104 CONSIDERATIONS AS TO THEIR CONDITION. 
extent; and the hippopotami large lakes, or deep 
and capacious rivers ;—morasses, jungles, and ex¬ 
tensive shelter would be required for the accommo¬ 
dation of tigers, hyaenas, boars, wolves, &c.—plains 
for the horse, and peaceful ruminants. Whether 
this condition of the land were antediluvian, and 
whether the climate to which these animals were 
subjected, were different from the present, are 
questions still sub judice, but there can be no 
rational doubt that the state of the country was 
greatly, though perhaps not essentially different from 
what might now obtain independently of cultivation. 
As in the examination of an animal or plant, the 
mind inevitably traces out its connexions to others, 
its internal economy, or its uses in the scheme of 
creation, or to ourselves ; so here, w r hen by the ex¬ 
amination of petrifactions and fossil bones, w r e are 
enabled to look back to former ages of the world, 
and to call up to our view by the magic aid of 
science the former aspect and condition of this por¬ 
tion of the earth, we find the subject blended wfith 
and inseparable from the theories and arguments 
concerning the epochs of the globe, the changes 
wdiich it and its inhabitants have undergone, and 
the immutability of the laws of nature. 
In quitting this subject I cannot forbear from 
one remark on the theory of geological deposits, 
that, since different situations afford such varying 
phenomena and features of connexion and deposi¬ 
tion, and such differences in their fossils, we 
might hence gather an important lesson on the 
propriety of allowing peculiarities to local geology,— 
that, although some few r general rules maybe arrived 
at in a review of the general geology of the globe, 
especial rules may be detected in the geology of an 
island or continent and again others in the geolo¬ 
gical appearances of mere localities, and that, 
notwithstanding authors have been industrious in 
