OF THE BRUTE CREATION. 
753 
They were formed for their own enjoyment or life, and from a 
principle of benevolence in the Deity. Some creatures, indeed, 
as the horse and the dog, the rein-deer of Lapland, and the 
camel of Arabia, are admirably adapted to be the friends and com- 
panions of man ; and we acknowledge with gratitude, too, that 
among the higher classes of animals there is a certain number of 
living species that are indispensable to the supply of human food 
and raiment ; but their numbers bear an extremely small pro- 
portion to the total amount of existing species. Could it, however, 
be possibly believed, that all existing species of animals were 
created for the uses of man, how could such an inference be drawn 
with respect to those numerous beings which the science of 
geology have shewn to have existed long before our race appeared 
upon the earth. For we believe that it is now generally admitted 
by all competent persons, that the formation even of those strata 
which are nearest to the surface of the earth must have occupied 
vast periods — probably millions of years — in arriving at their 
present state. We find in them the records of various and exten- 
sive revolutions in the condition of land and ocean, but no traces 
of man or his works have hitherto been discovered in them, and 
none of the fossil plants or animals that have been found imbed- 
ded there appear referrible to species now in being : so that the 
extensive forests and wild savannahs of the globe at that distant 
period must have swarmed with living creatures, although no 
human eye was there to behold them. 
How can this fact be reconciled with the assertion, that all the 
animal creation were created for the use of man. With few 
exceptions, they are created now by their beneficent Author for 
the same reasons that they were created then. It would be a 
waste of time to pursue this argument farther: but we will con- 
sider these geological phenomena at greater length, for it is a sub- 
ject connected with life that has been , and life that is to be. 
We are all aware how true and striking a picture of life and an- 
cient times is handed down to us in the excavated ruins of Pompeii, 
where a whole city was surprised by the devastating catastrophe 
of a volcanic eruption, and reduced to skeletons — remaining, as it 
were, spell-bound by a mighty wizard’s wand in the position of 
•active life. So here, in the strata of the earth, we find the annals 
of an earlier world — genera of creatures imbedded in fossil vege- 
tation, and surrounded by wondrous monsters, dragons of the 
deep, 
“ Resembling somewhat the wild habitants 
Of the deep woods of earth, the hugest which 
Roar mightily in the forest, but tenfold 
In magnitude and terror.” 
5 F 
VOL. XII. 
