O*v GIFT OF Miss Stella Finkelday WORKS BY HUGH MILLER, PUBLISHED BY Q O IT L D AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON. I. THE OLD RED SANDSTONE; OR, NEW WALKS IN AN OLD FIELD. Illustrated with Plates and Geological Sections. 12rao, cloth. Price $1.00. . "It is withal one of the most beautiful specimens of English composition to be found, convey- ing 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 thrilling] v 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. TPIE FOOTPRINTS OF THE CREATOR; OR, THE ASTEROLEPIS OF ST ROM NESS. 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 sucn POWERS OF DESCRIP- TION AS Tins MAX. IV. MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS; OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. AX 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 t>f 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 charac- terize his former works, while it embraces the latest results of geological discovery. But the grout 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. KIT"" The above works may be had in sets of uniform size and style of binding. PUBLISHED BY GOULD AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET THE GREAT TEACHER; or, Characteristics of our Lord's Ministry. With an Intro- ductory Essay by HEMAN HUMPIIBEY, D. D. 12mo, cloth. Trice 85 cents. II. THE GREAT COMMISSION} or, the Christian Church constituted ond charged to convey the Gospel to the world. A Prize Essay. With an Introductory Essay by WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS, D. D. 12mo, cloth. Price $ 1.00. III. THE PRE-ADAMITE EARTH; Contributions to Theological Science. New and Re- vised edition. 12mo, cloth. Price $1.00. IV. MAN PRIMEVAL; or, the Constitution and Primitive Condition of the Human Being. With a finely engraved Portrait of the Author. 12nio, cloth, Prico $1.25. V. PATRIARCHY ; or, The Family, its Constitution and Probation. Contributions to Theo- logical Science. 12mo, cloth. Price $1.25. [?* The immense sale of Dr. Harris's Works, both in this country and in Europe, attest their intrinsic worth and great popularity. (11) 8PHENOPTERIS AFFINIS. A Fora of the Lower Coal Measures. (Restored.) THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS; OR, GEOLOGY IK ITS BEARINGS ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES, NATURAL AND REVEALED. 13 Y HUGH MILLER, Atitfiou otf " THE oi/b RED BANDSTOKE," " FOOTPRINTS os> THE CREATOU," ETC., ETC. 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: S II E L, D O N, B L A K E M A N & 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, GIFT OF u, feY GEORGE C. RAND & AVERY. Electro-Stereotyped ' BY G EO. J. STILES, 23 Congress St., Boston. JAMES MILLER, ESQ., F.R.S.E. PROFESSOR OF SURGERY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. MY DEAR SIR, i 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 jt 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, 1 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 kind- ness that, when set aside by the indisposition which renders it doubtful whether 1 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 atten- VI DEDICATION. tions and advice during the crisis of my illness were certainly every vray 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, I With sincere respect and regard, Yours affectionately, HUGH MILLER. TO THE READER. OP 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 trans- lated 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 Palaeozoic 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 VIII TO THE READER. restricted to the Palaeozoic 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 hyaena; 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, i 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 ME3IORIALS OF THE DEATH AND CHARACTER OP HUGH MlLLER, 7 LECTURE FIRST. THE PALJEONTOLOGICAL HISTORY or PLANTS, ... 33 LECTURE SECOND. THE PAL.EONTOLOGICAL 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 CONTENTS. l'AGK LECTURE SEVENTH. THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. TART I. 283 LECTURE EIGHTH. THE NOACHIAN DELUGE. PART II. . . . . . . 320 LECTURE NINTH. THE DISCOVERABLE AND THE REVEALED, 300 LECTURE TENTH. THE GEOLOGY OP THE ANTI-GEOLOGISTS, 392 LECTURE ELEVENTH. Ox THE LESS KNOWN FOSSIL FLORAS or SCOTLAND. PART I. 429 LECTURE TWELFTH. Ox THE LESS' KNOWN FOSSIL FLORAS OF SCOTLAND. PART II. 4G3 fist of 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. Palaeochorda minor, 49 7. Lycopodium clavatum, 51 8. Equisetum fluviatile, 51 9. Osmundaregalis(.RoyaZ 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 1419. Ferns of the Coal Measures, 58 20. Altingiaexcelsa(A T or/bi& Island Pine), 59 21. East Indian Fern (Asophila perrotetiana), 60 22. Section of Stem of Tree-Fern ( Cyathea), 60 2325. 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 1 XII LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE 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. Cyclophtbalmus Bucklandii (a Fossil Scorpion of the Coal Measures of Bo- hemia), 81 45. Fossil Dragon-Fly, 83 46. Cyathaxonia Dalmani, 88 47. Glyptocrinus decadactylus, , 88 48. Calymene Blumcnbachii, 89 49. Orthisina Verneuili, 89 50. Lituites cornu-arietis, . 89 51. Lingula Lowisii, 89 52. Tort Jackson Shark ( Cestracion Phittippi), 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 laevissimus, 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. Plcsiosaurus dolichodeirus, 108 64. Pterodactylus crassirostris, 108 65. Chelonia Benstedi, 109 66. Palaeophis 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. Trogonthcrium Cuvieri ( Gigantic Beaver), 128 75. Ursus spelacus ( Cave Bear), 128 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XIII PAGE 76. Hyaena spelaea ( Cave Hyeena), 129 77. Asaplius caudatus, 134 78. Orthoceras laterale, 134 79. Spirigerina reticularis, 134 80. Ammonites margaritatus, . i 134 81. Ammonites bisulcatus, . . . . . 134 82. Belemnitella mucronata, 134 83. Belemnites sulcatus, 134 84. Murex alveolatus, 135 85. Astarte Omalii, 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 cannieformis, 165, 92. Megatherium Cuvieri, "... 167 93. Skull of Dinotherium giganteum, 168 94. Ammonites Humphriesianus, 242 95. Encrinites moniliformis, 243 96. Cupressocrinus crassus, 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 102104. Whorled Shells of the Old Red Sandstone, 256 105. Murchisonia bigranulosa, . . . . / 258 106. Conularia ornata, . . 258 107. Calico pattern (Manchester), 259 108. Smithia Tengellyi, 259 109. Apamsean 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 lasvigata (Pharaoh's Leans), 421 XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE 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, . 4C>4 126. Stigmaria, 405 127. 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 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, 185& ME MORTALS 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 ad- vance 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 anticipa- tions, 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 con- veying 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 im- mortal 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 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. press, mDB^'the ^Gnd&it^imes to the remotest provincial news- paper,; ga^. .expression to the .general sorrow in strains of un- wonted ^Uquence ;* apd^ 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 Decem- ber 27th, 1856, the paper of which Mr. Miller had been the editor from its establishment in 1840. It presents an authen- tic 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 liis writings. But he wrought at it too eagerly. Hours after midnight the light was seen MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 9 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, haunjted 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 particu- larly at ease, he read or recited some favorite passages, repeating, on this occasion, with great emphasis, that noble prayer of John Knox,* 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 * The Prayer will be found at the end of these Memorials. 10 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. ^ melancholy interest as his last contribution to this journal. About ten o'clock on Monday morning he took what with him was an alto- gether 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 morn- ing 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 burn- ing sensation on the top of the brain just below the bone. So thor- oughly 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. Bal- four stated his opinion of the case ; told him that he was over-work- ing lib 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 Pro- fessor Miller, and request that he would see her husband. " I ar- ranged," 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. Ho acknowledged having been, night after night, up till very late MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 11 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 evi- denced 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 fol- lowed 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 noth- ing 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 en- joined 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 com- mands he readily promised obedience, not forgetting the discontin- uance of neck rubbing, to which he had unfortunately been pre- vailed to submit some days before. For fully an hour we talked together on these and other subjects, and I left him with no appre- hension 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 par- took 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. 12 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. Miller in the room alone. Another of the paroxysms was on him. His face was such a picture of Jiorror 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 Cow- per's " Castaway," the Sonnet on Mary TJnwin, and one of his more playful pieces, for the special pleasure of his children. Having cor- rected 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.* The deadly bullet had perfor- ated the left lung, grazed the heart, cut through the pulmonary The same revolver proved to be the instrument of death to another person, two days after. The circumstances are thus related in the Edinburgh Witness of December 27 : " A most melancholy event, arising out of the following circumstances, occurred yesterday in the shop of Mr. Thomson, gunmaker. In the beginning of July, last year, Mr. Hugh Miller bought a six-shot revolving chamber pistol, size of ball ninety-two to the pound, from the late firm of Messrs. Alexander Thomson & Son, gunmakers, 16 Union Place. A few days after, he called and said he thought it a little stiff in its workings, and got it made to revolve more readily. The pistol has not been seen by Mr. Thomson since then ; but in his absence a few minutes at dinner yesterday, Professor Miller called about twenty minutes from two, and asked Mr. Thomson's foreman how many of the six shots had been fired. He added, ' Mind, it is loaded.' The foreman, instead of removing the breech or chamber to examine it, had incautiously turned the pistol entire towards his own person, and lifting up the hammer with his fingers, while he counted the remain- ing loaded chambers, he must have slipped his fingers while the pistol was turned to his own head. It exploded, and the ball lodging in the angle of his right eye, he fell back a lifeless corpse. The pistol is a bolted one, which permits of being carried loaded with perfect safety. Having been wet internally, rust may have stopped the action of the bolt. It is a singular fact that Hugh Miller dropped the pistol into the bath, where it remained for several hours. This may account for the apparent iucaution of Mr. Thomson's foreman.." MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. i3 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 sorrow 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 counte- nance 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 torna- do, 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 discov- ered, 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 rec- ollection 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 2 14 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. noble spirit, and some hideous, shapeless phantom overpowered if, 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 un- broken ! These last lines remain as the surest evidence of the mys- terious power that laid his spirit prostrate, and of the noble elements of which that spirit was composed, humble, and reverent, and lov- ing to the last. Yesterday, at the request of friends, and under the authority oi 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- MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 15 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 through- out 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 minis- ters and members of the Free Church. It was the high honor of the writer of these hurried lines to record the part taken by his vener- ated relative in that great ecclesiastical struggle which terminated in the Disruption. At that time it was matter to him of great regret that, as his office was that of the biographer, and not of the histo- rian, 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 judg- ment, 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 sec- tarian.* 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 Avill be found that it was mainly because of his firm belief, whether right or wrong, that the interests of vital godli- ness 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 un- seasonable to allude, he has ceased to take any active part in 16 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. ecclesiastical affairs. He had retired even, in a great measure, from the field of general literature, to devote himself to the study of Ge- ology. 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 gen- eralization, and of pictorial and poetic representation. But the friends of Christianity cannot regret, that since it was the mysteri- ous 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 struc- ture 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 tfiat 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. MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 17 On the 31st of December, two days after the obsequies had been performed, Dr. Hanna resumed the subject in the fol- lowing 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 pres- ence 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 dis- cussions which usually occupy and engross men. The weightiest matter that ever occupied the wisdom of cabinet or the pen of jour- nalist 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 mat- ters 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 sig- nificance 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 im- agination 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, 2* 18 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 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 noti- fied 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 deep- ly in a constitution originally strong, and which kept steadily ad- vancing 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 con- ceptions 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 theol- ogy 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 sud- denly 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 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 19 remembered, as he best deserved it, he had unconsciously been un- dergoing 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 admira- tion 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 incal- culable services they rendered to the Scottish nation ; but that he regarded Knox and Melville as men occupying a yet higher plat" form, as gifted with a yet deeper insight into their country's wants, as, in short, carrying forward and consummating the glo- rious 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 Scot- tish 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, chivalr^is devotion soaring infi- nitely above the partisan. He saw that the Church of Scotland was the creator of the rights and privileges of the people of Scot- land, 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. 