35 
teachings. Fancies and fallacies flit about thick as motes in 
a sunbeam. Their inventors are of those who imagine that 
two and two make five. They are spendthrifts of gene- 
ralization — often jumping to conclusions on very meagre data. 
They insist that the evidences of geology are conclusive of 
other systems of organic life having passed away, and been 
replaced by new creations. Yet, teaching this, (to me, false 
doctrine,) they go far toward contradicting themselves ; for, 
without geology, I can scarcely understand how we could, 
scientifically, prove the similarity in all cases, and identity in 
some, of present existences with the earliest past known. 
We learn much from it. We learn that chemistry and 
electricity were the same in time’s former day as now. We 
find precisely the same elemental proportions in the earliest 
known formations as in the latest. The law which regulates 
crystallography, too, is unchanged. The crystals of the oldest 
rocks are identical with the modern. The rocks furnish us 
also with evidence that the physiological laws are unchanged ; 
they tell us that death and reproduction have ever been the 
same; that respiration and nutrition have always depended 
upon the same organs and the same constitution of the atmo- 
sphere ; and the comparative anatomist testifies that the 
laws of his science were then as in the later ages. We 
might therefore rationally conclude, that the animal kingdom 
would supply the same great classes. And so it does. The 
four leading divisions are fully represented — the vertebrates, 
the molluscs, the articulated, and the radiated. After observ- 
ing that the three lower divisions greatly preponderated 
over the vertebrates of the olden time, Hitchcock says, thus 
we find, that the more perfect animals have been developed 
gradually; becoming more and more complex as we rise in 
the scale of the rocks. But in the three other classes, there 
does not appear to have been much advance upon the original 
types, although in number and variety there has been a great 
increase.” The inference here is, they were either developed 
from inferior forms or in the way of new creations ; neither of 
which do I think the witness of geology warrants. The facts 
.seem to be truly detailed. In the lower strata there are no 
vertebrates, save a few fishes, and certain tracks of possible 
batrachians. In the oolite, mammals appear. In the tertiary, 
they are more plentiful; at present more plentiful still. 
W ithout inventing new creations, or “ cudgelling the brains ” 
for any hypothesis of development, to account for the geolo- 
gical order — the task would have been quite as easy, quite as 
philosophical, and it seems to me infinitely more natural, 
to have argued up to a widely different conclusion, namely, 
d 2 
