sort, the authors look only at the material substances and their properties; and omit entirely the supposition of a devising forming, commanding, and operating mind; and yet not one single natural law, agency, substance, or formation exists, which such a pre-existing mind has not deliberately and intentionally made; and which, therefore, has not at all times essentially operated to do within the periods that he thought fit, every successive action, and effect, and formation, which his intelligence meant to take place. The Creator never left it to material things to create for him, or to move sluggishly and casually into the masses of the globe. He formed the earth as he designed to form it: and his omnipotence has, in all its structure, acted to execute the plans of his omniscient, and all-providing, and all-adjusting sagacity.

Nor must we deviate into the error of supposing, that instead of a planned and deliberate creation, all living things have originated of themselves, from such primeval molecules as we find in the smallest animalcula which the microscope detects in various fluids; and have been nothing else but a continual series of transformations from these into larger and larger, and more and more complicated in their organizations, until at last, after undergoing these changes for myriads of ages, they have come to be the various orders, genera, and species of animals which now form the brute inhabitants of our globe.* The advocates of this imagination feel that no moderate sequence of time would accomplish such wonderful mutations as these, and therefore stretch their chronology to an almost endless period, in order to allow a duration long enough for the production of such an effect as if any succession of years could effect that which never can be achieved but by the omnipotence which they disclaim or supersede. The answer to such dreams is given

* The reveries of De Maillet, published a century ago, and of Buffon in 1778, have been, in our days, enlarged upon by La Marck, and are still maintained by his followers. M. F. Cuvier thus briefly states them as now upheld by some. "The theory of Buffon supposed living organic molecules, which becoming developed, each according to conditions peculiar to it, after the lapse of thousands upon thousands of years, are themselves modified into as many myriads of times, and have, at last, been brought into that state in which they were able to produce this world of living animals that now covers the surface of our globe, from the creatures that can be only rendered visible by the aid of the microscope."-F. Cuvier's Prelim Disc. to Baron Cuvier's Fossil Bones, 4 : ed. Lond. v. i. p. 7.

conclusively by Baron Cuvier's brother; that there never has been an instance of such a change, and therefore it is a lawless conjecture, formed in wilful contradiction to all recorded knowledge, and to all existing experience.*

It is on the fossil remains, and the succession of plants, and of the small marine animals, and of interposed strata, and on apparent successions of fresh water and seawater overfloodings in some particular parts, as in the chalk or calcareous basins or formations of France and England, that many have raised up an anti-Mosaic chronology. The limits and remaining topics of this work will not allow me to go into that detail of facts and reasonings which satisfies me, that erroneous conclusions have been formed on these points from insufficient and sometimes misapprehended premises. But I am convinced, after a deliberate judgment, that in opposing the authentic facts of revelation, they are consigning themselves to future censure and neglect. It was an old Roman remark, that what is true, time confirms, and obliterates what is otherwise. It has already brought to light many phenomena which have thrown down several former fallacies; it will yet disclose others to us, which will subvert all the newer mistakes that are now so strongly maintained. The fossil remains recently discovered in the Burdie House limestone, near Edinburgh, alluded to in the preceding Letter, are a proof that some of our present geological theories must be greatly modified, as a larger examination of nature reveals more fully our Creator's subterraneous operations to us.‡

"The truth really is this: There is no fact whatever, of this description, among the records of science. For no person in the world has ever seen any species transform its state of existence, to any extent or in any shape, in order to be converted, either totally or even partially, into another species."--Prel. Dis. p. 8. "Neither has there been a single case known, throughout the world, in which one of our dogs has been found turned into a wolf, or a jackal, or a fox. There is no example in the records of natural history of a horse having assumed the character of an ass, or an ass taking on that of a zebra. Never did we find a single instance in which any one variety of our goats was metamorphosed into sheep, or vice versa."—Ib. p. 10.

† See page 265, note *.

Dr. Roget, at the close of his late valuable work, justly says, "The pursuit of remote and often fanciful analogies has, by many of the continental physiologists, been carried to an unwarrantable and extravagant length: for the scope which is given to the imagination in these seductive speculations, tends rather to obstruct than to advance the progress

LETTER XX.

New Formation or Adjustment of the Surface, after the Deluge, so as to produce the Soils fit for Human Residence and Cultivation—And for the present system of Vegetable and Animal Nature.

