Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1867 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI. The. Argument from Geology. 1 P HAVE endeavoured to explain that, accordJ_ ing to the discoveries of geologists, the masses of which the surface of the earth is composed, exhibit indisputable evidence that at different successive periods, the land and the waters which occupy it have been inhabited by successive races of plants and animals, which, when taken in large groups, according to the ascending or descending order of the strata, consist of species different from those above and below them. Many of these groups of species are of forms so different from any living things which now exist, as to give to the life of those ancient periods an aspect strangely diverse from that which life now. displays, and to transfer us, in thought, to a creation remote in its predominant forms from that among which we live. I have shewn also, that the life and successive generations of these groups of species, and the events by which the rocks which contain these remains have been brought into their present situation and condition, must have occupied immense intervals of time;--intervals so large as to deserve to be compared, in their numerical expressions, with the intervals of space which separate the planets and stars from each other. It has been seen, also, that the best geologists and natural historians have not been able to devise any hypothesis to account for the successive introduction of these new species into the earth's population; except the exercise of a series of acts of creation, by whi.ch they have been brought into being; either in groups at once, or in a perpetual succession of one or a few species, which the course of long intervals of time might accumulate into groups of species. It is true, that some speculators have...
