230 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [xn 



with the supposition of its having arisen, as a modifi- 

 cation of inorganic matter, by natural causes. 



The doctrine of special creation owes its existence 

 very largely to the supposed necessity of making science 

 accord with the Hebrew cosmogony ; but it is curious 

 to observe that, as the doctrine is at present maintained 

 by men of science, it is as hopelessly inconsistent with 

 the Hebrew view as any other hypothesis. 



If there be any result which has come more clearly 

 out of geological investigation than another, it is, that 

 the vast series of extinct animals and plants is not 

 divisible, as it was once supposed to be, into distinct 

 groups, separated by sharply-marked boundaries. There 

 are no great gulfs between epochs and formations — no 

 successive periods marked by the appearance of plants, 

 of water animals, and of land animals, en masse. Every 

 year adds to the list of links between what the older 

 geologists supposed to be widely separated epochs : 

 witness the crags linking the drift with the older ter- 

 tiaries ; the Maestricht beds linking the tertiaries with 

 the chalk : the St. Cassian beds exhibiting an abundant 

 fauna of mixed mesozoic and palaaozoic types, in rocks 

 of an epoch once supposed to be eminently poor in life ; 

 witness, lastly, the incessant disputes as to whether a 

 given stratum shall be reckoned devonian or carbon- 

 iferous, silurian or devonian, cambrian or silurian. 



This truth is further illustrated in a most interesting 

 manner by the impartial and highly competent testimony 

 of M. Pictet, from whose calculations of what percentage 

 of the genera of animals, existing in any formation, lived 

 during the preceding formation, it results that in no 

 case is the proportion less than one-third, or 33 per 

 cent. It is the triassic formation, or the commencement 

 of the mesozoic epoch, which has received this smallest 

 inheritance from preceding ages. The other formations 



