214 THE LAW. 



evidence is purely negative ; but taking into account all 

 that palaeontology lias revealed touching the other families 

 of animated nature, the fair presumption is, that man was 

 not called into being till the commencement of the current 

 geological era, and about the time when, in the northern 

 hemisphere, the sea and land received their present con- 

 figuration, and were peopled by those genera and species 

 which (with a few local removals and still fewer extinctions) 

 yet adorn their forests and inhabit their lands and waters. 



It has been often argued, that up till this time the world 

 was altogether unfit for the habitation and support of Man 

 its physical conditions being so unstable, and its flora 

 and fauna being unsuited for his sustenance. Now, while 

 we at once admit a physical as well as a moral fitness in 

 all things created, and that no creature was brought on the 

 stage of being till external conditions were suited alike for 

 the maintenance and genial development of its existence, 

 we must guard against any hasty generalisation that is not 

 absolutely warranted by the facts of geology, and which, in 

 its ultimate bearings, is quite as materialistic and physical 

 as any other that has been advanced to account for the 

 phenomena of vital development. The idea of a generally 

 unstable and convulsed world during the earlier geological 

 epochs is altogether disproved by the facts we have over 

 and over again repeated, even if it were not abhorrent to 

 all philosophical notions of a law -regulated cosmos ; and 

 the alleged absence of plants and animals necessary for 

 man's sustenance scarcely rests on a surer foundation. It 

 is true, and a beautiful corroboration of the fitness of 

 physical conditions, that all the flowers, and fruits, and 

 cereals, all the domesticated animals the horse, ox, and 

 sheep on which man in temperate regions so much relies 

 for the comforts and necessaries of existence, are unknown 

 till the latest geological epochs the means of support 



