34 
of this world, I do not, therefore, admit the great antiquity of man. 1 think 
it remains to be proved that the extinct animals are of the great antiquity that 
has been assigned to them* Bearing in mind that Mr. Hamilton says, W e 
are daily becoming more convinced that no real natural breaks exis 
between the Faunas and Floras of what we are accustomed to call geological 
periods,” I think the following remarks are worthy of consideration. 
« The first step in the false inductions geology made, arose from the rash 
deduction that the order in which the fossil remains of organic being were 
found deposited in the various strata, necessarily determined the order of 
their creation; and the nest error arose from bhndly rushmg to ^h ^ne - 
sions and hasty generalizations, from a very limited number of facts and the 
most imperfect investigations. There were also (and indeed are stdl) some 
wild dogmatisms as to the time necessary to produce certain geologic form - 
tions ; f but the absurdities of the science culminated when it ado P‘ ed J™“ 
Laplace the irrational and unintelligible theory of a natural origin of the world 
from a nebula of gaseous granite, intensely hot, and supposed to be gradually 
cooled while gyrating senselessly in space. This necessitated the furt 
supposition of a long lapse of ages before this gas-world cooled d °y™j ^ 
a „ain it was supposed that a hard granite crust would be the result, with the 
still hot liquid granite-matter inside! Then it was supposed (whence 01 
how not explained) that rain would fall upon the hardened granite, and that 
it would break up into soil, gravel, &c„ &c., in the course of another lapse of 
ages or milli ons of years; and so on and on, always supposing some fresh 
occurrence, without the most remote attempt at explaining how any one of 
them could have naturally occurred, and always allowing ages upon ages to 
intervene, as if to give time enough for totally inadequate causes to produce 
the continued series of improbable effects, which, without a Deity and without 
a design, were to result in this glorious world! . • • * *. * 
But^although. we have now got rid of the “Azoic” strata, and the ^oic 
ao-es of this world of ours, it is nevertheless worth while to suggest that, 
even had they existed, and even had all the fossils ever discovered been em- 
bedded exclusively as was long supposed to be the case, this would not 
have afforded any proof of the sole existence of the lower orders found ^in the 
lowest strata at any particular time; but only that such animals as natuially 
* In a Paper read in the Royal Institution of Great Britain by ^eminent 
r - 1. iirj? Prestwich, on tlie Flint Implements found at Amiens, he said, 
I tSL E vidence as it then stood seemed to him ^^“e'c^ing 
£™k g tf g " ‘the C gSgi“ es/MQuotld from Colony, by Evan 
^r^l’le're’vfew of £% Canada 
sedimentary rocks” 
