78 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



is rid of those visionary speculations which some of her votaries have 

 worked into her fabric, and which, like the rotten materials of the dis- 

 honest contractor, or the incoherent walls put together by incapable 

 workmen, endanger the whole edifice in case of attack. When Geology 

 and Scripture are brought into opposition, outsiders would do well to ask, 

 What is Geology, and what is Scripture? When we have both replies, we 

 might judge, probably very rightly, that as in the case of all quarrels, both 

 sides were wrong, or at least not right, — which is pretty nearly, although 

 not quite the same thing. If the Scripturists will d priori state what the 

 Bible declares in respect to creation, or if they will give us a correct 

 reading only of what the Bible does say ; and if the geologists will 

 give us — if they can agree amongst themselves — a correct version of 

 the ancient history of our earth, then the public can judge well enough 

 whether the two versions do agree or whether they do not. Until this is 

 done, we do not think arguments will be much more conclusive than they 

 have been. " Everybody knows," Mr. Young says, " that physical 

 hypotheses are by no means necessarily physical truths ; " but in geology 

 some of these hypotheses, " originally invented to group together natural 

 phenomena under some assumed general principle, from which those phe- 

 nomena may be logically deduced," have been commingled with theories or 

 stated as facts. 



It is but a few years since that we heard an eminent Fellow of the Geo- 

 logical Society say that the main work of geology was done, and geologists 

 had only to arrange their materials and keep their collections in order. 

 Since then we have had Sorby and others working at granites and meta- 

 morphosed rocks, and Darwin coming in with some stirring notions about 

 the transmutation of species and the imperfection of the geological record. 

 Latterly, too, the researches and speculations of Professors Thompson, 

 Tyndall, and Haughton ; the discoveries of Kirchhof and Bunsen ; the ex- 

 periments of Airy and Hawkins ; and the progress made in chemistry, 

 astronomy, pbysics, and all the other sciences, have made us feel, what is 

 doubtless felt by every deep-thinking or observant mind, that the fabric of 

 geology is not as solid as it ought to be, and the deductions from hypotheses 

 or facts not always as satisfactory or as logical as one could wish them. 

 It is only too true that there are matters of geology far more rickety 

 than is quite pleasant to its defenders. " So long as geology lets the 

 Bible alone it may go on constructing its theories as it pleases," says Mr. 

 Young ; but if these theories are paraded, in opposition to Scripture, as 

 " geological truths, the grounds upon which they lay claim to this dignity 

 must be examined." Whether this be correct, that geologists parade their 

 doctrines in opposition to Scripture, or whether the outcry was not really 

 raised by the opposite party against geologists, does not matter here. In 

 both cases it is equally right that the doctrines of geologists should 

 be submitted to as rigid tests as the words of the Bible. And so Mr. 

 A oung, as well as he is able, and sometimes ably, attacks the dogmas of 

 get >logy . For exam pie, giving in full the geologists' hypothetical assumption 

 that the primary condition of the globe was a fluid molten mass, and the 

 accessary corollaries of that assumption, that it has successively cooled 

 down until a crust of aqueous deposits containing remains of their life- 

 creations could be deposited from successive oceans, Mr. Young requests 

 the reader to examine them, " and then, if he know anything of science 

 in general, to ask himself it' the fanciful scheme here depicted deserves to 

 be called a strictly scientific theoiy. What is the primary assumption ? 

 AN hv. thai lite earth originally was a globe of fluid molten mass. Being 

 a globe, all the parts of it equidistant from the centre must have been in 



