OR THE BASIS UPON WHICH “THE LIVING WORLD” IS FOUNDED. 
INCE the advocacy of a theory is much like the pursuit of a material 
substance guided by the shadow it casts, it was not without diffi¬ 
dence that I undertook the preparation of a Natural History 
upon the plan herewith submitted. While the idea serving me as a 
basis may have been conceived by others, and is intimated by 
Buffon, yet I may claim for the plan an originality that is likely 
to invite, if not excite, the criticisms of such strict scientists as hold 
tenaciously to the theory that there can be no common correspon¬ 
dence between geology and the Genetic account of creation. 
While believing that there is a perfect corroboration of the testi¬ 
mony of Genesis, and that this fact is abundantly attested by the 
witness of all nature, as well as by the mute, though even more 
convincing evidences of geology, yet I cannot undertake an elucidation of either 
theory, except as an incidental explanation of the purposes of this work may 
involve a brief outline of the Genetic basis, upon which it has been planned and 
constructed. The harmony which exists between revelation and approved 
science—by which latter expression • I mean the deductions of the world’s most distinguished 
scientists—is briefly outlined in the introductory pages of this work, preliminary to a description 
of the earliest forms of life. In the belief that my readers will accept this theory, so well established 
by Winchell, Buckland and other great palaeontologists, to whose writings I beg to offer my pro¬ 
found acknowledgments, I shall proceed briefly to a description of the geological ages of the world, 
in which will be found indisputable evidence of the progression of species, upon which demon¬ 
stration The Living World has been prepared. 
It is to the rocks, the strata and the fossils, that we must turn for information respecting the 
age of the earth and the creatures that have peopled it in the aeons of the past. Though they can¬ 
not speak, yet upon each God has written, in a language which those who carefully study can read, 
with infinite delight, the records of the ages. Some years ago the hieroglyphics on the obelisks 
of Egypt and the walls of resurrected Nineveh were as so many carvings destitute of meaning, 
but patient study served to decipher them, and what were once unintelligible arrow-heads and crude 
pictures are now read as the records of a people who perished with all the monuments of their skill, 
learning, wealth and industry. The so-called everlasting rocks, precipitated, by the mighty sol¬ 
vents of nature, transmuted in the alembic wherein are deposited all the ingredients of earth, 
eroded by waves, ground by terrific forces, vitrified by furious fires, are covered with the hand¬ 
writings of Omnipotence, and are as easily decipherable as are the hewn and carved stones of 
buried cities, and tell the story of the ages in language no less explicit. 
As nearly every school-boy now knows, the earth’s crust is composed of several strata, or layers, 
which as geologists have discovered, are arranged in successive series, or chronological groups, 
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