanes of this vast city,--in the

glowing furnaces that smelt our metals, and give moving power to our

ponderous engines,--in the long dusky trains that, with shriek and

snort, speed dart-like athwart our landscapes,--and in the great

cloud-enveloped vessels that darken the lower reaches of your noble

river, and rush in foam over ocean and sea. The geologic evidence is so

complete as to be patent to all, that the first great period of

organized being was, as described in the Mosaic record, peculiarly a

period of herbs and trees, "yielding seed after their kind."

The middle great period of the geologist--that of the Secondary

division--possessed, like the earlier one, its herbs and plants, but

they were of a greatly less luxuriant and conspicuous character than

their predecessors, and no longer formed the prominent trait or feature

of the creation to which they belonged. The period had also its corals,

its crustaceans, its molluscs, its fishes, and in some one or two

exceptional instances its dwarf mammals. But the grand existences of the

age,--the existences in which it excelled every other creation, earlier

or later, were its huge creeping things,--its enormous monsters of the

deep,--and, as shown by the impressions of their footprints stamped upon

the rocks, its gigantic birds. It was peculiarly the age of egg-bearing

animals, winged and wingless. Its wonderful _whales_, not, however, as

now, of the mammalian, but of the reptilian class,--ichthyosaurs,

plesiosaurs, and cetiosaurs,--must have tempested the deep; its creeping

lizards and crocodiles, such as the teliosaurus, megalosaurus, and

iguanodon,--creatures some of which more than rivalled the existing

elephant in height, and greatly more than rivalled him in bulk,--must

have crowded the plains or haunted by myriads the rivers of the period;

and we know that the footprints of at least one of its many birds are

fully twice the size of those made by the horse or camel. We are thus

prepared to demonstrate, that the second period of the geologist was

peculiarly and characteristically a period of whale-like reptiles of the

sea, of enormous creeping reptiles of the land, and of numerous birds,

some of them of gigantic size; and, in meet accordance with the fact, we

find that the second Mosaic period with which the geologist is called on

to deal was a period in which God created the fowl that flieth above the

earth, with moving [or creeping] creatures, both in the waters and on

the land, and what our translation renders great whales, but that I find

rendered, in the margin, great sea monsters.

The Tertiary period had also its prominent class of existences. Its

flora seems to have been no more conspicuous than that of the present

time; its reptiles occupy a very subordinate place; but its beasts of

the field were by far the most wonderfully developed, both in size and

numbers, that ever appeared upon earth. Its mammoths and its mastodons,

its rhinoceri and its hippopotami, its enormous dinotherium and colossal

megatherium, greatly more than equalled in bulk the largest mammals of

the present time, and vastly exceeded them in number. The remains of one

of its elephants (_Elephas primigenius_) are still so abundant amid the

frozen wastes of Siberia, that what have been not inappropriately termed

"ivory quarries" have been wrought among their bones for more than a

hundred years. Even in our own country, of which, as I have already

shown, this elephant was for long ages a native, so abundant are the

skeletons and tusks, that there is scarcely a local museum in the

kingdom that has not its specimens, dug out of the Pleistocene deposits

of the neighborhood. And with this ancient elephant there were meetly

associated in Britain, as on the northern continents generally all

around the globe, many other mammals of corresponding magnitude. "Grand

indeed," says an English naturalist, "was the fauna of the British

islands in those early days. Tigers as large again as the biggest

Asiatic species lurked in the ancient thickets; elephants of nearly

twice the bulk of the largest individuals that now exist in Africa or

Ceylon roamed in herds; at least two species of rhinoceros forced their

way through the primeval forest; and the lakes and rivers were tenanted

by hippopotami as bulky, and with as great tusks, as those of Africa."

The massive cave-bear and large cave-hyæna belonged to the same

formidable group, with at least two species of great oxen (_Bos

longifrons_ and _Bos primigenius_), with a horse of smaller size, and an

elk (_Megaceros Hibernicus_) that stood ten feet four inches in height.

Truly this Tertiary age--this third and last of the great geologic

periods--was peculiarly the age of great "beasts of the earth after

their kind, and of cattle after their kind."

Permit me at this stage, in addressing myself to a London audience, to

refer to what has been well termed one of the great _sights_ of London.

An illustration drawn from what must be familiar to you all may impart

to your conceptions, respecting the facts on which I build, a degree of

tangibility which otherwise they could not possess.

[Illustration: Fig. 90.

LEPIDODENDRON STERNBERGII.]

One of perhaps the most deeply interesting departments of your great

British Museum--the wonder of the world--is that noble gallery,

consisting of a suite of rooms, opening in line, the one beyond the

other, which forms its rich storehouse of organic remains. You must of

coarse remember the order in which the organisms of that gallery are

ranged. The visitor is first ushered into a spacious room devoted to

fossil plants, chiefly of the Coal Measures. And if these organisms are

in any degree less imposing in their aspect than those of the apartments

which follow in the series, it is only because that, from the exceeding

greatness of the Coal Measure plants, they can be exhibited in but bits

and fragments. Within less than an hour's walk of the Scottish capital

there are single trees of this ancient period deeply embedded in the

sandstone strata, which, though existing as mere mutilated portions of

their former selves, would yet fail to find accommodation in that great

apartment. One of those fossil trees,--a noble araucarian,--which occurs

in what is known as the Granton quarry, is a mere fragment, for it

wants both root and top, and yet what remains is sixty-one feet in

length by six feet in diameter; and beside it there lies a smaller

araucarian, also mutilated, for it wants top and branches, and _it_

measures seventy feet in length by four feet in diameter. I saw lately,

in a quarry of the Coal Measures about two miles from my dwelling-house,

near Edinburgh, the stem of a plant (_Lepidodendron Sternbergii_),

allied to the dwarfish club mosses of our moors, considerably thicker

than the body of a man, and which, reckoning on the ordinary proportions

of the plant, must have been at least seventy feet in height. And of a

kind of aquatic reed (calamites), that more resembles the diminutive

mare's tail of our marshes than aught else that now lives, remains have

been found in abundance in the same coal field, more than a foot in

diameter by thirty feet in length. Imposing, then, as are the vegetable

remains of this portion of the National Museum, they would be greatly

more imposing still did they more adequately represent the gigantic

flora of the remote age to which they belong.

[Illustration: Fig. 91.

CALAMITES CANNÆFORMIS.]

Passing onwards in the gallery from the great plants of the Palæozoic

division to the animals of the Secondary one, the attention is at once

arrested by the monstrous forms on the wall. Shapes that more than rival

in strangeness the great dragons, and griffins, and "laithly worms," of

mediæval legend, or, according to Milton, the "gorgons, hydras, and

chimeras dire," of classical fable, frown on the passing visitor; and,

though wrapped up in their dead and stony sleep of ages, seem not only

the most strange, but also the most terrible things on which his eye

ever rested. Enormous jaws, bristling with pointed teeth, gape horrid in

the stone, under staring eye-sockets a full foot in diameter. Necks that

half equal in length the entire body of the boa-constrictor stretch out

from bodies mounted on fins like those of a fish, and furnished with

tails somewhat resembling those of the mammals. Here we see a winged

dragon, that, armed with sharp teeth and strong claws, had careered

through the air on leathern wings like those of a bat; there an enormous

crocodilian whale, that, mounted on many-jointed paddles, had traversed,

in quest of prey, the green depths of the sea; yonder a herbivorous

lizard, with a horn like that of the rhinoceros projecting from its

snout, and that, when it browsed amid the dank meadows of the Wealden,

must have stood about twelve feet high. All is enormous, monstrous,

vast, amid the creeping and flying things and the great sea monsters of

this division of the gallery.

[Illustration: Fig. 92.

MEGATHERIUM CUVIERI.]

We pass on into the third and lower division, and an entirely different

class of existences now catch the eye. The huge mastodon, with his

enormous length of body, and his tusks projecting from both upper and

under jaw, stands erect in the middle of the floor,--a giant skeleton.

We see beside him the great bones of the megatherium,--thigh bones

eleven inches in diameter, and claw-armed toes more than two feet in

length. There, too, ranged species beyond species, are the extinct

elephants; and there the ponderous skull of the dinotherium, with the

bent tusks in its lower jaw, that give to it the appearance of a great

pickaxe, and that must have dug deeply of old amid the liliaceous roots

and bulbs of the Tertiary lakes and rivers. There also are the massive

heads and spreading horn-cores of the _Bos primigenius_, and the large

bones and broad plank-like horns of the great Irish elk. And there too,

in the same apartment, but leaning against its further wall,--last, as

most recent, of all the objects of wonder in that great gallery,--is the

famous human skeleton of Guadaloupe, standing out in bold relief from

its slab of gray limestone. It occurs in the series, just as the series

closes, a little beyond the mastodon and the mammoths; and, in its

strange character as a fossil man, attracts the attention scarce less

powerfully than the great Palæozoic plants, the great Secondary

reptiles, or the great Tertiary mammals.

[Illustration: Fig. 93.

SKULL OF DINOTHERIUM GIGANTEUM.

(_Miocene._)]

I last passed through this wondrous gallery at the time when the

attraction of the Great Exhibition had filled London with curious

visitors from all parts of the empire; and a group of intelligent

mechanics, fresh from some manufacturing town of the midland counties,

were sauntering on through its chambers immediately before me. They

stood amazed beneath the dragons of the Oolite and Lias; and, with more

than the admiration and wonder of the disciples of old when

contemplating the huge stones of the Temple, they turned to say, in

almost the old words, "Lo! master, what manner of great beasts are

these?" "These are," I replied, "the sea monsters and creeping things of

the second great period of organic existence." The reply seemed

satisfactory, and we passed on together to the terminal apartments of

the range appropriated to the Tertiary organisms. And there, before the

enormous mammals, the mechanics again stood in wonder, and turned to

inquire. Anticipating the query, I said, "And these are the huge beasts

of the earth, and the cattle of the third great period of organic

existence; and yonder, in the same apartment, you see, but at its

further end, is the famous fossil man of Guadaloupe, locked up by the

petrifactive agencies in a slab of limestone." The mechanics again

seemed satisfied. And, of course, had I encountered them in the first

chamber of the suite, and had they questioned me respecting the

organisms with which _it_ is occupied, I would have told them that they

were the remains of the herbs and trees of the _first_ great period of

organic existence. But in the chamber of the mammals we parted, and I

saw them no more.

There could not be a simpler incident. And yet, rightly apprehended, it

reads its lesson. You have all visited the scene of it, and must all

have been struck by the three salient points, if I may so speak, by

which that noble gallery lays strongest hold of the memory, and most

powerfully impresses the imagination,--by its gigantic plants of the

first period (imperfectly as these are represented in the collection),

by its strange misproportioned sea monsters and creeping things of the

second, and by its huge mammals of the third. Amid many thousand various

objects, and a perplexing multiplicity of detail, which it would

require the patient study of years even partially to classify and know,

these are the great prominent features of the gallery, that

involuntarily, on the part of the visitor, force themselves on his

attention. They at once pressed themselves on the attention of the

intelligent though unscientific mechanics, and, I doubt not, still dwell

vividly in their recollections; and I now ask you, when you again visit

the national museum, and verify the fact of the great prominence of

these classes of objects, to bear in mind, that the gallery in which

they occur represents, both in the order and character of its contents,

the course of creation. I ask you to remember that, had there been human

eyes on earth during the Palæozoic, Secondary, and Tertiary periods,

they would have been filled in succession by the great plants, the great

reptiles, and the great mammals, just as those of the mechanics were

filled by them in the museum. As the sun and moon, when they first

became visible in the heavens, would have seemed to human eyes--had

there been human eyes to see--not only the greatest of the celestial

lights, but peculiarly the prominent objects of the epoch in which they

appeared, so would these plants, reptiles, and mammals, have seemed in

succession the prominent objects of the several epochs in which _they_

appeared. And, asking the geologist to say whether my replies to the

mechanics were not, with all their simplicity, true to geological fact,

and the theologian to say whether the statements which they embodied

were not, with all their geology, true to the scriptural narrative, I

ask further, whether (of course, making due allowance for the laxity of

the terms botanic and zoological of a primitive language unadapted to

the niceties of botanic or zoologic science) the Mosaic account of

creation could be rendered more essentially true, than we actually find

it, to the history of creation geologically ascertained. If, taking the

Mosaic days as equivalent to lengthened periods, we hold that, in giving

their brief history, the inspired writer seized on but those salient

points that, like the two great lights of the day and night, would have

arrested most powerfully, during these periods, a human eye, we shall

find the harmony of the two records complete. In your visit to the

museum, I would yet further ask you to mark the place of the human

skeleton in the great gallery. It stands--at least it stood only a few

years ago--in the same apartment with the huge mammifers. And it is

surely worthy of remark, that while in both the sacred and geologic

records a strongly defined line separates between the period of plants

and the succeeding periods of reptiles, and again between the period of

reptiles and the succeeding period of mammals, no line in either record

separates between this period of mammals and the human period. Man came

into being as the lastborn of creation, just ere the close of that sixth

day--the third and terminal period of organic creation--to which the

great mammals belong. Let me yet further remark, that in each of these

three great periods we find, with respect to the classes of existences,

vegetable or animal, by which they were most prominently characterized,

certain well marked culminating points together, if I may so express

myself,--twilight periods of morning dawn and evening decline. The

plants of the earlier and terminal systems of the Palæozoic division are

few and small: it was only during the protracted _eons_ of the

Carboniferous period that they received their amazing development,

unequalled in any previous or succeeding time.[16] In like manner, in

the earlier or Triassic deposits of the Secondary division, the

reptilian remains are comparatively inconsiderable; and they are almost

equally so in its Cretaceous or later deposits. It was during those

middle ages of the division, represented by its Liassic, Oolitic, and

Wealden formations, that the class existed in that abundance which

rendered it so peculiarly, above every other age, an age of creeping

things and great sea monsters. And so also, in the Tertiary, regarded

as but an early portion of the human division, there was a period of

increase and diminution,--a morning and evening of mammalian life. The

mammals of its early Eocene ages were comparatively small in bulk and

low in standing; in its concluding ages, too, immediately ere the

appearance of man, or just as he had appeared, they exhibited, both in

size and number, a reduced and less imposing aspect. It was chiefly in

its middle and latter, or Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene ages, that

the myriads of its huger giants,--its dinotheria, mastodons, and

mammoths,--cumbered the soil. I, of course, restrict my remarks to the

three periods of organic life, and have not inquired whether aught

analogous to these mornings and evenings of increase and diminution need

be sought after in any of the others.

