136 



THE MUSEUM. 



but it has never been authenticated. 

 At various depths, up to twenty feet, 

 in the naturally deposited chalk gravel 

 near the banks of the Somme, in Pi- 

 cardy, have been found multitudes of 

 flint implements, rudely chiselled by 

 the human hand, and apparently de- 

 signed to serve as spear heads. To 

 the same purport has been the discov- 

 ery of certain similar flint implements 

 in bone caves in Sicily and England; 

 but the discoveries are so rare, and 

 surrounded with circumstances which 

 render their authenticity as to time 

 and circumstances so doubtful, that 

 geologists have not thought it neces- 

 sary to account for them in any way 

 but as out of the time of geological 

 development. 



We thus conclude the wondrous sec- 

 tion of the earth's history which is told 

 by geology. We have told it briefly, 

 omitting those many features of its 

 changes in volcanic convulsions, up- 

 heavings of stratas, dislocations, chem- 

 ical actions, atmospheric changes, and 

 other important features which the 

 science of geology teaches us; but we 

 have endeavored to give so much of 

 what geology teaches as bears upon 

 the Biblical account of creation; and 

 we have given it from a point of view 

 which has been put forth and develop- 

 ed by the Darwinian school of modern 

 geologists. Therefore in our attempt 

 to prove that this wondrous history 

 corresponds with the Mosaic account 

 of creation, the reader must bear in 

 mind what was said at the outset, that 

 if science does not appear now to re- 

 concile itself with revelations, it is not 

 because the Word of God is at fault, 

 but because we do not know sufficient 

 of the book of science to give us a true 

 conception of the word that is revealed. 



We have thus, as briefly as possible, 

 sketched out the bare outlines of the 

 history of creation, as presented to us 

 by the science of geology. We see 

 that the earth is replete with the en- 

 tombed remains of animals and vege- 

 tables, from entire trees to lichens and 

 ferns, from coal beds to mere impres- 

 sions of plants, — from the smallest 

 shellfish to the largest reptiles; it is 

 chequered with fragments, from the 

 finest sand to enormous blocks of 

 stone; it exhibits in the materials of 

 its solid strata every degree of impres- 

 sion, from the slightest abrasion of a 

 thin edge or corner to the perfect 

 rounding; it abounds with dislocations 

 and fractures, with injections and fill- 

 ing up of fissures, with elevations and 

 depressions of strata in every position, 

 from horizontal to vertical; it is cover- 

 ed with the wreck and ruin of its up- 

 per surface; and as ancient fires for 

 periods dormant have never been ex- 

 tinguished but still struggle for exit 

 from their numerous volcanic outlets. 

 All these tell a history of their own 

 and present to our mind evidence of 

 the state of the globe we inhabit mil- 

 lions of ages ago, and long before our 

 species became its inhabitants. 



My readers will observe well not 

 only the order and position of the var- 

 ious stratas composing the earth's 

 crust which I have described, but also 

 the nature of the different kinds of or- 

 ganized beings discovered by the geol- 

 ogists in each strata from the lowest 

 upwards. There is no doubt as to 

 the certainty that the remains once 

 lived and moved to the very part where 

 they were discovered, and Vv-hether 

 animals or vegetables, whether de- 

 posited on land or in seas or lakes, all 

 the causes necessary to produce the 



