614 Objections to Capt. Iluttoris Theory, 



though without a shadow of Scripture warrant for so doing. No 

 sudden volcanic impetus, though combined with a reduction of tem- 

 perature, is sufficient to account for such a carboniferous series as 

 above described; many of the strata containing the impressions 

 of large trees, which must have taken years to attain their ap- 

 parent growth : again, the intermediate strata contain fossil shells 

 and deposits of a diluvial nature : those in the lower beds being of a 

 marine origin, and those of the upper strata apparently once the in- 

 habitants of fresh water ; circumstances all conspiring to impress us 

 with the idea, that they must have been deposited by a slow and 

 quiet process, probably extending through long periods of years. 



IX. Let us take one more view of the subject, and suppose that 

 the alleged reduction of temperature with its consequences, and the 

 attending volcanic formations, were but gradual in their progress, 

 occupying the period from the Fall, when the curse began to 

 be fulfilled, up to the time of the deluge, a period of about 1650 

 years : granting that the strata of the transition and secondary forma- 

 tion were deposited gradually during this interval, or a greater part 

 of it; this hypothesis also is by no means confirmed by any organic 

 remains hitherto discovered in those deposits, they being almost en- 

 tirely of an aquatic description ; the animals almost universally so 

 from the humble mollusc to the gigantic saurians : " the only terres- 

 trial mammalia," says Buckland,f " yet discovered in any secon- 

 dary strata are the marsupial quadrupeds allied to the opossum." 

 Now had these ante-diluvian animals been, as the theory under con- 

 sideration would make them, contemporaneous with the " cattle," 

 " the beasts of the field," and the sheep which we find distinctly 

 mentioned from the very commencement of the period in Genesis iv. 

 2, surely some remains of the latter description would be found also 

 entombed in those strata. 



X. The absence of any well-authenticated evidence of fossil human 

 bones, or any trace of human nature throughout the geological for- 

 mations, though negative evidence indeed, is still a strong argument 

 against the opinion of the structure of those formations since man 

 began to "increase and multiply and replenish the earth." 



* Section of the strata from Newcastle upon Tyne to Crossfell in Cumberland, 

 f Briclgewater Treatise, p. 64. 



