Sir H. Davy on the Formatimi of the Earth. 323 



that the first man was created with a i^reat variety of instinctive or inspired 

 knowledge, which must have been likewise enjoyed by his descendants ; and 

 some of this knowledge could hardly fail to have related to the globe which 

 he inhabited, and to the objects which surrounded him. It would have been 

 impossible for the human mind to have embraced the mysteries of creation ; 

 or to have followed the history of the moving atoms, from tlieir chaotic disor- 

 der into their arrangement in the visible universe ; to have seen dead matter 

 assuming the form of life and animation, and light and power arising out of 

 death and sleep. The ideas, therefore, transmitted to, or presented by Moses, 

 respecting the origin of the world and of man, were of the same simple kind, 

 and such as suited the early state of society ; but, though general and simple 

 truths, they were divine truths, yet clothed in a language, and suited to the 

 ideas, of a rude and uninstructed people. And yet, when I state my satisfac- 

 tion in finding that they are not contradicted by the refined researches of 

 modem geologists, I do not mean to deduce from them a system of science. 

 I believe that light was the creation of an act of the divine will ; but I do 

 not mean to say that the words ' Let there be light, and there was light,* 

 was orally spoken by the Deity ; nor do I mean to imply, that the modern 

 discoveries respecting light are at all connected from this sublime and mag- 

 nificent passage." 



Onu. " Having resided for a long time in Edinburgh, and having heard a 

 great number of discussions on the theory of Dr Hutton, and having been ex- 

 ceedingly struck both by its simplicity and beauty, its harmony with existing 

 facts, and the proof afforded to it by some beautiful chemical experiments, I 

 do not feel disjiosed immediately to renounce it, for the views I have just 

 heard explained." 



The Utiknown. " I have no objections to the Huttonian or Plutonic views, 

 as capable of explaining many existing phenomena ; indeed, you must be 

 aware that I have myself had recourse to it. What I contend against, is its 

 application to explain the formation of the secondaiy rocks, which I think 

 clearly belong to an order of facts not at all embraced hy it. The surface is 

 constantly imagined to be disintegrated, destroyed, degraded, and washed 

 into the bosom of the ocean by water, and as constantly consolidated, ele- 

 vated, and regenerated by fire ; and the ruins of the old form the foundations 

 of the new world. It is supposed that there are always the same types, both 

 of dead and living matter ; that the remains of rocks, of vegetables and ani- 

 mals of one age, are found imbedded in rocks raised from the bottom of the 

 ocean in another. Now, to support this view, not only the remains of living 

 beings, which at present people the globe, might be expected to be found in 

 the oldest secondary strata ; but even those of the arts of man, the most 

 powerful and the most populous of its inhabitants, whicli is well known not 

 to be the case. On the contrary, each stratum of the secondary rocks con- 

 tains remains of peculiar and mostly now unknown species of vegetables and 

 animals. In those strata which aredcc))cst, and which must consequently be 

 supposed to be the earliest deposited, forms even of vegetable life are rare; 

 shells and vegetable remains are found in the next order ; the bones of fishes 

 and oviparous reptiles exist in the following class . the remains of birds, with 

 those of the same tribes mentioned before in the next order; tliose of quad- 

 rupeds of extinct species, in a still more recent class ; and, it is only in the 

 2 x2 