Such are a few of the geological facts which lead me to believe that the

_days_ of the Mosaic account were great periods, not natural days; and

be it remembered, that between the scheme of lengthened periods and the

scheme of a merely local chaos, which existed no one knows how, and of a

merely local creation, which had its scene no one knows where,

geological science leaves us now no choice whatever. It has been urged,

however, that this scheme of periods is irreconcileable with that Divine

"reason" for the institution of the Sabbath which he who appointed the

day of old has, in his goodness, vouchsafed to man. I have failed to see

any force in the objection. God the Creator, who wrought during six

periods, rested during the seventh period; and as we have no evidence

whatever that he recommenced his work of creation,--as, on the contrary,

man seems to be the last formed of creatures,--God may be resting still.

The presumption is strong that his Sabbath is an extended period, not a

natural day, and that the work of Redemption is his Sabbath day's work.

And so I cannot see that it in the least interferes with the integrity

of the reason rendered to read it as follows:--Work during six periods,

and rest on the seventh; for in six periods the Lord created the heavens

and the earth, and on the seventh period _He_ rested. The Divine periods

may have been very great,--the human periods very small; just as a vast

continent or the huge earth itself is very great, and a map or

geographical globe very small. But if in the map or globe the

proportions be faithfully maintained, and the scale, though a minute

one, be true in all its parts and applications, we pronounce the map or

globe, notwithstanding the smallness of its size, a faithful copy. Were

man's Sabbaths to be kept as enjoined, and in the Divine proportions, it

would scarcely interfere with the logic of the "reason annexed to the

fourth commandment," though in this matter, as in all others in which

man can be an imitator of God, the imitation should be a miniature one.

The work of Redemption may, I repeat, be the work of God's Sabbath day.

What, I ask, viewed as a whole, is the prominent characteristic of

geologic history, or of that corresponding history of creation which

forms the grandly fashioned vestibule of the sacred volume? Of both

alike the leading characteristic is progress. In both alike do we find

an upward progress from dead matter to the humbler forms of vitality,

and from thence to the higher. And after great cattle and beasts of the

earth had, in due order, succeeded inanimate plants, sea monsters, and

moving creatures that had life, the moral agent, man, enters upon the

scene. Previous to his appearance on earth, each succeeding elevation in

the long upward march had been a result of creation. The creative fiat

went forth, and dead matter came into existence. The creative fiat went

forth, and plants, with the lower animal forms, came into existence. The

creative fiat went forth, and the oviparous animals,--birds and

reptiles,--came into existence. The creative fiat went forth, and the

mammiferous animals,--cattle and beasts of the earth,--came into

existence. And, finally, last in the series, the creative fiat went

forth, and responsible, immortal man, came into existence. But has the

course of progress come, in consequence, to a close? No. God's work of

elevating, raising, heightening,--of making the high in due progression

succeed the low,--still goes on. But man's responsibility, his

immortality, his God-implanted instincts respecting an eternal future,

forbid that that work of elevation and progress should be, as in all the

other instances, a work of creation. To create would be to supersede.

God's work of elevation _now_ is the work of fitting and preparing

peccable, imperfect man for a perfect, impeccable, future state. God's

seventh day's work is the work of Redemption. And, read in this light,

his reason vouchsafed to man for the institution of the Sabbath is found

to yield a meaning of peculiar breadth and emphasis. God, it seems to

say, rests on _his_ Sabbath from his creative labors, in order that by

his Sabbath day's work he may save and elevate you. Rest ye also on your

Sabbaths, that through your co-operation with him in this great work ye

may be elevated and saved. Made originally in the image of God, let God

be your pattern and example. Engaged in your material and temporal

employments, labor in the proportions in which he labored; but, in order

that you may enjoy an eternal future with him, rest also in the

proportions in which he rests.

One other remark ere I conclude. In the history of the earth which we

inhabit, molluscs, fishes, reptiles, mammals, had each in succession

their periods of vast duration; and then the human period began,--the

period of a fellow worker with God, created in God's own image. What is

to be the next advance? Is there to be merely a repetition of the

past?--an introduction a second time of man made in the image of God?

No. The geologist, in those tables of stone which form his records,

finds no example of dynasties once passed away again returning. There

has been no repetition of the dynasty of the fish, of the reptile, of

the mammal. The dynasty of the future is to have glorified man for its

inhabitant; but it is to be the dynasty--"the _kingdom_"--not of

glorified man made in the image of God, but of God himself in the form

of man. In the doctrine of the two conjoined natures, human and Divine,

and in the further doctrine that the terminal dynasty is to be

peculiarly the dynasty of HIM in whom the natures are united, we find

that required progression beyond which progress cannot go. We find the

point of elevation never to be exceeded meetly coincident with the final

period never to be terminated,--the infinite in height harmoniously

associated with the eternal in duration. Creation and the Creator meet

at one point, and in one person. The long ascending line from dead

matter to man has been a progress Godwards,--not an asymptotical

progress, but destined from the beginning to furnish a point of union;

and occupying that point as true God and true man,--as Creator and

created,--we recognize the adorable Monarch of all the future!

LECTURE FOURTH.

THE MOSAIC VISION OF CREATION.

The history of creation is introduced into the "Paradise Lost" as a

piece of narrative, and forms one of the two great episodes of the poem.

Milton represents the common father of the race as "led on" by a desire

to know

"What within Eden or without was done

Before his memory;"

and straightway Raphael, "the affable archangel," in compliance with the

wish, enters into a description of the six days' work of the Divine

Creator,--a description in which, as Addison well remarks, "the whole

energy of our tongue is employed, and the several great scenes of

creation rise up to view, one after another, in such a manner, that the

reader seems present at this wonderful work, and to assist among the

choirs of angels who are spectators of it." In the other great episode

of the poem,--that in which the more prominent changes which were to

happen in after time upon the earth are made to pass before Adam, he is

represented as carried by Michael to the top of a great mountain, lofty

as that on which in a long posterior age the Tempter placed our Saviour,

and where the coming events are described as rising up in vision before

him. In the earlier episode, as in those of the Odyssey and Æneid, in

which heroes relate in the courts of princes the story of their

adventures, there is but narrative and description; in the later, a

series of magnificent pictures, that form and then dissolve before the

spectator, and comprise, in their vivid tints and pregnant outlines, the

future history of a world. And one of these two episodes,--that which

relates to the creation of all things,--must have as certainly had a

place in human history as in the master epic of England. Man would have

forever remained ignorant of many of those events related in the opening

chapters of Scripture, which took place ere there was a human eye to

witness, or a human memory to record, had he not been permitted, like

Adam of old, to hold intercourse with the intelligences that had

preceded him in creation, or with the great Creator himself, the Author

of them all; and the question has been asked of late, both in our own

country and on the Continent, What was the form and nature of the

revelation by which the pre-Adamic history of the earth and heavens was

originally conveyed to man? Was it conveyed, like the sublime story of

Raphael, as a piece of narrative, dictated, mayhap, to the inspired

penman, or miraculously borne in upon his mind? Or was it conveyed by a

succession of sublime visions like that which Michael is represented as

calling up before Adam, when, purging his "visual nerves with euphrasy

and rue," he enabled him to see, in a series of scenes, the history of

his offspring from the crime of Cain down to the destruction of the Old

World by a flood? The passages in which the history of creation is

recorded give no intimation whatever of their own history; and so we are

left to balance the probabilities regarding the mode and form in which

they were originally revealed, and to found our ultimate conclusions

respecting them on evidence, not direct, but circumstantial.

The Continental writers on this curious subject may be regarded as not

inadequately represented by Dr. J.H. Kurtz, Professor of Theology at

Dorpat,--one of the many ingenious biblical scholars of modern Germany.

We find him stating the question, in his _Bibel und Astronomie_ (second

edition, 1849), with great precision and clearness, but in a manner, so

far at least as the form of his thinking is concerned, strikingly

characteristic of what may be termed the theological fashion of his

country in the present day. "The source of all human history," he says,

"is _eye-witness_, be it that of the reporter, or of another whose

account has been handed down. Only what man has himself seen or

experienced can be the subject of man's historical compositions. So that

history, so far as man can write it, can begin with but the point at

which he has entered into conscious existence, and end with the moment

that constitutes the present time. Beyond these points, however, lies a

great province of historic development, existing on the one side as the

_Past_, on the other side as the _Future_. For when man begins to be an

observer or actor of history, he himself, and the whole circumstantials

of his condition, have already come historically into being. Nor does

the flow of development stop with what is his present. Millions of

influences are spinning the thread still on; but no one can tell what

the compound result of all their energies is to be. Both these sorts of

history, then, lie beyond the region of man's knowledge, which is shut

up in space and time, and can only call the present its own. It is God

alone who, standing beyond and above space and time, sees backwards and

forwards both the development which preceded the first _present_ of men,

and that which will succeed this our latest _present_. Whatever the

difference of the two kinds of history may be, they hold the same

position in relation both to the principle of the human ignorance and

the principle of the human knowledge. The principle of the ignorance is

man's condition as a creature; the principle of the knowledge is the

Divine knowledge; and the medium between ignorance and knowledge is

objectively Divine revelation, and subjectively prophetic vision by man,

in which he beholds with the eye of the mind what is shut and hid from

the eye of his body." From these premises Dr. Kurtz goes on to argue

that the pre-Adamic history of the past being _theologically_ in the

same category as the yet undeveloped history of the future, that record

of its leading events which occurs in the Mosaic narrative is simply

_prophecy_ described backwards; and that, coming under the prophetic

law, it ought of consequence to be subjected to the prophetic rule of

exposition. There are some very ingenious reasonings employed in

fortifying this point; and, after quoting from Eichhorn a passage to the

effect that the opening chapter in Genesis is much rather a creative

picture than a creative history, and from Ammon to the effect that the

author of it evidently takes the position of a beholder of creation, the

learned German concludes his general statement by remarking, that the

scenes of the chapter are prophetic tableaux, each containing a leading

phase of the drama of creation. "Before the eye of the seer," he says,

"scene after scene is unfolded, until at length, in the seven of them,

the course of creation, in its main _momenta_, has been fully

represented." The revelation has every characteristic of prophecy by

vision,--prophecy by eye-witnessing; and may be perhaps best understood

by regarding it simply as an exhibition of the actual phenomena of

creation presented to the mental eye of the prophet under the ordinary

laws of perspective, and truthfully described by him in the simple

language of his time.

In our own country a similar view has been taken by the author of a

singularly ingenious little work which issued about two years ago from

the press of Mr. Constable of Edinburgh, "The Mosaic Record in Harmony

with Geology."[17] The writer, however, exhibits, in dealing with his

subject, the characteristic sobriety of the Anglo-Saxon mind; and while

the leading features of his theory agree essentially with those of the

Continental one, he does not press it so far. In canvassing the _form_

of the revelation made to Moses in the opening of Genesis, he discusses

the nature of the inspiration enjoyed by that great prophet; and thus

retranslates literally from the Hebrew the passage in which the Divine

Being is himself introduced as speaking direct on the point in the

controversy raised by Aaron and Miriam. "And He [the Lord] said, hear

now my words: If he [Moses] were _your_ prophet [subordinate, or at

least not superior, to the prophetess and the high priest], I, Jehovah,

in the vision to him would make myself known: in the dream would I speak

to him. Not so _my_ servant Moses [God's prophet, not theirs]; in all my

house faithful is he. Mouth to mouth do I speak to him, and vision, but

not in dark speeches; and likeness of Jehovah he beholds." Moses, then,

was favored with "visions without dark speeches."

