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CHARLES B. WARRING, M.A., PH.D., ON 



great break in the physical conditions of the globe. There have 

 been great alterations locally in the earth, both in the distribution 

 of land and water, but these changes have never so materially 

 affected the life on the globe as to bring about its complete 

 extermination. There have always been some parts of the waters of 

 the ocean habitable, and of the land, after land animals first made 

 their appearance, where life was enabled to continue. One thing 

 has to be borne in mind, that in the earlier periods the thickness 

 of the sedimentary deposits was so vast and the time which they 

 occupied in their deposition was so great, that one looks in 

 astonishment at the comparatively small period of time represented 

 by the accumulations formed during Secondary and Tertiary ages. 

 They are more like a few sheets of paper when compared to the 

 vast pile of strata of the older rocks (many miles in thickness. 

 The thousands of feet of the Tertiary and Secondary rocks are entirely 

 eclipsed by the hundreds of thousands of feet thicknesses of strata, 

 of the older sedimentary deposits. 



With regard to the points the author specially lays stress upon,. 

 I merely wish first of all to make an emphatic protest against the 

 opinion of the universal extermination of life at any one time, or 

 that at certain periods a universal extermination took place. Such 

 dogmas were generally accepted by the older geologists, and they 

 saw no other explanation. They did not know sufficiently 

 concerning this ancient life to form a clearer idea. They saw 

 great changes and breaks, and they were not aware that these 

 were not continuous over the whole world; they imagined that each 

 break in the series ushered in a fresh formation and a new creation. 



My father, Samuel Woodward, of Norwich, a well known 

 Norfolk geologist, who lived from 1790 to 1838, entertained 

 precisely the same views as the author (Mr. Warring) and 

 Professor Dana did : that there was a general and universal 

 destruction of life at all the different geological epochs, marking 

 each series of formations; but all that is now "ancient history," 

 and no longer accepted by geologists at the present day. 



In reference to the three points touched upon by the author, the 

 air, the water, and the soil : with regard to the air, it is now 

 universally accepted by chemists, biologists and geologists, that 

 since life appeared upon the surface of the earth and in the waters 

 of rivers, lakes, and seas, no material change of vast consequence 



