TRANSMUTABLE. 187 



geese, it would still be difficult to account for 

 the successive forms of organic life in the old 

 world. They appear to me to give the lie to 

 the theory at every turn of the pages of Dame 

 Nature's old book. 



And now for a few words upon Darwin's long 

 interpolated periods of geological ages. He has 

 an eternity of past time to draw upon; and I 

 am willing to give him ample measure; only let 

 him use it logically, and in some probable ac- 

 cordance with facts and phenomena. 



I place the theory against facts viewed col- 

 lectively. 1st. I see no proofs of enormous gaps 

 of geological time, (I say nothing of years or 

 centuries,) in those cases where there is a sudden 

 change in the ancient fauna and flora. 1 am 

 willing, out of the stock of past time, to lavish 

 millions or billions upon each epoch, if thereby 

 we can gain rational results from the operation 

 of true causes. But time and 'natural selection' 

 can do nothing if there be not a vera causa 

 working in them. [Note see remark on 'Time,' 

 in the 'Annotations on Bacon's Essays.'] I must 

 confine myself to a few of the collective instances. 



2nd. Towards the end of the carboniferous 

 perioc],, there was a vast extinction of animal and 

 vegetable life. We can, I think, account for this 

 extinction mechanically. The old crust was broken 

 up. The sea bottom underwent a great change. 

 The old flora and fauna went out; a new flora 

 and fauna appeared, in the ground now called 

 Permian, at the base of the new red sandstone, 



