102 PAL^ONTOLOGICAL BOTANY. 



tiou to the Sacred Volume, it is to difficult to say. At 

 present there are no satisfactory materials for such a correla- 

 tion ; but one thing is certain, that both Revelation and 

 Geology testify with one voice to the work of a Divine 

 Creator. 



" Who shall declare (Hugh Miller remarks) what through 

 long ages the history of creation has been ? We see at wide 

 intervals the mere fragments of successive Floras ; but know 

 not how, what seem the blank interspaces, were filled ; or 

 how, as extinction overtook in succession one . tribe of 

 existences after another, and species, like individuals, yielded 

 to the great law of death, yet other species were brought to 

 the birth, and ushered upon the scene, and the chain of being 

 was maintained unbroken. We see only detached bits of that 

 green web which has covered our earth ever since the dry 

 land first appeared. But the web itself seems to have been 

 continuous throughout all time; though, as breadth after 

 breadth issued from the creative loom, the pattern was altered, 

 and the sculpturesque and graceful forms that illustrated its 

 first beginnings and its middle spaces have yielded to flowers 

 of richer colour and blow, and fruits of fairer shade and out- 

 line ; and for gigantic club-mosses stretching forth their hir- 

 sute arms, goodly trees of the Lord have expanded their 

 great boughs ; and for the barren fern and the calamite clus- 

 tering in thickets beside the waters, or spreading on flowerless 

 hill-slopes, luxuriant orchards have yielded their ruddy flush, 

 and rich harvests their golden gleam." 



When we find animals and plants, of forms unknown at 

 the present day, in all stages of development, we read 

 a lesson as to the histoiy of the earth's former state as 

 conclusive as that which is derived from the Nineveh relics 

 (independent of Revelation) in regard to the history of 

 the human race. There is no want of harmony between 



