138 PAPERS, ETC. 
The following extract from the excellent little 
book “ The Earth’s Antiquity, by the Rev. J. Gray,” 
will be in place here. “ Treasured in the earth’s 
indurate bosom are medals of creation. A new 
sense is, as it were, added by geology to man, con- 
veying a before unenjoyed perception of beautiful 
existences. Scenes previously unappreciated, are 
now through this newly opened avenue, happily 
appropriated, and where we hitherto saw only 
sterile vacuity, there now spring forth to view 
bright and monitory things. We hear sermons in 
stones! what is now every mountain range, and 
swelling hill, that rises before our view? Not, as 
heretofore, a mere amorphous mass of senseless 
rock ; it isa sanctuary of an Almighty workman- 
ship, elaborated with a skill inconceivable and 
sublime, through the revolutions of countless 
time! What is now every chasm, dipping into the 
secluded recesses of the fractured earth? Not as 
heretofore, a mere empty, rocky cavern, but a fully 
tenanted sepulchre of long past races of living 
beings, which bespeak a Creator no less omnipotent 
than allwise! He it is who from the beginning 
hath laid the foundations of the earth, and the 
whole sustentation of the varied creations thereof 
has been the sole work of His hand.” 
However irrelevant such general views may be 
in an attempt to portray the geological peculiarities 
of a country where some prevailing formations 
engross the attention and restrict the labours of 
