Summary of Argument.

The great reigning Truth in this science, which, like Mont Blanc, towers above all others, and on which all the others lean, is the immense antiquity of the earth. If asked to give a summary of the evidence, which, after no light struggles, has satisfied our own mind, we should perhaps present that which has satisfied many others.

It is a principle in philosophy, that when all things are as if an hypothesis were true, that hypothesis is true, or, is no longer a mere hypothesis, but a truth, a fact.

We have no other proof of the Law of Gravitation, but that all things are, as if such a law existed; we, therefore infer, that it does exist. It explains all the phenomena, and nothing else will.

So with Newton's theory of the Tides, as occasioned by the attraction of the sun and moon. All things are as if the theory was true, and therefore we receive it as true.

Now all things in nature and in science are, as if the Geological Hypothesis was true.

1. The Rocks which compose the crust of the earth, for eight or ten miles in depth, are as if the lowest had been formed, countless ages before the last. If the crust of the earth were one solid, uniform rock of granite, we could not prove that it was not created at once. But when we find it consisting of hundreds, not to say thousands, of beds or layers of rocks, of different kinds, color, texture, composition; when we find them laid as if the lower had been formed before the higher, and the higher more or less out of the lower, with some new elements added; when we find that all the rocks above the primary, are as if formed by sediment in water, sometimes salt, sometimes fresh; find that the primary rocks are as if often broken up by internal fires, before the secondary were deposited upon them, and the secondary again broken up by similar disturbances beneath, before the tertiary were deposited in horizontal layers upon them; when we find that each rock in succession is, as if it had been formed slowly and gradually in a long course of ages, on what was then the surface of the earth, or the bottom of the sea; and when we find the same fixed order of formations, with the same general phenomena in Europe and Asia, in Africa and America, with nothing in nature or science to contradict the theory, why should it not be received as true?

A folio volume could hardly convey to the uninitiated reader

a tythe of the evidence which Geology presents, of the incalculable age of this world.

If we use the numbers from 1 to 40, to represent the different strata, or groups of strata, from the granite upward, permitting the numbers from 1 to 10, to represent the three or four miles of the Primary and Transition series, up to the old Red Sandstone, the lowest of the secondary series; the numbers from 10 to 30, to represent the various intermediate groups, up to the Chalk, the highest of the secondary series; the numbers from 31 to 37, to represent the tertiary series; and from 38 to 40, to represent the diluvium and alluvium, or post tertiary strata, the argument will be more easily understood.*

Now things are as if the Granite, (No. 1,) had been once the surface of the earth. Things are as if numbers 2, 3, 4, &c., the Gneiss, Mica Schist, and Slates, of the Cumbrian and Cambrian systems, had been formed out of fragments of No. 1, differently blended, and some of them metamorphosed by fire. No. 10, or the Old Red Sandstone, wherever found over the earth, has always the same relative position, and is as if formed after the whole series of rocks just named, and that series, it must not be forgotten, is "three or four miles thick.'

The secondary series, designated by the numbers from 10 to 30, is some six miles in thickness, and includes the Mountain Limestone, the Coal formation, the New Red Sandstone, the Lias, Oolite, up to the Chalk. These occur also in the same relative order, in Europe and America, and over the globe. That is, whatever numbers are missing, you never find number 30 under 25, or 20 under 10. If you call the coal formation 15, you will never find it under 14, or any of the inferior numbers. If the Old Red Sandstone, (No. 10,) for instance, is on the surface, no man need dig through it for coal. He might as well dig through granite.

Here then is a regular order of strata. None of the secondary are ever found in a natural position, below the primary; nor of the tertiary below the secondary.

Above the Chalk, we come to the Tertiary series; and as we ascend through the Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene formations, or groups, we find no trace of man, nor of his works. No one of these deposits below 37, we might say 39, has been made since the creation of man. No remains of man, or of any of the pre

• The later and more scientific classification into the Cumbrian, Cambrian, Siluvian, Devonian, &c., series, is not so well adapted to our argument, as the older and more simple classification.

sent race of animals or vegetables, has been found lower than No. 40, the most superficial stratum of the earth's crust.

Objection-"How have these ten miles of crust been examined? Who has dug so deep into the bowels of the earth, and ascertained the order and the deposits to be the same in Europe, Asia and Africa?"

