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 oif 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 fussil-trees have undoubtedly grown on the spot. 
Lyell and Dawson's paper on the Joggins Coal, in the ninth volume of the " Quar- 
terly Journal of the Geological Society" is highly interesting on this point. 
We would, moreover, observe 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 eacli fact by itself to perceive the harmony of its connecti:,n 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 ccntainible 
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 are 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 
undoubtedlyapowerful science, and the language itspeaks 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 fur men, having private 
reasons for disliking truth, or an unfortunate inc;ipacity 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 tauglit, 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 difficult 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 
