DESTRUCTION AND CREATION. 



mind cannot overleap, circumstances before which the march of 

 intellectual research must be arrested, and ultimate facts which 

 must be admitted without any human power of explaining them. 



252. When the temperature of the earth had cooled down to a 

 point compatible with the maintenance of organised life, and its 

 crust had thickened so as to give it comparative stability and 

 permanence, it pleased the Omnipotent to call into existence the 

 animal and vegetable kingdom, that continued to live upon the 

 earth during the Cambrian period, and was destroyed by the 

 convulsion which closed that period, the remains of the species 

 composing it being deposited in its strata. 



253. After this complete destruction of animal and vegetable 

 life a period of repose ensued, after which the same Almighty 

 Power at the commencement of the second Palaeozoic or Silurian 

 period, called into existence another and different animal king- 

 dom ; different, at least, so far as regarded species, many of 

 the genera being common to that of the previous period. The 

 close of the Silurian period was signalised by a like catas- 

 trophe, this second animal kingdom being similarly swept away 

 and the earth again left unpeopled and destitute of vegetation. 

 Another period of repose ensued, after which, at the commence- 

 ment of the third Paleozoic or Devonian period, a third animal and 

 vegetable kingdom was called into existence, and continued upon 

 the earth during the Devonian period, at the close of which, in 

 like manner, another destruction ensued, followed by another 

 creation at the commencement of the fourth Palaeozoic or Carboni- 

 ferous period, and so on destruction following destruction, and 

 creation following creation, during all the succeeding periods to 

 that which immediately preceded the human epoch. The latest 

 or fifth Tertiary period terminated like the others in a convulsion 

 which swept from the earth all animal and vegetable life existing 

 upon it, burying the remains in the highest layers of its crust. 

 After a final period of repose, the present animal kingdom, in- 

 cluding the human race, were called into existence, and the world 

 as we see it commenced. 



The Palaeozoic Age. 



254. The Palaeozoic formation, whether it be examined in 

 reference to its mineralogical strata or the organic remains depo- 

 sited in it, is resolved into five distinct stages. The researches of 

 Murchison in England and Russia, those of M. D'Orbigny in 

 South America, those of several eminent geologists in the United 

 States, and the observations of M. de Yerneuil in France, all 

 concur in establishing this division. 



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