OF CREATION. 117 



cannot satisfactorily determine. Perhaps the most 

 probable opinion is, that an extensive archipelago, 

 like that near the eastern shores of Asia, was the 

 remnant of a sinking tract throughout a great part 

 of the north temperate zone ; that portions of that 

 tract, now forming parts of England and central Eu- 

 rope, remained thus for a long time in shallow water, 

 the recipients of many deposits ; but that during this 

 time the other tracts were too deeply submerged and 

 too far from land to receive such additions. 



Whatever the cause may have been, the result, so 

 far as concerned the inhabitants both of sea and land, 

 was sufficiently remarkable. Between the close of 

 the older epoch and the commencement of this, which 

 we call the middle, every species, both of animal and 

 vegetable, seems to have been, almost without excep- 

 tion, changed. All the older forms have disappeared ; 

 all the modifications up to that time introduced have 

 vanished ; many even of the larger groups are so 

 greatly altered, and have become so rare, that they 

 also have nearly died out, either from the lapse of 

 time or change of condition ; and we have thus a 

 new creation, a new world, as it seems, supplying 

 the gap produced by the mighty change, whatever 

 it may have been, which closed one epoch of the 

 earth's history and commenced a second. 



But next in importance to the fact that this change 

 has taken place to so great an extent, is a fact no 

 less certain, that some species of one of the principal 

 groups of the higher animals the reptiles were 

 unquestionably introduced before the change took 

 place ; and this dawn of reptilian existence, ob- 

 servable in the magnesian limestone, gradually opens 