20 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 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 think- ers 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, Mrf 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 ^fenty-fi ve 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 discern- ible 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 mod- est, 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 \ic : if a powerful, he was a fair and open antagonist; and whatever MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 21 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 sacri- fice, 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 great- est of living Scotsmen, and the prince of modern philosophers Sir William Hamilton. These last few days have bereft us of an- other 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 occu- pied a foremost place among us, and there is none on whom his man- tle 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 tech- nicalities of science, yet ever rolling along with the same easy, on- ward 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 origi- nality. 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 al- together 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 22 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 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 em- ploying his leisure time among the fossil fishes of the Old Red Sand- stone, and the ammonites Tmd 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 truth- fulness. 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 restora- tions 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 resem- blance 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 Sand- stone " formed an era in the history of fossil geology. That forma- tion 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 hith- erto unknown fishes. A few years later he published his " Foot- prints of the Creator." This is undoubtedly his chef-d'oeuvre, exhibit- ing, 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 develop- ment theory, it is unanswerable ; and as a contribution to our phys- ic-o-theological literature, it ranks, with Chalmers' " Astronomical Lectures," among the finest in this or any other language. Some MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 23 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 So- ciety, at whose meetings he from time to time made known the prog- ress 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 palasontological 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 Frith, on the east coast of Scotland, along the shores of Fife and the Lothians, and on the coast of Ayr- shire and the Frith of Clyde. This last summer he made a tour through the centre of the island, and obtained boreal shells at Buch- lyvie 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 sub- merged 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 24 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 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 imme- diately 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 vege- tables. 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 exam- ple 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 dis- position 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 some- what 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, MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 25 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 pub- lished, on the ecclesiastical controversies which then distracted Scot- land, 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 Croniarty," 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 ecclesi- astical 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 Ptefichthys Mitteri, specimens of which were then under the notice of the section. Dr. Buckland, following M. Agassiz, said that " he had never been so 3 26 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 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 descrip- tion 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 lied Sandstone," with the details of the author's discoveries and researches, more than jus- tified 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 sweet- ness of its composition, as for the purity and gracefulness that per- vade it." The impression made by such a testimony was the more marked, that the reviewer spoke of the writer as a fellow country- man, " 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. MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 27 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 com- paratively few, from having appeared in the columns of a local news- paper. 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 peri- odical 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 mus- cular 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 lecturino-, &' 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 Mm one of their brightest ornaments, and Scotland one of its great- est men. On the Sabbath following Mr. Miller's death, sermons refer- ring 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 cere- monial is from the Edinburgh Witness. FUNEEAL OF MR. HUGH MILLEE. 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 28 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. Lord Provost of Edinburgh ; A. M. Dunlop, Esq., M. P. ; A. Black, Esq., M. P. ; Professors Simpson, Balfour, and Fraser ; Rev. Princi- pal Cunningham ; Professor James Buchanan ; Rev. Drs. Guthrie, Candlish, Hanna, Bruce, Begg, Hetherington, and Wylie; Rev. Messrs. M'Kenzie of Dunfermline, Cameron and Hunter of Nag- poor ; 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 Ceme- tery, 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. Mil- ler 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 read- ing 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 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 29 office-bearer, headed by the Rev. Dr. Guthric 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 So- ciety, of which the lamented deceased was a leading member, the employes in the Witness office, and a large body of the general pub- lic. 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 con- course 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 enter- tained 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, fol- lowed 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 3* 30 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 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 four- teen 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 touch- ing scene occurred at the close of all. After the whole of the com- pany 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 con- jectured, 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 to- gether the claims, too often made to appear divergent, of Science and Religion, and to blend them into one intelligent and reason- able 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.' " MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. 31 A PRAYER BY JOHN K N O X* 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.* O Lord God Almightie, and Father moste mercifull, 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 gar- den 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 adver- sitie, 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 all 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 * See ante, p. 9. 32 MEMORIALS OF HUGH MILLER. whome thowe shuldest shewe this great mercye ? O moste lovynge Lord, forgyve us our unthankfulnes, and all our synnes, for Jesus Christ's sake fc 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 nieke- nes, that whereas they backbyte and slaunder us as evyll doers, they may be ashamed and once stopp their mowthcs, seinge our good conversation in Christ lesu, 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, gath- ered 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 KOCKS, LECTURE FIRST. THE PAL^ONTOLOGICAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. PALAEONTOLOGY, 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 pala3ontologic 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 pres- ent 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 sur- I face, 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 34 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 over- come." " 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 Palajontologist 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 applica- ble 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 ? ^:iy, I reply, but it is not all. I refer to this classifying principle HISTORY OF PLANTS. 35 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 Palaiontological 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 devel- oped on this earth by the successive geologic periods ; and that the by-past productions of our planet, animal and veg- etable, were chronologically arranged in its history, accord- ing to the same laws of thought which impart regularity and order to the works of the later naturalist and phytolo- gists. I need scarce say how slow and interrupted in both prov- inces the course of arrangement has been, or how often succeeding writers have had to undo what their predeces- sors 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 con- sequences 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." 36 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 re- moval ; 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 Paleontology, 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 re- markable 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 anthro- pomorphists, that labor to create for themselves a god of their own type and form, it may be not altogether unprofit- able 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 phytol- ogists 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 HISTORY OF PLANTS. 37 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 pur- pose. As specimens of the strange classification that con- tinued 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 Gold- smith'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, monoco- tyledons, such as the iris, the tulip, and the lily, appear 4 38 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL among dicotyledons, such as the rose, the violet, the sun- flower, 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 divid- ing his animals than into wild and tame. And in Gold- smith, 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 king- dom 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 prog- ress 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 per- fect system of zoology until 1816, when the "Animal King- HISTORY OF PLANTS. o9 dom " 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 alga). 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 Iiliacea3, 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, polycotyledo- nous trees, represented by the coniferaa and cycadacea?. And, last of all, come the Dicotyledonous Exogens, a class to which all our fruit, and what are known as our c< 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 arrange- ment the slow growth of ages, to which this distinguished botanist has given the last finishing touches. And let us THE PAL^EOtfTOLOGICAL now mark how closely it resembles the geologic arrange- ment as developed in the successive stages of the earth's history. Fig. 1 * Silurian. Thallogens. Acrocrens. Old Red. Gymnogens. Carboniferous. Monocotyledons. Permian. Triassic. Oolitic. Dicotyledons. Cretaceous. Tertiary. Geologic [Thai. Ac. Gy. Mon. Die.] arrangement. Lindley's [Thai. Ac. Mon. Gy. Die.] arrangement. THE GENEALOGY OP PLANTS. The most ancient period of whose organisms any trace remains in the rocks seems to have been, prevailingly at * The horizontal lines in this diagram indicate the divisions of the various geologic systems; the vertical lines the sweep of the various classes or sub-classes of plants across the geologic scale, with, so far as has yet been ascertained, the place of their first appearance in creation; while the double line of type below shows in what degree the order of their occurrence agrees with the arrangement of the botanist. The single point of difference indicated by the diagram between the order of occur- rence and that of arrangement, viz., the transposition of the gymnogenotis and monocotyledonous classes, must be regarded as purely provisional. It is definitely ascertained that the Lower Old Red Sandstone has its coniferous wood, but not yet definitely ascertained that it has its true monocotyledonous plants ; though indications are not ^wanting that the latter were introduced upon the scene at least as early as the pines or araucarians; and the chance discovery of some fossil in a sufficiently good HIS TORY OF PLANTS. 41 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 algae, one of the four great orders into which the Thallogens are divided. There appear no traces of a ter- restrial 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 arrange- ments of our geologists, the first or introductory class which occurs in the ascending order is this humble Thallo- genic 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 Zosteracece, still exists in salt water; but the trace is faint and doubtful, and, even were it established, it WQuld 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 LycopodiacesB, 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 fossil- iferous beds we detect a Lycopodite which not a little resembles one of the commonest of our club mosses, Ly- copodium clavatum, with a minute fern and a large str.U ated plant resembling a calamite, and evidently allied to an existing genus of Acrogens, the equisetacea3. In the Middle Old Red Sandstone there also occurs a small fern, with state of keeping to determine the point may, of course, at once retrans- pose the transposition, and briny into complete correspondence the geo- logic und botanic arrangements. 4* THE PAL^ONTOLOGICAL Fig. 2 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 Ilibernicus is very abundant. This fern has been detected also in the Upper Old Red of our own country, mingled with fragments of con- temporary 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 polycotyle- donous tree, and which we find associated with remains of Coc- costeus and Diplacanthus. And here let me remark, that the facts of PalaBontoloirical O science compel us to blend, in some degree, with the classifica- tion of our mo( i crn 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 Cowlcy 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 h:ive been CYCLOPTERIS (Nat size.) HISTORY Otf PLANTS. " trees " as certainly as " herbs, the pataontological bot- antist finds that he has, in consequence, to range his classes, Fig. 3. CONIFER OF THE LOWER OLD RED SANDSTONE. Cromarty. (Mag. forty diameters.) 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 Conifer. 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 inter- 41 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL mediate 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, rep- resented 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 dico- tyledonous 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 Creta- ceous strata they become at once unequivocal in their char- acter, and comparatively abundant, both as individuals and species ; and in the Tertiary deposits they greatly out- number 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 Rosacea?, 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. The parallelism which exists between the course of creation, as exhibited in the animal kingdom, and the classi- fication 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, .he birds, the reptiles, and the fishes. From the lowest zone at which organic HIST011Y OF PLANTS. 45 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 inollusca, articulata, and radiata ; with, however, this differ- ence, that the three great divisions, instead of occurring in a continuous 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 three- fold chain; a fact nicely correspondent with the further Fig. 4.* Silurian. Old Red. Carboniferous. Permian. Triassic. Oolitic. Cretaceous. Tertiary. Recent. Had. Art. Mol. Fishes. Reptiles. Birds. Mammals. ! : i JPla. Mam. !,, Geologic fRad. Art. Mol. Fish. Rep. Bird. Mam. Man.] Arrangement. Cuvier's [Rad. Art. Mol. Fish. Rep. Bird. Mam. Man.] Arrangement. THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS. fact, that we cannot in the present creation range serially-, as either higher or lower in the scale, at least two of these * The horizontal lines of the diagram here indicate, as in Fig. 1, the divisions of the several geologic systems; the vertical lines represent the 46 THE PAL^EUNTOLOGICAL 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 ver- tebrates 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 Sand- stone, 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 de- voted by Cuvier, in his great work, to his second class, the birds. And in the Stonisfield slate, a deposit interposed leading divisions and classes of animals, and, as shown by the formations in which their earliest known remains occur, the probable period of their first appearance in creation; while the double line of text below exhibits the complete correspondence which obtains between their occurrence in nature and the Cuvierian arrangement. The line representative of the Iladiata ought perhaps to have been elevated a little higher than either of its two neighbors. HISTORY OF PLANTS. 