422 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY* 



became brackish, or alternately salt and fresh, so that fresh-water and 

 niarine shells were mingled in the blue argillaceous sediment at the 

 bottom. Thirdly, the shoaling continued until the river water pre- 

 vailed, and was no longer habitable by marine testacea, but fitted only 

 for the abode of fluviatile species and aquatic insects. Fourthly, a 

 peaty swamp or morass was formed, into which trees and terrestrial 

 animals, as deer, were occasionally drifted by land floods. Lastly, 

 the soil, being only subject to periodical inundations from the river, 

 became a verdant plain, through which the narrow Ouse now winds 

 its way to the British Channel. It is in alluvial deposits of this kind 

 that the remains of man first appear : human skeletons, and the rude 

 instruments of a half-civilized race, are found associated with the bones 

 of animals which still inhabit this country, and in some instances in- 

 termixed with the osseous remains of a few species that appear to 

 have been extirpated by man. 



Such are the results which a review of the geological phenomena 

 of the south-east of England offers to our consideration. We have 

 evidence of great physical mutations of the surface of the earth — of 

 vast changes in the temperature of the climate ; and we perceive that 

 these revolutions were accompanied by a corresponding alteration in 

 the forms of organic life : these are general conclusions, which can- 

 not be disputed, although the laws that governed these co-existing- 

 phenomena may be concealed from our view. It is, however, obvi- 

 ous, that the great changes which have taken place in the relative 

 proportion of the land and water, must have materially influenced 

 the temperature of the climate, and consequently the geographical 

 distribution of animals and vegetables. Mr. Lyell has treated this 

 question in a very luminous and admirable manner, and has shown 

 that there is every reason to conclude that since the commencement 

 of the tertiary period, the dry land in the northern hemisphere has 

 been increasing ; not only because it is now greatly in excess beyond 

 the average proportion which land generally bears to water on our 

 planet, but because a comparison of the secondary and tertiary strata 

 affords indications throughout the space occupied by Europe, of a 

 transition from the condition of an ocean, interspersed with islands, 

 to that of a large continent: and to this increase of the land in the 

 northern hemisphere we may probably attribute, in a great measure, 

 that gradual diminution of temperature which the organic remains of 

 the different periods denote. "The climate was hottest when the 

 northern hemisphere was for the most part occupied by the ocean ; 

 and the refrigeration did not become considerable until a very large 

 proportion of that ocean was converted into land and replaced in 

 some parts by high mountain chains : nor did the cold reach its maxi- 

 mum until these chains attained their greatest elevation, and the land 

 its utmost extension." 



The changes that have taken place in the forms of the animal and 

 vegetable kingdoms, are not less striking than those which we have 

 above described in the inorganic world. The animals and plants of 

 the more ancient strata, are not only such as could not now exist in 

 the latitudes which they formerly inhabited, but almost all the spe- 

 cies, and very many of the genera, are no longer to be found in any 

 part of the known globe. In the newer deposits, on the contrary, 