Now, as implied in the passage thus retranslated, there is a grand

distinction between symbolic and therefore _dark_ visions, and visions

not symbolic nor dark. Visions addressed, as the word indicates, to the

eye, may be obviously of a twofold character,--they may be either darker

than words, or a great deal clearer than words. The vision, for

instance, of future monarchies which Daniel saw symbolized under the

form of monstrous animals had to be explained in words; the vision of

Peter, which led to the general admission of the Gentiles into the

Christian Church, had also virtually to be explained in words; they were

both visions of the dark class; and revelation abounds in such. But

there were also visions greatly clearer than words. Such, for instance,

was the vision of the secret chamber of imagery, with its seventy men of

the ancients of Israel given over to idolatry, which was seen by the

prophet as he sat in his own house; and the vision of the worshippers of

the sun in the inner court of the temple, witnessed from what was

_naturally_ the same impossible point of view; with the vision of the

Jewish women in the western gate "weeping for Thammuz," when, according

to Milton's noble version,

"The love tale

Infected Sion's daughters with like heat,

Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch

Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,

His eye surveyed the dark idolatries

Of alienated Judah."

Here, then, were there visions of scenes actually taking place at the

time, which, greatly clearer than any merely verbal description,

substituted the seeing of the eye for the hearing of the ear. And

visions of this latter kind were enjoyed, argues the writer of this

ingenious treatise, by the prophet Moses.

One of the cases adduced may be best given in the author's own words.

"Moses," he says, "received directions from God how to proceed in

constructing the Tabernacle and its sacred furniture; and David also was

instructed how the Temple of Solomon should be built. Let us hear

Scripture regarding the nature of the directions given to these men:--

'According unto the _appearance_ [literally sight, vision] which the

Lord had showed unto Moses, so he made the _candlestick_.'--(Num. 5:4.)

'The whole in _writing_, by the hand of Jehovah upon me, he taught; the

whole works of the pattern.'--(1 Chron. 28:19.)

"There was thus a writing in the case of David; a sight or vision of the

thing to be made in that of Moses."

So far the author of the Treatise. He might have added further, that

from the nature of things, the revelation to Moses in this instance

_must_ have been "sight or vision," if, indeed, what is not in the least

likely, the peculiar architecture and style of ornament used in the

Tabernacle was not a borrowed style, already employed in the service of

idolatry. An old, long established architecture can be adequately

described by speech or writing; a new, original architecture can be

adequately described only by pattern or model, that is, by sight or

vision. Any intelligent cutter in stone or carver in wood could furnish

to order, though the order were merely a verbal one, a Corinthian or

Ionic capital; but no such mechanic, however skilful or ingenious, could

furnish to order, if unprovided with a pattern or drawing, a _facsimile_

of one of the ornately sculptured capitals of Gloucester Cathedral or

York Minster. To ensure a _facsimile_ in any such case, the originals,

or representations of them, would require to be submitted to the

eye,--not merely described to the ear. Nay, from the example given in

the text,--that of the golden candlestick,--we have an instance

furnished in recent times of the utter inadequacy of mere description

for the purposes of the sculptor or artist. Ever since copperplate

engravings and illustrated Bibles became comparatively common,

representations of the branched candlestick taken from the written

description have been common also. The candlestick on the arch of Titus,

though not deemed an exact representation of the original one described

in the Pentateuch, is now regarded,--correctly, it cannot be

doubted,--as at least the nearest approximation to it extant. Public

attention was first drawn to this interesting piece of sculpture in

comparatively modern times; and it was then found that all the previous

representations taken from the written description were widely

erroneous. They only served to show, not the true outlines of the golden

candlestick, but merely that inadequacy of verbal description for

artistic purposes which must have rendered _vision_, or, in other words,

optical representation, imperative in the case of Moses. Some of our

most sober minded commentators take virtually the same view of this

necessity of vision for ensuring the production of the true pattern of

the Tabernacle. "The Lord," says Thomas Scott, "not only directed Moses

by words how to build the Tabernacle and form its sacred furniture, but

showed him a model exactly representing the form of every part, and the

proportion of each to all the rest." There must have been clear optical

vision in the case,--"vision without dark speeches." Such, too, was the

character of other of the Mosaic visions, besides that of the "pattern"

seen in the Mount. The burning bush, for instance, was a vision

addressed to the eye; and seemed to come so palpably under the ordinary

optical laws, that the prophet _drew near_ to examine the extraordinary

phenomena which it exhibited.

The visual or optical character of _some_ of the revelations made to

Moses thus established, the writer goes on to inquire whether that

special revelation which exhibits the generations of the heavens and

earth in their order was not a visual revelation also. "Were the words

that Moses wrote," he asks, "merely impressed upon his mind? Did he hold

the pen, and another dictate? Or did he see in vision the scenes that he

describes? The freshness and point of the narrative," he continues, "the

freedom of the description, and the unlikelihood that Moses was an

unthinking machine in the composition, all indicate that he saw in

vision what he has here given us in writing. _He is describing from

actual observation._" The writer remarks in an earlier portion of his

treatise, that all who have adopted the theory advocated in the previous

lecture,--the "Two Records," which was, I may state, published in a

separate form, ere the appearance of his work, and which he does me the

honor of largely quoting,--go upon the supposition that things during

the Mosaic days are described as they would appear to the eye of one

placed upon earth; and he argues that, as no man existed in those

distant ages, a reason must be assigned for this _popular_ view of

creation which the record is rightly assumed to take. And certainly, if

it was in reality a view described from actual vision, the fact would

form of itself an adequate reason. What man had actually seen, though

but in dream or picture, would of course be described _as seen by man_:

like all human history, it would, to borrow from Kurtz, be founded on

eye-witnessing; and the fact that the Mosaic record of creation is

_apparently_ thus founded, affords a strong presumption that it was in

reality revealed, not by dictation, but by vision.

Nor, be it remembered, has the recognition of a purely _optical_

character in the revelation been restricted to the assertion of any one

theory of reconciliation. It was as certainly held by Chalmers and Dr.

Pye Smith, as by Dr. Kurtz and the author of this treatise; nay, it has

been recognized by not a few of their opponents also. Granville Penn,

for instance, does not scruple to avow his belief, in his elaborate

"Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaic Geologies," that both sun and moon

were created on the first day of creation, though they did not become

"_optically_ visible" until the fourth. "In truth, that the fourth day

only rendered visible the sidereal creation of the first day, is

manifested," he says, "by collating the transactions of the two days. On

the first day, we are told generally, 'God divided the light, or day,

and the darkness, or night;' but the physical agents which he employed

for that division are not there declared. On the fourth day, we are told

referentially, 'God commanded the lights [or luminaries] for dividing

day and night, to give their light upon earth.' Here, then, it is

evident from the retrospective implication of the latter description,

that the lights or luminaries for dividing day and night, which were to

give their light upon the earth for the first time on the fourth day,

were the unexpressed physical agents by which God divided the day and

night on the first day." Now, whatever may be thought of Mr. Penn's

argument here, there can be no doubt that it demonstrates at least his

own belief in the purely optical character of the Mosaic account of the

sidereal creation. It is an account, he held, not of what God wrought on

the first day in the heavens, but of what a human eye would have seen on

the fourth day from the earth. And Moses Stuart, in his philological

assault on the geologists, is scarce less explicit in his avowal of a

similar belief. "Every one sees," he says, "that to speak of the sun as

rising and setting, is to describe, in common parlance, what appears

_optically_, that is, to our sensible view, as reality. But the history

of creation is a different affair. In ONE RESPECT, indeed, there is a

resemblance. _The historian everywhere speaks as an optical observer

stationed on a point of our world, and surveying from this the heavens

and the earth, and speaking of them as seen in this manner by his bodily

eye._ The sun, and moon, and stars, are servants of the earth, lighted

up to garnish and to cheer it, and to be the guardians of its times and

seasons. Other uses he knows not for them: certainly of other uses he

does not speak. The distances, magnitudes, orbicular motions,

gravitating powers, and projectile forces of the planets and of the

stars, are all out of the circle of his history, and probably beyond his

knowledge. Inspiration does not make men _omniscient_. It does not teach

them the scientific truths of astronomy, or chemistry, or botany, nor

any science as such. Inspiration is concerned with teaching _religious_

truths, and such facts or occurrences as are connected immediately with

illustrating, or with impressing them on the mind." Thus far Dr. Stuart

and Mr. Penn,--men whose evidence on this special head must be

sufficient to show that it is not merely geologists who have recognized

an _optical_ or _visual_ character in the Mosaic history of creation.

And certainly the inference deduced from the admitted _fact_, that is,

the inference that the optical description must have been founded on a

revelation addressed to the eye,--a revelation by vision,--does seem a

fair and legitimate one. The revelation must have been either a

revelation in words or ideas, or a revelation of scenes and events

pictorially exhibited. Failing, however, to record its own history, it

leaves the student equally at liberty, so far as _external_ evidence is

concerned, to take up either view; while, so far as _internal_ evidence

goes, the presumption seems all in favor of revelation by vision; for,

while no reason can be assigned why, in a revelation by word or idea,

appearances which took place ere there existed a human eye should be

_optically_ described, nothing can be more natural or obvious than that

they should be so described, had they been revealed by vision as a piece

of _eye-witnessing_. It seems, then, at least eminently probable that

such was the mode or form of the revelation in this case, and that he

who saw by vision on the Mount the pattern of the Tabernacle and its

sacred furniture, and in the Wilderness of Horeb the bush burning but

not consumed,--types and symbols of the coming dispensation and of its

Divine Author,--saw also by vision the _pattern_ of those successive

pre-Adamic creations, animal and vegetable, through which our world was

fitted up as a place of human habitation. The _reason_ why the drama of

creation has been _optically_ described seems to be, that it was in

reality _visionally_ revealed.

A further question still remains: _If_ the revelation was by vision,

that circumstance affords of itself a satisfactory reason why the

description should be _optical_; and, on the other hand, since the

description is decidedly _optical_, the presumption is of course strong

that the revelation was by vision. But why, it may be asked, by vision?

Can the presumption be yet further strengthened by showing that this

visual mode or form was preferable to any other? Can there be a reason,

in fine, assigned _for_ the _reason_,--for that revelation by vision

which accounts for the optical character of the description? The

question is a difficult one; but I think there can. There seems to be a

peculiar fitness in a revelation made by vision, for conveying an

account of creation to various tribes and peoples of various degrees of

acquirement, and throughout a long course of ages in which the knowledge

of the heavenly bodies or of the earth's history, that is, the sciences

of astronomy and geology, did not at first exist, but in which

ultimately they came to be studied and known. We must recognize such a

mode as equally fitted for the earlier and the more modern times,--for

the ages anterior to the rise of science, and the ages posterior to its

rise. The prophet, by describing what he had actually seen in language

fitted to the ideas of his time, would shock no previously existing

prejudice that had been founded on the apparent evidence of the senses;

he could as safely describe the moon as the second great light of

creation, as he could the sun as its first great light, and both, too,

as equally subordinate to the planet which we inhabit. On the other

hand, an enlightened age, when it had come to discover this key to the

description, would find it _optically_ true in all its details. But how

differently would not a revelation have fared, in at least the earlier

time, that was strictly scientific in its details,--a revelation, for

instance, of the great truth demonstrated by Galileo, that the sun rests

in the centre of the heavens, while the apparently immoveable earth

sweeps with giddy velocity around it; or of the great truth demonstrated

by Newton, that our ponderous planet is kept from falling off into empty

space by the operation of the same law that impels a descending pebble

towards the ground! A great miracle wrought in proof of the truth of the

revelation might serve to enforce the belief of it on the generation to

whom it had been given; but the generations that followed, to whom the

miracle would exist as a piece of mere testimony, would credit, in

preference, the apparently surer evidence of their senses, and become

unbelievers. They would act, all unwittingly, on the principle of Hume's

famous argument, and prefer to rest rather on their own _experience_ of

the great phenomena of nature, than on the doubtful testimony of their

ancestors, reduced in the lapse of ages to a dim, attenuated tradition.

Nor would a geological revelation have fared better, in at least those

periods intermediate between the darker and more scientific ages, in

which ingenious men, somewhat skeptical in their leanings, cultivate

literature, and look down rather superciliously on the ignorance and

barbarism of the past. What would skeptics such as Hobbes and Hume have

said of an opening chapter in Genesis that would describe successive

periods,--first of molluscs, star-lilies, and crustaceans, next of

fishes, next of reptiles and birds, then of mammals, and finally of man;

and that would minutely portray a period in which there were lizards

bulkier than elephants, reptilian whales furnished with necks slim and

long as the bodies of great snakes, and flying dragons, whose spread of

wing greatly more than doubled that of the largest bird? The world would

assuredly not receive such a revelation. Nor, further, have scientific

facts or principles been revealed to man which he has been furnished

with the ability of observing or discovering for himself. It is

according to the economy of revelation, that the truths which it

exhibits should be of a kind which, lying beyond the reach of his ken,

he himself could never have elicited. From every view of the case, then,

a prophetic exhibition of the pre-Adamic scenes and events by vision

seems to be the one best suited for the opening chapters of a revelation

vouchsafed for the accomplishment of moral, not scientific purposes, and

at once destined to be contemporary with every stage of civilization,

and to address itself to minds of every various calibre, and every

different degree of enlightenment.

