38 
of Bengal, tlie burning plains, the steaming jungles ? How 
enjoy the pleasures and pay the penalties of those districts 
where lurk beast and reptile of surpassing beauty, and where 
vegetation rises in all its grandeur ? Where else is this to 
be found ? Where else ? here, under our very feet are buried 
races of the tropics. We see it in multitudes of shells; we 
see it in vast numbers of animals ; we see it in trees, having 
at this hour their roots in the very soil in which they grew 
luxuriantly under warmer skies, showing the impossibility of 
their having arrived where we find them by any accidental 
occurrence — any convulsion of nature. Long is it since the 
beams of a sun which did this have ceased to visit our land. 
It is even so. Then how did they get here ? The answer 
to that question involves the utter destruction of the fun- 
damental doctrines of geology, as hitherto taught. In the 
present state of science I do not think any man would be 
justified in pledging himself to the truth of the reply. There 
are, however, some very strong reasons in its favour. 
Geology has not, heretofore, reasonably accounted for the 
contents of those strata lying below the more recent deposits. 
That the denizens of a hot climate could never live under our 
skies is unquestionable. The late Mr. Evan Hopkins advo- 
cated the theory that these and many other lands arose from 
the sea, if not within the tropics, at any rate in such a lati- 
tude that the then surface could only bear the tropical plants, 
and nourish the tropical animals of which we find the rocks 
bearing such faithful and ample testimony — a very simple 
solution of seemingly formidable difficulties ; and that, too, in 
strict accordance with our Bible, leaving not one inch of room 
for conjecture. 
Both astronomy and geography point to these northern 
countries as having once been in or near the tropics. Granting 
this to be the true means of accounting for our tropical fossils, 
it is not the most important matter for which we shall have 
to thank it. Will it not sweep away the whole of that 
geological mass of assumptions which imputes to the antiquity 
of the world tens of millions of years ? Will it not dissipate 
the illusion of plurality of creations ? The rate of the earth's 
northernly progress known, the calculation is very simple ; and 
geology’s dealings with repeated fresh introductions of life, 
in the way of new creations, is at an end; they merely 
become modifications of existences under change of external 
conditions. 
What may be called tropical geology, as telling of all 
lands having risen in or near the tropics, or having passed 
through them, shows us both a short chronological career for 
