654 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



I shall not attempt to criticize, nor even to 

 enumerate, these Scriptural Geologies, Sacred 

 Theories of the Earth, as Burnet termed his. Ray, 

 Woodward, Whiston, and many other persons to 

 whom science has considerable obligations, were in- 

 volved, by the speculative habits of their times, in 

 these essays ; and they have been resumed by per- 

 sons of considerable talent and some knowledge, on 

 various occasions up to the present day; but the 

 more geology has been studied on its own proper 

 evidence, the more have geologists seen the un- 

 profitable character of such labours. 



I proceed now to the next step in the progress 

 of Theoretical Geology. 



Sect. 3. Of Premature Geological Theories. 



WHILE we were giving our account of Descriptive 

 Geology, the attentive reader would perceive that 

 we did, in fact, state several steps in the advance 

 towards general knowledge ; but when, in those 

 cases, the theoretical aspect of such discoveries 

 softened into an appearance of mere classification, 

 the occurrence was assigned to the history of De- 

 scriptive rather than of Theoretical Geology. Of 

 such a kind was the establishment, by a long and 

 vehement controversy, of the fact, that the impres- 

 sions in rocks are really the traces of ancient living 

 things ; such, again, were the division of rocks into 

 Primitive, Secondary, Tertiary ; the ascertainment of 



