LETTERS TO REV. GARDINER SPRING, D. D. 149 



the 24th with the accompanying tract I am glad to be in 

 possession of your views, conveyed as they are with Chris- 

 tian fidelity and gentlemanly courtesy. 



I have, elsewhere, given my reasons for believing that we 

 are acquainted with the physical materials of the earth to a 

 great and unassignable depth, and with its arrangement far 

 below the deepest seated record of life. " The scratch of 

 a needle upon the varnish of an artificial globe," conveys 

 only a very erroneous and inadequate impression. 



Omitting the consideration of the great physical powers 

 that have wrought out the present mineral condition of the 

 planet, we have ascertained the point in the strata beneath 

 which no record of life appears, the date, therefore, at 

 which life began, and above which the progress of the crea- 

 tion of animated beings is fully recorded in strata of miles 

 in depth, commencing with the earliest marine animals and 

 marine plants, and proceeding upward in stratigraphical 

 order, and downward in time, through all the varieties of 

 ancient life, until we arrive at the human era when man 

 first appeared on earth. 



It is in perusing this record, so distinct, so full, and so 

 orderly, that the geologist arrives at the inevitable conclu- 

 sion, that all the time necessary to these successive crea- 

 tions, and to the growth and action and sepulture of these 

 millions of millions of beings, was actually allowed, along 

 with that requisite for the deposition of the universal mat- 

 ter in which these venerable relics are enclosed. 



This exegesis of life in the planet is no doubt consistent 

 with that of the sacred record, and this I endeavored to 

 prove * many years ago, when, so far as I know to do good, 

 I endeavored to do it, and thus to vindicate myself from 

 the sin of omission. 



In these few remarks, my dear sir, it is not my intention 

 to enter on discussion, but simply to state the case as it 

 exists in my own mind, and there for the present to leave 



* In a full appendix to Bakewell's Geology, New Haven edition, 1839. 