The statement of Dr. Kurtz, that as vision of pre-Adamic history comes

under the same laws as vision of history still future, it ought

therefore to be read by the same rules, craves reflection. "Since the

source of knowledge for both kinds of history," we find him saying, "and

not only the source, but the means, and manner, and way of coming to

know, is the same, viz., the _eye-witness_ of the prophet's mental eye,

it follows that the historical representation which he who thus comes to

know, _projects_ [or portrays], in virtue of this eye-witnessing of his,

holds the same relation to the reality in both the cases we speak of,

and must be subjected to the same laws of exposition. We thus get this

very important rule of interpretation, viz., that the representations of

pre-human events, which rest upon revelation, are to be handled from the

same point of view, and expounded by the same laws, as the prophecies

and representations of future times and events, which also rest upon

revelation. This, then, is the only proper point of view for scientific

exposition of the Mosaic history of creation; that is to say, if we

acknowledge that it proceeded from Divine revelation, not from

philosophic speculation or experimental investigation, or from the ideas

of reflecting men." There is certainly food for thought in this striking

and original view; and there is at least one simple rule of prophetic

exposition which may be applied to the pre-Adamic history, in accordance

with the principle which it suggests. After all that a scientific

theology has done for the right interpretation of prophecy, we find the

prediction always best read by the light of its accomplishment. The

event which it foretold forms its true key; and when this key is

wanting, all is uncertainty. The past is comparatively clear. The

hieroglyphic forms which crowd the anterior portions of the prophetic

tablet are found wonderfully to harmonize (men such as the profound

Newton being the judges) with those great historic events, already

become matter of history, which they foreshadowed and symbolized; but,

on the other hand, the hieroglyphics which occupy the tablet's

posterior portion,--the hieroglyphics that symbolize events still

future,--are invincibly difficult and inexplicable. I have read several

works on prophecy produced in the last age, in which the writers were

bold enough to quit the clue with which history furnishes the student of

fulfilled prophecy, and, with the prophecies yet unfulfilled as their

guide, to plunge into a troubled sea of speculation regarding the

history of the future. And I have found that in every instance they were

deplorably at fault regarding even the events that were nearest at hand

at the time. History is thus the surest interpreter of the revealed

prophecies which referred to events _posterior_ to the times of the

prophet. In what shall we find the surest interpretation of the revealed

_prophecies_ that referred to events _anterior_ to his time? In what

light, or on what principle, shall we most correctly read the prophetic

drama of creation? In the light, I reply, of scientific discovery,--on

the principle that the clear and certain must be accepted, when

attainable, as the proper exponents of the doubtful and obscure. What

fully developed history is to the prophecy which of old looked forwards,

fully developed science is to the prophecy which of old looked

backwards. Scarce any one will question whether that portion of the

creation drama which deals with the heavenly bodies ought to be read in

the light of established astronomic discovery or no; for, save by

perhaps a few of Father Cullen's monks, who can still hold that the sun

moves round the earth, and is only six feet in diameter, all theologians

have now received the astronomic doctrines, and know that they rest upon

a basis at least as certain as any of the historic events symbolized in

fulfilled prophecy. And were we to challenge for the established

geologic doctrines a similar place and position with respect to those

portions of the drama which deal with the two great kingdoms of nature,

plant and animal, we might safely do so in the belief that the claim

will be one day as universally recognized as the astronomic one is now.

On this principle there may, of course, be portions of the _prophetic_

pre-Adamic past of as doubtful interpretation at the present time, from

the imperfect development of physical science, as is any portion of the

prophetic future from the imperfect development of historic events. The

science necessary to the interpretation of the one may be as certainly

still to discover as the events necessary to the interpretation of the

other may be still to take place. Three centuries have not yet passed

since astronomic science was sufficiently developed to form a true key

to the various notices of the heavenly bodies which occur in Scripture;

among the others, to the notice of their final appearance on the

_fourth_ day of creation. Little more than half a century has yet passed

since geologic science was sufficiently developed to influence the

interpretation given of the three _other_ days' work. And respecting the

work of at least the first and second days, more especially that of the

second, we can still but vaguely guess. The science necessary to the

right understanding of these portions of the prophetic record has still,

it would seem, to be developed, if, indeed, it be destined at all to

exist; and at present we can indulge in but doubtful surmises regarding

them. What may be termed the three _geologic_ days,--the third, fifth,

and sixth,--may be held to have extended over those Carboniferous

periods during which the great plants were created,--over those Oolitic

and Cretacious periods during which the great sea monsters and birds

were created,--and over those Tertiary periods during which the great

terrestrial mammals were created. For the intervening or fourth day we

have that wide space represented by the Permian and Triassic periods,

which, less conspicuous in their floras than the period that went

immediately before, and less conspicuous in their faunas than the

periods that came immediately after, were marked by the decline, and

ultimate extinction, of the Palæozoic forms, and the first partially

developed beginnings of the Secondary ones. And for the first and second

days there remain the great Azoic period, during which the immensely

developed gneisses, mica schists, and primary clay slates, were

deposited, and the two extended periods represented by the Silurian and

Old Red Sandstone systems. These, taken together, exhaust the geologic

scale, and may be named in their order as, _first_, the Azoic day or

period; _second_, the Silurian and Old Red Sandstone day or period;

_third_, the Carboniferous day or period; _fourth_, the Permian and

Triassic day or period; _fifth_, the Oolitic and Cretaceous day or

period; and _sixth_, the Tertiary day or period. Let us attempt

conceiving how they might have appeared pictorially, if revealed in a

series of visions to Moses, as the successive scenes of a great

air-drawn panorama.

During the Azoic period, ere life appears to have begun on our planet,

the temperature of the earth's crust seems to have been so high, that

the strata, at first deposited apparently in water, passed into a

semi-fluid state, became strangely waved and contorted, and assumed in

its composition a highly crystalline character. Such is peculiarly the

case with the fundamental or gneiss deposits of the period. In the

overlying mica schist there is still much of contortion and disturbance;

whereas the clay slate, which lies over all, gives evidence, in its more

mechanical texture, and the regularity of its strata, that a gradual

refrigeration of the general mass had been taking place, and that the

close of the Azoic period was comparatively quiet and cool. Let us

suppose that during the earlier part of this period of excessive heat

the waters of the ocean had stood at the boiling point even at the

surface, and much higher in the profounder depths, and further, that

the half-molten crust of the earth, stretched out over a molten abyss,

was so thin that it could not support, save for a short time, after some

convulsion, even a small island above the sea level. What, in such

circumstances, would be the aspect of the scene, optically exhibited

from some point in space elevated a few hundred yards over the sea? It

would be simply a blank, in which the intensest glow of fire would fail

to be seen at a few yards' distance. An inconsiderable escape of steam

from the safety-valve of a railway engine forms so thick a screen, that,

as it lingers for a moment, in the passing, opposite the carriage

windows, the passengers fail to discern through it the landscape beyond.

A continuous stratum of steam, then, that attained to the height of even

our present atmosphere, would wrap up the earth in a darkness gross and

palpable as that of Egypt of old,--a darkness through which even a

single ray of light would fail to penetrate. And beneath this thick

canopy the unseen deep would literally "boil as a pot," wildly tempested

from below; while from time to time more deeply seated convulsion would

upheave sudden to the surface vast tracts of semi-molten rock, soon

again to disappear, and from which waves of bulk enormous would roll

outwards, to meet in wild conflict with the giant waves of other

convulsions, or return to hiss and sputter against the intensely heated

and fast foundering mass, whose violent upheaval had first elevated and

sent them abroad. Such would be the probable state of things during the

times of the earlier gneiss and mica schist deposits,--times buried deep

in that chaotic night or "evening" which must have continued to exist

for mayhap many ages after that beginning of things in which God created

the heavens and the earth, and which preceded the first day. To a human

eye stationed within the cloud, all, as I have said, must have been

thick darkness: to eyes Divine, that could have looked through the

enveloping haze, the appearance would have been that described by

Milton, as seen by angel and archangel at the beginning of creation,

when from the gates of heaven they looked down upon chaos:--

"On heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore

They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss,

Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,

Up from the bottom turned by furious _heat_

And surging waves, as mountains to assault

Heaven's height, and with the centre mix the pole."

At length, however, as the earth's surface gradually cooled down, and

the enveloping waters sunk to a lower temperature,--let us suppose,

during the latter times of the mica schist, and the earlier times of the

clay slate,--the steam atmosphere would become less dense and thick, and

at length the rays of the sun would struggle through, at first

doubtfully and diffused, forming a faint twilight, but gradually

strengthening as the latter ages of the slate formation passed away,

until, at the close of the great primary period, day and night,--the one

still dim and gray, the other wrapped in a pall of thickest

darkness,--would succeed each other as now, as the earth revolved on its

axis, and the unseen luminary rose high over the cloud in the east, or

sunk in the west beneath the undefined and murky horizon. And here again

the _optical_ appearance would be exactly that described by Milton:--

"'Let there be light,' said God, and forthwith light

Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,

Sprung from the deep, and from her native east

To journey through the airy gloom began,

Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun

Was not: she in a cloudy tabernacle

Sojourned the while. God saw the light was good,

And light from darkness by the hemisphere

Divided: light the day, and darkness night,

He named. This was the first day, even and morn."

The second day's work has been interpreted variously, according to the

generally received science of the times of the various commentators who

have dealt with it. Even in Milton, though the great poet rejected the

earlier idea of a solid firmament, we find prominence given to that of a

vast hollow sphere of "circumfluous waters," which, by encircling the

atmosphere, kept aloof the "fierce extremes of chaos." Later

commentators, such as the late Drs. Kitto and Pye Smith, hold that the

Scriptural analogue of the _firmament_ here--by the way, a Greek, not a

Hebrew idea, first introduced into the Septuagint--was in reality simply

the atmosphere with its clouds. "The historian" [Moses], says Dr. Kitto,

"speaks as things would have appeared to a spectator at the time of the

creation. A portion of the heavy watery vapor had flown into the upper

regions, and rested there in dense clouds, which still obscured the sun;

while below, the whole earth was covered with water. Thus we see the

propriety with which the firmament is said to have divided the waters

from the waters." It is certainly probable that in a vision of creation

the atmospheric phenomena of the second great act of the creation drama

might have stood out with much greater prominence to the prophetic eye

placed in the circumstances of a natural one, than any of its other

appearances. The invertebrate life of the Silurian period, or even the

ichthyic life of the earlier Old Bed Sandstone period, must have been

comparatively inconspicuous from any sub-ærial point of view elevated

but a few hundred feet over the sea level. Even the few islets of the

latter ages of the period, with their ferns, lepidodendra, and

coniferous trees, forming, as they did, an exceptional feature in these

ages of vast oceans, and of organisms all but exclusively marine, may

have well been excluded from a representative diorama that exhibited

optically the grand characteristics of the time. Further, it seems

equally probable that the introduction of organized existence on our

planet was preceded by a change in the atmospheric conditions which had

obtained during the previous period, in which the earth had been a

desert and empty void. We know that just before the close of the

Silurian ages terrestrial plants had appeared, and that before the close

of the Old Red Sandstone ages, air-breathing animals had been produced;

and infer that the atmosphere in which both could have existed must have

been considerably different from that which lay dark and heavy over the

bare hot rocks, and tenantless, steam-emitting seas, of the previous

time. Under a gray, opaque sky, in which neither sun nor moon appear, we

are not unfrequently presented with a varied drapery of clouds,--a

drapery varied in form, though not in color: bank often seems piled over

bank, shaded beneath and lighter above; or the whole breaks into dappled

cloudlets, which bear--to borrow from the poetic description of

Bloomfield--the "beauteous semblance of a flock at rest." And if such

ærial draperies appeared in this early period, with the clear space

between them and the earth which we so often see in gray, sunless days,

the optical aspect must have been widely different from that of the

previous time, in which a dense vaporous fog lay heavy upon rock and

sea, and extended from the earth's surface to the upper heights of the

atmosphere.

The third day's vision seems to be more purely geological in its

character than either of the previous two. Extensive tracts of dry land

appear, and there springs up over them, at the Divine command, a rank

vegetation. And we know that what seems to be the corresponding

Carboniferous period, unlike any of the preceding ones, was remarkable

for its great tracts of terrestrial surface, and for its extraordinary

flora. For the first time dry land, and organized bodies at once bulky

enough, and exhibited in a medium clear enough, to render them

conspicuous objects in a distant prospect, appear in the Mosaic drama;

and we still find at once evidence of the existence of extensive though

apparently very flat lands, and the remains of a wonderfully gigantic

and abundant vegetation, in what appear to be the rocks of this period.

