434 APPENDIX. 



Professor James Hall, also, in his recent lecture before the American 

 Institute on the "Evolution of the American Continent," is reported (in 

 the New York Tribune) as advancing views which indicate that he has re- 

 lapsed into the ranks of the most radical Neptunists. "I desire," says 

 he, ' ' to impress upon you this one truth, that we have not, in our geolog- 

 ical investigation, succeeded in going back one step beyond the existence 

 of water and stratification— one step toward this so-called primary nucleus 

 of molten matter. So far as we have any knowledge of the materials in 

 the interior of the globe, they appear to us only as trap dikes, and these 

 occupying only a very small area upon the surface. This original nucleus 

 that has been talked about in geology has produced no effect upon the 

 surface of the earth ; neither upon its mountain chains or any other of 

 the great features of the continent. " 



" This idea of a great primary nucleus is only theoretical. It has not 

 in it any thing tangible. The earliest rocks of which we have any knowl- 

 edge were deposited by the ocean, under conditions similar to those which 

 now exist. The conditions of the ocean currents are the same now as 

 they have been from the earliest time. From the earliest history of the 

 American continent — from the earliest history of any other, we know that 

 the ocean currents have prevailed as they now prevail, moving northward 

 and southward ; and here, at least, the transporting power has generally 

 been from the north toward the south and west ; and we have abundant 

 evidence tha' all the materials composing our continent have been derived 

 in that way from the transporting agency of currents of water alone." 



Professor Hall seems to have taken the laurels from the brow of M. 

 Comte in his resignation to the consequences of the Positive Philosophy. 

 There are many positions in the foregoing quotation which are destined 

 to be shaken as by an earthquake shock generated by those very internal 

 fires which he so irreverently ignores. Though this is not the place for 

 argument, I will not refrain from reminding the reader that if our world 

 has been cooling for many ages, as science demonstrates that it is cooling 

 to-day, there must have been a time when the first aqueous sediments ac- 

 cumulated. What was their origin ? I very well understand that the re- 

 ply will be, that we neither know that the earth has been in process of cool- 

 ing from a high antiquity, nor have we seen, except in isolated patches, 

 the supposed foundation-lavas and granites which constituted the primor- 

 dial crust. When I stand by the Michigan Central Railway, and see the 

 "Blue Line" freight-cars pass, bearing the inscription "Great Central 

 Route ; through freight from New York to the Mississippi," I should con- 

 sider it folly to deny that these cars have proceeded from New York, and 

 base my denial on the fact that I had never seen them at that point. It is 

 thus that events rush past us, and he who will read the legends which they 

 bear may learn somewhat both of the beginning and the end. Lack of 

 demonstration is not necessarily nescience. It is too much the fashion of 

 a certain school to apply the shears of nescience to scientific and philc 



