.YA TVRAL HISTOR V OF CREA TION. 1 1 5 



their sui-fjices, in the time of the secondary rocks, we 

 have proof on the yet preserved surfaces of the sands 

 which constituted margins of the seas in those days. 

 Even the fall of wind-slanted rain is evidenced on the 

 same tablets. Tlie washing down of detached matter 

 from elevated grounds, which we see rivers constantly 

 engaged in at the present time, and which is daily shal- 

 lowing the seas adjacent to their mouths, only appears to 

 have proceeded on a. greater scale in earlier epochs. The 

 volcanic sul)terranean force, wliicli we see belching forth 

 lavas on the sides of mountains, and throwing up new 

 elevations by land and sea, was only more pov.erfuUy 

 operative in distant ages. To turn to organic nature, 

 vegetation seems to have proceeded then exactly as now. 

 The very alternation of the seasons has been read in 

 unmistakable characters in sections of the trees of those 

 days, precisely as it might be read in a section of a tree 

 cut down yesterday. The system of prey amongst 

 animals flourished throughout the whole of the pre- 

 human period ; and the adaptation of all plants and 

 animals to their respective sphei'es of existence was as 

 perfect in those early ages as it is still. 



But, as has been observed, the operation of the laws 

 may be modihed by conditions. At one early age, if 

 there was any diy land at all, it was perhaps enveloped 

 in an atmosphere luitit for the existence of tei-restrial 

 animals, and which had to go thi-ough some changes 

 before that condition was altered. In the carbonigenous 

 era, dry land seems to have consisted only of clusters of 

 islands, and the temperature was much above what now 

 obtains at the same places. Volcanic forces, and perhaps 

 also the disintegrating power, seem to have been on the 

 decrease since the first, or we have at least long enjoyed 

 an exemption from such paroxysms of the former, as 



