Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/28

 24 of the remains of animals and vegetables, differing more and more widely from existing species, as the strata in which we find them are placed at greater depths. The fact that a large proportion pf these remains belong to extinct genera, and almost all of them to extinct species, that lived and multiplied and died on or near the spots where they are now found, shows that the strata in which they occur were deposited slowly and gradually, during long periods of time, and at widely distant intervals. These extinct animals and vegetables could therefore have formed no part of the creation with which we are immediately connected.

It has been supposed by others, that these strata were formed at the bottom of the sea, during the interval between the creation of man and the Mosaic deluge; and that, at the time of that deluge, portions of the globe which had been previously elevated above the level of the sea, and formed the antediluvian continents, were suddenly submerged; while the ancient bed of the ocean rose to supply their place. To this hypothesis also, the facts I shall subsequently advance offer insuperable objections,

A third opinion has been suggested, both by learned theologians and by geologist and on grounds independent of one another; viz. that the Days of the Mosaic creation need not be understood to imply the same length of time which is now occupied by a single revolution of the globe; but successive periods, each of great extent: and it has been asserted that the order of succession of the organic remains of a former world, accords with the order of creation recorded in Genesis. This assertion, though to a certain degree apparently correct, is not entirely supported by geological facts; since it appears that the most ancient marine animals occur in the same division of the lowest transition strata with the earliest remains of vegetables; so that the evidence of organic remains, as far as it goes, shows the origin of plants and animals to have been