The vision of the fourth day, like that of the second, pertained not to

the earth, but to the _heavens_; the sun, moon, and stars become

visible, and form the sole subjects of the prophetic description. And

just as, during the second period, the earth would in all probability

have failed to furnish any feature of mark enough to divert a human eye

placed on a commanding station from the conspicuous _atmospheric_

phenomena of the time, so it seems equally probable that during this

fourth period it would have failed to furnish any feature of mark enough

to divert a human eye from the still more conspicuous _celestial_

phenomena of the time. As has been already incidentally remarked, the

Permian and Triassic periods were "epochs"--to employ the language of

the late Professor Edward Forbes--"of great poverty of production of

generic types." On the other hand, the appearance for the first time of

sun, moon, and stars, must have formed a scene well suited to divert the

attention of the seer from every other. Nor (as has been somewhat rashly

argued by Dr. Kitto and several others) does it seem irrational to hold

that three very extended _periods_ should have elapsed ere the sidereal

heavens became visible on earth. Addison's popular illustration, drawn

from one of the calculations of Newton, made in an age when comets were

believed to be solid bodies, rendered the reading public familiar,

considerably more than a century ago, with the vast time which large

bodies greatly heated would take in cooling. "According to Sir Isaac

Newton's calculation," said the exquisitely classical essayist, "the

comet that made its appearance in 1680 imbibed so much heat by its

approaches to the sun, that it would have been two thousand times hotter

than red hot iron had it been a globe of that metal; and that, supposing

it as big as the earth, and at the same distance from the sun, it would

be fifty thousand years in cooling before it recovered its natural

temper." Such was an estimate of the philosopher, that excited no little

wonder in the days of our great grandfathers, for the vast time which it

demanded; and, now that the data on which such a calculation ought to be

founded are better known than in the age of Newton, yet more time would

be required still. It is now ascertained, from the circumstance that no

dew is deposited in our summer evenings save under a clear sky, that

even a thin covering of cloud,--serving as a robe to keep the earth

warm,--prevents the surface heat of the planet from radiating into the

spaces beyond. And such a cloud, thick and continuous, as must have

wrapped round the earth as with a mantle during the earlier geologic

periods, must have served to retard for many ages the radiation, and

consequently the reduction, of that internal heat of which it was itself

a consequence. Further, the rocks and soils that form the surface of our

globe would be much more indifferent conductors of heat than the iron

superficies of Newton's ball, and would serve yet more to lengthen out

the cooling process. Nor would a planet covered over for ages with a

thick screen of vapor be a novelty even yet in the universe. It is

doubtful whether astronomers have ever yet looked on the face of

Mercury: it is at least very generally held that hitherto only his

clouds have been seen. Even Jupiter, though it is thought his mountains

have been occasionally detected raising their peaks through openings in

his cloudy atmosphere, is known chiefly by the dark shifting bands that,

streaking his surface in the line of his trade winds, belong not to his

body, but to his thick dark covering. It is questionable whether a human

eye on the surface of Mercury would ever behold the sun, notwithstanding

his near proximity; nor would he be often visible, if at all, from the

surface of Jupiter. Nor, yet further, would a warm steaming atmosphere

muffled in clouds have been unfavorable to a rank, flowerless vegetation

like that of the Coal Measures. There are moist, mild, cloudy days of

spring and early Summer that rejoice the heart of the farmer, for he

knows how conducive they are to the young growth on his fields. The Coal

Measure climate would have consisted of an unbroken series of these,

with mayhap a little more of cloud and moisture, and a great deal more

of heat. The earth would have been a vast greenhouse covered with smoked

glass; and a vigorous though mayhap loosely knit and faintly colored

vegetation would have luxuriated under its shade.

The fifth and sixth days,--that of winged fowl and great sea monsters,

and that of cattle and beasts of the earth,--I must regard as adequately

represented by those Secondary ages, Oolitic and Cretaceous, during

which birds were introduced, and reptiles received their greatest

development, and those Tertiary ages during which the gigantic mammals

possessed the earth and occupied the largest space in creation. To the

close of this latter period,--the evening of the sixth day,--man

belongs,--at once the last created of terrestrial creatures, and

infinitely beyond comparison the most elevated in the scale; and with

man's appearance on the scene the days of creation end, and the Divine

Sabbath begins,--that Sabbath of rest from creative labor of which the

proper work is the moral development and elevation of the species, and

which will terminate only with the full completion of that sublime task

on the full accomplishment of which God's eternal purposes and the

tendencies of man's progressive nature seem alike directed. Now, I am

greatly mistaken if we have not in the six geologic periods all the

elements, without misplacement or exaggeration, of the Mosaic drama of

creation.

I have referred in my brief survey to extended periods. It is probable,

however, that the prophetic vision of creation, if such was its

character, consisted of only single representative scenes, embracing

each but a point of time; it was, let us suppose, a diorama, over whose

shifting pictures the curtain rose and fell six times in

succession,--once during the Azoic period, once during the earlier or

middle Palæozoic period, once during the Carboniferous period, once

during the Permian or Triassic period, once during the Oolitic or

Cretaceous period, and finally, once during the Tertiary period. Dr.

Kurtz holds, taking the Sabbath into the series, that the division into

_seven_ scenes or stages may have been regulated with reference to the

importance and sacredness of the mythic number seven,--the symbol of

completeness or perfection; but the suggestion will perhaps not now

carry much weight among the theologians of Britain, whatever it might

have done two centuries ago. It is true, that creation _might_ have been

exhibited, not by seven, but by seven hundred, or even by seven thousand

scenes; and that the accomplished man of science, skilled in every

branch of physics, might have found something distinct in them all. But

not the less do the seven, or rather the six, exhibited scenes appear to

be not symbolic or mystical, at least not exclusively symbolic or

mystical, but truly representative of successive periods, strongly

distinctive in their character, and capable, with the three geologic

days as given points in the problem, of being treated geologically.

Another of the questions raised, both by the German doctor and the

writer in our own country, must be recognized as eminently suggestive.

"We treat the history of creation," says Dr. Kurtz, "with its six days'

work, as a connected series of so many prophetic visions. The appearance

and evanishing of each such vision seem to the seer as a morning and an

evening, apparently because these were presented to him as an increase

and decrease of light, like morning and evening twilight." And we find

the Scottish writer taking essentially the same view. "Each day

contains," he says, "the description of what he [Moses] beheld in a

single vision, and when it faded it was twilight. There is nothing

forced in supposing that, after the vision had for a time illumined the

fancy of the seer, it was withdrawn from his eyes, in the same way that

the landscape becomes dim on the approach of evening.... From this point

of view, a 'day' can only mean the period during which the Divinely

enlightened fancy of the seer was active. When all continued bright and

manifest before his entranced but still conscious soul, it was 'day' or

'light.' When the dimness of departing enlightenment fell upon the

scene, it was the evening twilight." The _days_, then, are removed, we

find, by the holders of this view, altogether from the province of

chronology to the province of prophetic vision; they are represented

simply as parts of the exhibited scenery, or rather as forming the

measures of the apparent time during which the scenery _was_ exhibited.

We must also hold, however, that in the character of symbolic days they

were as truly representative of the lapse of foregone periods of

creation as the scenery itself was representative of the creative work

accomplished in these periods. For if the apparent days occurred in only

the vision, and were not symbolic of foregone periods, they could not

have been transferred with any logical propriety from the vision itself

to that which the vision represented, as we find done in what our

Shorter Catechism terms "the reason annexed to the Fourth

Commandment."[18] The days must have been prophetic days, introduced,

indeed, into the panorama of creation as mayhap mere openings and

droppings of the curtain, but not the less symbolic of that series of

successive periods, each characterized by its own productions and

events, in which creation itself was comprised. Nothing more probable,

however, than that even Moses himself may have been unacquainted with

the _extent_ of the periods represented in the vision; nay, he may have

been equally unconscious of the actual extent of the seeming days by

which they were symbolized. "Visions without dark speeches,"--visions,

not of symbolic apparitions, but of actual existences and events, past

or present,--may, nay must, have differed from what may be termed the

dark hieroglyphic visions; but we find in all visions an element of mere

representative value introduced when they deal with time, and that they

occur as if wholly outside its pale. These creation "days" seem, in

relation to what they typify, to have been, if I may so express myself,

the mere _modules_ of a graduated scale.

Such a description of the creative vision of Moses as the one given by

Milton of that vision of the future, which he represents as conjured up

before Adam by the archangel, would be a task rather for the scientific

poet than for the mere practical geologist or sober theologian. Let us

suppose that it took place far from man, in an untrodden recess of the

Midian desert, ere yet the vision of the burning bush had been

vouchsafed; and that, as in the vision of St. John in Patmos, voices

were mingled with scenes, and the ear as certainly addressed as the eye.

A "great darkness" first falls upon the prophet, like that which in an

earlier age fell upon Abraham, but without the "horror;" and, as the

Divine Spirit moves on the face of the wildly troubled waters, as a

visible aurora enveloped by the pitchy cloud, the great doctrine is

orally enunciated, that "in the beginning God created the heavens and

the earth." Unreckoned ages, condensed in the vision into a few brief

moments, pass away; the creative voice is again heard, "Let there be

light," and straightway a gray diffused light springs up in the east,

and, casting its sickly gleam over a cloud-limited expanse of steaming,

vaporous sea, journeys through the heavens towards the west. One heavy,

sunless day is made the representative of myriads; the faint light waxes

fainter,--it sinks beneath the dim, undefined horizon; the first scene

of the drama closes upon the seer; and he sits awhile on his hill-top in

darkness, solitary but not sad, in what seems to be a calm and starless

night.

The light again brightens,--it is day; and over an expanse of ocean

without visible bound the horizon has become wider and sharper of

outline than before. There is life in that great sea,--invertebrate,

mayhap also ichthyic, life; but, from the comparative distance of the

point of view occupied by the prophet, only the slow roll of its waves

can be discerned, as they rise and fall in long undulations before a

gentle gale; and what most strongly impresses the eye is the change

which has taken place in the atmospheric scenery. That lower stratum of

the heavens occupied in the previous vision by seething steam, or gray,

smoke-like fog, is clear and transparent; and only in an upper region,

where the previously invisible vapor of the tepid sea has thickened in

the cold, do the clouds appear. But there, in the higher strata of the

atmosphere they lie, thick and manifold,--an upper sea of great waves,

separated from those beneath by the transparent firmament, and, like

them too, impelled in rolling masses by the wind. A mighty advance has

taken place in creation; but its most conspicuous optical sign is the

existence of a transparent atmosphere,--of a firmament, stretched out

over the earth, that separates the waters above from the waters below.

But darkness descends for the third time upon the seer, for the evening

and the morning have completed the second day.

Yet again the light rises under a canopy of cloud; but the scene has

changed, and there is no longer an unbroken expanse of sea. The white

surf breaks, at the distant horizon, on an insulated reef, formed mayhap

by the Silurian or Old Red coral zoophytes ages before, during the

bygone yesterday; and beats in long lines of foam, nearer at hand,

against a low, winding shore, the seaward barrier of a widely spread

country. For at the Divine command the land has arisen from the

deep,--not inconspicuously and in scattered islets, as at an earlier

time, but in extensive though flat and marshy continents, little raised

over the sea level; and a yet further fiat has covered them with the

great carboniferous flora. The scene is one of mighty forests of

cone-bearing trees,--of palms, and tree-ferns, and gigantic club mosses,

on the opener slopes, and of great reeds clustering by the sides of

quiet lakes and dark rolling rivers. There is deep gloom in the recesses

of the thicker woods, and low thick mists creep along the dank marsh or

sluggish stream. But there is a general lightening of the sky over head;

as the day declines, a redder flush than had hitherto lighted up the

prospect falls athwart fern covered bank and long withdrawing glade. And

while the fourth evening has fallen on the prophet, he becomes sensible,

as it wears on, and the fourth dawn approaches, that yet another change

has taken place. The Creator has spoken, and the stars look out from

openings of deep unclouded blue; and as day rises, and the planet of

morning pales in the east, the broken cloudlets are transmuted from

bronze into gold, and anon the gold becomes fire, and at length the

glorious sun arises out of the sea, and enters on his course rejoicing.

It is a brilliant day; the waves, of a deeper and softer blue than

before, dance and sparkle in the light; the earth, with little else to

attract the gaze, has assumed a garb of brighter green; and as the sun

declines amid even richer glories than those which had encircled his

rising, the moon appears full orbed in the east,--to the human eye the

second great luminary of the heavens,--and climbs slowly to the zenith

as night advances, shedding its mild radiance on land and sea.

