THE BOOK OF THE GREAT SEA-DRAGONS. 
7 
Having once recognised the Creature with life, we need 
not pause upon the seeming exceptions of contemporaneous 
Piscal Vertebrata, sometimes found with these Primordial 
Patterns of Marine Being. The System of adjustment 
abides, although we are as yet unable to refer every Rock 
to its true Chronological place, and the Marine Blood¬ 
hound to his actual Age: And the absence of a True ter¬ 
restrial Creature from the Earlier Deposits, apart from 
physiological induction, which gives the affirmative, de¬ 
cides that the Ocean had the priority of a Sentient Race. 
New Orders of Animals multiply with the Progressive 
Seas, until Dragons come to Lord it over the teeming 
Waters, and over also the Libellulae of the superincum¬ 
bent Skies. “ Dixit etiam Deus ; producant aquae reptile 
animse viventis, et volatile super terram sub firmamento 
cceli.—Et factum estvespere et mane, dies quintus.” 
II. The Quantity of Time, like the Quadrature of the 
Circle, is unknown. It is either slow, or quick, or short, 
or long, according to the ever oscillating mind of a man. 
True, we take the ordinary measure of the Astral Bodies 
by which to compute Time, but our notion of it is abso¬ 
lutely indefinite and worthless. Dreaming we often crowd 
the events of a Century and the immensity of a Universe 
into the shortest space; and Ephemera born that in¬ 
stant to die, have most likely a sense of duration full 
and complete as our own. To argue then about Time, 
were absurd; but the acknowledgment of the Heavenly 
“ light givers” constrains us to ask if thenceforth their ap¬ 
pointed mission, they were the only sources from which 
Animal and Vegetable Life obtained sustentation. The 
condition of these Kingdoms, long after the appearance 
of Organs which bespeak sunlight, negatives that hypo¬ 
thesis ; the fossil Skeletons of those Sentient and Floral 
Families, which most demand an exaggerated heat, are 
alone found, long—long after the revelation of the Sun. 
The finality of Physics was accomplished by degrees, and 
the Earth Continued her Career in the Original Cycle of 
Time, of which the fishes and beasts knew their indivi¬ 
dual portion by the light of that Sun, which awoke their 
heart-tides and lulled them too. The ordinary day then 
of twenty-four hours existed for that New Edition of 
Things to which it was indispensable, but it is no less 
certain that the Primal Quantities of Time were meted 
out, and that our Planet still coursed the veiled Camdeos’ 
of an immense Circle, irrespective of that borrowed lustre 
of w'hich we speak. 
This premise understood, the Volume of Nature, by 
which we piously hope the better to understand the 
Oracles of God, increases in interest and intelligibility the 
farther we examine its contents. It may be conjectured 
that the pregnant Seas would embrace an equally prolific 
Earth as soon as ever that came in its turn to an equilib¬ 
rium, and this we find to be the fact: and the graminivo¬ 
rous and herbivorous birds and beasts of the Earlier Ter¬ 
tiary Period indicate by their size a most propitious Clime, 
and boundless profusion of food. The pretence upon 
which all Marine Classes of Animals are referred to a co- 
temporaneous origin, because a bone of a sharp-toothed 
monster has been detected in a suspicious place, is as little 
worth as the apocryphal exceptions which here also pre¬ 
sent themselves, the remains of an Owl, and of one or two 
other Accipitres: In the former case the overwhelming 
myriads of lowermost Creatures, and in the latter the 
countless herbivora, and the Gallinacese disown these un¬ 
natural exceptions. The Stonesfield, so-called, opossum, 
upon whose tiny skeleton swings with anticipative groans 
so many ponderous lies, of all animals affords the very 
best reasons for resigning it to the Deep; the extrinsic 
argument is no less decisive, its bed is Marine, and its 
bony Companions all in a common grave are marine also. 
Moreover, with respect to the Ornithicknites, and other 
marks in the New Red Sandstone of America, to refer 
them to red-blooded Cotemporaneous birds, in the face of 
protesting nature were vain indeed. In the almost Egyp¬ 
tian darkness which envelopes the nebulous history of a 
Planet, how can we expect to construe every mutilated 
Hieroglyph? Refer these specious shadows to the “weoph” 
— of Genesis, which implies a marine-aerial Creature 
—traces of an engrafted-by-Evil stock of which are now 
known as Pterodactyles, and the difficulty vanishes. 
Even were these “Footmarks ” substantiated as those of 
actual birds, the Rock which preserves them may have 
been disintegrated and subject to such slight impressions 
ages beyond the Epoch to which it really belongs. 
Thus by self-demonstrated analogies, and the identical 
exuvirn of the first Terrestrial Orders, we ponder upon the 
very date in which our Mother Earth gave birth to a 
Mammiferous population, and indignantly reject the intru¬ 
sive bones of those Satanic Races, which came howling 
at a later Period, and of a waning Fortune. The march 
of Things from Chaos through Light, and Life, proceeds 
from the threshold of Sense to its soul, from the Crawling 
worm on the Ocean-floor to the Parent of our God like 
Race. To strain after arguments in behalf of God's un¬ 
sullied Creation, were to varnish the Empyrean, and 
burnish the Sun : Every Condition of right reason, every 
process of Science, every thing above, below, and in the 
Depths proclaim the goodness of Jehovah, by whom the 
Heavens, and the Earth, and all their Host were finished. 
“ Dixit quoque Deus : producat terra animam viventem 
in genere suo, jumenta, et reptilia, et bestias terras secun¬ 
dum species suas.—Etait; faciamus Hominem ad imagi- 
nem, et similitudinem nostram; et prsesit piscibus maris, 
et volatilibus cceli, et bestiis, universaeque terree, omnique 
reptili, quod movetur in terra. Viditque Deus cuncta 
quae fecerat; et erant valde bona. Et factum est vespere 
et mane, dies sextus.” 
Sect. III. Adorable Elohim—blessed be His Holy 
Name, made the World, built it for a Throne, and enriched 
the Sceptre thereof for the Son of Elohim. The King of the 
World came, with Dominion, and the Roll of his Glory 
is long. There is, alas ! another Register of succeeding 
Times, penned by terrific Fiends. Clotty horrible, it 
opens the History of fiendish Brutes, which came by per¬ 
mission, but surely not the Hand of Jehovah. Their un¬ 
clean carcasses in every quarter of the Globe, suggest a 
Curse universal, and their ugly bones offer us a Scale by 
which to calculate the stately Titans upon whom they 
warred. Here then we fall upon Evil; like Time it is a 
Property of which we know barely the Effects, and per¬ 
haps the most deplorable Consequence of Evil is that 
very fact. It coverts in fire, air, earth, and in water, 
pouncing upon us at pleasure, for ever spoiling and laying 
us waste. We may call it the antithesis of every good, 
but the definition of Evil was known to man only at the 
moment of his fall. 
“ Fertur Prometheus addere, principi 
Limo coactus, particulam undique 
Desectam.” 
It is enough that Evil reaches above the Clouds, and 
