542 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



that the theory which requires us to suppose that fishes, of many species and high 

 organization, existed, in as great numbers as the countless shoals which now 

 people the waters, for many thousands of years in an ocean of liquid mud, must be 

 at OQce dismissed as a simple absurdity." Mr. Miller was too good a geologist to 

 have said any such thing. 



The author of these " Voices," then, after disagreeing with all previous writers, 

 brings himself to the condition recorded in the concluding sentence of chapter 

 five : — " The uniform and deplorable failure of every attempt which has hitherto 

 been made to bring the Mosaic narrative into harmony with the statements of 

 modern geology should suggest to every Christian mind the inquiry — May not the 

 assertions of geologists, after all, be unfounded in truth ? The facts of the 

 science, of course, are altogether beyond dispute ; but may not the theories founded 

 upon those facts be fallacious ? We will honestly," continues that author^ 

 " confess that, for many years past, this has been our conviction ; and, with the 

 reader's permission, we will now place before him the grounds of our belief." 



The first of these grounds is as fallacious as the statement of the footprints. 

 We quote it from the book; — "The absence of the erosive action of water, as 

 manifested in cutting valleys and gorges in the under- strata of the earth, is fatal 

 to the theory that each formation has successively emerged from the sea and 

 become the surface of the habitable woi'ld." Now, this is neither true nor fairly 

 put. No real geologist believes that each and every formation, as here implied, 

 has been raised into dry land and again submerged before the deposition of the 

 next ; and wherever, in those cases of ancient elevation which are known, in 

 which the former surfaces are preserved to us in the structure or super-position 

 of the rocks, there we find the evidence of the influences and results of moving 

 water and atmospheric action. 



Every thorough geologist knows well the instances of erosion in the coal- 

 measures, — over the surface of the chalk, — of numberless instances recorded as tlie 

 effects of denudation and in the cases of unconformable super-position. And it 

 would not be difficult for even tyros in the science to offer abundance of facts in 

 disproof of the above unwarranted assertion. 



The second ground is couched in these words : — " It is a strong presumption 

 that the theories of modern geologists are altogether baseless, that no instance 

 has ever been known of any alluvial soils, river-beds, forests m situ, or other 

 traces of a habitable world having been discovered in the ancient strata of the 

 earth." 



We have heard of the man who collected a great crowd round Northumberland 

 House upon the mere assertion that the stone lion's tail on the top of it did move. 

 We think it would be easier to believe in the actual wagging of the Northumber- 

 land lion's ornamental extremity, than in this untenable assertion. Is it possible 

 for any one to forget the everywhere-famous Purbeck dirt-bed — that old soil with 

 the broken trees still rooted in it ? This was too glaring a fact to escape notice 

 from even the author himself, who, in this very chapter, and knowing he could 

 not pass it over in silence, evidently felt it would be too great assurance for even his 

 slack modesty to deny it too positively. So, after quoting from Dr. Mantell, and 

 putting upon a sentence of that geologist a construction it was never meant to bear, 

 he adds : — " Now, although we would not positively deny that this is a real instance 

 of a petrified ancient forest, yet we are far, very far, from being satisfied of the fact." 

 Doubtless very far from being satisfied with the fact, because a fact fatal at once, 

 without further discussion, to the author's design. But the attempts to explain 