Again the day breaks; the prospect consists, as before, of land and

ocean. There are great pine woods, reed-covered swamps, wide plains,

winding rivers, and broad lakes; and a bright sun shines over all. But

the landscape derives its interest and novelty from a feature unmarked

before. Gigantic birds stalk along the sands, or wade far into the water

in quest of their ichthyic food; while birds of lesser size float upon

the lakes, or scream discordant in hovering flocks, thick as insects in

the calm of a summer evening, over the narrower seas, or brighten with

the sunlit gleam of their wings the thick woods. And ocean has its

monsters: great "_tanninim_" tempest the deep, as they heave their huge

bulk over the surface, to inhale the life-sustaining air; and out of

their nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a "seething pot or cauldron."

Monstrous creatures, armed in massive scales, haunt the rivers, or scour

the flat rank meadows; earth, air, and water are charged with animal

life; and the sun sets on a busy scene, in which unerring instinct

pursues unremittingly its few simple ends,--the support and preservation

of the individual, the propagation of the species, and the protection

and maintenance of the young.

Again the night descends, for the fifth day has closed; and morning

breaks on the sixth and last day of creation. Cattle and beasts of the

fields graze on the plains; the thick-skinned rhinoceros wallows in the

marshes; the squat hippopotamus rustles among the reeds, or plunges

sullenly into the river; great herds of elephants seek their food amid

the young herbage of the woods; while animals of fiercer nature,--the

lion, the leopard, and the bear,--harbor in deep caves till the evening,

or lie in wait for their prey amid tangled thickets, or beneath some

broken bank. At length, as the day wanes and the shadows lengthen, man,

the responsible lord of creation, formed in God's own image, is

introduced upon the scene, and the work of creation ceases forever upon

the earth. The night falls once more upon the prospect, and there dawns

yet another morrow,--the morrow of God's rest,--that Divine Sabbath in

which there is no more creative labor, and which, "blessed and

sanctified" beyond all the days that had gone before, has as its special

object the moral elevation and final redemption of man. And over _it_ no

evening is represented in the record as falling, for its special work is

not yet complete. Such seems to have been the sublime panorama of

creation exhibited in vision of old to

"The shepherd who first taught the chosen seed,

In the beginning how the heavens and earth

Rose out of chaos;"

and, rightly understood, I know not a single scientific truth that

militates against even the minutest or least prominent of its details.

LECTURE FIFTH.

GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES.

PART I.

The science of the geologist seems destined to exert a marked influence

on that of the natural theologian. For not only does it greatly add to

the materials on which the natural theologian founds his deductions, by

adding to the organisms, plant and animal, of the present creation the

extinct organisms of the creations of the past, with all their

extraordinary display of adaptation and design; but it affords him,

besides, materials peculiar to itself, in the history which it furnishes

both of the appearance of these organisms in time, and of the wonderful

order in which they were chronologically arranged. Not only--to borrow

from Paley's illustration--does it enable him to argue on the old

grounds, from the contrivance exhibited in the _watch_ found on the

moor, that the watch could not have lain upon the moor forever; but it

establishes further, on different and more direct evidence, that there

was a time when absolutely the watch was not there; nay, further, so to

speak, that there was a previous time in which no watches existed at

all, but only water clocks; yet, further, that there was a time in which

there were not even water clocks, but only sundials; and further, an

earlier time still in which sundials were not, nor any measurers of time

of any kind. And this is distinct ground from that urged by Paley. For,

besides holding that each of these contrivances must have had in turn

an originator or contriver, it adds historic fact to philosophic

inference. Geology takes up the master volume of the greatest of the

natural theologians, and, after scanning its many apt instances of

palpable design, drawn from the mechanism of existing plants and

animals, authoritatively decides that not one of these plants or animals

had begun to be in the times of the Chalk; nay, that they all date their

origin from a period posterior to that of the Eocene. And the fact is,

of course, corroborative of the inference. "That well constructed

edifice," says the natural theologian, "cannot be a mere _lusus naturæ_,

or chance combination of stones and wood; it must have been erected by a

builder." "Yes," remarks the geologist, "it was erected some time during

the last nine years. I passed the way ten years ago, and saw only a

blank space where it now stands." Nor does the established fact of an

absolute beginning of organic being seem more pregnant with important

consequences to the science of the natural theologian than the fact of

the peculiar order in which they begin to be.

The importance of the now demonstrated fact, that all the living

organisms which exist on earth had a beginning, and that a time was when

they were not, will be best appreciated by those who know how much, and,

it must be added, how unsuccessfully, writers on the evidences have

labored to convict of an absurdity, on this special head, the atheistic

assertors of an infinite series of beings. Even Robert Hall (in his

famous Sermon on Modern Infidelity) could but play, when he attempted

grappling with the subject, upon the words _time_ and _eternity_, and

strangely argue, that as each member of an infinite series must have

begun in _time_, while the succession itself was _eternal_, it was

palpably absurd to ask us to believe in a _succession_ of beings that

was thus infinitely earlier than any of the beings themselves which

composed the succession. And Bentley, more perversely ingenious still,

could assert, that as each of the individuals in an infinite series must

have consisted of many parts,--that as each man in such a series, for

instance, must have had ten fingers and ten toes,--it was palpably

absurd to ask us to believe in an infinity which thus comprised many

infinities,--ten infinities of fingers, for example, and ten infinities

of toes. The infidels had the better in this part of the argument. It

was surely easy enough to show against the great preacher, on the one

hand, that _time_ in such a question is but a mere word that means

simply a certain limited or definite period which had a beginning,

whereas eternity means an unlimited and undefinable period which had no

beginning;--that his seeming argument was no argument, but merely a sort

of verbal play on this difference of signification in the

words;--further, that man could conceive of an infinite series, whether

extended in infinite space, or subsisting in infinite time, just as well

as he could conceive of any other infinity, and in the same way; and

that the only mode of disproving the possibility of such a series would

be to show, what of course cannot be shown, that in conceiving of it in

the progressive mode in which, according to Locke, man can alone

conceive of the infinite or the eternal, there would be a point reached

at which it would be impossible for him to go on adding millions on

millions to the previous sum. The symbolic "_ad infinitum_" could be

made as adequately representative in the case of an infinite series of

men or animals in unlimited time, as of an infinite series of feet or

inches in unlimited space, or of an infinite series of hours or minutes

in the past eternity. And as for Bentley, on the other hand, he ought

surely to have known that all infinities are not equal, seeing that

Newton had expressly told him so in the second of his four famous

letters; but that, on the contrary, one infinity may be not only ten

times greater than another infinity, but even infinitely greater than

another infinity; and that so the conception of an infinity of men

possessed of ten infinities of fingers and toes is in no respect an

absurdity. Of the three infinities possible in space, the second is

infinitely greater than the first, and the third infinitely greater than

the second. A line infinitely produced is capable of being divided

into--that is, consists of--an infinity of given parts; a plane

infinitely extended is capable of being divided into an infinity of

infinitely divisible lines; and a cube, that is, a solid, infinitely

expanded, is capable of being divided into an infinity of infinitely

divisible planes. In fine, metaphysic theology furnishes no argument

against the infinite series of the atheist. But geology does. Every

plant and animal that now lives upon earth began to be during the great

Tertiary period, and had no place among the plants and animals of the

great Secondary division. We can trace several of our existing

quadrupeds, such as the badger, the hare, the fox, the red deer, and the

wild cat, up till the earlier times of the Pleistocene; and not a few of

our existing shells, such as the great pecten, the edible oyster, the

whelk, and the Pelican's-foot shell, up till the greatly earlier times

of the Coraline Crag. But at certain definite lines in the deposits of

the past, representative of certain points in the course of time, the

existing mammals and molluscs cease to appear, and we find their places

occupied by other mammals and molluscs. Even such of our British shells

as seem to have enjoyed as species the longest term of life cannot be

traced beyond the times of the Pliocene deposits. We detect their

remains in a perfect state of keeping in almost every shell-bearing bed,

till we reach the Red and Coraline Crags, where we find them for the

last time; and, on passing into older and deeper lying beds, we see

their places taken by other shells, of species altogether distinct. The

very common shell _Purpura lapillus_, for instance, is found in our

raised beaches, in our Clyde beds, in our boulder clays and

mammaliferous crags, and, finally, in the Red Crag, beyond which it

fails to appear. And such also is the history of the common edible

mussel and common periwinkle; whereas the common edible cockle, and

common edible pecten (_P. opercularis_) occur not only in all these

successive beds, but in the Coral Crag also. They are older by a whole

deposit than their present contemporaries, the mussel and periwinkle;

and these, in turn, seem of older standing than shells such as _Murex

erinaceus_, that has not been traced beyond the times of the

mammaliferous crag, or than shells such as _Scrobicularia piperata_,

that has not been detected in more ancient deposits than raised sea

beaches of the later periods, and the elevated bottoms of old estuaries

and lagoons. We thus know, that in certain periods, nearer or more

remote, all our existing molluscs _began_ to exist, and that they had no

existence during the previous periods; which were, however, richer in

animals of the same great molluscan group than the present time. Our

British group of recent marine shells falls somewhat short of _four_

hundred species;[19] whereas the group characteristic of the older

Miocene deposits, largely developed in those districts of France which

border on the Bay of Biscay, and more sparingly in the south of England,

near Yarmouth, comprises more than six hundred species. Nearly an equal

number of still older shells have been detected in a single deposit of

the Paris basin,--the _Calcaire grossier_; and a good many more in a

more ancient formation still, the London Clay. On entering the Chalk, we

find a yet older group of shells, wholly unlike any of the preceding

ones; and in the Oolite and Lias yet other and different groups. And

thus group preceded group throughout all the Tertiary, Secondary, and

Palæozoic periods; some of them remarkable for the number of species

which they contained, others for the profuse abundance of their

individual specimens, until, deep in the rocks at the base of the

Silurian system, we detect what seems to be the primordial group,

beneath which only a single animal organism is known to occur,--the

_Oldhamia antiqua_,--a plant-like zoophyte, akin apparently to some of

our recent sertularia, (See fig. 5, page 48.) Each of the extinct groups

had, we find, a beginning and an end;--there is not in the wide domain

of physical science a more certain fact; and every species of the group

which now exists had, like all their predecessors on the scene, their

beginning also. The "infinite series" of the atheists of former times

can have no place in modern science: all organic existences, recent or

extinct, vegetable or animal, have had their beginning;--there was a

time when they were not. The geologist can indicate that time, if not by

years, at least by periods, and show what its relations were to the

periods that went before and that came after; and as it is equally a

recognized truth on both sides of the controversy, that as something now

exists, something must have existed forever, and as it must now be not

less surely recognized, that that something was not the race of man, nor

yet any other of the many races of man's predecessors or contemporaries,

the question, What then was that something? comes with a point and

directness which it did not possess at any former time. By what, or

through whom, did these races of nicely organized plants and animals

begin to be? Hitherto at least there has been but one reply to the

question originated on the skeptical side. All these races, it is said,

have been _developed_, in the long course of ages, into what they now

are, as the young animal is developed in the womb, or the young plant is

developed from the seed. Topsy, in the novel, "'spected that she was not

made, but growed;" and the only class of opponents which the geological

theist finds in the field which his science has laid open to the world

is a class that hold by the philosophy of Topsy.

Let me briefly remark regarding this development hypothesis, with which

I have elsewhere dealt at considerable length, that while the facts of

the geologist are demonstrably such, that is, truths capable of proof,

the hypothesis is a mere dream, unsupported by a shadow of evidence. A

man of a lively imagination could no doubt originate many such dreams;

nay, we know that in the dark ages dreams of the kind were actually

originated. The _Anser Bernicla_, or barnacle goose, a common winter

visitant of our coasts, was once believed to be developed out of

decaying wood long submerged in sea water: and one of our commonest

cirripedes or barnacles, _Lepas anatifera_, still bears, in its specific

name of the goose-producing _lepas_, evidence that it was the creature

specially recognized by our ancestors as the half-developed goose. As if

in memory of this old development legend, the bird still bears the name

of the barnacle, and the barnacle of the bird; and we know further, that

very intelligent men for their age, such as Gerardes the herbalist

(1597), and Hector Boece the historian (1524), both examined these

shells, and, knowing but little of comparative anatomy, were satisfied

that the animal within was the partially developed embryo of a fowl.

