

OF A FORMER WORLD. 7 



a careful watchman on his rounds, has vanished from the 

 face of civilized society, though supported by the impres- 

 sion of the senses, once deemed essential to religious faith, 

 and defended by ecclesiastical law. It becomes us there- 

 fore, when the decisions of science are contrary to our 

 familiar ideas, to inquire into the soundness of both, and 

 willingly to surrender our preconceived opinions to the force 

 of truth, and not to any prejudice against knowledge" 



The vast antiquity of our globe is now as fully demon- 

 strated as its rotundity : and the lapse of ages which must 

 have occurred in the completion of a geological epoch, as 

 evident as the distances of the heavenly spheres : indeed 

 more so because the one can be proven to any person in 

 the slightest degree conversant with the structure of the 

 earth, by deductions most rational and satisfactory, and by 

 evidence the most complete; whereas in Astronomy the 

 person who cannot apply the telescopic tube, has in a great 

 measure to rest satisfied with the testimony of the astrono- 

 mer, and the collateral evidence of the mathematician. 

 That our globe was the seat of animal and vegetable life 

 through a countless series of ages, before its occupation by 

 the human species that successive races flourished, decayed 

 and altogether vanished, long anterior to the appearance of 

 man upon the stage of life is a conclusion of which irre- 

 fragable evidence is aiforded in the myriad forms of once 

 animated existence, whose remains have been disinterred 

 from their graves in the lias, gypsum-quarries, and chalk, 

 and which enter almost exclusively into the composition of 

 vast masses of mountain limestone. 



"The earth is in truth a charnel house, full of bones, 

 sinews, shells, leaves, and prostrate trunks, and with con- 

 summate skill the botanist and comparative anatomist have 

 traced the animal and vegetable forms indicated by the 

 fragments gathered from the wreck of life. Ancient con- 

 ditions of our planet have thus been restored, when stately 