47 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 tunes of the Tertiary division do the mammals in their higher orders appear. The great Terti- ary volume corresponds to those volumes of Cuvier which treat of the placenta! 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 geo- logic 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 inter- nal 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 t<, 48 THE PxVL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 revolv- ing in an idle circle, but progressing Godwards, and gradu- ally 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. 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 Fig. 5. OLDHAMIA ANTIQUA; the oldest known Zoophyte. Wrae Head, Ireland. Oldhamia of the Lowest Irish Silurians, a plant-like zoo- phyte somewhat resembling our modern sertularia, has yet HISTORY OF PLANTS. 49 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 ujifossiliferous, 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 up- ward march of the animal kingdom takes its departure at its starting point from a thick forest of algae. 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 algae, 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 Pig. 6. PALJEOCIIORDA MINOR. (One half nat. size.) a noticeable likeness to families familiar to the modern alga3- ologist. The cordrlike plant, Chorda filum, known to our 5 50 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 Palaeontologist as the Palceochorda, or an- cient chorda, which existed apparently in two species, a larger and smaller. The still better known Chondrus cris- pus, the Irish moss or carrageen of our cookery-books, has likewise its apparent though more distant representative in Chondritis, a Lower Silurian algae, 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 lite seem to have resembled, in the group, and in at least their more prominent features, the algae 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 Lycopodiaceae, 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 com- posed exclusively of those little spore receptacles. The num- ber 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 threat- ens too palpably to partake of the poverty of that with which it deals, by a simple illustration. We stand, at low ebb, on the outer edge of one of those iron-bound shores of the Western Highlands, rich in forests of algae, from which, not yet a generation bygone, our Celtic proprietors used to derive a larger portion of their revenues HISTORY OF PLANTS. 51 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 Fiicus 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 Fig. 7. Ffc. 8. LTCOPODIUM CLAVATUM. EQUISETUM FLUVIATILE. smaller species, O. Norvegicus. Now, in the thickly-spread fucoids of this Highland shore we have not a very inadequate 52 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 zos- tera, with its jointed saccharine roots and slim flowers, un- furnished with petals, we would render it perhaps more adequately representative still. 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 Fig. 9. OSMUNDA REGALIS. (Royal Fern.) marshy hollow, a smaller and less hardy species, Eycopo- dium inundatum, takes its place. The marshes themselves bristle thick with the deep green horse tail, Equisetum HISTORY OF PLANTS. 53 fluviatile, with its fluted stem and verticillate series of lineal- branches. 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 Fig. 10. STLVESTRIS. (Scotch Fir.) forests of the country, which may be seen far in the back- ground, clothing with its shaggy covering of deep green the lower hill-slopes. And as we found in the Thallogens of 5* 54 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL that littoral zone over which we have just passed, represent- atives 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. 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 gen- eral 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 doubt- ful 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 Hibemicus (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 fruc- tiferous- spike or cone of the latter, mingled with carbonn- HISTORY OF PLANTS. 55 ceous stems, which, in the simplicity of their texture, and their abundance, give evidence of a low but not scanty Fig. 11. Fig. 12. CALAMITE? Of the Lower Old Red Sandstone. Shetland. (One eighth nat. size.) LTCOPODITE ? Of the Lower Old Red Sandstone. Thurso. (Mag. two diameters.) 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 dele- 56 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL terious ; 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 FERN ? of Lower Old Red Sandstone. Orkney. (Nat. Size.) 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 pres- ent time we know not that a single herbivorous animal HISTORY OF PLANTS. 57 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." 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 dorsifer- ous 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 w T hich 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 dis- cover no nearer analogies than those which connect them with the fern allies. And if with the British Coal Measure 58 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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. Fig. 14. Fig. 15. Fig. 16. Fig. 17. Fig. 18. Fig. 19. FERNS OP THE COAL MEASURES.* Rising in the scale from the lower to the higher vege- table 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 * Fig. 14, Ncuropteris Loshii. Fig. 15, Neuropteris gigantca. Fig. 16, Neuropteris acuminata. Fig. 17, Sphcnopteris afflnis. Fig. 18, Pecoptcris hctcrophylla. Fig. 19, Sphenopteris dilitata. HISTORY OF PLANTS. 69 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 struc- ture, 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 Fig. 20. ALTINGIA EXCELSA. Norfolk Island Pine. (Young Specimen.) 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 GO THE PALJiONTOLOGICAL Fig, 21. no existing representatives; and in this class the fossil botanist finds puzzles and en- igmas with which hitherto at least he has been able to deal with only indifferent success. There is a view, however, suf- ficiently simple, which may be found somewhat to lessen, if not altogether remove, the dif- ficulty. 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 Rosaceae, the Le- guminosae, the Myrtacese, and many others, we have plants of all sizes, from the creeping EAST INDIA TREE-FERN.* (Asophila perrotetiana.) SECTION OP STEM OF TREE-FERN. t (Cyathea.) * Fig. 21, r a, Rachis, greatly thickened towards its base by numerous aerial roots, shot downwards to the soil, and which closely cover the stem. t Fig. 22, m, Cellular tissue of the centre of rachis; d, similar tissue of HISTORY OF PLANTS. 61 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 RosaceaB or the Leguminosa3, 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 pani- cles 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. the circumference ; /, v, darkly -colored woody fibres of great strength, the "internal buttresses" of the illustration; e, the outer cortical portion formed by the bases of the leaves. 6 62 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL Now, not a few of the more anomalous forms of the Coal Measures seem to be simply fern allies of the types Lycopo- dacea3, MarsileaceaB, 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 pre- Fig. 23. Fig. 25. LEPIDODENDRON STERNBEKGII.* * Fig. 23, Branching stem, with bark and leaves. Fig. 24, Extremity of branch. Fig. 25, Extremity of another branch, with indication of cone- like receptacle of spores or seed. HISTORY OF PLANTS. sent, 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 exist- ences 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 frame- work; nay, so strangely were they pervaded throughout by the coniferous characteristics, that it seems difficult to determine whether they really most resembled the acro- genous 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 coniferae as to the Lycopodites. The Fig. 28. Fig. 27. CALAMITES MOUGEOTII. SPHENOPHYLLUM DENTATUM. Calamites, reed-like, jointed plants, that more nearly re- semble the EquisetaceaB than aught else which now exists, 64 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 coni- fers. 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 Coniferas as to its lowlier representatives, the Mar- sileaceae. 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. Let me attempt introducing you more intimately to one of those plants which present scarce any analogy with exist- ing 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 Fig. 28. SIGILLARIA RENIFORMIS. period: no fewer than twenty-two diiferent 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 HISTORY OF PLANTS. Go 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 sculp- tured 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 ($. flexuosa) the sculpture consists of round knobs, surrounded Fig. 29. SIGILLARIA RENIFORMIS. (Nat. size.) ^ by single rings, like the heads of the bolts of the ship car- penter ; 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 6* 66 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL of distinctly formed elliptical links drops down the middle of each flute-; in yet another ($. oculata) the carvings are of an oval form, and, bearing each a round impression in its Fig. 30. SIGILLARIA PACHYDERMA. (One fourth nat. size.) centre, they somewhat resemble rows of staring goggle-eyes; while the carvings in yet another species (8. pachy derma) 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^urious 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 stig- .HISTORY OF PLANTS. 67 mata ; and the appearance of the whole, as it radiated from the central mass, whence the carved trunk proceeded, some- what resembled that of an enormous coach-wheel divested Fig. 81. STIGMARIA FICOIDES. (One fourth nat. size.) 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 Cycadeae, 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 68 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL Fig. 32. 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 Cala- mites, and all the Lepidodendra, ex- hibited the most delicate sculpturing. In walking among the ruins of this ancient flora, the Palaeontologist al- most feels as if he had got among the broken fragments of Italian pal- FAVULARIA TESSELLATA. , -, , 1.^1 aces, erected long ages ago, when the (One fifth nat, size.) architecture of Rome was most ornate, and every moulding was roughened with ornament ; and in Fig. 33. LEPIDODENDRON OBOVATUM. (Nat. size.) attempting to call up in fancy the old Carboniferous forests, HISTORY OF PLANTS. 69 he has to dwell on this peculiar feature as one of the most Fig, 34. Fig. 35. CYCAS BEVOLUTA. ZAMIA PUNGEN8. (Recent.) Fig. 38. ZAMIA FENEONIS. (Portland Oolite.) prominent, and to see, in the multitude of trunks darkened 70 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL above by clouds of foliage, that rise upon him in the pros- pect, the slim columns of an elder Alhambra, roughened with arabesque tracery and exquisite filagree work. In the Oolitic flora we find a few peculiar features intro- duced. The Cycadeai, 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 Fig. 37. MANTELLIA NIDIFORMIS. (Portland Dirt-bed.) 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 ap- pearance 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, JPmws 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 tunes of the Oolite, HISTORY OF PLANTS. 71 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 Cycadea3 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, Fig. 38. EQTTISETUM COLUMNAEE. (Nat. size.) 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 equi- setum, 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 Favu- 72 THE PALJEONTOLOGICAL laria, no Knorria or Halonia. Those monsters of the veg- etable world that united to the forms of its humbler produc- tions 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 indica- tion of the Liliaceae, or lily-like plants, of plants, too, allied to the Pandanacese 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 some- what general name of an Endogenite. With these there occur a few disputed leaves, which I must persist in regard- Fig. 39. Fig. 40. CARPOLITHES CONICA. CARPOLITHES BUCKLANDII.* (Reduced one third.) ing as dicotyledonous. But they formed, whatever their true character, a very inconspicuous feature in the Oolitic * No true fossil palms have yet been detected in the great Oolitic and Wealden systems, though they certainly occur in the Carboniferous and Permian rocks, and are comparatively common in the earlier and middle Tertiary formations. Much cannot be founded on merely negative evidence ; but it would be certainly a curious circumstance should it be found that this graceful family, first ushered into being some time in the later Palaeo- zoic periods, was withdrawn from creation during the Middle ages of the earth's history, to be again introduced in greatly more than the earlier pro- portions during the Tertiary and recent periods. HISTORY OF PLANTS. 73 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 dicoty- ledonous 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 speci- mens of fossil woods which he had picked up in the Egyptian Desert, in order that I might if possible determine their ACER TRILOBATUM.* (Miocene of (Eningen,) age, I told him, ere yet the optical lapidary had prepared them for examination, that if they exhibited the coniferous * Leaf of a tree allied to the maple. 74 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 micro- scope, they were found to exhibit the peculiar dicotyledonous Fig. 42. TTLMUS (Miocene of Bohemia.) structure as strongly as the oak or chestnut. And Lieu- tenant 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, * Leaf of a tree allied to the elm. HISTORY OF PLANTS. 75 but also to one of the comparatively modern formations of the Tertiary. 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 coniferse, previously so abundant, occupy any longer a prominent place. On the other hand, the^dicotyledonous herbs and trees, previously so inconspic- uous 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; Fig. 43. PALMACITES LAMANONIS. (A Palm of the Miocene of Aix.) 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 70 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 vegeta- tion 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 Coniferae, Equisetaceae, and Cycadaceaa 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 sur- faces, 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 HISTORY OF PLANTS. 77 British floras, that which occurs in the southwest 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 rhino- ceros, extinct for untold ages, forced their way through their tangled branches ; and the British tiger and hyaena 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 thou- sand 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 Pakeontologic science, testimony so invariable, that no great Palaeontol- ogist was ever yet an asserter of the development hypothe- sis. With the existing trees of our indigenous woods it is probable that in even these early times a considerable por- tion of the herbs of our recent flora would have been asso- ciated, 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 vege- 78 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL tation 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 singu- larly 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 profit- ably 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 nega- tive 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 Rosacea3,_ 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 hum- bler varieties form the staple food of the grazing animals, scarce appear in the fossil state at all. They are pecu- liarly plants of the human period. Let me instance one other family of which the fossil bot- HISTORY OF PLANTS. 