Such was one of the fables gravely credited as a piece of natural

history in Britain about three centuries ago, and such was the kind of

evidence by which it was supported. And we know that the followers of

Epicurus received from their master, without apparent suspicion, fables

still more extravagant, and that wanted even such a shadow of proof to

support them as satisfied the herbalist and the historian. The

Epicureans at least professed to believe that the earth, after

spontaneously producing herbs and trees, began to produce in great

numbers mushroom-like bodies, that, when they came to maturity, burst

open, giving egress each to a young animal, which proved the founder of

a race; and that thus, in succession, all the members of the animal

kingdom were ushered into existence. But whether the dream be that of

the Epicureans of classic times, or that of the naturalists of the

middle ages, or that of the Lamarckians of our own days, it is equally a

dream, and can have no place assigned to it among either the solid facts

or the sober deductions of science. Nay, the dream of the Lamarckians

labors under a special disadvantage, from which the dreams of the others

are free. If some modern Boece or Epicurus were to assert that at

certain definite periods, removed from fifteen to fifty thousand years

from the present time, all our existing animals were developed from

decaying wood, or from a wonderful kind of mushrooms that the earth

produced only once every ten thousand years, the assertion, if incapable

of proof, would be at least equally incapable of being _dis_-proven. But

when the Lamarckian affirms that all our recent species of plants and

animals were developed out of previously existing plants and animals of

species entirely different, he affirms what, if true, _would_ be capable

of proof; and so, if it cannot be proven, it is only because it is not

true. The trilobites have been extinct ever since the times of the

Mountain Limestone; and yet, by series of specimens, the individual

development of certain species of this family, almost from the extrusion

of the animal from the egg until the attainment of its full size, has

been satisfactorily shown. By specimen after specimen has every stage of

growth and every degree of development been exemplified; and the

Palæontologist has come as thoroughly to know the creatures, in

consequence, under their various changes from youth to age, as if they

had been his contemporaries, and had grown up under his eye. And had our

existing species, vegetable and animal, been derived from other species

of the earlier periods, it would have been equally possible to

demonstrate, by a series of specimens, _their_ relationship. Let us

again instance the British shells. Losing certain species in each of the

older and yet older deposits at which we successively arrive, we at

length reach the Red and Coraline Crags, where we find, mingled with the

familiar forms, a large per centage of forms now extinct; then going on

to the shells of the lower Miocene, more than six hundred species

appear, almost all of which are strange to us; and then, passing to the

Eocene shells of the _Calcaire grossier_, we find ourselves among well

nigh as large a group of yet other and older strangers, not one of which

we are able to identify with any shell now living in the British area.

There would be thus no lack of materials for forming such a genealogy of

the British shells, had they been gradually developed out of the extinct

species, as that which M. Barrande has formed of the trilobites. But no

such genealogy can be formed. We cannot link on a single recent shell to

a single extinct one. _Up_ to a certain point we find the recent shells

exhibiting all their present specific peculiarities, and beyond that

point they cease to appear. _Down_ to a certain point the extinct shells

also exhibit all _their_ specific peculiarities, and then they disappear

forever. There are no intermediate species,--no connecting links,--no

such connected series of specimens to be found as enables us to trace a

trilobite through all its metamorphoses from youth to age. All geologic

history is full of the beginnings and the ends of species,--of their

first and their last days; but it exhibits no genealogies of

development. The Lamarckian sets himself to grapple, in his dream, with

the history of all creation: we awaken him, and ask him to grapple,

instead, with the history of but a few individual species,--with that of

the mussel or the whelk, the clam or the oyster; and we find from his

helpless ignorance and incapacity what a mere pretender he is.

But while no hypothesis of development can neutralize or explain away

the great geologic fact, that every true species had a beginning

independently, apparently, of every preceding species, there was

demonstrably a general progress, in the course of creation, from lower

to higher forms, which seems scarce less fraught with important

consequences to the natural theologian than this fact of _beginning_

itself. For while the one fact effectually disposes of the "infinite

series" of the atheist, the other fact disposes scarce less effectually

of those reasonings on the skeptical side which, framed on the

assumption that creation is a "singular effect,"--an effect without

duplicate,--have been employed in urging, that from that one effect only

can we know aught regarding the producing cause. Knowing of the cause

from but the effect, and having experience of but one effect, we cannot

rationally hold, it has been argued, that the producing cause could have

originated effects of a higher or more perfect kind. The creation which

it produced we know; but, having no other measure of its power, we

cannot regard it, it has been contended, as equal to the production of a

better or nobler creation, or of course hold that it _could_ originate

such a state of things as that perfect future state which faith

delights to contemplate. It has been well said of the author of this

ingenious argument,--by far the most sagacious of the skeptics,--that if

we admit his premises we shall find it difficult indeed to set aside his

conclusions. And how, in this case, does geology deal with his premises?

By opening to us the history of the remote past of our planet, and

introducing us, through the present, to former creations, it breaks down

that _singularity_ of effect on which he built, and for one creation

gives us many. It gives us exactly that which, as he truly argued, his

contemporaries had not,--an _experience_ in creations. And let us mark

how, applied to each of these in succession, his argument would tell.

There was a time when life, animal or vegetable, did not exist on our

planet, and when all creation, from its centre to its circumference, was

but a creation of dead matter. What, in that early age, would have been

the effect of the argument of Hume? Simply this,--that though the

producing Cause of all that appeared was competent to the formation of

gases and earths, metals and minerals, it would be unphilosophic to deem

him adequate to the origination of a single plant or animal, even to

that of a spore or of a monad. Ages pass by, and the Palæozoic creation

is ushered in, with its tall araucarians and pines, its highly organized

fishes, and its reptiles of comparatively low standing. And how now, and

with what effect, does the argument apply? It is now rendered evident,

that in the earlier creation the producing Cause had exerted but a

portion of his power, and that he could have done greatly more than he

actually did, seeing that we now find him adequate to the origination of

vitality and organization in its two great kingdoms, plant and animal.

But, still confining ourselves with cautious skepticism within the

limits of our argument, we continue to hold that, as fishes of a high

and reptiles of a low order, with trees of the cone-bearing family, are

the most perfect specimens of their respective classes which the

producing Cause has originated, it would be rash to hold, in the absence

of proof, that he _could_ originate aught higher or more perfect. And

now, as yet other ages pass away, the creation of the great Secondary

division takes the place of that of the vanished Palæozoic; and we find

in its few dicotyledonous plants, in its reptiles of highest standing,

in its great birds, and in its some two or three humble marsupial

mammals, that in the previous, as in the earlier creation, the producing

Cause had been, if I may so express myself, working greatly under his

strength, and that in this third creation we have a still higher display

of his potency. With some misgivings, however, we again apply our

argument. And now yet another creation,--that of the Tertiary period,

with its noble forests of dicotyledonous trees and its sagacious and

gigantic mammals,--rises upon the scene; and as our experience in

creations has now become very considerable, and as we have seen each in

succession higher than that which preceded it, we find that,

notwithstanding our assumed skepticism, we had, compelled by one of the

most deeply seated instincts of our nature, been secretly anticipating

the advance which the new state of things actually realizes. But

applying the argument once more, we at least assume to hold, that as the

sagacious elephant is the highest example of animal life yet produced by

the originating Cause, it would be unphilosophic to deem him capable of

producing a higher example. And, while we are thus reasoning, man

appears upon creation,--a creature immeasurably superior to all the

others, and whose very nature it is to make use of his experience of the

past for his guidance in the future. And if that only be solid

experience or just reasoning which enables us truly to anticipate the

events which are to come, and so to make provision for them; and if that

experience be not solid, and that reasoning not just, which would serve

but to darken our discernment, and prevent us from correctly predicating

the cast and complexion of coming events; what ought to be our decision

regarding an argument which, had it been employed in each of the

vanished creations of the past, would have had but the effect of

arresting all just anticipation regarding the immediately succeeding

creation, and which, thus reversing the main end and object of

philosophy, would render the philosopher who clung to it less sagacious

in divining the future than even the ordinary man? But, in truth, the

existing premises, wholly altered by geologic science, are no longer

those of Hume. The footprint on the sand--to refer to his happy

illustration--does not now stand alone. Instead of one, we see many

footprints, each in turn in advance of the print behind it, and on a

higher level; and, founding at once on an acquaintance with the past,

extended throughout all the periods of the geologist, and on that

instinct of our nature whose peculiar function it is to anticipate at

least one creation more, we must regard the expectation of "new heavens

and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness," as not unphilosophic,

but as, on the contrary, altogether rational and according to

experience.

Such is the bearing of geological science on two of the most important

questions that have yet been raised in the field of natural theology.

Nor does it bear much less directly on a controversy to which, during

the earlier half of the last century, there was no little importance

attached in Britain, and which engaged on its opposite sides some of the

finest and most vigorous intellects of the age and country.

The school of infidelity represented by Bolingbroke, and, in at least

his earlier writings, by Soame Jenyns, and which, in a modified form,

attained to much popularity through Pope's famous "Essay," assigned to

man a comparatively inconsiderable space in the system of the universe.

It regarded him as but a single link in a chain of mutual dependency,--a

chain which would be no longer an entire, but a broken one, were he to

be struck out of it, but as thus more important from his position than

from his nature or his powers. You will remember that one of the

sections of Pope's first epistle to his "good St. John" is avowedly

devoted to show what he terms the "absurdity of man's supposing himself

the final cause of the creation;" and though this great master of

condensed meaning and brilliant point is now less read than he was in

the days of our grandfathers, you will all remember the elegant stanzas

in which he states the usual claims of the species only to ridicule

them. It is human pride personified that he represents as exclaiming,--

"For me kind Nature wakes her genial power,

Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower,

Annual for me the grape, the rose, renew

The juice nectarious and the balmy dew.

For me the mine a thousand treasures brings;

For me health gushes from a thousand springs;

Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;

My footstool earth, my canopy the skies."

You will further remember how the poet, after thus reducing the claims

and lowering the position of the species, set himself to show that man,

viewed in relation to the place which he occupies, ought not to be

regarded as an imperfect being. Man is, he said, as perfect as he ought

to be. And, such being the case, the Author of all, looking, it would

seem, very little after him, has just left him to take care of himself.

A cold, unfeeling abstraction, like the gods of the old Epicurean, the

Great First Cause of this school is a being

"Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish or a sparrow fall;

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world."

Such, assuredly, was not that God of the New Testament whom the Saviour

of mankind revealed to his disciples as caring for all his creatures of

the dust, but as caring most for the highest of all. "Are not two

sparrows," he said, "sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall

to the ground without your Father. Fear ye not, therefore; ye are of

more value than many sparrows."

It was the error of this ingenious but very unsolid school, that it

regarded the mere _order_ of the universe as itself an end or final

cause. It reasoned respecting creation, as if it would be true

philosophy to account for the origin and existence of some great city,

such as the city of Washington in the United States, built, as we know,

for purely political purposes, by showing that,--as it was remarkable

for its order, for the rectilinear directness of its streets, and the

rectangularity of its squares,--it must have been erected simply to be a

perfect embodiment of regularity; and to urge further that, save in

their character as component parts of a perfect whole, the House of

Representatives and the mansion of the President were of no more

intrinsic importance, or no more decidedly the _end_ of the whole, than

any low tavern or outhouse in the lesser streets or lanes. The

destruction of either the outhouse or the House of Representatives would

equally form a void in the general plan of the city, regarded as an

admirably arranged whole. And it was thus with the grand scheme of

creation; for,

"From nature's chain whatever link we strike,

Tenth or tenth thousand, breaks the chain alike."

Nor is it in other than due keeping with such a view of creation, that

its great Author should be represented as a cold abstraction, without

love or regard, and equally indifferent to the man and the sparrow, to

the atom and the planet. Order has respect to but the _relations_ of

things or of beings,--not to the things or beings themselves; order is

the _figure_ which, as mere etched points or strokes, they compose,--the

legend which, as signs or characters, they form; and who cares anything

for the component strokes or dots irrespective of the print, or for the

component letters or words apart from the writing? The "equal eye," in

such a scheme, would of necessity be an indifferent one. Against this

strange doctrine, though in some measure countenanced by the glosses of

Warburton in his defence of Pope, the theologians protested,--none of

them, however, more vigorously than Johnson, in his famous critique on

the "Free Inquiry" of Soame Jenyns. Nor is it uninteresting to mark with

what a purely instinctive feeling of the right some of the better poets,

whose "lyre," according to Cowper, was their "heart," protested against

it too. Poor Goldsmith, when sitting a homeless vagabond on the slopes

of the Alps, could exclaim in a greatly truer tone than that of his

polished predecessor,--

"Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine!"

And in Cowper himself we find all Goldsmith's intense feeling of

appropriation, that "calls the delightful scenery all its own,"

associated

"With worthy thoughts of that unvaried love

That planned, and built, and still upholds, a world

So clothed with beauty, for rebellious man."

Strange to say, however, it is to the higher exponents of natural

science, and in especial to the geologists, that it has been left to

deal most directly with the sophistries of Bolingbroke and Pope.

Oken, a man quite as far wrong in some points as either the poet or his

master, was the first to remark, and this in the oracular, enigmatical

style peculiar to the German, that "man is the sum total of all the

animals." Gifted, as all allow, with a peculiarly nice eye for detecting

those analogies which unite the animal world into a harmonious whole, he

remarked, that in one existence or being all these analogies converge.

