THEORY OF SUCCESSIVE CREATIONS. 327 



sical Society of Edinburgh, in 1852, he enunciated 

 the following proposition : ' There is no truth more 

 thoroughly ascertained than that the great Tertiary, 

 Secondary, and Palaeozoic divisions represent, in the 

 history of the globe, periods as definitely distinct and 

 separate from each other as the modern from the 

 ancient history of Europe, or the events which took 

 place previous to the Christian era from those that 

 date in the subsequent centuries which we reckon 

 from it. All over the globe, too, in the great Palaeozoic 

 division, the Carboniferous system is found to overlie 

 the system of the Old Red Sandstone, and that, in 

 turn, the widely developed Silurian system/ Having 

 spoken thus without evoking one dissentient symp- 

 tom in his audience, he could expect an affirmative 

 answer to the question which he proceeded to put : c I 

 would ask such of the gentlemen whom I now address 

 as have studied the subject most thoroughly, whether, 

 at those grand lines of division between the Palaeozoic 

 and Secondary, and again between the Secondary and 

 Tertiary periods, at which the entire type of organic 

 being alters, so that all on the one side of the gap be- 

 longs to one fashion, and all on the other to another and 

 wholly different fashion, whether they have not been 

 as thoroughly impressed with the conviction that there 

 existed a Creative Agent, to whom the sudden change 

 was owing, as if they themselves had witnessed the 

 miracle of Creation ? ' Professor Huxley now declares 

 without contradiction that it is ' admitted by all the 

 best authorities that neither similarity of mineral com- 

 position, nor of physical character, nor even direct con- 

 tinuity of stratum, are absolute proofs of the synchron- 

 ism of even approximated sedimentary strata : while, 

 for distant deposits, there seems to be no kind of 



