THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 249 
perhaps accumulating more rapidly than those of our lakes, 
forests, or rivers? Yes, unquestionably, in friths and estua- 
ries, in the neighborhood of streams that drain vast tracts of 
country, and roll down the soil and clay swept by the winter 
rains from thousands of hill-sides; but what is there to lead 
to the formation of sudden deposits in those profounder depths 
of the sea, in which the water retains its blue transparency 
all the year round, let the waves rise as they may? And da 
we not know that, along many of our shores, the process of 
accumulation is well nigh as slow as on the land itself? The 
2xisting creation is represented in the little land-locked bay, 
where the crustacea harbor so thickly, by a deposit hardly 
three feet in thickness. In a more exposed locality, on the 
opposite side of the promontory, it finds its representative in 
a deposit of barely nine inches. It is surely the present scene 
of things that is in its infancy! Into how slender a bulk 
have the organisms of six thousand years been compressed ! 
History tells us of populous nations, now extinct, that flour- 
ished for ages: do we not find their remains crowded into a 
few streets of sepulchres? °Tis but a thin layer of soil that 
covers the ancient plain of Marathon. I have stood on Ban- 
nockburn, and seen no trace of the battle. In what lower 
stratum shall we set ourselves to discover the skeletons of the 
wolves and bears that once infested our forests? Where 
shall we find accumulations of the remains of the wild bisons 
and gigantic elks, their contemporaries? They must have 
existed for but comparatively a short period, or they would 
surely have left more marked traces behind them. 
When we appeal to the historians, we hear much of a re- 
mote antiquity in the history of man: a more than twilight 
gloom pervades the earlier periods; and the distances are 
exaggerated, as objects appear large ina fog. We measure, 
24 
