452 ON THE GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS 



grounds, and from the names attached to these several 

 speculations. Burnet has already remarked, and St. 

 Augnstin long before him, on the impropriety of at- 

 tempting to prove Scripture by what may ultimately 

 prove unfounded. That lesson was also urged by 

 Bacon, it has often been repeated, but it seems to 

 have been ever thro wo away. Let us hope that we 

 have now heard of this pernicious interference for the 

 last time. 



Of the Identification of Strata through organic 

 Fossils. 



Practical Geology is peculiarly interested in this 

 question, and it especially requires to be investigated, 

 not only because the utility has been highly overrated, 

 but because it continues to be an impediment to geo- 

 logical knowledge, by supporting the hypothesis of 

 universal formations, even when that is renounced 

 in words. I have formerly shown, that in the man- 

 ner in which strata were formed, their universal, or 

 even wide correspondence was impossible: and 

 if there is here a fundamental falsity, there is a 

 still greater one, if possible, as to the animal fossils 

 contained in them. The latter must be tried, as usual, 

 by the history of the living earth. The same shell 

 fishes do not live in the equatorial and polar seas, 

 they are not even the same in the British channel and 

 the Mediterranean: I have made the remark already, 

 in speaking of the tertiary strata. This is fatal to 

 such inferences : if those two seas do not contain 

 identical races of living shells, whence should the 

 limestones which we have thought fit to call Oolithes 

 contain the same fossils in Italy and in England? 

 similar laws as to former organic beings may be in- 

 ferred; dissimilar or contradictory ones cannot. 



