22 CREATION OF ANIMALS. 



pher, " presents in all its parts the features of a 

 grand ruin ; the confusion and overthrow of most 

 of its strata, the irregular succession of those 

 which seem to remain in their original situations, 

 the wonderful variety which the direction of the 

 veins and the forms of the caverns display, the 

 immense heaps of confused and broken sub- 

 stances, the transportation of enormous blocks 

 to a great distance from the mountains of which 

 they appear to have formed a part," 1 do not 

 lead us as he would intimate " to periods far 

 anterior to the existence of the human race," 

 but to a mighty catastrophe by which the whole 

 structure of our globe has been dislocated, and 

 its ancient strata broken up, and separated by 

 the intervention of new ones formed of animal 

 and vegetable remains. 



When the Almighty formed our globe from 

 the original chaos, and projecting it into space 

 bade it perform its diurnal and annual revolu- 

 tions, he first weighed it in his balance, and 

 moulded it so as it might answer to the "action 

 of those mighty powers by whose constant im- 

 pulse or impact those revolutions were to be 

 maintained ; and if a central void was necessary' 

 he wanted not the means to produce and main- 

 tain it. When the power called attraction 

 tended to drive all to the centre, the repellant 



1 Malte-Brim Syst. of Geogr. L. i. 192. 



