CHAP. XXXVII. ] OPPOSITION TO GEOLOGICAL TRUTHS. 235 



birds or quadrupeds which they hunted, they would be not unlikely 

 to give very accurate copies of markings with which they were 

 so familiar. The important observations made by Dr. King 

 relatively to the fossil imprints, called the attention of the whole 

 country to the Indian antiquities of comparatively modern date ; 

 but the popular notion that there was a connection between them 

 is wholly erroneous. 



Since the announcement, by Dr. King, in 1844, of the proofs 

 of the existence of reptiles at the period when the coal strata of 

 Pennsylvania were formed, Professor Goldfuss, of Bonn, has pub 

 lished the description of more than one saurian found in the an 

 cient coal-measures of Saarbruck, near Treves. 



Never, certainly, in the history of science, were discoveries 

 made more calculated to put us on our guard for the future 

 against hasty generalizations founded on mere negative evidence. 

 Geologists have been in the habit of taking for granted, that at 

 epochs anterior to the coal there were no birds or air-breathing 

 quadrupeds in existence ; and it seems still scarcely possible to 

 dispel the hypothesis that the first creation of a particular class 

 of beings coincides in date with our first knowledge of it in a fossil 

 state, or the kindred dogma that the first appearance of life on 

 the globe agrees, chronologically, with the present limits of our 

 insight into the first creation of living beings, as deduced from 

 organic remains. These limits have shifted, even in our own 

 times, more than once, or have been greatly expanded, without 

 dissipating the delusion, so intense is the curiosity of man to trace 

 back the present system of things to a beginning. Rather than 

 be disappointed, or entertain a doubt of his power to discern the 

 shores of the vast ocean of past time, into which his glances are 

 penetrating, like the telescope into the region of the remoter ne 

 bulae, he can not refrain from pleasing his imagination with the 

 idea that some fog-banks, resting on the bosom of the deep, are, 

 in reality, the firm land for which his aching vision is on the 

 stretch. 



I can not conclude these remarks on the geological discoveries 

 made in these remote valleys of the Alleghanies, without alluding 

 to a moral phenomenon, which was forcibly brought before my 



