A Review of Theoretical GeologyGeneral Books, 2013 - 46 pages 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. 1856 edition. Excerpt: ...We have already seen that it is demonstrably true, that the great mountain ranges were upheaved at an early age of the earth; and who, therefore, shall presume to say, that extraordinary causes were not appointed, and even at an earlier date, that will explain the stratification of the earth, in its general manifestations, without assuming the present operations of nature, as a ground of analogy for the geological ages? This brings us upon the ground so ably occupied by Mr. David 1ST. Lord, and we shall not, therefore, attempt to show the absurdity of predicating of the present order of nature, the causes which were then in operation. The whole of this scheme, however professing to rest upon the strata and the " medals," has grown out of the doctrine of the slow formation of the earth in virtue alone of the properties of matter, while all the attendant facts in either case have been overridden by the spirit of hypothesis. These unquestionable facts demonstrate the existence of causes when the earth underwent stratification that have had no analogies for a time long antecedent to the coal formations; and we thus come to understand how the great mass of sedimentary rocks may have followed the operation of those causes in less than half a century; and, as will be seen, there is nothing in the aggregate depth of the strata or the imbedded " medals" to contradict this conclusion. As to the early fossiliferous rocks, theoretical geology needs not the information from us, though others may, that the multiplication of the aquatic animals is so rapid that a very few years would be an ample allowance of time; and in respect to the calcareous matter embraced in those strata, the attendant fossils denote, of course, that it was deposited with great... |
