288 On the Cosmogony of Moses. 



in water. Besides, the rocks of which they consist often hAvc 

 a crystalline composition, and crystallization can only have been 

 effected in water. The Huttonians, indeed, pretend that fire 

 was the solvent : but then they find it necessary to assert that the 

 fiisi:>n was performed in some hot Tartarus or Pyriphlegethon be- 

 neath the weight of the wtiole ocean. 



2. That no organized being existed in the universal ocean, is 

 evident from the total want of organic remains in the oldest class 

 of rocks. 



'kL That the water had subsided before the creation of or- 

 ganized beings, is evident from the primitive rocks occupying- 

 the highest situations. Had it been otherwise, they would be 

 found to be enveloped everywhere in a covering of fl('«tz rocks 

 on mountainous tracts equally as in valleys and plains. 



4. That in the next period organized beings of the simplest 

 kinds were created, is evident from the series of formations con- 

 taining these remains and those of no other creatures. This 

 series begins with the transition rocks, and includes the moun- 

 tain limestones and the rocks belonging to the coal-formation : 

 in fact, all those strata which in South Britain are found in an 

 inchned ])osition. In the coal-formation we find impressions of 

 vegetable bodies in great abundance, and in the limestones zoo- 

 phytes and testacea. 



5. That in the next period the sea produced locomotive ani- 

 mals, is proved by our finding their remains in the rocks which 

 succeed them above mentioned, viz. in the first horizontal for- 

 mations which in England lie over the inclined. Thus the lyas 

 limestone contains abundance of the remains of fishes and those 

 large marine animals which vvere erroneously supposed to be 

 crocodiles. The remains of birds are so perishable that we 

 could not expect to find many of them ; but Blumenbach and 

 Faujas St. Fond mention some specimens of them found in 

 niarle slates, together with numerous impressions of fishes, which 

 seem to prove that they began to exist at this aera. 



6. The remains of quadrupeds are found only in strata which 

 are, mucji more recent than all those above mentioned. 



7. That man v.as created at a later ccra than all the above- 

 mentioned beings, is proved by a similar method. The reason 

 why no human bones are found even in the newest rocks, is, pro-' 

 bablv, that all the rock-formations were deposited before the 

 creation of the human &pecies. 



I may observe, that modern discoveries in physiology confirm 

 this order of events. Animals only feed on animal and vegetable- 

 matter, while vegetable l)odies, and probably zoophytes, derive 

 nutriment from mineral sul)stanccs. It follows that vegetables 



must 



