Cxliv PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



creation is not described as a work of manufacturing ingenuity, but 

 as an act of infinite power : let the earth, let the sea, let the air 

 bring forth tilings of their kind, was the fiat of the Almighty ; and 

 I cannot but think, that at each portion of the earth this fiat led 

 to the production of genera and species suitable to the conditions 

 of each, and to the appearance, therefore, in different localities, of 

 species representative of, but rarely identical with, each other. 

 On such a principle, how easy is it to understand that the colonies 

 of M. Barrande should, although not identical with those species 

 which had pre-existed in a locality, still have coexisted with them ! 

 Absolute identity would indeed be more opposed to the laws of crea- 

 tion than the slight variations we observe in closely allied species. 



Let me too for a moment refer to that theory which would ascribe 

 the destruction of species to the agency of man, and has sought 

 to bestow upon the human race an antiquity far greater than that 

 usually assigned to it. Doubtless the actual number of years of 

 tlie existence of the human race might be multiplied ten- or a hun- 

 dred-fold, and yet the problem left unsolved. I\Ian, as a species, 

 in a -natural state, is restricted in his development by the hardships 

 of life, and the difficulty of obtaining subsistence. So far from 

 being an agent of destruction, beyond those limits which render the 

 existence of the Carnivora compatible with the existence of the 

 Ruminantia and other harmless animals, he, perhaps, of all animals, 

 is the most feeble and defenceless, and it is only when he has be- 

 come a civilized species that his race is capable of great develop- 

 ment, and he becomes a really destroying agent. The ordinary 

 history of the world is sufficient to prove this statement ; and, if we 

 compare the wide forest and prairie lands of America as they were 

 200 years ago, when the wild Indian tribes only killed for sub- 

 sistence, and used for that purpose only the simple weapons which 

 barbaric ingenuity had enabled them to form, with their present 

 state, when civilized man has not only invaded their lands, but 

 supplied the still uncivilized natives with the weapons of civilization, 

 not merely to supply the wants of their own existence, but also to 

 minister to the luxury of civilized man, — we shall see that the actual 

 destruction of species, so far as the agency of man is concerned, 

 could never have occurred, to any appreciable extent, had not that 

 extraordinary phasis in man's existence — civilization — occurred ; 

 and I will add, that even civilized man would have required a 

 vast extension of time to work out the destruction of species, had 

 not the invention of gunpowder supplied him with an agent of 

 almost unlimited power of destruction ; and further, that, even pro- 

 vided with it, he has made but small progress indeed in the destruction 

 of species. The Creation is, and must ever he, a mj^stery to man, and 

 yet it is a speculation worthy of the exercise of the highest intel- 

 ligence. Placed on the earth, it is our privilege to study every- 

 thing connected with it, and we should be neglecting the highest 

 endowments of our race were we not to do so ; nor let us be 

 tempted to scoff at or to condemn those who, possessed perhaps 

 of a higher intelligence than our own, see further than we do, and 