79 anist 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 Rosacese, 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 odorif- erous ; 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 marjorum, 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 marjorum sweet in shepherd's posic found, And lavender, whose spikes of azure bloom Shall be crcwhile in arid bundles bound, To lurk amid her labors of the loom, And crown her kerchiefs clean with mcikle 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. 80 THE PAL^EONTOLOGiCAL 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 (Laven- dula vera) yields the well known lavender oil, and another (L. latifolio) the spike oil. The peppermint (Meantlia viridus) furnishes the essence so popular under that name among our confectioners ; and one of the most valued per- fumes of the East (next to the famous Attar, a product of the Rosaces) is the oil of the Patcliouly plant, another of the labiates. Let me indulge, ere quitting this part of the subject, in a single remark. There have been classes of re- ligionists, 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 inno- cent and delicate. The excellent but mistaken Pascal re- fused to look upon a lovely landscape ; and the Port Roy- alist 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 HISTORY OF PLANTS. SI any of these luxuries, not even of that "ointment of spiken- ard, very precious" (a product of the labiate family), with which Mary anointed his feet. Though it may at first seem a little out of place, let us an- ticipate 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 Fig. 44. CYCLOPHTHALMTTS BUCKLANDI. (A fossil Scorpion of the Coal Measures of Bohemia.) 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 Meas- ures, and in genera suited to its character. Among these the scorpions take a prominent place, carnivorous arach- 82 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL nida3 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, manu- scripts, 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 dis- agreeable pests of the European settler, or of war vessels on foreign stations. I have among my books an age-em- browned 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 cock- roaches ; 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 Blattce were as little nice in their eating as the devourers of the "Tea Table Miscel- lany," they would not have lacked food amid even the un- productive 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 Phas- mia, 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 Phasmidce and grasshoppers would have lived on the tender shoots of the less rigid HISTORY OF PLANTS. 83 plants their contemporaries ; the Tinea, probably on ligne- ous 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 car- rig. 45. FOSSIL DRAGON-FLY. Solenhofen. nivorons 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 84 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 corp^ in a crystal coflin, along with fragments of flower-bearing herbs and trees. The first of the Bombycidse too, insects that may be 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 HISTORY OF PLANTS. 85 called into existence, in order, apparently, that he might enter in favoring circumstances upon his two earliest avoca- tions, and be in good hope a keeper of herds and a tiller of the ground ; and as another family of plants the Rosacese 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 distin- guishes 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 geolo- gist 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." 8 LECTURE SECOND. THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 myselfj 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 a're 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 corre- sponding parts, ranged, as in the cuttle-fishes, the clams, and HISTORY OF ANIMALS. 87 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, Avho, 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 won- derfully 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 re- sembled 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 88 THE PAL^ONTOLOGICAL Fiir. 46. CYATHAXONIA DALMANI. Fiff. 47, variety and beauty among these Silurian crinoids; and, from the ornate sculpture of their groijied and ribbed cap- itals and slender columns, the Gothic architect might borrow not a few striking ideas. 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 Paleozoic division ended and the Secondary division be- gan nature, in forming this class of creatures, discarded the number four, and adopted in- stead the number six, the great leading idea of the star itself was equally retained in corajs of the modern as in those of the more ancient type. 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 contri- vances of his craft anticipated, with not a few besides which lie 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 GLYPTOCRINUS DECADACTYLUS. (Hudson River Group, Lower Silurian.) HISTORY OF ANIMALS 89 exclusively of their remains, gradually died out in the times of the Old Red Sandstone, and disappeared for ever from creation a/ter the Carboniferous Limestone had been de- . 48. CALYMENE BLUMENBACHII. posited. The Paleontologist 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 Fig. 49. Fig. 50. Fig. 51. ORTElsrNA. VERNEUILI. LITTJITES COKNTT-ARIETIS. LINGTTLA LOWISII. certainty the early rocks in which they occur. And yet, though formed in a fashion that perished myriads of ages 8* 90 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 de- tected in the terebratula of our Highland lochs and bays, and some in the linguke 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 gast'eropoda and lamelli- branchiata, 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 Zos- teracea, 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 maybe but merely apparent, the first HISTORY OF ANIMALS. 91 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 inverte- brate 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, may be accepted as not inadequate representatives of this order as it now exists. The Port Jackson shark, however, a creature that to the Fig. 52. PORT JACKSON SHARK. (Ccstracion Plullippi.) 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 hi creation than any of our British placoids. And here let me adduce another and very remarkable instance of the correspondence which obtains between tho sequence in which certain classes of organisms were first ushered into being, and the order of classification adopted, 92 THE rAL.EONTOLOGICAL 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 Cartila- ginous and Osseous ; and these last he mainly divided into the hard or spiny-finned fishes, and the soft or joint-finncd fishes. He placed the sturgeon in his Cartilaginous series ; while in his soft-finned order he found a place for the Polyp- terus 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 Pala3ontological 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 cartilagi- nous 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 consis- tency of their skeleton, by a continuous or nearly continu- ous 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 HISTORY OF ANIMALS. pectinated at their lower edges like the teeth of a comb, and a Cycloid order, composed of fishes whose scales, like Fig. 53.* Silurian. Old Kcd. Carboniferous. Permian. Triassic. Oolitic. Cretaceous. Tertiary. .Flaccid. Ganoid. Ctenoid and Cycloid. Geologic [Pki. Gnn. Cto. Cyc.] arrangement. Agassiz's [l-'la. Gun. Cte. Cyc.] arnuigcmcnt. THE GENEALOGY OF FISHES. those of the salmon, are defined all around by a simple con- tinuous margin ; and no sooner was the diA- ision 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 ver- tebral 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 * Here, as in the former diagrams (Figs. 1 and 4), the horizontal lines represent the divisions of the great geologic systems ; while the vertical lines indicate the sweep of the several orders of fishes across the scale, and the periods, so far as has yet been determined, of their first occurrence in. creation. 94 THE PAL^ONTOLOGICAL two orders. During the times of the Old Red Sandstone, of the Carboniferous, of the Permian, of the Triassic, and Fig. 54. AMBLYPTERUS MACROPTERUS. From the Coal at Saarbruck. (A Ganoid cf the Carboniferous System.) of the Oolitic Systems, all fishes, though apparently as Fig. 55. LEBIAS CEPHALOTES. Cycloids of Aix. (Miocene.) numerous individually as they are now, were comprised in the ganoidal and placoidal orders. The period of these HISTO11Y OF ANIMALS. 9,3 orders seems to have been nearly correspondent with the reign, in the vegetable kingdom, of the Acrogens and Vis. 56. PLATAX ALTISSIMUS. A Ctenoid of Monte Bolca. (Eocene.) Gymnogens, with the intermediate classes, their allies. At length, during the ages of the Chalk, the Cycloids and 96 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 circum- stance. 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 Le- pidosteus 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 un- reckoned 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 Rosacea3 and the Grasses, that scarce preceded man in their appearance, so there are families of fishes that seem pecu- liarly to belong to the human period. Of these, there is a family very familiar on our coasts, and which, though it HISTOEY OF ANIMALS. 97 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 Sal- monidse and the Pleuronectida?, families to which the salmon and turbot belong, were ushered into being as early as the times of the Chalk ; but the GadidaB 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. 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 Rnks of connection which no longi 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 Paleontologists for a time failed to detect that of the fish at all, we reckon those of the genera Coccosteus, Pterich- thys, 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 exem- plified the general type of their class were extremely long lived. The Celacanths were reprocluced }n 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 9 98 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL in at least one species to exist still. It would almost seem as if some such law influenced the destiny of genera in this Fig. 57. PTERICHTHYS ODLONGUS. (One half nut. size.) 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 were, 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 HISTORY OF ANIMALS. 99 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 old- est fishes, was gradually reduced, till in more recent periods, and in the present creation, the fishes lost all this herpeto- logical relationship, and were at last endowed with characters- which contrast as much, when compared with those of rep- tiles, 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." The ancient fishes seem to have received their fullest development during the Carboniferous period. Their num- ber 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, how- ever, 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 Paleontologist finds 110 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 100 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL PLEUI? ACANTHUS L.EVISSIMCS. (Coal Measures.) (Half 11 at. size.) 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 contem- porary, 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 gigan- tic 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 tor- ture. The defensive armor of the period, especially that of its ganoids, seems to have been as remarkable for its powers of resistance as the offensive must have been HISTORY OF ANIMALS. 101 for their potency in the assault ; and it seems probable that in the great strength of the bony and jenamelle^. armptuc e> of this order of fishes we have the seScre^ J - lanus crenatus. Now, this genus, so amaz- ingly abundant at the present tune in every existing sea, and whose accumulated remains bid fair to exist as great limestone rocks in the future, had no existence in the Palaeozoic BALANUS CRA8SU8. ex T TA. _o ^.t or secondary ages. It nrst 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 Palceonto- logical features of the human period. But enough for the present of circumstance and detail. 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 Rawlin- sons seen aught so extraordinary as that long procession of being which, starting out of the blank depths of the by- gone 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 HISTORY OF ANIMALS. 137 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 de- duced, are as various as the hopes and fears, the habits of thought, and the cast of intellect, of the several interpre- ters 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 assert ors of the development hypothesis who can see in the upward progress of being only the operations of an incomprehend- ing and incromprehensible 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 intel- ligence 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 imperceiving creatures ; and they go, not together into the ditch, but 12* 138 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL 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 exist- ence 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 per- haps 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 J ' but no, From scarped cliff and quarried stono, 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, HISTORY OF ANIMALS. 139 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 Avithin 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, sug- gests 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 dili- gently seek Him." And in looking along the long line of being, ever rising in the scale from high'er to yet higher manifestations, or abroad on the lower animals, whom instinct never deceives, can we hold that man, immeas- urably 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 expec- tant of a happy future, which he is never to see ? As- suredly 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. 140 THE PAL^EONTOLOGICAL HISTORY, ETC. We nave 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 church-yards 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 pro- pensities. 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 an- tiquity 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 theo- logical field. He was marked, too, by what his soberer 142 THE TWO IlECORDS, 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 ah 1 the great cities of the empire were lighted with oil burnt in lamps, he held that the time was not distant when a carburetted hydro- gen 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 ade- quately 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 esti- mating 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 stand- ing of geology is all but universally recognized, and the vast periods of time which it demands fully conceded, MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 143 neither geologist nor theologian conld, 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. An- drews, that "the writings of Moses do not fix the antiquity of the globe." In 1814, ten years after the date of the St. Andrews' lec- tures, 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 144 THE TWO RECORDS, 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 sur- veyor, possessed of but the ordinary education of men of MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 145 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 pur- chased at the toy shop, he had collected, instead, a hoard of spherical fossil terebratulse, 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 sup- porting 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; 13 14.6 THE TWO RECORDS, or, in other words, to the great Secondary division. Tlu; 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 Lon- don Clay. But both ends of the geological scale, compris- ing those ancient systems older than the Coal, and repre- sentative 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 Palae- ozoic from the Secondary division, and that which sepa- rates 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 MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 147 labors, both ends of the geologic scale have been com- pleted. Sir Roderick Murchison addressed himself to the formations older than the Coal, more especially to the Upper and Lower Silurian systems, from the Ludlow rocks 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 estab- lished 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 sys- tems 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 148 THE TWO RECORDS, 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 deter- mine 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 prog- ress 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 reconcilia- tion f 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 hol- rowed into deep caverns, in short, presenting all the MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. i i'J 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 refer- ence to at least human history, the age of the old coast-line and terrace must be a very remote one. Though geologi- cally 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 Friths 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 at- tained 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 13* 150 THE TWO RECORDS, 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 nave excavated caves one third deeper, three thousand nine hundred years. And both periods united (six thousand MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 151 five hundred years) more than exhaust the Hebrew chro- nology. 