136 
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 itars, 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 debris, 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 sUence. 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. 
But 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 Rocks," in respect to those other de- 
posits, the organic remains from which arc more familiarly known. The 
