ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. 269 



iiig now of tlie world's annals, is simply a congeries of bio- 

 graphies. It is when we extend our view into the geologi- 

 cal field that it passes from biography into liistory proper, and 

 that we have to rise from the consideration of the birth and 

 death of individuals, which, in all mere biographies, form the 

 great terminal events that constitute beginning and end, to 

 a survey of the birth and death of races, and the elevation 

 or degradation of dynasties and sub-kingdoms. 



We learn from human history that nations are as certainly 

 lortal as men. They enjoy a greatly longer term of exist- 

 ence, but they die at last : Rollin's " History of Ancient Na- 

 tions" is a history of the dead. And we are taught by geo- 

 )gical history, in like manner, that species are as mortal as 

 idividuals and nations, and that even genera and families 

 jcome extinct. There is no man upon earth at the present 

 loment whose age greatly exceeds an hundred years ; — there 

 is no nation now upon earth (if we perhaps except the long- 

 lived Chinese) that also flourished three thousand years ago ; 

 •^ — there is no species now living upon earth that dates beyond 

 the times of the Tertiary deposits. All bear the stamp of 

 death, — individuals, — nations, — species ; and we may scarce 

 less safely predicate, looking upon the past, that it is ap- 

 pointed for nations and species to die, than that it "is ap- 

 pointed for man once to die." Even our own species, as 

 now constituted, — with instincts that conform to the original 

 injunction, " increase and multiply," and that, in consequence, 

 " marry and are given in marriage," — shall one day cease to 

 exist : a fact not less in accordance with beliefs inseparable 

 from the faith of the Christian, than with the widely-founded 

 experience of the geologist. Now, it is scarce possible for 

 the human mind to become acquainted with the fact, that at 

 certain periods species began to exist, and then, after the lapse 

 of untold ages, ceased to be, without inquiring whether, from 

 the " conditions of existence, commonly termed final causes," 



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