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 em- bedded in the subsoils beneath the old coast-line are exactly those which still live in our seas. 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 Spitz- bergen; and the. abundance in which they were developed on the submerged plains and hill-sides of what are now Eng- land 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 ex- plored, 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 proximo), 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 152 THE TWO RECORDS, 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 Fig. 87. Fig- 88. ASTAKTE AKCT1CA. XELLIKA PHOXIJUA. light by hundreds, on the spot evidently where the indi- viduals 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 Eu- rope had been brought, this tellina and astarte had in- creased 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 even more than its present breadth of surface. During this ancient time, more remote by many cen- turies 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 Eng- MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 153 land 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-hyaena, the cave-tiger, and the cave-bear, we know that the descen- dants 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 Fig. 89. NORWEGIAN SPRUCE. (Abies excelsa.) 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 154 THE TWO RECORDS, 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 tuska and numerous portions of skeletons. It was calculated that these remains could not have belonged to fewer than five hundred individual mam- moths 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 gen- erations. The further fact, that remains of this ancient elephant (Eleplias 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. 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 tho> 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 pec- ten. 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 MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 155 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, dark- ness, and death has occurred, to break the line of succes- sion, 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 Bib- lical creation and the previous period of death are repre- sented as coextensive with the globe, they are represented, according to that of Dr. Smith, as limited and local. They 156 THE TWO RECORDS, 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 alto- gether 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 com- plete, that when first penetrated by the light, that pene- tration could be described as actually a making or creating of light ; and that, while life obtained all around its pre- cincts, C9uld yet be thoroughly void of life. A local dark- ness 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 MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 157 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 may- hap a few scores of animals and plants. What, then, is the scheme of reconciliation which I would venture to pro- pound ? 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 14 158 THE TWO RECORDS, 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 Bitle, 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 nar- rative in the first chapter were what is assuredly meant by fie 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, MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. Io9 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 hi the rocks. Let me, however, pause for a moment, to re- mark 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 abso- lutely 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 de- scribed as greatest, on what grounds are we to hold that it may riot 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 geo- logical scale naturally divides into three great parts. There are many lesser divisions, divisions into systems, forma- tions, 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 differ- ence, are simply three, the Paleozoic, or oldest fossil- 160 THE TWO RECORDS, iferous division ; the Secondary, or middle fossiliferous di- vision ; and the Tertiary, or latest fossiliferous division. In the first, or Palaeozoic division, we find corals, crus- taceans, molluscs, fishes, and, in its later formations, a few reptiles. But none of these classes of organisms give its leading character to the Paleozoic ; 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 Paleozoic from the Secondary and Tertiary periods was its gorgeous flora. It was emphatically the period of plants, " of herbs yield- ing seed after their kind." In no other age did the world ever witness such a flora: the youth of the earth was peculiarly a gr.een and umbrageous youth, a youth of dusk and tangled forests, of huge pines and stately arau- carians, of the reed-like calamite, the tall tree-fern, the sculp- tured 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 fur- naces 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 MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. IGi 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 foot- prints 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 rivera 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 H* 1G2 THE TWO RECORDS, 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 ren- dered, in the margin, great sea monsters. The Tertiary period had also its prominent class of exist- ences. 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 abun- dant 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 associ- ated 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 MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 103 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-hyaena belonged to the same formidable group, with at least two species of great oxen (Hos longi- frons and JBos ^imigenius], 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 Lon- don 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 con- ceptions, respecting the facts on which I build, a degree of tangibility wnich otherwise they could not possess. 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 course 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 sand- 164 THE TWO RECORDS, stone strata, which, though existing as mere mutilated portions of their former selves, would yet fail to find Fig. 90. LEPIDODENDRON STERNBERGII. accommodation in that great apartment. One of these fossil trees, a noble araucarian, which occurs in what MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 165 is known as the Granton quarry, is a mere fragment, for it wants both root and top, and yet what remains is sixty-one Fig. 91. CALAMITES CANN^EFORMIS. feet in length by six feet in diameter ; and beside it there lies a smaller araucarian, also mutilated, for it wants top 1G6 THE TWO RECORDS, and branches, and it measures seventy feet in length by four feet in diameter. I saw lately, hi a quarry of the Coal Meas- ures about two miles from my dwelling-house, near Edin- burgh, the stem of a plant (Lepidodendron Sternbergii), allied to the dwarfish club mosses of our moors, consid- erably thicker than the body of a man, and which, reckon- ing 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 diminu- tive 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. Passing onwards in the gallery from the great plants of the Paleozoic 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 me- diaBval 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 resem- bling those of the mammals. Here we see a winged dragon, that, armed with sharp teeth and strong claws, MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 167 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 herbivor- ous 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. 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 Fig. 92 MEGATHERIUM CUVIERI. 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 dinothcrium, with the bent tusks in its lower 168 THE TWO RE COll DS, 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 Fig. 93. SKULL OF DINOTHERIUM GIGANTEUM. (Miocene.) massive heads and spreading horn-cores of the J3os primi- genius, 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 Palaeozoic plants, the great Secondary reptiles, or the great Tertiary mammals. J last passed through this wondrous gallery at the time when the attraction of the Great Exhibition had filled Lon- don with curious visitors from all parts of the empire ; and a group of intelligent mechanics, fresh from some manufac- turing town of the midland counties, were sauntering on MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 169 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 satis* factory, and we passed on together to the terminal apart- ments 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, u 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 lime- stone." 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 col- lection), 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 per- 15 170 THE T\VO RECORDS, plexing 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 char- acter of its contents, the course of creation. I ask you to remember that, had there been human eyes on earth during the Paleozoic, 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 mam- mals, 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 scrip- tural narrative, I ask further, whether (of course, making due allowance for the laxity of the terms botanic and zoo- logical 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. MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 171 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 luiman 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 geo- logic 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 exist- ences, vegetable or animal, by which they were most promi- nently 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 Paleozoic 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 tune.* * It will be seen that there is no attempt made in this lecture to represent the great Palaeozoic division as characterized throughout its entire extent by a luxuriant flora. It is, on the contrary, expressly stated here, that the "plants of its earlier and terminal formations (i. e. those of the Silurian, Old Red, and Permian Systems) were few and small," and that "it was 172 THE TWO RECORDS, 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 Cre- taceous or later deposits. It was during those middle ages t only during the protracted eons of the carboniferous period that they received their amazing development, unequalled in any previous or succeeding time." Being thus express in my limitation, I think I have just cause of complaint against any one who represents me as unfairly laboring, in this very com- position, to make it be believed that the whole Palaeozoic period was characterized by a gorgeous flora; and as thus sophistically generalizing in the first instance, in order to make a fallacious use of the generalization in the second, with the intention of misleading non-geologic readers. Such, however, as may be seen from the following extracts from the "Proceed- ings of the Academy of Natural Science at Philadelphia," is the charge preferred against me by a citizen of the United States. " Mr. William Parker Foulkc asked the attention of the Society to a lec- ture by Mr. Hugh Miller, recently republished in the United States under the title of ' The Two Records, Mosaic and Geological/ and made some remarks upon the importance of maintaining a careful scrutiny of the logic of the natural sciences Mr. Miller teaches that, in the attempt to reconcile the two ' records/ there are only three periods to be accounted for by the geologist, viz. 'the period of plants; the period of great sea monsters and creeping things ; and the period of cattle and beasts of the earth ; ' and that the first of these periods is represented by the rocks grouped under the term Palaeozoic, and is distinguished from the Second- ary and Tertiary chiefly by its gorgeous flora; and that the geological 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 general reader, not familiar with the details of geological arrangement, could not fail to infer from such a statement, used for such a purpose, that the Palamoic rocks arc regarded by geologists as forming one group representative of one period, which can properly be said to be distinguished as a whole by its gorgeous flora; and that it is properly so distinguished for the argument in question. It was familiar to the Academy, as well as to Mr. Miller, that from the carboniferous rocks downward (backward in order of time), there have been discriminated a large number of periods, differing from one another in mineral and in organic remains ; and that the proportion of the carboniferous era to the whole series is small, whether we regard the thick- ness of its deposits or its conjectural chronology. It is only of this car- boniferous era, the latest of this series, that the author's remarks could bo MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 173 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 true; and even of this, if taken for the entire surface of the earth, it could not be truly asserted that ' the evidence is so complete as to be patent to all,' that the quantity of its vegetable products distinguishes it from the earth's surface during the era in which we live. To confound by implica- tion all the periods termed Palaeozoic, so as to apply to them as a whole what could be true, if at all, only of the carboniferous period, is a fallacious use of a generalization made for a purpose, and upon a principle not pro- perly available for the writer's argument," &c. So far the " Proceedings " of the Academy. This, surely, is very much the reverse of fair. I, however, refer the matter, without note or comment (so far at least as it involves the ques- tion whether Mr. Foulke has not, in the face of the most express state- ment on my part, wholly misrepresented me), to the judgment of candid and intelligent readers on both sides of the Atlantic. I know not that I should recognize Mr. Foulke as entitled, after such a display, to be dealt with simply as the member of a learned society who differs from me on a scientific question; nor does his reference to the " carboniferous era " as " the latest of the " Palaeozoic " series," and his apparent unacquaintancc with that Permian period, in reality the terminal one of the division during which the Palaeozoic forms seem to have grad- ually died away, in order to give place to those of the Secondary division, inspire any very high respect for his acquirements as a geologist. Waiving, however, the legitimacy of his claim, I may be permitted to repeat, for the further information of the non-geological reader, that the carboniferous formations, wherever they have yet been detected, justify, in the amazing abundance of their carbonized vegetable organisms, the name which they bear. Mr. Foulke, in three short sentences, uses the terms " carboniferous era," "carboniferous rocks," "carboniferous period," four several times; and these terms are derived from the predominating amount of carbon (elaborated of old by the plants of the period) which occurs in its several formations. The very language which he has to employ is of itself a con- firmation of the statement which he challenges. For so " patent " is this carboniferous character of the system, that it has given to it its universally accepted designation, the verbal sign by which it is represented wherever it is known. Mr. F. states, that " if taken for the entire surface of the earth," it cannot be truly asserted that the carboniferous flora preponderated over that of the present time, or, at least, that its preponderance could not bo 15* 174 THE TWO RECORDS, 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 compara- rcgardcd as " patent to all." The statement admits of so many different meanings, that I know not whether I