Objections to Capt. Hutton's Theory. 613 



first, we are brought back to the point from whence we started, that 

 the Bible, per se, affords no support to Captain Hutton's Theory. 



VI. But how do geological discoveries, actually made, accord 

 with Captain Hutton's views ? Do the organic remains which we 

 find embedded in the strata under consideration help to corroborate, 

 any more than the Mosaic record, the facts of these supposed revolu- 

 tions ? On the contrary, we find all the remains of vegetables and 

 animals of those by-gone epochs as yet discovered, belonging to ex- 

 tinct species, many of them to extinct genera, and all differing from 

 any known species now in existence ;* whereas if a part only of the 

 vegetable and animal creations had been destroyed by those revolu- 

 tions, the remainder, that is, the persisting species, which were able 

 to bear the reduction of temperature, would also, as a natural conse- 

 quence, have been found also embedded in the same strata, as they 

 grew and died on the same localities ; the utmost difference being, that 

 the latter died perhaps a few years later in the common course of nature. 



VII. The supposition that the mere reduction of temperature de- 

 scribed as attending the first revolution would be sufficient to form all 

 the strata of such vast thickness which we find alternating up to the 

 completion of the secondary strata, is at variance with all we know 

 of the relations of cause and effect in Nature's economy. The author 

 says, that this first revolution " was at once carried into effect ;" that 

 " the effects of this dreadful curse were at once felt," such are his 

 words at pages 394-5. Now, leaving the earlier conglomerates of the 

 transition series, in which remains of animal life have been found, 

 and the whole Silurian system, let us consider one example from the 

 carboniferous series : the latter, in one place in England alone, mea- 

 sures a thickness of more than 4000 feet, and contains 32 distinct 

 beds of coal ; how could such an arrangement as this have been the 

 effect merely of any change of temperature, however severe and sud- 

 den such change might be supposed ? 



VIII. Neither can the difficulty be got over by the supposed up- 

 heavement of mountains and other volcanic phenomena, said to have 

 also attended the first revolution, which the essayist calls in to 

 his assistance in accounting for these huge stratified formations ; 



* Phillip's Guide to Geology, 1834, p. 61-63. 



