(Dti tjje JHroMp Sto Cawrns. 



BY THE REV. W. A. JONES, M.A. 



THE inaterials for the physical history of the earth, 

 almost froin the very dawn of creation to the pre- 

 sent age, are scattered around us every where. The 

 record may not always be as clear and distinct as a written 

 record might have been, but it has been infinitely more 

 durable and more trustworthy. It carries us back to ages 

 long before the hand of man could possibly have registered 

 the events to which it refers. The great facts and 

 phenomena in this history, are not written with the pen on 

 perishable parchinent, nor cut by sculptor's art in slabs of 

 stone or plates of brass. The record is writ by the 

 Almighty hand itself upon the rocky tablets of everlasting 

 ages. The chief actors and agents in the successive 

 dramas of development in creation are brought before us, 

 or lcave unequivocal traces of their existence, and the 

 clearest indications of their works and their ways. The 

 successive strata which compose the crust of the earth are 

 so many pages in the great Book wherein the history of 

 the earth is recorded ; and the fossils in our Museum are 

 but portions of the language by which the facts are 

 revealed. 



vol. vir., 185G-7, PART ii. d 



