12 Notice of the Wonders of Geology. 
exempt from scientific details, by giving a quotation at some 
length from the conclusion of his work, believing that all which 
is necessary to render these general views intelligible, will be 
found either in the remarks themselves or in our preceding obser- 
vations. 
~ “General Inferences.—Restricting ourselves within the bounds 
of legitimate induction, and forbearing to speculate on those points 
which rest on insnfficient or questionable data, we may neverthe- 
less venture to draw some general inferences as to the varying 
physical conditions of our planet, and of animal and vegetable 
life, through the immense periods contemplated by geology. 
_ “From the remotest epoch in the earth’s physical history recog- 
nizable by man, to the present time, the mechanical and chemical 
laws, which govern inorganic matter, appear to have undergone 
no change. ‘The wasting away of the solid rocks by water, and 
the subsequent deposition and consolidation of the detritus by 
heat ; the subsidence of the dry land beneath the sea, and the 
elevation of the ocean-bed into new islands and continents ; the 
decomposition of animal and vegetable substances on the surface, 
and their conversion into stone or coal, under circtimstances in 
which the gaseous principles were confined; the transmutation 
of mud and sand into rock, and of earthy minerals into crystals,— 
these physical changes have constantly been going on under the 
influence of those fixed and immutable laws, established by Di- 
vine Providence for the maintenance and renovation of the ma- 
terial universe. 
“And although among the sentient beings which have from 
time to time inhabited the earth, we discover at successive periods 
the appearance of new forms, which flourished awhile and then 
passed away, while other modifications of life sprung up, and 
after the lapse of ages, in their turn were annihilated ; yet the 
laws which governed their appearance and extinction, were in 
perfect harmony with those which regulate inorganic matter. 
Every creature was especially adapted to some peculiar state of 
the earth at the period of its development ; and when the physical 
conditions were changed, and no longer favorable for the exist- 
ence of such a type of organization, it necessarily became extinct. 
Thus we have seen different modifications of animal and vegeta- 
ble life prevailing at different epochs of the earth’s physical his- 
tory, yet all presenting the same principles of structure, the same 
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