deposits are spread over a large proportion of the actual land upon the earth the species found in them, in England, being again met with in Russia, in North America, and apparently in Australia."

Professor Ansted does not use words at random; and speaking of the impossibility of connecting geological phenomena with any known operations of nature, he means what he says. There is an impassable gulph between our world and the world of geology, which renders an explanation of the causes of the geological phenomena a present impossibility; and, where data are wholly wanting, time will not lessen the difficulty-millions of years will not remove an impossibilitywill not accomplish a work which has never begun: the element of time in such a case is wholly beside the questionis altogether absurd; and as we are unable to take the very first step; as we are unable to connect the alluvial matter carried down by rivers with the newest geological deposit, that of the gravel, which has some little resemblance to present operations, how greatly does the difficulty increase as we recede more and more from the only world we know, and its present laws and we need not wonder at finding the laws of that other, that Paleozoic world, in which not one of the creatures was the same as those of our own time, appearing wholly inexplicable. The Paleozoic world is separated from our own by an impassable gulph: its laws are at present unknown to us, and so far as these laws are concerned, our only wise conduct is to be silent. But concerning its phenomena, we do well to observe and classify them, just as we might observe the phenomena of Jupiter or Saturn; and when all the phenomena have been collected and compared, it may lead to general inferences tending to clear away the present difficulties, and perhaps to bridge over that gulph which now separates us from the past; and, in the meantime, we may beneficially avail ourselves of such systems of classification as are at present in use, so far as they can be made to apply to the past world, using them only for present convenience, and being ready to give them up when necessary, or when any true principles shall be established.

It is true, as Professor Ansted says, that the subject is surrounded with difficulties, and that there appears to be an impossibility in surmounting them; but the impossibility arises from the inadequacy of the causes which have been referred to by geologists: it may be impossible by these means to account for any one of the phenomena which we observe. Yet there may be other causes and other means, which have not

been noticed, or have not been brought to bear upon the question, which may afford such explanations of geological phenomena as to remove the difficulties, and bring them into harmony with the present system of things, and its acknowledged laws and operations; and in preparation for this it is absolutely necessary to get rid of the idea that the modern theories will stand. No length of time will suffice to cause that which is absurd in principle to cease to be absurd: though it is by their enormous drafts upon time that men bewilder themselves, and forget the first absurdity. No alluvial deposit will suffice to account for, or could possibly produce such a deposit as the gravel, the uppermost and least considerable of the geological strata; and scarcely amounting to a stratum, seeing it is not consolidated into rock, but is only a loose bed. But if so-if there is an impassable gulf between the present alluvium and the first and least considerable of the strata-if there be an "impossibility" in actually connecting these twohow does beginning at the other end of the geological series help the enquirer? How is it less impossible to connect the oldest of the strata with the present alluvium? How are the difficulties lessened by pointing to the farthest removed, the most enormous and widely diffused formations, which, from their great hardness, as stones, are most unlike of all to the mud of rivers? The difficulties increase instead of diminishing at every step, and are rendered still more palpably and appallingly insurmountable by the fossil contents of the older strata; of which we are told that "not one of them is the same, and but few of them similar to the animals and vegetables of our own time." We want to be taught how the first step is to be taken, from the operations now going on to the gravel beds; but we are told that there is an impossibility in the way of this. Yet we are carried at one vast bound to the far distant Paleozoic, and so bewildered by the new and strange sights presented to our view, that it is hoped we may forget to enquire how we came there, and receive with blind confidence any account of the matter that our guide may furnish.

If words have any meaning, no length of time can render an impossibility possible; but we are not laying hold merely of words-the words assert a truth, and it is for that truth we contend. No length of time can convert the mud of rivers into gravel strata, because they are things totally different in substance; and no length of time can further change gravel beds into solid rocks, or newer strata into older, because the ingredients are so different. And the totally different living

beings which are entombed in these older strata only interpose another and a still greater difficulty in the way of accounting for what we see, by operations now going on around us. Time was out of the question, and beside the mark, when it lay only between mud and the gravel beds: but in the fossils of the old strata another constitution of things is also introduced-therefore, our time and its laws are superseded, and cannot by any possibility come in. It is not only gratuitous but absurd, in such a connection, to speak of "that far distant period when the world was only first beginning to assume its present form;" when we are told in the next breath that "not one of the creatures was the same, and but few of them similar to the animals and vegetables that now exist." It was not, in any exact sense, this world, when the laws of matter were different, and all living things were totally unlike ours.