Even the humbler students of the heavens have learned to find for

themselves the star of the pole, by following the direction indicated by

what are termed the two pointer stars in the Great Bear. And to the eye

of Oken all the groups of the animal kingdom formed a sphere of

constellations, each of which has its pointer stars, if I may so speak,

turned towards man. Man occupies, as it were, the central point in the

great circle of being; so that those lines which pass singly through

each of the inferior animals stationed at its circumference, meet in

him; and thus, as the focus in which the scattered rays unite, he

imparts by his presence a unity and completeness to creation which it

would not possess were he away. You will be startled, however, by the

language in which the German embodies his view; though it may be not

uninstructive to refer to it in evidence of the fact that a man may be

_intellectually_ on the very verge of truth, and yet for every moral

purpose infinitely removed from it. "Man," he says, "is God manifest in

the flesh." And yet it may be admitted that there is a certain loose

sense in which man _is_ "God manifest in the flesh." As may be

afterwards shown, he is God's _image_ manifested in the flesh; and an

image or likeness _is_ a manifestation or making evident of that which

it represents, whether it be an image or likeness of body or of mind.

Not less extraordinary, but greatly more sound in their application,

are the views of Professor Owen,--supreme in his own special walk as a

comparative anatomist. We find him recognizing man as exemplifying in

his structure the perfection of that type in which, from the earliest

ages, nature had been working with reference to some future development,

and as _therefore_ a foreordained existence. "The recognition of an

ideal exemplar for the vertebrated animals proves," he says, "that the

knowledge of such a being as man must have existed before man appeared.

For the Divine mind that planned the archetype also foreknew all its

modifications. The archetypal idea was manifested in the flesh under

divers modifications, upon this planet, long prior to the existence of

those animal species that actually exemplify it." So far Owen. And not

less wonderful is the conclusion at which Agassiz has arrived, after a

survey of the geologic existences, more extended and minute, in at least

the ichthyic department, than that of any other man. "It is evident," we

find him saying, in the conclusion of his recent work, "The Principles

of Zoology,"[20] "that there is a manifest progress in the succession of

beings on the surface of the earth. This progress consists in an

increasing similarity to the living fauna, and among the vertebrates,

especially in their increasing resemblance to man. But this connection

is not the consequence of a direct lineage between the faunas of

different ages. There is nothing like parental descent connecting them.

The fishes of the Palæozoic age are in no respect the ancestors of the

reptiles of the Secondary age, nor does man descend from the mammals

which preceded him in the Tertiary age. The link by which they are

connected is of a higher and immaterial nature; and their connection is

to be sought in the view of the Creator himself, whose aim in forming

the earth, in allowing it to undergo the successive changes which

geology has pointed out, and in creating successively all the different

types of animals which have passed away, _was to introduce man upon the

surface of our globe_. MAN IS THE END TOWARDS WHICH ALL THE ANIMAL

CREATION HAS TENDED FROM THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE FIRST PALÆOZOIC

FISHES." These, surely, are extraordinary deductions. "In thy book,"

says the Psalmist, "all my members were written, which in continuance

were fashioned when as yet there was none of them." And here is natural

science, by the voice of two of its most distinguished professors,

saying exactly the same thing.

Of the earliest known vertebrates,--the placoidal fishes of the Upper

Silurian rocks,--we possess only fragments, which, however, sufficiently

indicate, from their resemblance to the corresponding parts of an

existing shark,--the cestracion,--that they belonged to fishes furnished

with the two pairs of fins now so generally recognized as the homologues

of the fore and hinder limbs in quadrupeds. With the second earliest

vertebrates,--the ganoids of the Old Red Sandstone,--we are more

directly acquainted, and know that they exhibited the true typical

form,--a vertebral column terminating in a brain-protecting skull; and

that, in at least the acanth, celacanth, and dipterian families, they

had the limb-like fins. In the upper parts of the system the earliest

reptiles leave the first known traces of the typical foot, with its five

digits. Higher still in one of the deposits of the Trias we are startled

by what seems to be the impression of a human hand of an uncouth massive

shape, but with the thumb apparently set in opposition, as in man, to

the other fingers; we next trace the type upwards among the wonderfully

developed reptiles of the Secondary periods; then among the mammals of

the Tertiary ages, higher and yet higher forms appear; the mute

prophecies of the coming being become with each approach clearer,

fuller, more expressive, and at length receive their fulfilment in the

advent of man. A double meaning attaches to the term type; and hence

some ambiguity in the writings which have appeared on this curious

subject. Type means a prophecy embodied in symbol; it means also what

Sir Joshua Reynolds well terms "one of the general forms of nature,"--a

pattern form, from which all others in the same class or family, however

numerous, are recognized as mere exceptions and aberrations. But in the

geologic series both meanings converge and become one. The form or

number typical as the _general_ form or number, is found typical also as

a _prophecy_ of the form or number that came at length to be exemplified

in the deputed lord of creation. Let us in our examples take typical

numbers, as more easily illustrated without diagrams than typical forms.

There are vertebrate animals of the second age of ichthyic existence,

that, like the _Pterichthys_ and _Coccosteus_, were furnished with but

two limbs. The murænidæ of recent times have no more; at least one of

their number, the muræna proper, wants limbs altogether; so also do the

lampreys. The snakes are equally limbless, save that the boas and

pythons possess the rudiments of a single pair; and such also is the

condition, among the amphibia, of all the known species of Coecilia.

And yet, notwithstanding these exceptional cases, the true typical

number of limbs, as shown by a preponderating majority of the

vertebrates of all ages of the world, is four. And this typical number

is the human number. There is as certainly a typical number of digits

too, as of the limbs which bear them. The exceptions are many. All the

species of the horse genus possess but a single digit; the cattle family

possess but two digits, the rhinoceros three digits, the hippopotamus

four digits; many animals, such as the dog and cat, have but four digits

on one pair of limbs and five on the other; whereas in some of the

fishes the number of digits is singularly great,--from ten to twenty in

most species, and in the rays from eighty to a hundred. And yet, as

shown in the rocks, in which, however, the aberrations appear early, the

true typical number is five on both the fore and hinder limbs. And such

is the number in man. There is also, in at least the mammalia, a typical

number of vertebræ in the neck. The three-toed sloth has nine cervical

vertebræ; the manati only six; but seven is the typical number. And

seven is the human number also. Man, in short, is pre-eminently what a

theologian would term the antetypical existence,--the being in whom the

types meet and are fulfilled. And not only do typical forms and numbers

of the exemplified character meet in man, but there are not a few parts

of his framework which in the inferior animals exist as but mere

symbols, of as little importance as dugs in the male animal, though they

acquire significancy and use in him. Such, for instance, are the

many-jointed but moveless and unnecessary bones of which the stiff

inflexible _fin_ of the dugong and the fore paw of the mole consist, and

which exist in his arm as essential portions, none of which could be

wanted, of an exquisitely flexible instrument. In other cases, the old

types are exemplified serially in the growth and development of certain

portions of his frame. Such is specially the case with that all

important portion of it, the organ of thought and feeling. The human

brain is built up by a wonderful process, during which it assumes in

succession the form of the brain of a fish, of a reptile, of a bird, of

a mammiferous quadruped; and, finally, it takes upon it its unique

character as a human brain. Hence the remark of Oken, that "man is the

sum total of all the animals;" hence, too, a recognition of type in the

_history_ of the successive vertebral periods of the geologist,

symbolical of the history of every individual man. It is not difficult

to conceive how, on a subject of such complexity, especially if

approached in an irreverent spirit, grave mistakes and misconceptions

should take place. Virgil knew just enough of Hebrew prophecy to

misapply, in his _Pollio_, to his great patron Octavius, those ancient

predictions which foretold that in that age the Messiah was to appear.

And I am inclined to hold, that in the more ingenious speculations of

the Lamarckians we have just a similar misapplication of what,

emboldened by the views of Owen and Agassiz, I shall venture to term the

_Geologic Prophecies_.

The term is new, but the idea which it embodies, though it at first

existed rather as a nice poetic instinct than as a scientifically based

thought, is at least as old as the times of Herder and Coleridge. In a

passage quoted from the former writer by Dr. M'Cosh, in his very

masterly work on typical forms, I find the profound German remarking of

the strange resemblances which pervade all nature, and impart a general

unity to its forms, that it would seem "as if on all our earth the

form-abounding mother had proposed to herself but one type,--one

proto-plasma,--according to which, and for which, she formed them all.

Know, then," he continues, "what this form is. It is the identical one

which man also wears." And the remark of Coleridge, in his "Aids to

Reflection," is still more definite. "Let us carry us back in spirit,"

he says, "to the mysterious week, the teeming work days of the Creator

(as _they rose in_ VISION _before the eye of the inspired historian_) of

the operations of the heavens and of the earth, in the day that the

Lord God made the earth and the heavens. And who that watched their ways

with an understanding heart could, as the vision evolved still advanced

towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal bee, the home-building,

wedded, and divorceless swallow, and, above all, the manifoldly

intelligent ant tribes, with their commonwealths and confederacies,

their warriors and miners, the husband folk that fold in their tiny

flocks on the honey leaf, and the virgin sister with the holy instincts

of maternal love detached and in selfless purity, and not say in

himself, Behold the shadow of approaching humanity, the sun rising from

behind in the kindling morn of creation?" There is fancy here; but it is

that sagacious fancy, vouchsafed to only the true poet, which has so

often proved the pioneer of scientific discovery, and which is in

reality more sober and truthful, in the midst of its apparent

extravagance, than the gravest cogitations of ordinary men. It is surely

no incredible thing, that He who, in the dispensations of the human

period, spake by type and symbol, and who, when He walked the earth in

the flesh, taught in parable and allegory, should have also spoken in

the geologic ages by prophetic figures embodied in the form and

structure of animals. Nay, what the poet imagined, though in a somewhat

extreme form, the philosophers seem to be on the very eve of confirming.

The foreknown "archetypal idea" of Owen,--"the immaterial link of

connection" of all the past with all the present, which Agassiz resolves

into the foreordained design of the Creator,--will be yet found, I

cannot doubt, to translate themselves into one great general truth,

namely, that the Palæozoic, Secondary, and Tertiary dispensations of

creation were charged, like the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations of

grace, with the "shadows of better things to come." The advent of man

simply as such was the great event prefigured during the old geologic

ages. The advent of that Divine Man "who hath abolished death, and

brought life and immortality to light," was the great event prefigured

during the historic ages. It is these two grand events, equally portions

of one sublime scheme, originated when God took counsel with himself in

the depths of eternity, that bind together past, present, and

future,--the geologic with the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the

Christian ages, and all together with that new heavens and new earth,

the last of many creations, in which there shall be "no more death nor

curse, but the throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it, and his

servants shall serve him."

"There is absurdity," said Pope, "in man's conceiting himself the final

cause of creation." Unless, however, man had the entire scheme of

creation before him, with the further partially known scheme of which

but a part constitutes the grand theme of revelation, how could he

pronounce on the absurdity? The knowledge of the geologist ascends no

higher than man. He sees all nature in the pre-Adamic past, pointing

with prophetic finger towards him; and on even the argument of

Hume,--just and solid within its proper limits,--he refuses to acquiesce

in the unfounded inference of Pope. In order to prove the absurdity of

"man's conceiting himself the final cause of creation," proof of an

ulterior cause,--of a higher end and aim,--must he adduced; and of aught

higher than man, the geologist, as such, knows nothing. The long vista

opened up by his science closes with the deputed lord of creation,--with

man as he at present exists; and when, casting himself full upon

revelation, the vail is drawn aside, and an infinitely grander vista

stretches out before him into the future, he sees man--no longer,

however, the natural, but the Divine man--occupying what is at once its

terminal point and its highest apex. Such are some of the bearings of

geologic science on the science of natural theology. Geology has

disposed effectually and forever of the oft-urged assumption of an

infinite series; it deals as no other science could have dealt with the

assertion of the skeptic, that creation is a "singular effect;" it casts

a flood of unexpected light on the somewhat obsolete plausibilities of

Bolingbroke and Jenyns, that exhibits their utterly unsolid character;

yet further, it exhibits in a new aspect the argument founded on design,

and invests the place and standing of man in _creation_ with a peculiar

significancy and importance, from its relation to the future. But on

this latter part of my subject--necessarily of considerable extent and

multiplicity, and connected rather with revealed than with natural

religion--I must not now expatiate. I shall, however, attempt laying

before you, on some future evening, a few thoughts on this portion of

the general question, which you may at least find suggestive of others,

and which, if they fail to elicit new truths, may have the effect of

opening up upon an old truth or two a few fresh avenues through which to

survey them. The character of man as a fellow-worker with his Creator in

the material province has still to be considered in the light of

geology. Man was the first, and is still the only creature of whom we

know anything, who has set himself to carry on and improve the work of

the world's original framer,--who is a planter of woods, a tiller of

fields, and a keeper of gardens,--and who carries on his work of

mechanical contrivance on obviously the same principles as those on

which the Divine designer wrought of old, and on which he works still.

It may not be wholly unprofitable to acquaint ourselves, through

evidence furnished by the rocks, with the remarkable fact, that the

Creator imparted to man the Divine image before he united to man's the

Divine nature.

LECTURE SIXTH.

GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES.