X36 THE GEOLOGIST. 



The artist has one advantage over the author— the results of his 

 labours burst at once upon the eye ; his achievements in all their glory 

 are at once patent and apparent. Line by line must the author work 

 upon the mind of each individual reader ; line by line with each in- 

 dividual must he battle with pre-judgment and prejudices ; and line by 

 line in each individual and differently constituted mind, must he cause 

 to be developed the same ideas which flow through his own brain if he 

 would achieve success. Line by line, nay, letter by letter, is the history 

 of our planet written ; line by line, bit by bit only is the ponderous 

 volume to be read ; bit by bit only can the stupendous picture be un- 

 rolled, as if the Deity in his mercy spared the intellect of man the madden- 

 ing glory of the whole dazzling spectacle displayed at once. As, peering 

 into the dark heavens, we perceive the glittering twinkle of tiny stars, and 

 wonder at their distance, so do we look back into the eternity that 

 was, and catch the star-like glimmerings of primeval life upon our 

 globe, and become awe-stricken in the contemplation of the vastness 

 of the ages that have passed away. 



Thousands of years ago seems a long time measured by the span 

 of human life ; but by thousands of ages is the passage backwards into 

 time reckoned when we speak of the oldest fossils ; and yet ages before 

 the period marked by the first traces of organised life, the world, the 

 land was ; and the sea, ever rising and falling twice a day in its tidal 

 homage to the moon and sun, was at its ancient toil washing down the 

 mountains, and elaborating the dehrisy sorting the sand, the mud, and 

 the ooze. Schists and slates were being slowly arranged, particle by 

 particle, thousands of feet of stratified rocks were being piled one over 

 the other, and consolidated in solitary silence. Perhaps before the 

 first worms made their tracks on the primeval shores — for worm-holes 

 and rain- drops are the first fossils in the rippled sands and sun-cracked 

 mud of that long, long ago" — other creations lived, whose records have 

 been erased by the fiery touch of the volcano, contact with heat, or the 

 mysterious influences of electricity and metamorphic action; or perhaps, 

 indeed, we have found — but I think not yet — the earliest traces of life 

 and of the seasons. 



Eut let us not anticipate the evidence ; and first, then, to proceed, 

 I will exhibit, by a tabulated diagram, the position of what I mean 

 to designate as the Bottom Kocks," in respect to those other de- 

 posits, the organic remains from which are more familiarly known. The 



