70 
PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT. 
in itself a proof with some geologists, that an inter¬ 
val fraught with a creation more advanced in 
physical endowments had succeeded to that evinced 
by the contents of our own rocks.* 
The limestone, sandstone, and slaty precipitates, 
which we traced as the coeval (though not precisely 
simultaneous) deposits of one flood or aqueous 
catastrophe, were not imposed on the granitic bed 
with reference to equality of surface or method of 
arrangement; no farther rules can be detected than 
such as I have pointed out; with the few exceptions 
related, no order of occurrence is observable, and 
* A late writer of eminence opposes the doctrine of progressive 
development , in the various “zoological epochs” because, contrary 
to supposed rule remains of a quadruped have been found in 
slate which is low in the scale of rocks geognostically, and because 
in some solitary instance the order of progression is reversed, and 
so forth. I had never understood that the rule was more than 
generally preserved,—that it excluded sparing productions of the 
higher classes of animals from the original a>ras of the world, or that 
it prevented the superaddition of the lower tribes during the more 
advanced epochs. Can the facts of a generally preserved scale of 
advancement, and very often of a decided numerical predominance 
of the fresh addition in the scale of improvement during each 
succeeding creation,—or in short, a general rule of advancement 
among those animals and tribes respectively peculiar par excel¬ 
lence, to each geological epoch, he denied ? That every geological 
change, disturbance, or revolution was attended by some change, 
or advancement in the order of being as has been hitherto taught, 
may however he greatly questioned. Many of these appearances 
are much too local or circumscribed to admit of such a theory, in¬ 
dependently of the positive evidence of facts , which are decidedly 
averse to the belief in numerous cases. In the present instance 
of conglomerates and sandstones to our east, no proof whatever 
is furnished by them or by any concomitant circumstances, that a 
coincident improvement of creation attended the formation, on 
the contrary, I believe they are even said to be devoid of fossils, 
but whether fossiliferous or not, the influence of local Plutonic 
action must never be lost sight of, as an agency of very general, 
as well as irregular occurrence. 
