170 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCBL 



56. 



Bishop Butler accepted witn unwavering trust the 

 chronology of the Old Testament, describing it as 

 ' confirmed by the natural and civil history of the world, 

 collected from common historians, from the state of 

 the earth, and from the late inventions of arts and 

 sciences.' These words maik progress; and they must 

 seem somewhat hoary to the Bishop's successors of to- 

 day. It is hardly necessary to inform you that since 

 his time the domain of the naturalist has been im- 

 mensely extended the whole science of geology, with 

 its astounding revelations regarding the life of the 

 ancient earth, having been created. The rigidity of 

 old conceptions has been relaxed, the public mind being 

 rendered gradually tolerant of the idea that not for 

 six thousand, nor for sixty thousand, nor for six thou- 

 sand thousand, but for aeons embracing untold millions 

 of years, this earth has been the theatre of life and 

 death. The riddle of the rocks has been read by the 

 geologist and palaeontologist, from sub-cambrian depths 

 to the deposits thickening over the sea-bottoms of to- 

 day. And upon the leaves of that stone book are, as 

 you know, stamped the characters, plainer and surer 

 than those formed by the ink of history, which carry the 

 mind back into abysses of past time, compared with 

 which the periods which satisfied Bishop Butler cease to 

 have a visual angle. 



The lode of discovery once struck, those petrified 

 forms in which life was at one time active, increased to 

 multitudes and demanded classification. They were 

 grouped in genera, species, and varieties, according to 

 the degree of similarity subsisting between them. Thus 

 confusion was avoided, each object being found in the 

 pigeon-hole appropriated to it and to its fellows of 



