LOCAL OCCURRENCES IN NATURAL HISTORY. 
3 
round at every step he takes to be quite certain that he is still within ken of the 
cosmological ark indicated in what Professor Phillips has termed certain 4 dark 
and ill-understood passages of the Pentateuch.”* It is in fact only an extension 
of the same principle that in the 44 dark ages 5 gagged poor Galileo, when the 
Churchmen of his day insisted that the foundations of the earth were literally 
immoveable. f Of course the theologist, after a candid inquiry into the views and 
arguments of scientific observers, will harmonize the statements of Scripture with 
actual phenomena as far as he can, or the present state of knowledge admits; but 
it ought to be generally understood, and in fairness agreed, that the geological 
inquirer is not bound to undertake this task. Agreeing^with Dr. Buckland,£ 
that the Mosaic narrative was primarily intended to declare that the true Go$ 
formed the world 44 in the beginning ” in opposition to heathen fables, there can 
exist no necessity for the inquirer to imagine absurdly any 44 pre-Adamite races 
of men on the one hand, or be fearful that his inductions may not literally coincide 
with the received text of the Pentateuch on the other. 
As the subject of 44 the deluge ” is so familiar to our thoughts, and it so inces¬ 
santly recurs in geological investigations, from the unscientific application of the 
term 44 ante-diluvian” I may be excused for here introducing a notice of it as 
connected with the subject I am discussing, The passage-1 thus quote from 
myself was given to some young friends, neophytes in the study, who, of course, 
wished to understand something of the so-called diluvial beds. 
66 We have shown from the examination of the immense collection of marine 
relics enclosed in the fossiliferous strata, and which often constitute very lofty 
eminences, that our present land was not merely transitorily covered by the 
waters of an inhabited ocean, but that it has actually been formed of materials 
collected through periods of uncertain length, in the bosom of an aqueous abyss o 
We have also been led to the conclusion, that certain powerful igneous agents 
have elevated our present mountains, and with them to a certain extent the 
adjacent islands and continents—-the bed of the ocean has thus been propor¬ 
tionately depressed, and what was once the bottom of an ancient sea, now appears 
* Professor Phillips’s Treatise on Geology in Lardner’s Cab. Cyclop. 
+ When we read that an Arabian named Omar El Aalem, or “the learned,” who flourished 
in the tenth century, and wrote a work On the Retreat of the Sea , was obliged to go into volun¬ 
tary banishment from Samarkand, because his system was declared to be contrary to the Koran , 
we justly smile at such an instance of priestly bigotry. Rut alas, as Cowper says— 
-“ The laugh applied , 
May make us laugh on t’other side.” 
Since, to say the least, the spirit that called for the recantation of poor Omar, though perhap 8 
disguised, is far from being extinct. 
* Bridgwater Treatise , p. 33. 
