the latter, for we find that it was when the earth was to be made fit for the reception of man that animals were created; and it is the period that succeeded the time of " in the beginning," and that preceded the creation of man, those countless ages that the physical operations through the evidence of fossils speak of, that we want to have explained. Now, Dr. Buckland repudiates the idea that each of the demiurgic days might be thousands of years, but states that the day in the Mosaic narrative of the Creation might be the common Jewish day from evening to evening. Therefore, by this he allows no time for the remains of animals to fill the earth; but will he allow that under the title "in the beginning" a former inhabited world might have existed, and that the new world was but formed out of the disordered materials of the old one? It seems to be an opinion held by the Fathers that a prior creation had taken place, and that the word "created" in the original (bara) by no means implies the first creation of matter, or a creation out of nothing: and neither do the words "let there the light" (yehi or) necessarily imply that light had never existed before. Allow then a prior creation of material earth inhabited by animals, and we at once

must acknowledge all difficulty to be cleared up, because then the remains of countless generations, and their singular admixture in the earth, (the phenomena of geology) are not the decayed product of this present earth, but of one which has ceased to be in all but its remains. Under this theory the present race of animals were created just previous to the creation of man, and death and pain among them must have been introduced first after the fall of man-for we almost immediately read of the skins of animals being made use of.

If the above theory fails, and if my theory fails regarding the deaths of animals taking place during the nine hundred years of Adam's life, and before the remains of man could be imbedded in the earth, then we have to fall back and account for the original objection started, namely, how God could look on all things He had created in the Garden of Eden, and pronounce them to be very good, when, in fact, the earth had been long filled with the dead and the dying? If we can explain this by the consideration that all time is ever present with God, and that His eye can regard past and present as one hour, (so to speak), and that the scene presented to our eyes of the

limited space of a garden, the limited period of a week, at the end of which the Almighty pronounces approval on a limited number of animals, and had the whole Creation immediately before Him, then we may account for this difficulty also-only we must consider well whether such a view can legitimately be taken.

In regard to no human remains or footsteps having been observed in the earlier strata, what has become of the discovery at Tintwistle, in Cheshire: a series of impressions in a bed of millstone grit? The bed in which these vestigiæ are seen, in chronological order, lies beneath the coal formation, and, in the order of depth, thousands of feet before any mammalia have been as yet discovered to have paced the

earth.

LETTER III.

My dear Patroclus,

What may modern science of geology it is impossible for us to determine. It is confessedly a new science, although many in earlier ages have

be the ultimate fate of the new

partially studied it. That important conclusions, in various degree, may be derived from its data, there is little doubt-but, at the same time, we may reasonably think that it may aim at too much, and from really puny investigation, be too ready to announce illimitable discovery. For recollect, we can only deal with the "earth's crust," and of the extent of this in depth an eminent geologist* thus speaks: "By the "earth's crust," is meant that small portion of the exterior of our planet which is accessible to human observation. It comprises, not merely all of which the structure is laid open in mountain precipices, or in cliffs overhanging a river or sea, or whatever the miner may reveal in artificial excavations, but the whole of that outer covering of the planet on which we are enabled to reason by observations at or near the surface. These reasonings may extend to a depth of several miles, perhaps ten miles: but even then it may be said, that such a thickness is no more than one four hundredth part of the distance from the surface to the centre. The remark is just !" This, then, is the utmost ex

* Lyell.

↑ Is not the diameter of our globe reckoned at about eight thousand miles?

tent of geological research, and how his reasonings may perhaps extend to the depth of ten miles is wholly unexplained; and since we are especially told that the science of geology requires ocular observation and proof, we do not see how we are entitled to extend our reasonings much beyond the fissures of mountains and cliffs, and the excavations caused by the operations of miners. True, there may be a kind of argument from analogy, but only a suggestive one,* and not to be depended upon in fact. And how does our geologist reason upon this. "The remark is just," he continues, "but although the dimensions of such a crust are, in truth, insignificant when compared to the entire globe, yet they are vast and of magnificent extent in relation to man, and to the organic beings which people our globe." Let us allow the propriety of the magniloquent terms "vast" and "magnificent," in junction with their subsequent limitations, but let us also

* "Mankind had a beginning," says Dr. Prichard, "since we can look back to the period when the surface on which they lived began to exist.”—Phys. Hist. of Mankind, vol. ii. p. 294. Geology overthrows at once the vast age given to the world in the books of the Hindoos, &c.