shall succeed in replying to the special meaning intended by Mr. Foulkc. There are no doubt carboniferous de- posits on the earth's surface still unknown to the geologist, the evidence of which on the point must be regarded, in consequence, not as " patent to all," but as nil. They are witnesses absent from court, whose testimony has not yet been tendered. But equally certain it is, I repeat, that wher- ever carboniferous formations have been discovered and examined, they have been found to bear the unique characteristic to which the system owes its name, they have been found charged with the carbon, existing usually as great beds of coal, which was elaborated of old by its unrivalled flora from the elements. And as this evidence is certain and positive, no one would be entitled to set off against it, as of equal weight, the merely nega- tive evidence of some one or two deposits of the carboniferous age that did not bear the carboniferous character, even were such known to exist; far less is any one entitled to set off against it the possibly negative evidence of deposits of the carboniferous age not yet discovered nor examined ; for that would be simply to set off against good positive evidence, what is no evidence at all. It would be to set off the possible evidence of the absent witnesses, not yet prccognosced in the case, against the express declara- tions of the witnesses already examined, and strong on the positive side. Surely an American, before appealing, in a question of this kind, to the bare possibility of the existence somewhere or other of barely negative evidence, ought to have bethought him of the very extraordinary positive evidence furnished by the carboniferous deposits of his own great country. The coal fields of Britain and the European continent had been wrought for ages ere those of North America were known, and for ages more after it had been but ascertained that the New, like the Old World, has its Coal Measures. And during the latter period the argument of Mr. Foulke might have been employed, just as now, and some member of a learned society might have urged that, though the coal fields of Europe bore evidence to the former existence of a singularly luxuriant flora, beyond comparison more vast than the European one of the present day, the same could not be predicated of the American coal fields, whose carbonized remains mfyJit be found representative of a flora which had been at least not more largely developed than that existing American flora to which the great western forests belong. Now, however, the time for any such argument has gone MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 175 lively small in bulk and low in standing ; in its conclud- ing 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 Pleisto- cene ages, that the myriads of its huger giants, its dino- theria, 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 by; the American coalfields have been carefully explored; and what is the result? The geologist has come to know, that even the mighty forests of America are inconsiderable, compared with its deposits of coal ; nay, that all its forests gathered into one heap would fail to furnish the materials of a single coal seam equal to that of Pittsburg ; and that centuries after all its thick woods shall have disappeared before the axe, and it shall have come to present the comparatively bare, unwooded aspect of the long civilized countries of Southern Europe, it will continue to derive the ele- ments of its commercial greatness, and the cheerful blaze of its many millions of domestic hearths, from the unprecedentedly luxurious flora of the old carboniferous ages. Truly, very wonderful are the coal fields of Northern America ! If geologists inferred, as they well might, that the extinct flora which had originated the European coal vastly outrivalled in luxuriance that of the existing time, what shall be said of that flora of the same age which originated the coal deposits of Nova Scotia and the United States, deposits twenty times as great as all those of all Europe put together! 176 THE TWO RECORDS, 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 Sab- bath 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 integ- rity 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 main- tained, 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 MOSAIC AND GEOLOGICAL. 177 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 exist- ence. 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 origi- nally in the image of God, let God be your pattern and 178 THE TWO RECORDS, ETC. example. Engaged in your material and temporal employ- ments, 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 prog- ress, 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 com- mon 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 com- pliance 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 repre- sented 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 hi those of the Odyssey and JEneid, in which heroes relate in the courts of princes the story of their adventures, there is but narrative and description ; in the 180 THE MOSAIC VISION 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 origi- nally 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 OF CREATION. 181 ingenious biblical scholars of modern Germany. We find him stating the question, in his Bibel und Astronomic (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-icitness, 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 composi- tions. 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 him- self, and the whole circumstantials of his condition, have already come historically into being. 3STor 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 his- tory 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 knowl- edge is the Divine knowledge ; and the medium between 16 182 THE MOSAIC VISION 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 theologi- cally 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 back- wards ; 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 Geol- OF CREATION. 183 ogy." * 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 * Such is also the view taken by the author of a recently published work, " The Genesis of the Earth and of Man." " Christian philosophers have been compelled to acknowledge," says this writer, " that the Mosaic ac- count of creation is only reconcileable with demonstrated facts, by its being regarded as a record of appearances ; and if so, to vindicate the truth of God, we must consider it, so far as the acts arc concerned, as the relation of a revelation to the sight, which was sufficient for all its purposes, rather than as one in words ; though the words are perfectly true as de- scribing the revelation itself, and the revelation is equally true as showing man the principal phenomena which he would have seen had it been pos- sible for him to be a witness of the events. Further, if we view the nar- rative as the description of a series of visions, while we find it to be perfectly reconcileable with the statement in other parts of Scripture, that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, we remove, with other dif- ficulties, the only strong objection to the opinion of those who regard the ' six days ' as periods of undefinable duration, and who may even believe that we are now in the ' seventh day/ the day of rest or of cessation from the work of creation. Certainly, ' the day of God/ and ' the day of the Lord/ and the ' thousand two hundred and threescore days/ of the Revelation of St. John, and the ' seventy weeks ' in the Prophecy of Daniel, are not to be understood in their primary and natural senses," &c., c. 184 THE MOSAIC VISION 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 ad- dressed, 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 ad- mission 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 Thamnmz," when, according to Milton's noble version, " The love talo Infected Sion's daughters with like heat, Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch Ezckiel 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 OF CREATION. 185 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 direc- tions from God how to proceed in constructing the Taber- nacle 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 : 4 According unto the appearance [literally sight, vision] which the Lord had showed unto Moses, so he made the candlesticks (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 archi- tecture 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 16* 186 THE MOSAIC VISION ensure a facsimile in any such case, the originals, or rep- resentations 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 candle- stick, 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 engrav- ings and illustrated Bibles became comparatively common, representations of the branched candlestick taken from the written description have been common also. The candle- stick on the arch of Titus, though not deemed an exact representation of the original one described in the Penta- teuch, 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 candle- stick, 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 Taber- nacle. " 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 rep- resenting 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 OF CREATION. 187 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 un- thinking 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 de- scribed 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 ade- quate reason. What man had actually seen, though but in dream or picture, would of course be described as seen ly 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, 188 THE MOSAIC VISION 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, a& by Dr. Kurtz and the author of this treatise ; nay, it has been recognized by not a few of their opponents also. Gran- ville Penn, for instance, does not scruple to avow his belief, in his elaborate " Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaic Ge- ologies," 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, 4 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 eyt) would have seen on the fourth OF CREATION. 189 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 KESPECT, indeed, there is a re- semblance. The historian everyichere 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, magni- tudes, 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 no make men omniscient. It does not teach them the scientific truths of astronomy, or chemistry, or botany, nor any science as such. Inspiration is con- cerned 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 geolo- gists who have recognized an optical or visual character in the Mosaic history of creation. And certainly the infer- ence 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 reve- lation of scenes and events pictorially exhibited. Failing, 190 THE MOSAIC VISION 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 de- scribed, 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 burn- ing 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 OF CREATION. 191 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 geol- ogy, 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, Avhen it had come to discover this key to the description, would find it opti- cally 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 unwit- tingly, on the principle of iTume's famous argument, and 192 THE MOSAIC VISION 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 igno- rance and barbarism of the past. What would skeptics such as Hobbes and Hume have said of an opening chapter in Gene- sis that would describe successive periods, first of mol- luscs, star-lilies, and crustaceans, next of fishes, next of rep- tiles 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 assur- edly 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 discover- ing 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 pro- phetic exhibition of the pre-Adamic scenes and events by vision seems to be the one best suited for the opening chap- ters 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 OF CREATION. 193 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 ancj. 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 cre- ation ; 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 pf his- tory, which they foreshadowed and symbolized ; but, pn the 17 104 THE MOSAIC VISION 1 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 proph- ecy, 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 ques- tion 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 per- haps 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 OF CREATION. 195 great kingdoms of nature, plant and animal, we might safely do so in the belief that the claim will be one day as univer- sally 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 cer- tainly still to discover as the events necessary to the inter- pretation 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 devel- oped 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 196 THE MOSAIC VISION 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 Paleozoic 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 pic- torially, 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 appar- ently in water, passed into a semi-fluid state, became strangely waved and contorted, and assumed in its com- position 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 OF CREATION. 107 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 un- seen 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 Convul- sions, 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 con- tinued 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 sta- tioned within the cloud, all, as I have said, must have been 17* 198 THE MOSAIC VISION 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 arch- angel 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, OF CREATION. 199 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 seconci 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 ap- pearances. The invertebrate life of the Silurian period, or even the ichthyic life of the earlier Old Red Sandstone period, must have been comparatively inconspicuous from any sub-aerial 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 200 THE MOSAIC VISION 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 terres- trial 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 sem- blance of a flock at rest." And if such aerial 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 OF CREATION. 201 period, unlike any of the preceding ones, was remarkable for its great tracts of terrestrial surface, and for its extra- ordinary 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 dis- tant 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 wonder- fully 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 command- ing station from the conspicuous atmospheric phenom- ena 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 illus- tration, drawn from one of the calculations of Newton, made in an age when comets were believed to be solid 202 THE MOSAIC VISION 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 OF CREATION. 203 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, fleaking 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 may- hap a little more of cloud and moisture, and a great deal more of heat. The earth would have been a vast green- house 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 intro- duced, and reptiles received their greatest development, and those Tertiary ages during which the gigantic mammals possessed the earth and occupied the largest space in cre- ation. 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 204 THE MOSAIC VISION 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 com- pletion 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 represent- ative 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 Palaeo- zoic period, once during the Carboniferous period, once dur- ing 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 hun- dred, 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, OF CREATION. 205 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 sugges- tive. " 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 essen- tially 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 twi- light." 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 sim- ply as parts of the exhibited scenery, or rather as forming the measures of the apparent tune 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 18 206 THE MOSAIC VISION 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." * The days must have been prophetic days, introduced, indeed, into the panorama of creation as mayhap mere openings and drop- pings of the curtain, but not the less symbolic of that series of successive periods, each characterized by its own pro- ductions 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 sup- pose 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 * "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." OF CREATION. 