Ch. IX.] 



AT SUCCESSIVE GEOLOGICAL PERIODS. 



1G9 







perform the same actions as before ; the same arts were to 

 be invented, and the same cities built and destroyed. The 

 Argonautic expedition was destined to sail again with the 



combat before the walls of Troy. 



Myrmidon 



Alter erit turn Tiphys, et altera quae vehat Argo 



Dilectos heroas ; erunt etiam altera bella, 



Atque iterum ad Trojam magnus niittetur Achilles.* 





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surd, without running into the opposite extreme, and denying 



from 



uniform in the same sense in which we believe it to be uni- 

 form at present, and expect it to remain so in future. We 



man 



small 



its physical condition than is now experienced when districts, 

 never before inhabited, become successively occupied by new 

 settlers. When a powerful European colony lands on the 

 shores of Australia, and introduces at once those arts which 

 it has required many centuries to mature ; when it imports 

 a multitude of plants and large animals from the opposite 

 extremity of the earth, and begins rapidly to extirpate many 

 of the indigenous species, a mightier revolution is effected in 

 a brief period than the first entrance of a savage horde, or 

 their continued occupation of the country for many centuries, 

 can possibly be imagined to have produced. If there be no 

 impropriety in assuming that the system is 

 disturbances so unprecedented occur in certain localities, we 

 can with much greater confidence apply the same language 

 to those primeval ages when the aggregate number and power 

 of the human race, or the rate of their advancement in civi- 



uniform 



must 



In rea- 



soning on the state of the globe immediately 



our 



must 



same rules of induction as when we speculate on the state of 

 America in the interval that elapsed between the introduction 



* Virgil, Eclog. iv. For an account Human Mind, vol. ii. chap. ii. sect. 4, 



of these doctrines, see Dugald Stewart's 

 Elements of the Philosophy of the 



and Prichard's Egypt. Mythol. p. 177. 



