REVIEWS. 



131 



The subject of Palgeontology is then taken up, and regarded in the hght of the 

 continuance of God's creative energy and providence ; each successive life-stage 

 being subjected to analysis and special notice in descending series from the most 

 recent with the remains of man and of his works through the ages of great beasts, 

 of gigantic reptiles, of profuse vegetation, of trilobites, to that of primeval worm- 

 tracks and rain-drops. Everywhere in these rocks " we find the clearest evidences 

 of adaptation in the character of the animal-remains of their successive beds. One 

 kind of life flourishes in the fine shales, the consolidated impalpable mud of the 

 early seas ; another affects the coarser sandstone, loving the littoral conditions 

 suited to its existence ; a third abounds only in shell-sand ; whilst the most 

 numerous occupy the calcareous zones, which are the chief sepulchres of the remote 

 past." The first appearance of every creature in the geological scale is not in a 

 rudimentary or imperfect condition, and so sudden has sometimes been the addition 

 of life that' one band of the Upper Silurian Formation— the Niagara limestone — 

 presents us Avith 150 new species. The results of extensive observations in various 

 regions show that marine species in the olden geological periods had a wider range 

 than those now living, so that the climatal or physical conditions of the ocean over 

 large areas must have been more uniform, although particular localities were 

 characterised by the predominance of particular forms. Thus lifting the curtain of 

 the past, we are struck by the endless procession of animated existence appearing 

 on the stage, moving slowly across it, and visibly ending, not by worn-out life, but 

 by changed conditions, nor " can we announce that there have been absolute life- 

 breaks, for evidence is continually coming in, showing that such lines do not exist, 

 or if existing in one district, do not extend to others." 



" The study of Geology puts to flight for ever the opinion that God has rarely, 

 if ever, been actively employed in creation since the issuing of His fiat for its com- 

 mencement. There have been no long periods of inaction, positively no repose 

 whatever of Divine power, no trace of quiescence, no proof of abandonment for a 

 moment." 



From these reflections the author's thoughts turn hopefully to futurity, and he 

 concludes " if He has thus cared for the material universe from all eternity, so He 

 will for the moral, and the traces of continual provision for the one may be 

 well appealed to as tokens of assurance for the other. It is not, therefore, 

 as a stranger that the geologist opens the Word of God." 



The fourth chapter deals with the history of our globe. In it, of course, the 

 high antiquity of our planet is - dwelt upon, and a pretty illustration of this 

 is thus pleasingly given : " Just as we should learn much of the history of 

 England by tracing the fortunes of one of our aristocratic families backward to the 

 Norman man-at-arms who came over with the Conqueror, so we may obtain a lively 

 impression of the sequences in the geologic past by tracing the fortunes of any 

 family which has survived from the earliest times to the present, in the palseonto- 

 logical roti." And so Mr. Pattison selects the Lingula, and traces the family- 

 pedigree back from the tiny molluscous inhabitant of the Polynesian coral-reefs 

 " beyond the time whereof the memory of man nmneth not to the contrary," 

 beyond "legal memory, whose boundary is the departure of brave Coeur-de-Lion to 

 the Crusades— beyond Herodotus, the father of history, from before the voyage of 

 the good ship Argo, it has been living and flourishing unknown to fame." " It 

 may have attracted the attention of the world's grey fathers in their boyhood ; but 

 it claims a still higher ancestry, for we find it in pre-historic times." Backward in 

 time the pedigree is traced— among the crag shells, in the sands of the cretaceous 

 sea, we find it "in the region of the oolites, it takes its place with the coral then 

 growing over the new-made grave of the gigantic saurians, beyond still with the 

 marine fossils of the mountain limestone, — in the Devonian and Silurian rocks," 

 but we must still press on, " for the little Lingula ascends to the utmost hmit of 

 organic life and thus, by the aid of Geology, " we carry back into untold ages 

 the evidences for God, which the naturalist so triumphantly gathers from the 

 creation around." " Palseontology and mineralogy both tell us that the world has 

 a history not recorded, because not professed to be recorded in the Scriptures ; and 

 that the great actor in this history was unquestionably God, ' blessed for ever- 

 more.' He has in the Bible given us adequate information to make wise unto 