207 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 begin- ning 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 208 THE MOSAIC VISION manifold, an upper sea of great waves, separated from those beneath by the transparent firmanent, and, like them too, impelled in rolling masses by the wind. A mighty advance has taken place in creation ; but its most conspicu- ous optical sign is the existence of a transparent atmosphere, of a firmanent stretched out over the earth, that sepa- rates the waters above from the waters below. But dark- ness 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 hori- zon, 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 car- boniferous 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 clus- tering 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 OF CREATION. 209 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 un- erring instinct pursues unremittingly its few simple ends, the support and preservation of the individual, the propa- 18* 210 THE MOSAIC VISION OF CKEATION. gation 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 eleva- tion 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 212 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS 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, corrobora- tive of the inference. "That well constructed edifice," says the natural theologian, "cannot be a mere lusus naturae, 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 estab- lished 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 w T hich exist on earth had a begin- ning, 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 ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 213 any of the beings themselves which composed the succes- sion. 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 sig- nification 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, accord- ing 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 214 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS 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 ex- panded, 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 iperiod, 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 mam- mals 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 THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 215 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 com- mon 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 contempo- raries, 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 mammalifer- ous crag, or than shells such as Scrobieidaria 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 ; * whereas the group characteristic of the older Miocene deposits, largely developed in those districts of France which bor- der 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 * Forbes and Hanley enumerate one hundred and sixty bivalves, and two hundred and thirty-two univalves, in all three hundred and ninety- two species, as the only known shell-bearing molluscs of the existing Brit- ish seas. 216 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS basin, the Calcaire grossicr; 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 Palaeozoic 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 ap- parently 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 predeces- sors 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 indi- cate 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 recog- nized truth on both sides of the controversy, that as some- thing now exists, something must have existed forever, and as it must now be not less surely recognized, that that some- thing 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 ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 217 nicely organized plants and animals begin to be ? Hith- erto 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 Avhich 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 hypo- thesis, with which I have elsewhere dealt at considerable length, that while the facts of the geologist are demonstra- bly 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 fur- ther, that very intelligent men for their age, such as Gerardes the herbalist (1597), and Hector Boece the his- torian (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 19 218 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS 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 exist- ence. 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, icould 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 ON TIJE TWO THEOLOGIES. 219 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 satis- factorily shown. By specimen after specimen has every stage of growth and every degree of development been ex- emplified ; and the Paleontologist has come as thoroughly to know the creatures, in consequence, under their various changes from youth to age, as if they had been his contem- poraries, 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 grassier ', 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 ex- tinct 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, 220 ' GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS no connecting links, no such connected series of speci- mens 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 geneal- ogies 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 prog- ress, 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 dis- poses 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. Know- ing 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 ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 221 as that perfect future state which faith delights to contem- plate. 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 Paleozoic 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 19* 222 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS 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 Palaeozoic ; 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 mar- supial 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 argu- ment. And now yet another creation, that of the Ter- tiary 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, notwith- standing 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 ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 223 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 philoso- pher who clung to it less sagacious in divining the future than even the ordinary man ? But, in truth, the existing premises, whoUy 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. 224 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS 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 de- pendency, 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 bril- liant point is now less read than he was in the days of our grandfathers, you will all remember the elegant stanzas in w r hich he states the usual claims of the species only to ridi- cule 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 reduc- ing 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 ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 225 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 ? ancRne 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 Washing- ton 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 import- ance, 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 Repre- sentatives 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." 226 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS 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 indif- ferent 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 writir%? The "equal eye," in such a scheme, would of necessity be an indifferent one. Against this strange doctrine, though in some measure coun- tenanced 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 Cow- per, was their "heart," protested against it too. Poor Gold- smith, 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 feel- ing of appropriation, that "calls the delightful scenery ail 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 ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 227 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 analo- gies which unite the animal world into a harmonious whole, he remarked, that in one existence or being all these analo- gies 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 im- parts 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 intel- lectually 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 hi the flesh." As may be afterwards shown, he is God's image manifested in the flesh ; and an image or like- ness is a manifestation or making evident of that which it represents, whether it be an image or likeness of body or of mind. 228 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS 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 won- derful 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,"* "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 ver- tebrates, 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 Palaeozoic age are in no respect the ancestors of the reptiles of the Secondary age, nor does man descend from * PRINCIPLES OF ZOOLOGY : touching the Structure, Development, Distribution, and Natural Arrangement of the Races of Animals, living and extinct. With numerous Illustrations. For the Use of Schools and Colleges. Part I., " Comparative Physiology." By Louis AGASSIZ and AUGUSTUS A. GOULD. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 229 the mammals which preceded him in the Tertiary age. The link by \vflich they are connected is of a higher and imma- terial 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 ^^pon the surface of our globe. MAN is THE END TOWARDS WHICH ALL THE ANIMAL CREATION HAS TENDED FROM THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF THE FIRST PALAEO- ZOIC 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 resem- blance 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 oppo- 20 230 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS sition, 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 am- biguity 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 muroenidse of recent times have no more ; at least one of their number, the murama 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 nil ages of the world, is four. And this typical number is the human number. There is as certainly a typical num- ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 231 ber 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 vertebrae in the neck. The three-toed sloth has nine cervical verte- bra ; 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 ante- typical 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 Avhich 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 instru- ment. 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 232 GEOLOGY IK ITS BEARINGS fish, of a reptile, of a bird, of a mammiferotis 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 ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 233 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, contem- plate the filial and loyal bee, the home-building, wedded, and divorceless swallow, and, above all, the manifoldly intelligent ant tribes, with their commonwealths and con- federacies, 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 dis- covery, 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 Paleozoic, Secondary, and Tertiary dispensations of creation were charged, like the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations of grace, with the 20* 234 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS " shadows of better things to come." The advent of man simply as such was the great event pel-figured 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. lie 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 be 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 rail is drawn aside, and an infinitely grander vista stretches ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 235 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 skeptif , 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 tAvo 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 23G ' GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS, ETC. 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. PART II, UP till the introduction of man upon our planet, the humbler creatures, his predecessors, formed but mere figures in its various landscapes, and failed to alter or affect by their works the face of nature. They were conspicuous, not from what they did, but from what they were. At a very early period reefs of coral, the work of minute zoophytes, whitened the shallows of the* ocean, or encircled with pale, ever broadening frames, solitary islands green with the shrubs and trees of extinct floras; but, though products of the animal world, they were not built up under the direction of even an instinctive intelli- gence, but were as entirely the results of a vegetative process of mere growth as the forests or reed brakes of the old Carboniferous savannahs. At a later time an ant hill might be here and there descried, rearing its squat, brown pyramid amid the recesses of some Oolitic forest ; or, in a period still more recent, the dam of the gigantic beaver might be seen extending its minute eye-like circlet of blue amid the windings of some bosky ravine of the Pliocene age; or existing as a little mound-skirted pond, with the rude half-submerged cottage of the creature, its architect, rising beside it, on some rivulet of the Pleisto- cene. But how inconsiderable such works, compared with the wide extent of prospect in whicli they were included ! 238 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS How entirely inconspicuous rather, save when placed in the immediate foreground of the pictures into whose composition they entered 1 Not until the introduction of man upon earth do we find a creature whose works sensibly affect and modify the aspects of nature. But Avhen man appears, how mighty the change which he effects! Immediately on his creation he takes under his care the vegetable productions of use and show : it becomes his business to keep and dress a garden. He next becomes a tiller of fields, then a planter of vineyards : here he cuts down great forests ; there he rears extensive woods. He makes himself places of habitation ; and busy cities spring up as the trophies of his diligence and skill. His labors, as they grow upon the waste, affect the appearance of vast continents ; until at length, from many a hill-top and tall spire, scarce a rood of ground can be seen on which he has not built, or sown, or planted, or around which he has not erected his walls or reared his hedges. Man, in this great department of industry, is what none of his predecessors upon the earth ever were, "a fellow-worker" with the Creator. He is a mighty improver of creation. We recognize that as improvement which adapts nature more thoroughly to man's own necessities and wants, and renders it more pleasing both to his sense of the a3Sthetic and to his more material senses also. He adds to the beauty of the flowers which he takes under his charge, to the delicacy and fertility of the* fruits; the seeds of the wild grasses become corn beneath his care ; the green herbs grow great of root or bulb, or bulky and succulent of top and leaf; the wild produce of nature sports under his hand ; the rose and lily broaden their disks and multiply their petals ; the harsh green crab swells out into a delicious golden-rinded apple, streaked with crimson ; the productions of his kitchen garden, strangely metamorphosed to serve the ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 239 uses of his table, bear forms unknown to nature ; an occult law of change and development inherent to these organ- isms meets in him with the developing instinct and ability, and they are regenerated under his surveillance. Nor is his influence over many of the animals less marked. The habits which he imparts to the parents become nature, in his behalf, in their offspring. The dog acquires, under his tutelage, the virtues of fidelity to a master and affection to a friend. The ox and horse learn to assist him in the labors of the fields. The udders of the cow and goat distend beneath his care far beyond the size necessary in the wild state, and supply him with rich milk, and the other various products of the dairy. The fleece of the sheep becomes finer of texture and longer of fibre in his pens and folds; and even the indocile silkworm