MY DEAR SYDNEY,

THAT the present surface of the earth on which we are living was not, in all its regions, that primeval surface on which the first plants vegetated, the organic remains in several of the subterraneous rocks satisfactorily evince. The exterior masses of our globe, to the lowest depth that we have been able to explore, appear to consist of a succession of rocks, which have been traced and named, and of which you had a summary notice in the seventh and eighteenth of my former Letters, with a brief intimation of the vegetable and animal fossils which had been found among them. It would be too great a digression from the main and chosen subject of the present correspondence to enter into a review of the geological construction of our earth, although it is an important compartment of its sacred history. But my other topics, and the limits which I have fixed for these pages, compel me to abstain from it, and only to desire you to bear

of real knowledge. By confining our inquiries to more legitimate objects, we shall avoid the delusion into which one of the disciples of this transcendental school appears to have fallen, when he announces with exultation, that the simple laws he has discovered have now explained the universe: nor shall we be disposed to lend a more patient ear to the more presumptuous reveries of another system-builder, who, by assuming that there exists in organized matter an inherent tendency to perfectibility, fancies that he can supersede the operations of divine agency."

Dr. Roget closes his gratifying task with this admirable paragraph. "Happily there has been vouchsafed to us from a higher source, a pure and heavenly light to guide our faltering steps, and animate our fainting spirit, in this dark and dreary search, revealing those truths which it imports us most of all to know; giving to morality higher sanctions; elevating our hopes and affections to nobler objects than belong to earth, and inspiring more exalted themes of thanksgiving and of praise."Roget, An, & Veg. Phy. vol. ii. p. 639–41.

Σ

in mind that the rocks and strata which we have attained to know are distinguishable by a natural separation into two great divisions. Those which, containing no organic remains, give thereby evidence that they were formed and laid down before plants and animals were created; and those which, containing in several of their series and localities fossil remains of organic life, must have been made and deposited at a subsequent period. The first are called the primordial or primary rocks, of which the chief members are granite, gneiss, and mica slate; to which some minor and subordinate ones are in several places attached.

These primordial rocks constitute the greatest bulk of our surface masses. The granite formation appearing everywhere, and often uncovered by others, presents to us many indications that it is the foundation rock, on which all the others have been placed; and that it encompasses the whole circuit of the globe. Not so universal as this, but the next to it in extent and lying upon it, are the gneiss rocks, which, in several countries, predominate on the visible surface; and still less general, yet more so than any other, the mica slate formation appears resting upon the gneiss, where that has preceded it, or on the granite, where no gneiss has been deposited.

Upon these have been placed those which have been called transition and intermediate in their lower masses; and secondary in the upper ones; but to all of which we may apply the term secondary, to distinguish them from a later series, which have been termed tertiary and diluvial. They comprise principally the slate formations, the grauwacke, and old and new red sandstones; the mountain and magnesian limestones; the oolites and lias, up to the great chalk beds, with some others less remarkable.

On these the tertiary and diluvial strata have been deposited, which are more immediately connected with the deluge, as it is in some of these, always nearest the present surface, that the fossil remains of quadrupeds and land animals have been found; which may be presumed to have been those which perished in that overwhelming catastrophe which we have been recently considering.

These recollections will be sufficient for my present subject, which is to lead your attention to the fact, that one great operation and intended result of the deluge was, to

lay a new surface on many parts of the antideluvian one, and to form that peculiar configuration and kind of habitable ground which the human race and our accompanying plants and animals have ever since been occupying and subsisting on.

In forming the new surface of the earth, it was peculiarly important to the future subsistence of the renewed human race, that the convulsions and agitations of the deluge should be so directed, that such earthy masses should be on the uppermost superficies, and in such a fragmentary and comminuted state, as would afterward suit and produce that vegetation, those herbs, shrubs, roots, and trees, from which our subsistence, conveniences, and comforts were afterward to arise. This event never could be a matter of course, because any rock, any sort of ground will not do. The steril granite, the sandy desert, the flinty rock, the watery marsh, the hard limestone, the mere clay, the gravel, the unbroken lava, or the stony ground, will not furnish mankind with what they need for their food and welfare. The earth is suffered in many parts to exhibit all these appearances, in some portions, as if to show us that undirected sequences of things, and what are called chance-formations, would not provide for the human race those supplies, without which they could not increase their numbers, or would do so, but to drag on a miserable life, and to remain in a destitution like that of the Australian savages.*

Nor will every species of soil produce every kind of vegetation. Animals may need only grass; but it was intended that man should feed on corn, rice, and many other nutritious plants and roots that will only grow or flourish on the soil which is adapted respectively to them. The trees also that were to exist for his benefit, and for that of the bird classes, and of the brute animals that live in the shade and forests, equally require suitable ground. It was therefore expedient that

* Dr. Prout very appositely says, that "it is the business of the geologist to point out the changes which our earth has evidently undergone, before it arrived at its present condition :-and to show that all these changes have not resulted from chance; but from the agency of an intelligent Being, operating with some ulterior purpose, and according to certain laws, to which he had chosen to restrict himself."-Dr. Prout's Brid. Treat. p. 178-9.

"Plants and trees, the roots of which are fibrous and hard, and capable of penetrating deep into the earth, will vegetate to advantage in