Very little "digging," has been necessary. The Most High God, after laying these strata in their order horizontally, has by internal fires, again and again, broken up the whole crust, and turned up the strata edgewise, so that without very long travel, or very much research, you may see all the strata as reposing one upon another, "cropping out." As before hinted, Dr. Anderson, in his "Course of Creation," says that in his "walk" from the Grampians to the Alps, he finds a revelation of almost the whole series. In the Alps themselves, you may take in at one view several miles of the exposed crust. And so in other high mountains in all other parts of the earth. Whereever Granite shows itself at the top, the whole series above the Granite has been disturbed. Just as if the thick ice of a pond should be broken up by a granite wedge-like rock rising from beneath till the rock appeared above the ice; you would see the whole thickness of the ice on either side. In travelling by rail road, from London to Birmingham, you travel downwards through a mile and a quarter of the earth's crust.* The fossiliferous rocks in Pennsylvania, below the top of the coal measures, are more than 40,000 feet, or seven and a half miles in thickness.†

If to the stratified, you add the unstratified rocks, you may penetrate to more than double the depth. In New England, in passing by rail road from Westfield to Pittsfield, you pass through not less than twenty miles of the thickness of the primary rocks. And there are countries, in the opinion of some geologists, where you can examine more than sixty miles of the earth's crust.§

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So wide of the mark is the common idea, that you can examine the earth's crust, no farther than you can dig" into it. The fact is, the earth itself exposes its crust, so that he who runs (in a rail-car) may read.

But it is objected, "Might not the earth's crust, with all its

• Miller.

† Professor Rogers. Geology of Pennsylvania.

Hitchcock's Elementary Geology, page 69. § Lyell's Principles of Geology, Vol. I., p. 457.

layers, have been created at once, in a moment of time?" No; the slightest glance at the nature, extent and situation of the various fractures, (if there were nothing else), will demonstrate the impossibility of a simultaneous creation. If the whole crust had been formed at once, the internal fires which fractured the under-layers, would necessarily have fractured the higher. As in the pond of ice before supposed, the upheaving rocks could not have broken the under, without, at the same time, breaking the upper surface also. The transition rocks, for instance, could not have been lifted, without lifting the secondary; nor could the secondary have been lifted, without lifting the tertiary and the whole crust, at the same angle.

But the fact is, the lower strata were often lifted and broken, and yet the stratum immediately above, is horizontal and unbroken, as if deposited after the fracture. No. 10, has been lifted up, and No. 15 is laid horizontally on its edges, as if deposited afterwards; and again, No. 15 is tilted up, and No. 20 has settled quietly and peaceably on a level over it, and so on; all things are, as if seasons of convulsion had been followed by seasons of rest; seasons of upheaving, by seasons of subsidence; seasons of paroxysm, by seasons of repose; and this, times almost without number.

The impossibility of all the rocks having been formed at once, will be made still more clear, when we come, under the head of Mineralogy, to consider more particularly the composition and texture, and self-evident origin of these rocks.

At present, we must content ourselves with the remark, that all these various strata are, as we would expect them to be, if formed gradually, by the ordinary laws of nature, acting sometimes slowly, sometimes violently, through countless ages; the lower preceding the higher; and the higher formed more or less out of the lower.

2. The fossils of the Vegetable world are, as if there had been successive creations, age after age, often at long intervals, of different species and genera.

The Transition rocks are, as if few or no vegetables had then existed; or, as if the fossils had been consumed by fire.

The Secondary are full of Vegetable fossils; some strata, as the Coal measures, composed altogether of vegetable matter; as if the earth, under a tropical, or hyper-tropical climate, had been covered for ages with a dense vegetation, ultimately overwhelmed, compressed, solidified and indurated into this useful

mineral. How could this have been, if that stratum had not been at the time, the surface of the earth?

As you ascend the series, you find species and genera of vegetables, after subsisting through many generations, dying out; and entirely new species and genera, after a time, coming in their place, to subsist also for a series of generations, and then disappear, in like manner, to give place to an entirely new set of successors.

The indications are as if, by a change of climate, or by some awful convulsion of sea and land, the vegetables of one period had been almost entirely destroyed, to give place, after a season, to an entirely new creation, adapted to the altered circum

stances.

Geologists think they can trace at least four or five, and some think as many as ten or twelve of these "Epochs of Creation;" as, for instance, after the Silurian, after the Mountain Limestone, after the Oolite, after the Chalk formations, and after the Tertiary series. As a general rule, the Flora of each period is an advance on the previous period; i. e., approaches nearer to the vegetables and plants of the present period.

Professor Agassiz, in a lecture on the trees of America, speaking of the family of the Rose, which includes among its varieties, not only many of the most beautiful flowers, but also the richest fruits, such as the apple, pear, peach, plum, apricot, cherry, strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, &c., states this remarkable fact, that "no fossils or plants belonging to this family have ever been discovered by geologists!" This he regards as conclusive evidence that the introduction of this family of plants upon the earth, was "coeval with, or subsequent to the creation of man, for whose comfort and happiness they seem especially designed."

Now, if as anti-geologists suppose, the deluge of Noah, or any other deluge since Adam, has disturbed the crust of the earth and made deposits some eight or ten miles deep, how happens it that none of the existing vegetables have found their way to one five hundredth part of that depth? How is it that you find no fossils of existing vegetables deeper than the alluvium, or within one or two hundred feet of the earth's surface; and not a single species or genus of vegetables now existing, below the Tertiary series?

The vegetable fossils, therefore, are as if the geological hypothesis of the antiquity and slow formation of the crust of the earth were true. Therefore, we conclude it is true.