436 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



tJie supposed identification of some of his fossils witli those of recent ani- 

 mals, he was induced to refer the circumstance to ' a change in the situa- 

 tion of this globe respecting the sun,' — in other words, to a ' change in the 

 ecliptic' Here he departs from his principle of explaining the past phe- 

 nomena hy present causes. IN^ewton long since declared, in reference to a 

 similar supposition borrowed by Burnet from an Italian author, Alles- 

 sandro degli AUessandri, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, that 

 * there was every presumption in astronomy against any former change in 

 the inclination of the earth's axis ;' and Laplace has since strengthened the 

 arguments of jN'ewton, against the probability of any former revolution of 

 this kind. 



" It may be a question, however, whether the mental stock now to be 

 dealt with by the geologist does not yield a truer appreciation of the dura- 

 tion of tim3 in which the movements of the stellar and solar systems have 

 gone on, than could be afforded by the observations and calculations of 

 the astronomer in the times of J>[ewton and Laplace : whether the in- 

 adequacy of the analogy, based by Cuvier on the knowledge of the cha- 

 racters of a species during a period of 3000 years, of such seeming fixity of 

 specific characters, to the effects of influences on generations succeeding 

 each other during 300,000 years, may not be applicable to the case of New- 

 ton, considering the results of his observations and calculations under a 

 preoccupation of the mind by the theological age of the world. 



" Hunter's recourse to ' a change in the ecliptic,' as well as to ' some at- 

 tractive external principle producing a great and permanent tide,' such as 

 Whiston's comet, e.g., was however the consequence of a misconception 

 or misinterpretation of the phenomena which those hypothetical causes 

 were invoked to explain. 



"Hunter believed, for example, that the elephants' remains found in 

 northern and temperate latitudes belonged to the same species, or at most 

 to a variety of the same species of elephant, as that which now lives in 

 tropical regions. Its specific distinction from the existing tropical ele- 

 phants was then as little understood as the specific distinction of the 

 African from the Asiatic elephants. 



. " The moment that zoology and comparative anatomy had made such 

 progress as to discern constant differences interpreted as specific distinc- 

 tions, and to appl}^ the same principle to the differentiation of the fossil 

 elephant of northern regions from either of the existing tropical kinds, the 

 necessity for calling in a cataclysm, either through a hypothetical shift in 

 the ecliptic, or the attraction of the ocean upon the continents by a comet, 

 no longer existed." 



Hunter's observations on the inadequacy of a pre-supposed Mosaic 

 deluge to account for the manifold evidences of aqueous action which geo- 

 logy has revealed to us, we must quote : — 



" History gives us no determined account of this change of the waters ; 

 but as the Sacred History mentions the whole surface of the eartii having 

 been dehigod with water, the natural historians have laid hold of this, and 

 have conceived that it would account for the whole. Forty days' water 

 OA'crflowing the dry land could not have brovight such quantities of sea- 

 productions on its surfaee,; nor can we suppose thence, taking all possible 

 circumstances into consideration, that it remained long on the whole sur- 

 ftU'C of tlie earth; therefore there was no time for their being fossilized; 

 tliey could only have been left, and exposed on the surface. i3ut it would 

 a])pear that the sea has more than once made its incursions on the same 

 phu'o ; for the mixture of land- and sea-productions now found on the land 

 IS a ])roof of at leasl two changes liaving taken place." 



