ON GEOLOGY. ^ 77 



hand we observe numerous quantities of vegetables, both submarine and su- 

 perficial, heaped and deposited together by currents or other causes, consti- 

 tuting distinct strata, which progressively become decomposed, lose their 

 organization, and confound their own principles with those of the earths. 

 Hence the origin of pit-coal, and secondary schists or slates ; to which, 

 however, the decomposition of animal substances has also largely contributed. 

 Hence, too, the formation and extrication of a variety of acids and alkalies, 

 which have essentially administered to the actual phenomena of the face of 

 the earth. 



The action of volcanoes has contributed much in all ages, and is still con- 

 tributing in our own, to the present state of the earth's surface. We have 

 daily proofs of the mountains which it has elevated, and have already noticed 

 it as one source of the numerous islands that stud the face of the ocean ; and 

 we have just adverted to the subterranean agencies of electricity, heat, water, 

 and other gases and fluids which form its fuel. But the operation of volca- 

 noes is more limited and local than that of the preceding agents. " They 

 accumulate substances," says M. Cuvier, " on the surface that were formerly 

 buried deep in the bowels of the earth, after having changed or modified their 

 nature or appearances, and raise them into mountains; but they have never 

 raised up nor overturned the strata through which their apertures pass, and have 

 in no degree contributed to the elevation of the great mountains, which are 

 not volcanic." 



Inundations of seas and rivers have also, from time to time, added their tre- 

 mendous force ; but there is no ground for concluding that any catastrophe of 

 this kind has been universal for the last four thousand years ; nor, in fact, 

 that such an event has ever occurred more than once since the earth has 

 been rendered habitable. 



In examining, then, the merits of the antagonist systems of geology before 

 us, the Plutonic is perhaps best entitled to the praise of boldness of con- 

 ception and unlimited extent of view. It aspires, in many of its modifications, 

 not only to account for the present appearances of the earth, but for that of 

 the universe ; and traces out a scheme by which every planet, or system of 

 planets, may be continued indefinitely, and perhaps for ever, by a perpetual 

 series of restoration and balance. 



With this system the Neptunian forms a perfect contrast. It is limited to 

 the earth, and to the present appearances of the earth. It resolves the ge- 

 nuine origin of things into the operation of water ; and while it admits the 

 existence of subterranean fires to a certain extent, and that several of the 

 phenomena that strike us most forcibly may be the result of such an agency, 

 it peremptorily denies that such an agency is the sole or universal cause of 

 the existing state of things, or that it could possibly be rendered competent 

 to such an effect. 



More especially should we feel disposed to adhere to this theory, from its 

 g:eneral coincidence with the geology of the Scriptures. The Mosaic narra- 

 tive, indeed, with bold and soaring pinions, takes a comprehensive sweep 

 through the vast range of the solar system, if not through that of the uni- 

 verse ; and in its history of the simultaneous origin of this system touches 

 chiefly upon geology, as the part most interesting to ourselves ; but so far as 

 it enters upon this doctrine, it is in sufficiently close accordance with the 

 Neptunian scheme, — with the great volume of nature as now cursorily 

 dipped into. The narrative opens, as I had occasion to observe in the lec- 

 ture on Matter and a Material World, with a statement of three distinct facts, 

 each following the other in a regular series, in the origin of the visible world. 

 First, an absolute creation, as opposed to a mere remodification of the heaven 

 and the earth, which constituted the earliest step in the creative process. 

 Secondly, the condition of the earth when it was thus primarily brought into 

 being, which was that of an amorphous or shapeless waste. And, thirdly, 

 a commencing effort to reduce the unfashioned mass to a condition of order 

 and harmony. " In the beginning," says the sacred historian, " God created 

 the heaven and the earth. — And the earth was without form and void : and 



