220 Cape. Button's Geological Report. [No. 111. 



mineral geologist, has disregarded and passed over the first of them which 

 occurred, not during but subsequent to the Creation, when man first trans- 

 gressed the commandment of his Maker, and drew down, in consequence, 

 the curse of an offended God upon the earth and its productions. Thus it 

 would appear, that geologists are right in referring the fossil exuviae of the 

 secondary strata to a revolution long prior to that of the deluge, and they 

 have only erred in not assigning to it the actual period pointed out by 

 the record. 



The second revolution, or deluge, is too clearly marked, and its consequen- 

 ces too obvious to escape the notice of any one ; but the historian enters 

 into no details of the means by which the first was effected, although he 

 clearly points out the effect of it. This difference in the seeming impor- 

 tance of the two revolutions may have arisen from the fact that the first 

 did not, like the second, involve the loss of life to the human race, and there- 

 fore the record is content to point it out merely by its effects, leaving us 

 at liberty to infer the causes. 



Asserting therefore, with the inspired historian, that our planet, toge- 

 ther with all its goodly furnishing of vegetable and animal life was creat- 

 ed and finished in the space of six days, each of the same duration as 

 these of our present computation, and that on the sixth and last day the 

 progenitors of the human race were also created, and were consequent- 

 ly contemporaneous with the whole animal kingdom, as constituted before 

 the fall, I shall endeavour to point out the period when, in my opinion, 

 the marine animals, whose exuviae are imbedded in the secondary strata 

 of the Spiti valley, ceased to exist. 



Within the limits, however, which it is found necessary to assign to the 

 present paper, it cannot be expected that I should much enlarge upon the 

 time at which, or the causes by which this first great change in the tem- 

 perature of our earth occurred, and I shall therefore pass it over with 

 a slight allusion only, and with the less regret, since I hope at no distance 

 of time to lay before the Society a theory of the changes which have 

 taken place on the surface of the earth, from creation to the present time. 



If in succeeding ages a writer were to state that the various countries 

 of our present earth had suddenly undergone a great change for the worse 

 in the prolificness and character of their vegetation, would not our poste- 

 rity justly look upon it as an indication of a well marked revolution and 

 change of temperature ? 



And would they not naturally seek for a corresponding change and loss 

 in the genera and species of the animate classes ? 



Assuredly they might reasonably do so ; then why do not we, who have a 

 parallel case presented to us in the pages of Holy Writ, seek for traces of 