It being, therefore, an acknowledged fact that the operations now going on around us cannot account for the least and lowest of the geological phenomena, let us hold fast to this fact throughout the whole system of geology. Let us be consistent, and not cheat ourselves into the idea that, as the discrepancies become greater, it becomes easier to account for the phenomena. The existence and continuity of the same properties and laws are assumed and taken for granted as the basis of all reasoning, without which basis not a word of argument will stand, and we should be left to mere speculation and chance. But these properties and laws being the same, it is absurd to suppose that a connection, which cannot be established now, might have been established millions of years ago or that a present impossibility may, perchance, have once been possible, or may yet become possible in the long lapse of ages whose duration is incomprehensible. It is here that the error slips in. Time, as mere succession-time, in the indefinite sense of past, present, and future-mixes with all our thoughts with our thoughts of the things we see, whether connected with present operations or not. But time becomes definite becomes the scale to measure other time only when we can connect it with present operations; yet even then only so in the same sense in which it is definite—that is, only to measure the things which are under present laws, and can be connected with operations now going on. Time, as a merely indefinite period, and in the vague sense of boundless duration, has no place in science: it belongs to the wonderment of the vulgar: to have a place in science, time must be connected with some known epoch, during which some known process has been accomplished. But the processes now going on

cannot be connected at all with geological phenomena—therefore, no time defined by these operations can be applied to geology: geological time consists of vague, incomprehensible, boundless epochs, which no one attempts to define. But the mind having been beguiled into contemplations which bewilder it as to time, may become bewildered in other respects; and may deem it allowable to assume that things which are incomprehensible now-nay, in which we acknowledge a present impossibility-may have taken place somehow or somewhere during those inconceivably remote epochs; forgetting the ground and basis of all the argument, which is, that the things have not changed their properties, and, therefore, we may account for them. If, from what we know of alluvium, we are unable to account for the gravel beds, no drafts upon time will enable us to account for them: and still less from the same alluvium, which is our only datum, to account for the Paleozoic formations. And since it is an acknowledged impossibility to connect the gravel with any operations now going on around us, we are surprised that men do not perceive that the impossibility is increased an hundredfold by every stage between the gravel and old red sandstone: and we wonder at the inconsistency of first acknowledging a difficulty to be insuperable and then overleaping it, and speaking of far greater difficulties as though none whatever existed.

The radical mistake consists in regarding rocks that are stratified as mere deposits; and that, in defiance of all experience, which testifies that no mere deposit ever hardens into stone. By deposits we mean any kind of sediment which falls to the bottom of water in which it has been mechanically suspended-meaning to exclude those substances which may be held in chemical solution, and are thrown down by electric or chemical agency, or evaporation of the solvent fluid. And there will be found this marked distinction between mere deposits and chemical precipitations-that the former will dry in amorphous cakes, or loose friable powder, void of internal structure, having no arrangement of particles, no law of cleavage; but the chemical precipitations will be of a crystalline nature-perfectly so if the solution and precipitation have been complete, and varying only according to the nature of the substance and menstruum-always the same if made under similar circumstances. Thus we call all kinds of mud, and sand, and shingle, mere deposits; but the stalactites formed in caverns are not mere deposits, because the lime has been dissolved in water, and not mechanically suspended, and the stalactites are semi-crystalline bodies. And the differ

ence is still more apparent in plaster of Paris and all kinds of mortar, which require that the ingredients should be in a chemical condition, and that the water should be in proper quantity when, at its setting or crystallization, the water suddenly disappears, not by evaporation, but by being taken up as water of crystallization at the moment when the consolidation of the mass takes place.

We must keep in mind the difference between mechanical suspension in water and true solutions, and remember that disintegration is the very opposite of consolidation, instead of being a step towards formation. Men may pound rock crystal, or the diamond itself, and shake up these powders in water; yet the deposit will not crystallize or consolidate. To form crystals, of such substances, a perfect solvent for them must first be found. And that which applies in the fullest sense to the hardest and purest substances applies to all substances in a lower sense, and according to their several degrees of purity. A solution of copper may be precipitated in a solid form, so as to be a perfect revival of the metal, with all its former properties; but mere filings of copper, shaken up in water, cannot be made to yield such results. In like manner the disintegration of granite and the older rocks, by exposure, and frost, and storms, would not at all prepare for their being reconsolidated into strata: some solvent power is necessary beyond the mechanical suspension in water. Disintegration is in itself simply destructive, and it is the same in all cases. What would be thought of the man who should find the trunk of a tree decayed by exposure and mouldering into dust, and should yet maintain that, if buried for some thousands of years, it would reconsolidate, and become sound timber? Scarcely more absurd would this be than the maintaining that the deposits of rivers may in time consolidate into stone. The fibrous structure of the tree upon which its character as wood depends, and which constitutes also its solidity, is not an accidental arrangement of particles indurated by time, but is the nature of the tree, and the same in all the trees of the same species. And, mutatis mutandis, exactly such is the case with rocks. Rocks have not grown, but they have been formed, and different laws of formation are observable in different rocks, manifested in different internal arrangement of their particles, like the various kinds of fibre in trees. And as each species of tree shews the same fibre in every tree of the same species, so each kind of rock has its own internal structure, which is found to be the same in all instances of rocks of that species. And by these internal characters a