PROOFS OF CREATION AND BEGINNING. 585 
and constantly proclaiming the Unity of the great 
divine Original."* 
It has been stated in our Sixth Chapter, on 
primary stratified rocks, that Geology has ren- 
dered an important service to Natural Theology, 
in demonstrating by evidences peculiar to itself, 
that there was a time when none of the existing 
forms of organic beings had appeared upon our 
Planet, and that the doctrines of the derivation 
of living species either by Development and 
Transmutation^; from other species, or by an 
Eternal Succession from preceding individuals of 
the same species, without any evidence of a Be- 
* Buckland's Inaiig. Lect. 1819, p. 13. 
t As a misunderstanding may arise in the minds of persons 
not familiar with the language of physiology, respecting the im- 
port of the word Developinent, it may be proper here to state, 
that in its primary sense, it is applied to express the organic 
changes which take place in the bodies of every animal and 
vegetable Being, from their embryo state, until they arrive at 
full maturity. In a more extended sense, the term is also ap- 
plied to those progressive changes in fossil genera and species, 
which have followed one another during the deposition of the 
strata of the earth, in the course of the gradual advancement 
of the grand system of Creation. The same term has been 
adopted by Lamarck, to express his hypothetical views of the de- 
rivation of existing species from preceding species, by successive 
Transmutatio7is of one form of organization into another form, 
independent of the influence of any creative Agent. It is impor- 
tant that these distinctions should be rightly understood, lest the 
frequent application of the word Development, which occurs in 
the writings of modern physiologists, should lead to a false infe- 
rence, that the use of this term implies an admission of the theory 
of Transmutation with which Lamarck has associated it. 
