Sir H. Davy on the Formation of the Earth. 3^5 



The Unknown. " I have made use of the term diluvian, because it has 

 been adopted by geologists, but without meaning to identify the cause of the 

 formations with the Deluge described in the sacred writings : I apply the 

 term merely to signify loose and water-worn strata, not at all consolidated, 

 and deposited by an inundation of water ; and, in those countries which 

 they have covered, man certainly did not exist. With respect to your argu- 

 ment derived from New Holland, it appears to me to be without weight. 

 In a variety of climates, and in very distant parts of the globe, secondary 

 strata, of the same order, are found, and they contain always the same kind 

 of organic remains, which are entirely different from any of those now af- 

 forded by beings belonging to the existing order of things. The catastrophe 

 which produced the secondary strata and diluvian deposition, could not have 

 been local and partial phenomena, but must have extended over the whole, 

 or a great part of the surface of the globe ; the remains of similar shell 

 fishes are found in the limestones of tlie old and new continents ; the teeth 

 of the mammoth are not uncommon in various parts of Europe ; entire skele- 

 tons have been found in America, and even the skin covered with hair, and 

 the entire body of one of these enormous extinct animals has been disco- 

 vered in Siberia, preserved in a mass of ice. In the oldest secondary strata, 

 there are no remains of such animals as now belong to the surface ; and, in 

 the rocks which may be regarded as more recently deposited, these remains 

 occur but rarely, and with abundance of extinct species ; — there seems, as it 

 were, a gradual approach to the present .system of things, and a succession of 

 destructions and creations preparatory to the existence of man. It will be 

 useless to push these arguments further. You must allow, that it is impos- 

 sible to defend the proposition, that the present order of things is the an- 

 cient and constant order of nature, only modified by existing laws ; and, 

 consequently, the view which you have supported, must be abandoned. The 

 monuments of extinct generations are as perfect as those of extinct nations; 

 and, it would be more reasonable to suppose, that the pillars and temples of 

 Palmyra were raised by the wandering Arabs of the desert, than to imagine 

 that the vestiges of peculiar animated forms, in the strata beneath the sur- 

 face, belonged to the early and infant families of the beings that at present 

 inhabit it." 



Onu. " I am convinced ; — I shall push my arguments no farther, for I will 

 not su])port the sophisms of that school, which supposes that living nature 

 has undergone gradual changes, by the effects of its irritabilities and appe- 

 tencies ; that the fish has, in millions of generations, ripened into the quad- 

 ruped, and the quadruped into man ; and that the system of life, by its own 

 inherent powers, has fitted itself to the physical changes in the system of the 

 universe. To this absurd, vague, atheistical doctrine, I prefer even the 

 dream of jilastic powers : or that other more modern dream, that the second- 

 ary strata were created, filled with remains, as it were, of animal life, to con, 

 found tlie speculations of our geological reasoners." 



The Unknown. " I am glad you have not retreated into the desert and de- 

 fenceless wilderness of scepticism, or of false and feeble philosophy. I should 

 not have thought it worth my while to have followed you there : I should as 

 soon tliink of arguing with the peasant, who informs me, that the basaltic co- 

 lumns of Antrim or of Stafla were the works of Iiuman art, and raised by 

 the giant Finniacoul." 



