324 Sir H. Davy on the Formation of the Earth. 



loose and slightly consolidated strata of gravel and sand, and which are usually 

 called Diluvian Formations, that the remains of animals, such as now people 

 the globe, are found, with others belonging to extinct species. But in none 

 of these formations, whether called Secondary, Tertiary, or Diluvial, have 

 the remains of man, or any of his works, been found. It is, I think, impos- 

 sible to consider the organic remains found in any of tlie earlier secondary 

 strata, the lias-limestone, and its congenerous formations, for instance, with- 

 out being convinced, that the beings, whose organs they formed, belonged to 

 an order of things entirely different from the present. Gigantic vegetables, 

 more nearly allied to the palms of the equatorial countries than to any other 

 jilanls, can only be imagined to have lived in a very high temperature ; and 

 the immense reptiles, the Megalosauri, with paddles instead of legs, and 

 clothed in mail, in size equal or even superior to the whale ; and the great 

 amphibia, Plesiosauri, with bodies like turtles, but furnished with necks 

 longer than their bodies, probably to enable them to feed on vegetables 

 growing on the shallows of the primitive ocean, seem to shew a state in 

 which low lands, or extensive shores, rose above an immense calm sea, and 

 when there was no great mountain chains to produce inequalities of tempe- 

 rature, tempests, or storms- Were the surface of the earth now to be carried 

 down into the depth of the ocean, or were some great revolution of the wa- 

 ters to cover the existing land, and it was again to be elevated by fire, 

 covered by consolidated depositions of sand or mud, how entirely different 

 would it be in its characters from any of the secondary strata ; its great features 

 would undoubtedly be the works of man ; hewn stones, and statues of bronze 

 and marble, and tools of iron, and human remains would be more common 

 than those of the lower animals, on the gi-eatest part of the surface ; the 

 columns of Psestum and Agrigentuni, or the immense iron and granite 

 bridges of the Thames, would form a striking contrast to the bones of the cro- 

 codiles or sauri, in the older rocks, or even to those of the mammoth, or 

 Elephas primogenus, in the diluvial strata. And, whoever dwells upon this 

 subject must be convinced, that the present order of things, and the compa- 

 ratively recent existence of man, as the master of the globe, is as certain as 

 the destruction of a former and a different (irder, and the extinction of a num- 

 ber of living forms, which have now no types in being, and which have left 

 their remains wonderful monuments of the revolutions of nature." 



Onu. " I am not quite convinced by your arguments. Supposing the lands 

 of New Holland were to be washed into the depth of the ocean, and to be 

 raised according to the Huttonian view, as a secondary stratum, by subter- 

 raneous fire, they would contain the remains of both vegetables and animals 

 entirely different from any found in the strata of the old continents ; and, 

 may not those peculiar formations to which you have referred, be, as it were, 

 accidents of nature belonging to peculiar parts of the globe ? And, you speak 

 of a diluvian formatio'i, which I conclude you would identify with that be- 

 longing to the catastrophe described in the sacred writings, in which no hu« 

 man remains are now found ; now, you surely will not deny, that man existed 

 at the time of this catastro])he ; and he, consequently, may have existed at 

 the period of the other revolutions, which are supposed to be produced, in the 

 Huttonian views, by subterranean fire." 



