556 
GEOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS. 
made in vain, but th.it every created object 
has its sphere of usefulness, and therefore of 
duration ; and when we look on the fair and 
harmonious world around us, and examine the 
diversified materials of which it is composed, 
and the wondrous agencies by which it has 
been elaborated into order, fertility, and. beauty, 
we cannot avoid the conviction, so irresistibly 
forced upon the mind, that operations thus 
complicated and extensive, and results thus 
admirable and perfect, must have required an 
adequate period for their development ; and 
that time, to an extent inappreciable, perhaps, 
by human powers of calculation, must have 
formed an essential element in the vast work 
of creation." — Pp. 85—87. 
In the next portion, that in which the author 
endeavours to prove the extreme antiquity of 
the earth by astronomy, there are many sin- 
gular facts which support his views, but they 
are more deeply scientific than our readers will 
care to peruse in this otherwise short notice. 
The facts, however, connected with astronomy 
are singular, and very conclusive to those who 
have given to astronomy sufficient attention; 
but the unscientific reader will hardly be 
convinced, at the first view, as to the rate at 
which light travels, nor as to the distance from 
this earth which some planets are assumed to 
be placed. To the uninitiated they will appear 
only so many assertions, which study may 
hereafter change to palpable truths, though he 
may net be ready at present to receive them 
as such ; for instance, it will appear to the 
young student very strange that anybody can 
tell the distance of a planet from this earth, 
and especially when that distance is assumed 
to be " twelve millions of millions of millions 
of miles," and it«nay be equally astounding 
to read that the light by which these objects 
have become visible to us, must have been 
nearly two millions of years in its progress. 
We therefore leave this for future considera- 
tion, when the mind of the reader is prepared 
to receive them as facts. The most interesting 
portion of the work, perhaps, is the author's 
illustrations of the modern date of man. It 
is here that the scriptural account of the 
creation is confirmed by every fact adduced. 
The author says : — 
" The comparatively modern period of the 
creation of man, and the inferior age of our 
race to that of the globe which we- inhabit, is 
a fact revealed by Scripture and confirmed by 
science. The same internal evidence which 
convinces us of the extreme antiquity of our 
planet, affords the like satisfactory proof of 
the comparatively modern period of the origin 
of our species. The whole vast series of 
aqueous deposits are of course crowded with 
organic remains, with fragments of the weeds, 
plants, corals, shells, Crustacea, fish, reptiles, 
birds and mammalia, relics of the vegetable 
and animal existence of the ancient earth ; but 
no fossil remains of the human form have yet 
been discovered in the solid rocks themselves ; 
or in any, save those accumulations of silt, or 
mud, which date from the most modern era — ■ 
the yesterday, as it were, in the infinite history 
of the past. It is only in these accumulations 
of the historic period, that we discover the 
remains of even the most ancient families of 
mankind ; that in this country we meet with 
the implements or utensils of our British 
ancestors, or the coins and weapons of their 
Roman invaders ; that in Italy we find the 
Cyclopean structures and works of art of the 
Etruscans, a nation who appear to have pre- 
ceded the Romans in the occupation of Italy, 
and to have excelled them in civilization and 
the arts of life ; while vestiges of the Pelasgi 
are alike discoverable in similar deposits in 
Greece ; and in the new world, traces exist of 
the Tulteques, a people who seem to have 
been the predecessors of the Mexicans, and 
their superiors in knowledge and improve- 
ment. In the solid rocks, we repeat, no traces 
of man are discernible. Yet had the human 
race been really the aborigines of the physical 
history of our planet ; had they actually 
existed in its primeval times, their remains 
would, unquestionably, have been found scat- 
tered throughout its varied deposits from the 
oldest to the most recent in the series. No 
impediment exists to their conservation ; our 
bones, composed of the same elements as those 
of the animal races, are equally capable of 
being kept from destruction ; the same battle- 
field has preserved the bones of the horse and 
his rider; the same cavern which, in earlier eras, 
gave shelter during life to the hyena and the bear, 
and retained their skeletons after death, has 
alike preserved the remains of those human 
occupants, who, at a later period, found, in the 
same retreat, a refuge and a tomb. But a 
still stronger proof of the modern date of our 
species exists in the obvious fact, that if man 
had really been an inhabitant of the earth 
during its early history, his skeleton, or the 
mere fragments of his osseous structure, would 
have constituted the least of those relics which 
he would have bequeathed to the soil, of 
which he was an inhabitant. "We should have 
discovered his mighty and majestic works, 
which so far transcend in duration his own 
ephemeral existence. We should have found 
his cities and his structures overwhelmed in 
the waters of ancient seas, or buried beneath 
the ejections of primeval volcanoes ; his 
majestic pyramids sunk in the bed of early 
rivers ; his mountain-temples, hewn on the 
surface of the deepest and the oldest rocks ; 
we should have encountered his bridges of 
granite and of iron ; his palaces of limestone 
