OF THE ORGANIC FOSSILS. 419 



If a recent geologist has undertaken, in the last 

 ease, to explain otherwise what he never saw, because 

 he preferred autient ignorance to modern truth, he 

 has also forgotten that the secondary and the primary 

 strata never can undergo a joint undulation : he could 

 not have been ignorant to this extent, though his re- 

 searches had been confined to the recent strata: it has 

 been the oversight of anxiety for an hypothesis. And 

 geologists would be better employed in seeking for 

 new truths, than in determining what is, because they 

 think that it ought to be. If this is to be the rule, all 

 observation is useless : he who has seen nothing be- 

 comes the interpreter of everything, and interprets as 

 he had previously statuted to do : Geology is attained, 

 and we may rest from our labours. But if it is thus 

 to become a Science, it is the first that ever succeeded 

 through this road. I owe this remark to the Geolo- 

 gical student, whom I have undertaken to teach in all 

 that I know myself, and whom it is my duty to guide 

 where he has been misled. 



Organic fossils ought to be found in the primary 

 limestones ; and they are so, if we exclude the false 

 distinction already noticed. If they do not occur 

 in the oldest ones, the explanation is easy. This sub- 

 stance is remarkably fusible; and I have shown 

 that it has been locally fused by Trap, in Sky and the 

 Isle of Man, to the obliteration of those fossils which 

 abound in other parts of the same stratum. And the 

 earlier limestones have been most exposed to heat. 

 The occurrence of organic fossils in the argillaceous 

 schist is notorious. And this terminates the primary 

 series : while the conclusion is, that it does contain 

 organic fossils, abundantly in its upper parts, with 

 sufficient indications in its lower ones; thus pointing 

 to a living creation as old as any rocks that we know, 



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