10 SPECIES NOT 



the most improbable. For instance, Mr. Darwin, 

 with commendable candour, admits that his whole 

 theory tumbles to pieces unless the world has 

 existed for unnumbered ages before the siluriaii 

 epoch the lowest fossiliferous stratum known to 

 geologists. It is clear that the hypothesis must 

 fail if this is the u dawn of creation," for we find 

 numerous fossil forms presenting a tolerably high 

 organization. Below this there is no record of 

 life. The time which geologists compute must 

 have passed since this period, is far too vast for 

 the mind to grasp. One of the latest geological 

 writers however, Mr. Mackie, in his "First Traee- 

 of Life on the Earth," gives us some data upon 

 which a tolerably approximate calculation may In- 

 formed. 



u The greatest amount of sediment which, ac- 

 cording to our present information, can be per- 

 manently laid down in our deep waters over the 

 range of our present seas, would probably not 

 exceed in the aggregate, including even our littoral 

 accumulation, a coating of more than three inches 

 thick in ten thousand years; and yet we have at 

 least a minimum thickness of upwards of eighty 

 thousand feet consolidated sedimentary rock to 

 explain as the result of natural agencies in past 

 time. "(Page 126.) 



Thus we may calculate from the minimum 

 thickness that at least three billions two hundred 

 millions of years have passed since the tirst known 

 living organism was deposited in its rocky grave! 

 And yet it is absolutely necessary for Mr. Darwin 