spins, in his sheltered conservatories, and among the mulberry trees which he has planted, a larger, and brighter, and more glistening cocoon. Man is the great creature-worker of the world, its one created being, that, taking up the work of the adorable Creator, carries it on to higher results and nobler developments, and finds a field for his persevering ingenuity and skill in every province in which his Maker had expatiated before him. He is evidently to adopt and modify the remark of Oken God's image " manifest in the flesh." Surveyed from the special point of view furnished by this t peculiar nature of man, unique in creation, all the past of our planet divides into two periods; the period, inclusive of every age known to the geologist, during which only the Creator wrought ; and the period during which man has wrought, and to which all human history belongs. In such a view we are presented with two sets of works, those of the Creator-worker, and those of the creature-worker; and the vast fund of materials on which the natural theo- 240 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS logian frames his arguments demonstrative of design or contrivance, assumes a new significancy and interest when employed as evidence that there exists a certain correspond- ence of nature and intellect between the two workers, human and Divine. The ability of accomplishing the same ends by the same means, in other words, of thinking and acting in the same practical tract, indicates a similarity, if not identity, of intellectual nature. In the Chinese centre of civilization, for instance, printing, gunpowder, the mari- ner's compass, with the various chemical and mechanical arts of elegant life, were originated without concert with the European centre of civilization, simply because in China, as in Europe, the same human faculties, prompted by the same tastes and necessities, had expatiated in the same tracts of invention, and had, as a consequence, educed the same results. I was much struck, when spending half an hour in a museum illustrative of the arts in China, by the identity of these with our own, especially in the purely mechanical departments ; and again, when similarly em- ployed in that apartment devoted, in the British Museum, to the domestic utensils of the ancient Egyptians. The identity of the more common contrivances which I wit- nessed, with familiar contrivances in our own country, I regarded as altogether as conclusive of an identity of mind in the individuals who had originated them, as if I had actually seen human creatures at work on them all. One class of productions showed me that the potter's wheel and the turning lathe had been known and employed as cer- tainly in China and ancient Egypt as in Britain. Another, that their weaving processes must have been nearly the same. The Chinese know, for instance, as well as ourselves, that patterns can be delicately brought out, as in the damasks, without the assistance of color, simply by expos- ing silken or flaxen fibre at different angles to the light ; ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 241 and they have fallen, as their work shows, on the right methods of producing it. And the Egyptians anticipated us in even our most homely household contrivances. They even fermented their bread and trussed their fowls after the same fashion; and thus gave evidence, in these familiar matters, that they thought and contrived " after the manner of men." Now, in acquainting myself with the organisms of the geologic periods, I have been similarly but more deeply impressed by what I must be permitted to term the human cast and character of the contrivances which they exemplified. Not only could I understand the principles on which they were constructed, but further, not a few of them had, I found, been actually introduced into works of human invention ages ere they were discovered in the rock. What the great Creator-worker had originated in the Paleozoic and Secondary periods, had been in after times originated by the little creature-worker, wholly unaAvare that his con- trivance had been anticipated, and was but a repetition of a previously executed design. In the later geologic ages the organization of the various extinct animals so nearly resembled that of the animals which still live, that we may regard it as not inadequately represented by the illustrations of Paley. A few such exceptional contrivances appear among the mammals of the Tertiary as that formed by the huge pickaxe-like tusks of the Dinotherium, or a few such extraordinary modifications of the ordinary mammalian framework as that exhibited in the enormously massive pel- vic arches and hinder limbs of the Mylodon and Megathe- rium. But not until we pass into the deposits of the Sec- ondary period, and get among its cephalopoda, do we find a mechanism altogether unlike any with which we are acquainted among living organisms. As admirably shown by Buckland, the partitions which separate into chambers all the whorls of the ammonite except the outermost one, 21 242 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS were exquisitely adapted to strengthen, by the tortuous windings of their outer edges, a shell which had to combine great lightness with great powers of resistance. Itself a continuous arch throughout, it was supported by a series of continuous arches inside, somewhat resembling in form the groined ribs of the Gothic roof, but which, unlike the pon~ derous stone work of the medieval architects, were as light as they were strong. And to this combination of arches there was added, in the ribs and grooves of the shell, yet another element of strength, that which has of late been introduced into iron roofs, which, by means of their corru- gations, ribs and grooves like those of the ammonite, are made to span over wide spaces, without the support of beams or rafters. Still more recently, the same principle has been introduced into metallic boats, which, when corru- Fig. 94. AMMONITES HTTMPRIESIANUS. (Oolite.) gated, like the old ammonites, are found to be sufficiently strong to resist almost any degree of pressure without the wonted addition of an interior framework. Similar evi- dences of design appear in the other extinct molluscs pecu- ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 243 liar to these geologic ages, such as the hamite and turrilite. The belemnite seems to have united the principle of the float to that of the sinker, as we see both united in some of our modern life boats, which are steadied on their keel by one principle, and preserved from foundering by the other; or as we find them united by the boy in his mimic smack, which he hollows out and decks, in order to render it suffi- ciently light, while at the same time he furnishes it with a keel of lead, in order to render it sufficiently steady. The old articulata abound in marks of ingenious mechanical O contrivance. The trilobites were covered over back and Fig. 96. ENCHINITES UONILIFOEUI8. (Tn'as.) CUPRESSOCRINUS CRASSUS. (Old Red Sandstone.) head with the most exquisitely constructed plate armor : but as their abdomens seem to have been soft and defence- less, they had the ability of coiling themselves round on the approach of danger, plate moving on plate with the nicest 244 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS adjustment, till the rim of the armed tail rested on that of the armed head, and the creature presented the appearance of a ball defended at every point. In some genera, as in Calymene, the tail consisted of jointed segments till its ter- mination ; in others, as in Illaonus, there was a great caudal shield, that in size and form corresponded to the shield which covered the head ; the segments of Calymene, from the flexibility of their joints, fitted close to the cerebral run ; while the same effect was produced in the inflexible shields, caudal and cephalic, of Illa3nus, by their exact cor- respondence, and the flexibility of the connecting rings, which enabled them to fit together like two equal-sized cymbals brought into contact at every point by the hand. Nor were the ancient crinoids less remarkable for the amount of nice contrivance which their structures exhibited, than the ancient molluscs or crustaceans. In their calyx-like bodies, consisting always of many parts, we find the princi- ple of the arch introdued in almost every possible form and modification, and the utmost flexibility secured to their stony arms by the amazing number of the pieces of which they were composed, and the nice disposition of the joints. In the Pentacrinites of the Secondary period (see Fig. 97) an immense spread of arms, about a thousand in number, and composed of about a hundred thousand separate pieces, had all the flexibility, though formed of solid lime, of a drift of nets, and yet were so nicely jointed, tooth fitting into tooth in all their numerous parts, and the whole so bound together by ligament, that, with all the flexibility, they had also all the toughness and tenacity, of pieces of thread network. Human ingenuity, with the same purposes to effect, that is, the sweeping of shoals of swimming animals into a central receptacle, would probably construct a somewhat similar machine ; but it would take half a life- time to execute one equally elaborate. OX THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 245 Iii carefully examining, for purposes of restoration, some of the earliest ganoidal fishes, I was not a little impressed Fig. 97.* (Laos.] * a, Articulating surface of joint. I, Fragment of column, exhibiting laterally the tooth processes, so litted into each other as to admit of 21* 246 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS by the peculiar mechanical contrivances exhibited in their largely developed dermal skeletons. In some cases these contrivances were sufficiently simple, resembling those which we find exemplified in the humbler trades, originated in comparatively unenlightened ages ; and yet their simplicity had but the effect of rendering the peculiarly human cast of the mind exhibited in their production all the more obvious. The bony scales which covered fishes such as the Osteolepis and Diplopterus of the Old Red Sandstone, or Fig. 98. , CHAMFERED SCALES. (OsteoleplS.) b, IMBRICATED SCALES. (GlyptoleplS.) (Old Bed Sandstone.) the Megalichthys of the Coal Measures, were of consider- able mass and thickness. They could not, compatibly with flexure without risk of dislocation. The uppermost joint shows two lateral cavities for the articulation of auxiliary anus. ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 247 much nicety of finish, be laid over each other, like the thin horny scales of the salmon or herring ; and so we find them curiously fitted together, not like slates on a modern roof, but like hewn stones on an ancient one. There ran on the upper surface of each, along the anterior side and higher end, a groove of a depth equal to half the thickness of the scale ; and along the posterior side and lower end, on the under surface, a sort of bevelled chamfer, which, fitting into the grooves of the scales immediately behind and beneath Fig. 99. SCALE OF IIOLOPTYCHIUS GIGANTEUS. (Nat. size.) (Old Red Sandstone.) it, brought their surfaces to the same line, and rendered the shining coverings of these strongly armed ganoids as smooth and even as those of the most delicately coated fishes of the present day. In the scales of the Celacanth family the arrangement was different. Though exceedingly massive in some of the genera, they were imbricated, like those of 248 GEOLOGY IN ITS HEARINGS the Pangolins ; and were chiefly remarkable for the combi- nation of contrivances which they exhibited for securing the greatest possible amount of strength from the least possible amount of thickness. The scales of Iloloptyclims giganteus may be selected as representative of those of the family to which it belonged. It consisted of three plates, or rather, like the human skull, of two solid plates, with a diploe or spongy layer between. The outer surface was curiously fret- ted into alternate ridges and furrows ; and hence the name of the genus, wrinkled scale / and these imparted to the exterior plate on which they occurred, and which was formed of solid bone, the strength which results from a cor- rugated or fluted surface. Cromwell, in commissioning a friend to send him a helmet, shrewdly stipulated that it should be a "fluted pot ;" and we find that the Holoptychius had got the principle of the fluted pot exemplified in the outer plate of each of its scales, untold ages before. The spongy middle plate must, like the diploe of the skull, have served to deaden ths vibrations of a blow dealt from the . 100. SECTIOy OF SCALE OF HOLOrTYCIIITJS. (Mag. eight diameters.) outside. It was a stratum of sand bags piled up in tho mid- dle of a plank rampart. Their innermost table was formed, like the outer, of solid bone, but had a different arrange- ment. It was properly not one, but several tables, in eueh ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES. 249 of which the osseous fibres, spread out in the general plane of the scale, lay at a diverse angle from those of the table immediately in contact with it. The principle was evidently that of the double-woven cloth, or cloth of two incorporated layers, such as moleskin, in which, from the arrangement of the threads, what a draper would term the tear of the one layer or fold lies at a different angle in the general fabric from that of the other. We are thus presented, in a single fossil scale little more than the eighth part of an inch in thickness, with three distinct strengthening principles, the principle of Cromwell's "fluted pot," the principle of a rampart lined with plank, and filled with sand bags in the centre, and the principle of the double-woven fabrics of the "moleskin" manufacturer.* The contrivances exem- plified in the cuirass of the Pterichthys were scarce less remarkable. It was formed of bony plates, strongly arched above, but comparatively flat beneath ; and along both its anterior and posterior rims a sudden thickening of the plates formed a massive band, which served to strengthen the entire structure, as transverse ribs of stone are found streng- thening Gothic vaults of the Norman age. The scale covered tail of the creature issued from within the posterior rim, which formed around it a complete though irregular ring, arched above and depressed beneath; whereas the anterior rim, to which the head was attached, was incom- plete when separated from it. It was, in its detached state, an arch wanting the keystone. A keystone, however, pro- jected outwards from the occipital pkte of the head; and, * Perhaps one strengthening principle more might be enumerated as occurring in this curious piece of mechanism. In the layers of the nether plate, the fibres, instead of being laid in parallel lines, like the threads in the moleskin of my illustration, seem to be felted together, an arrange- ment which must have added considerably to their coherency arid powers of resistance. 250 GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS as it had to form at once the bond of connection between the cerebral armature of the creature and its cuirass, and to complete the arch formed by the strengthening belt or rib of the latter, it curiously combined the principle of both the dovetail of the carpenter and the keystone of the mason. Viewed from above, it was a dovetail, forming a strong attachment of the head to the body ; viewed in the trans- verse section, it was an efficient keystone, that gave solidity and strength to the arched belt or rib. Both keystone and dovetail are comparatively simple contrivances ; but I know not that they have been united in the same piece, save in the very ancient instance furnished by the strong bony plate which connected the helmet of the Pterichthys with its cuirass. A brief anecdote, yet further illustrative of the frame- work of this ancient ganoid, may throw some additional light on what I have ventured to term the human cast of the contrivances exhibited in the organisms of the old geologic ages. After carefully examining many specimens, I published a restoration of both the upper and under side of Pterichthys fully fifteen years ago. The greatest of living ichthyologists, however, misled by a series of speci- mens much less complete than mine, differed from me in my conclusions; and what I had represented as the creature's under or abdominal side, he represented as its upper or dorsal side; while its actual upper side he regarded as belonging to another, though closely allied, genus. I had no opportunity, as he resided on the Con- tinent at the time, of submitting to him the specimens on which I had founded; though, at once certain of his thorough candor an