38 



DILUVIAL THEOEY. 



[Ch. in. 



not so. 



But so eager were they to root out what they justly 

 considered an absurd prejudice respecting the nature of 

 organised fossils, that they appear to have been ready to 

 make any concessions, in order to establish this preliminary 

 point. Such a compromising policy was short-sighted, since 

 it was to little purpose that the nature of the documents 



men 



prevented from deducing fair conclusions from them. 



Diluvial Theory. — The theologians who now entered the field 

 in Italy, Germany, France, and England, were innumerable ; 

 and henceforward, they who refused to subscribe to the posi- 

 tion, that all marine organic remains were proofs of the Mosaic 



lm 



whole of the sacred writings. Scarcely any step had been made 

 in approximating to sonnd theories since the time of Fraeas- 



wr 



o 



gma that organised fossils were mere 





nature. An additional period of a century and a half was now 

 destined to be consumed in exploding the hypothesis, that or- 

 ganised fossils had all been buried in the solid strata by Noah's 

 flood. Never did a theoretical fallacy, in any branch of science, 

 interfere more seriously with accurate observation and th 

 systematic classification of facts. In recent times, we may 

 attribute our rapid progress chiefly to the careful determina- 

 tion of the order of succession in mineral masses, by means 

 of their different organic contents, and their regular super- 

 position. But the old diluvialists were induced by their 

 system to confound all the groups of strata together instead 

 of discriminating — to refer all appearances to one cause and 

 to one brief period, not to a variety of causes acting through- 

 out a long succession of epochs. They saw the phenomena 



them, sometimes 



O' 



facts, and at other times deducing false conclusions from 

 correct data. Under the influence of such prejudices, three 

 centuries were of as little avail as a few years in our own 

 times, when we are no longer required to propel the vessel 

 against the force of an adverse current. 



It may be well, therefore, to forewarn the reader, that m 

 tracing the history of geology from the close of the seventeenth 







