74 THE RECORD. 



ranged the stratified crust of the globe the great chapters, 

 as it were, of world-history, whose strata, like the leaves of 

 a mighty volume, are indelibly stamped with the forms and 

 characters of extinct vitality. As in human history we 

 speak of the times of Ninevites, Egyptians, Greeks, and 

 Romans, so in geology we refer to Silurian, Devonian, Car- 

 boniferous, and other systems ; and as Ninevites and Egyp- 

 tians present a certain similarity or fades of civilisation, 

 and Greeks and Romans another, so we unite certain sys- 

 tems, having features in common, into Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, 

 and Cainozoic epochs. As to the Time represented by these 

 groups and systems, we have at present no means of deter- 

 mining ; but, gauging the past by the present rate of geolo- 

 gical change, the amount must be immense, and we could 

 no more form, an idea of its aggregate even could we ex- 

 press it in years and centuries than we can form a con- 

 ception of the distances that separate our globe from the 

 remoter stars of the universe. Enough for us, in the 

 mean time, to be convinced of the vastness of its relative 

 portions, and to fix with certainty the order of their occur- 

 rence. As in human history it is ever more important to 

 determine the true sequence and connection of events than 

 to be curious about the minutiae of dates, so in geology it 

 is far more satisfactory to discover the order in time than 

 to indulge in surmises about the expression of its duration 

 in years and centuries. It is surely of higher value to be 

 able to determine the relative ages of two contiguous depo- 

 sits, the contemporaneity of others widely apart, and the 

 kind and character of life they respectively imbed, than to 

 perplex ourselves with vague hypotheses as to the number 

 of years that have passed since the date of their deposit. 

 And yet even for this, too, the time will undoubtedly ar- 

 rive ! Geological events are the orderly results of natural 

 laws ; laws are as fixed in their times as in their modes of 



