ON THEORIES OF THE EARTH. ,'599 



primitive mountains were crystallized from silica, and 

 the argillaceous ones filled their intervals; when it 

 was laid dry for the creation of animals, the water 

 retiring into caverns, through the fissures. Fishes 

 were created when the sea had subsided to 9000 feet; 

 then vegetables, and afterwards land animals; the sea 

 thus retreating though many centuries. By means of 

 storms and volcanoes, the primitive mountains gene- 

 rate the secondary ones, the sea continues to retreat, 

 and our progenitors are created. 



In such a sketch, there is at least some civility: 

 Mr. Kirvvan's ambition after chemical and geological 

 reasonings, has rendered himself a severer critic of his 

 work than many of his readers could well be. I sup- 

 press much, for the same reason ; and, of his subsidiary 

 theories, a few must suffice. The conchiferous strata 

 of Peru, since they exceed the limit of 8500 feet, arose 

 from the Deluge; that eternal resource of every " geo- 

 logist" who finds none in his own intellect, while, not 

 to be appealed from, but under the fulminated penalties 

 of all the infallible theories. But if the specific theory 

 'of this event is unintelligible in the original, some 

 other CEdipns must abridge it. If, on rocks, all sorts 

 of contradictory facts are collected from all sorts of 

 authorities, it will at least offer a hint to modern sys- 

 tem makers, should they have forgotten Mr. Pinker- 

 ton's success. And if the theory of lava fused without 

 heat, has, in being borrowed, found borrowers equally 

 learned in Chemistry and Geology, that of coal is so 

 far original, that the carbon and petroleum were de- 

 rived from the primitive rocks. Yet Kirwan has the 

 abstract merit of not dealing in generalities: and had 

 he been what his circle thought him, his book might, 

 possibly, have been what it is not. But, Werner or 

 Kirwan, every idol is constituted by its idolaters: and 



