SKETCHES OF CREATION. 
265 
friends, we may say the world was not the less 
the handywork of the Creator, if thus pro- 
duced, than if called into existence in its 
present form. Besides these unquestionable 
evidences of internal fire, witness the volca- 
noes, and external evidences of fusion in the 
various metals in the state that fire alone could 
leave them : however, this is digressing;, — 
the author is quite capable of working out his 
own case without our assistance. If among 
the facts produced by geologists, we are 
shown things that are incredible unless we 
witness them, and yet they are pointed out 
that our own senses may be exercised for our 
conviction, we may give credence to much 
that they say, not so well within reach of our 
observation. For instance, when they tell us 
that enormous rocks are formed by the secre- 
tions and remains of certain minute animals, 
that mountains are raised by the mere living 
and dying of myriads of small creatures, the 
careless observer or the non-observer may 
feel indisposed to believe it ; but there is no 
more doubt of it than there is that the Pyra- 
mids of Egypt were built by men, though we 
did not see them in hand. We did not see the 
coral reefs building any more than the Pyra- 
mids of Egypt ; but there they are with the 
evidence on every inch of vast mountains ; 
and we see others now in progress, and rising 
so rapidly as to occasionally make it necessary 
to alter our navigation charts ; — a coral rock 
under water, out of all reach of vessels, 
within the memory of man, becoming so 
augmented as to cause the loss of vessels by 
striking, where, a comparatively short time 
previous, there was no danger within reach. 
Speaking of the accumulation of rock from 
the mere work of small creatures, individually 
as nothing, the writer says : — 
"The prodigious extent of the combined 
and unintermitting labours of these little 
world-architects must be witnessed, in order 
to be adequately conceived or realised. They 
have built up four hundred miles of barrier 
reef on the shores of New Caledonia ; and on 
the north-east coast of Australia their labours 
extend for one thousand miles in length ; and 
these reefs may average, perhaps, a quarter 
of a mile in breadth, and one hundred and 
fifty feet in depth, and they have been built 
amidst the waves of the ocean, and in defiance 
of its fiercest storms. The geologist, in con- 
templating these stupendous operations, learns 
to appreciate the circumstances by which were 
deposited in ancient times, and under other 
conditions than those which now characterise 
our climate, those mountain masses of lime- 
stone, for the most part entirely coralline, 
which abound in many parts of our native 
island. The most abundant remains of corals 
in these masses are similar in their general 
nature to living species, but indicate animals 
very distinct from those living polyps which 
are now actively engaged in forming similar 
deposits on the undulating and half-submerged 
crust of the earth washed by the Indian and 
Pacific oceans. The limestones, which form 
a part even of the oldest formations, offer 
distinct proof, by their organic remains, that 
they are due to the secretions of gelatinous 
polyps, the species of which perished before 
those that formed the newer strata were cre- 
ated ; and, as these polyps of the older period 
have been superseded by those of the present 
day, so these, in all probability, are destined 
to give way in their turn to new forms of 
essentially analogous animals, to which, in 
time to come, the same great office will be 
assigned, — to clothe with fertile limestone 
future rising continents." 
The theories broached by the geologists 
suppose, that, from the period when the world 
first became habitable, even to the lowest 
order of animals and reptiles, there was a 
succession of new genera and species, and a 
decay of old ones, and that the various strata 
of the earth were formed each of the 
organic remains of various families, some 
altogether extinct, totally unlike anything 
known in the present day, and only figured 
and described from their bones, teeth, scales, 
impressions of their feet, localities, and other 
evidences, complete up to a certain point, 
but after or beyond that imaginary. Some of 
those remains are of gigantic proportions and 
monstrous formations. The races of animals 
existing at the periods of the various forma- 
tions appear to have been very distinct, and 
in some geological works an attempt has been 
made to represent the periods by figures of the 
various living creatures supposed to exist at 
the time. In the work before us there is a 
frontispiece describing the vegetation of 
England during the coal period. These things 
being, in part, accomplished by analogy, 
drawn from fragments actually found, may be 
pretty nearly accurate. It is quite clear, from 
the discoveries of organic remains, that all the 
animals in the creation were not introduced 
at once, and as clear, that with the animals 
were also introduced the vegetation or other 
food and circumstances necessary for their 
existence ; it is also clear, that as whole fami- 
lies, genera, and species have become extinct, 
the circumstances necessary to their existence 
have been changed. There are those who, 
referring to the Mosaic records, find, or satisfy 
themselves that they find, a sufficient cause for 
all the effects spoken of by geologists in the 
simple but awful single occasion of the flood ; 
— the overturning of mountains, the washing 
out of vallies, the various precipitates of differ- 
ent substances, the changing of vallies into 
