20 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



privileged with the faculties of discovery are, therefore, to be regarded as 

 preordained instruments in making known the power of God, without a 

 knowledge of which, as well as of Scripture, we are told that we shall err. 

 Great and marvellous have been the manifestations of this power imparted 

 to us of late times, not only in respect of the shape, motions, and solar rela- 

 tions of the earth, but also of its age and inhabitants. In regard to the 

 period during which the globe allotted to man has revolved in its orbit, pres- 

 ent evidence strains the mind to grasp such sum of past time with an effort 

 like that by which it tries to realize the space dividing that orbit from the 

 fixed stars and remoter nebulas. Yet, during all those eras that have passed 

 since the Cambrian rocks were deposited, which bear the impressed record 

 of creative power, as it was then manifested, we know, through the interpreters 

 of these "writings on stone," that the earth was vivified by the sun's light 

 and heat, was fertilized by refreshing showers and washed by tidal waves. 

 No stagnation has been permitted to air or ocean. The vast body of waters 

 not only moved, as a whole, in orderly oscillations, regulated, as now, by 

 sun and moon, but were rippled and agitated here and there successively by 

 \vinds and storms. The atmosphere was healthily influenced by its horizon- 

 tal currents, and by ever-varying clouds and vapors rising, condensing, dis- 

 solving, and falling in endless vertical circulation. With these conditions of 

 life, we know that life itself has been enjoyed throughout the same countless 

 thousands of years ; and that with life, from the beginning, there has been 

 death. The earliest testimony of the living thing, \vhether shell, crust, or 

 coral, in the oldest fossiliferous rock, is at the same time proof that it died. 

 It has further been given us to know, that not only the individual but the 

 species perishes; that as death is balanced by generation, so extinction has 

 been concomitant with creative power, which has continued to provide a 

 succession of species; and furthermore, that as regards the vaiying forms 

 of life which this planet has witnessed, there has been "an advance and prog- 

 ress in the main." Geology demonstrates that the creative force has not 

 deserted this earth during any of her epochs of time ; and that in respect to 

 no one class of animals has the manifestation of that force been limited to 

 one epoch. Not a species of fish that now lives, but has come into being 

 c*uring a comparatively recent period : the existing species were preceded by 

 other species, and these again by others still more different from the present. 

 No existing genus of fishes can be traced back beyond a moiety of known 

 creative time. Two entire orders (Cycloids and Ctenoids) have come into 

 being, and have almost superseded two other orders (Ganoids and Placoids), 

 since the newest or latest of the secondary formations of the earth's crust. 

 Species after species of land animals, order after order of air-breathing rep- 

 tiles, have succeeded each other; creation ever compensating for extinction. 

 The successive passing away of air-breathing species may have been as little 

 due to exceptional violence, and as much to natural law, as in the case of 

 marine plants and animals. It is true, indeed, that every part of the earth's 

 surface has been submerged; but successively, and for long periods. Of the 

 present dry land, different natural continents have different Fauna? and 

 Floras ; and the fossil remains of the plants and animals of these continents 

 respectively show that they possessed the same peculiar characters, or char- 

 acteristic fades, during periods extending far beyond the utmost limits of 

 human history. Such, gentlemen, is a brief summary of facts most nearly 

 interesting us, which have been demonstratively made known respecting our 

 earth and its inhabitants. And when we reflect at how late and in how 



