PREFACE. XV 



on this subject in a paper in the 22d number of the Edinburgh 

 Philosophical Journal, entitled " Remarks illustrative of the In- 

 fluence of Society on the Distribution of British Animals.' 1 '' 

 Other observers, undervaluing the cause of extinction here assign- 

 ed, have imagined, that the species referred to were destroy- 

 ed by the agency of a violent Deluge, which they consider as 

 identical with the one recorded by Moses. How this deluge 

 could select a few species only as the objects of its vengeance, 

 and leave in safety many species living in the same regions, and 

 possessing nearly the same habits, is a difficulty which the abet- 

 tors of the hypothesis have not yet ventured to explain. Should 

 they attempt to account for the safety of the existing races, by 

 supposing that they were preserved in the Ark, they have still 

 to find proof of the law of exclusion, under the operation of 

 which the now extinct kinds were denied protection. The ex- 

 travagant pretensions of this hypothesis have been pointed out 

 by the author, in a paper inserted in the 28th number of the 

 Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, entitled " The Geological 

 Deluge, as interpreted by Baron Cuvier and Professor Buck- 

 land, inconsistent with the Testimony of Moses, and the Phe- 

 nomena of Nature.'''' 



Among the extinct animals there are multitudes of species, 

 the relics of which do not occur in the superficial strata, and 

 are never associated with the remains of the extirpated or exist- 

 ing kinds. These are found imbedded in solid rock, and seem 

 to have occupied the surface of the earth, when its physical 

 condition and animal and vegetable productions differed greatly 

 from the present order of things. By attending to the specific 

 marks of these remains, the manner in which they are associat- 

 ed, and the strata in which they are imbedded, it is easy to dis- 

 cover that they do not all possess claims to the same degree of 

 antiquity, and that they may be distributed into certain well 

 marked Zoological Epochs. In the arrangement of the strata, 

 inclosing these organic remains, there is a definite order of su- 

 perposition, and there are characters likewise marking groups of 

 different degrees of antiquity. Hence has arisen the idea of 

 Geological Epochs, first distinctly intimated by Lister and 

 Stenon, and elucidated by a host of subsequent observers. 



