GEOGENY. 2C7 



This new life first takes a certain development in fishes (including 

 reptiles, no doubt), then birds, which, together, corstitute the second 

 epoch of creation. It acquired a new extension in mammals, which 

 appeared at a third epoch ; and finally reached its highest degree 

 in man, with whom terminated the work of the OMNIPOTENT. 

 receiving a soul in the image of God, to distinguish him from all 

 other creatures. 



This is without doubt a wonderful example of successive organic 

 combinations; but it is also precisely the order in which all the 

 remains buried in different ages successively present themselves. 

 Those we meet in deposits we regard as the most ancient, are the 

 calcareous remains of certain polypa'ria, mussels, sometimes even 

 the shell of some acephalous mollusks, the trilobite crusta'ceans, 

 and the remains of plants, the accumulation of which formed the 

 anthracite of the devonian formations. The abundance, the extent, 

 the thickness of these combustible beds announce the great luxu- 

 riance of vegetation, which leads us to believe that plants existed 

 for a long time, and that perhaps their first debris have disappeared 

 in the profound metamorphisms which modified the deposits in 

 which they might have been. 



Fishes are not met with prior to the devonian formations, and it 

 is only in the coal deposits they present a strength of organization, 

 which is lost in the succeeding deposits, and which is not known 

 even now on the globe. Reptiles have left their remains in the 

 new red sandstone, or penine formations which followed ; and the 

 birds, the creation of which Genesis also places in the same epoch, 

 have left the imprints of their feet on the sandstones. 



Mammals did not appear until long afterwards ; the traces* of 

 those found in the great o'olite belonged to the least perfect orders : 

 it is only in the tertiary strata that their debris of every species are 

 found in abundance. 



Human remains are not found in any of the beds which have 

 been upheaved from the bosorn of the waters, and now forming 

 parts of our continents; it therefore follows that this privileged 

 being of the general creation did not appear on the globe until after 

 the animals whose fossil debris have been found ; he dates from 

 an epoch comparatively very recent, which is placed after the up- 

 heaval of the principal Alps; -his formation would consequently 

 go back about 6800 years, according to admitted chronology. 

 It is in deposits formed under the waters since this catastrophe 

 that the bones of man should be found, and they will not appear 

 from that time in the series of geological beds antil new revolu- 

 tions shall have transformed the sediments still found under water 

 into dry land. 



It is clear from this outline that the brief statement of sacred 

 history is entirely in conformity with geological generalities. Ob- 



