544 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



tide from the influx of the water into the cavities between the particles of the 

 incoherent mass, such as the notorious Goodwin Sands off Deal, are thus said to be 

 very quickly swallowed unless they happen to be broken to pieces by the fury of 

 the waves. In some cases the fossil-trees have undoubtedly grown on the spot. 

 Lyell and Dawson's paper on the Joggius Coal, in the ninth volume of the " Quar- 

 terly Journal of the Geological Society" is highly interesting on this point. 



We would, moreover, obsei-ve that sand-banks, in contradistinction to lime- 

 stones, clays, and other forms of mud, are commonly of more or less rapid origin. 

 A storm may accumulate a great bank of sand, but it would disperse and distri- 

 bute as a mere film over a large surface, the finer particles of mud ; and there is 

 no reason whatever for drawing one general conclusion for primordial conditions, 

 any more than in the phenomena going on around us. Circumstances in their 

 variety now seem infinite, and they were equally so in the ancient state of things. 

 We must regard each fact by itself to perceive the harmony of its connection with 

 the grand universality and unity of nature. 



The bone-caves show an evidence totally opposed to the statements of the author 

 of the " Voices." So far from the ossiferous deposits in them being sudden or 

 diluvial, we know, from calculations respecting bones already exhumed from many 

 of them, that the number of individuals to which they belonged were commonly far 

 more than could have been contained within the cubic dimensions of the cnvity. 



In some of the continental caves more than seventeen times the bulk ccntainable 

 has thus been estimated, while only a portion of the bone-deposit has been worked 

 out. 



Bit by bit we might thus go on through the whole book, refuting mis-statement 

 after mis-statement, until we had at last written a treatise on geology in the 

 accumulated refutations. 



We content ourselves, however, with noticing one other statement. We quote 

 it entire ; — 



"Although geology is professedly in its infancy — although it mutters only a 

 feeble and inarticulate language — although its professors ai'e notoriously at variance 

 as to its fundamental positions, yet it has ventured to set itself in opposition to 

 the declarations of the Scriptures of truth. Diverse theories concerning the past 

 history of our globe swarm every season, and buzz like ephemera for a time, until 

 they perish before a fresh generation of their kind. 



" Various as these speculations are, however, they agree in one particular — they 

 completely ignore and set at naught the revelation which it has pleased the 

 Creator himself to give us respecting the generation of the heavens and of the 

 earth when they were created.' " 



Now, we protest against this. Geology is past its infancy ; it stands now 

 undoubtedly a powerful science, and the language it speaks is neither feeblenor inar- 

 ticulate. If the deductions of geology were but the puny lispings of a feeble infant, 

 they would assuredly be beneath attack ; but it is their power and their influence 

 that, rendering them formidable, makes it necessary for men, having private 

 reasons for disliking truth, or an unfortunate incapacity for right-thinking, to 

 make malicious, almost malignant, attacks upon men who, having real and deep 

 religious feelings themselves, scorn to impugn the conscientious principles of 

 others. Geology has never, by its true professors, been set in defiance of Scrip- 

 ture ; its truths have been most scrupulously taught, and those truths have been 

 accumulated in one uninterrupted succession from first to last, and against the 

 will and preconceived ideas and first belief of its votaries. Nay, the progress 

 of the science has been greatly retarded by the laboured eff'orts of its earlier pro- 

 pagators, in their numerous attempts to build up the superstructure of the science 

 on the basis of their preconceived and popular notions of the teachings of Divine 

 Writ ; whilst surely Miller, M'Causeland, and others, have well shown how great 

 sympathy there is between the teachings of inspiration and of science. Nor shall 

 we say that the language of Geology is feeble and inarticulate because, being a 

 choice and difiicult one to acquire, it is not universally spoken. As well might 

 we say the language of that great people of antiquity, the Egyptians, was feeble 

 and inarticulate, because we could not read the hieroglyphical inscriptions on 



