British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV: July and October, 1871Various
History
British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV: July and October, 1871
Various
English periodicals
granting that life--animal and vegetable, of many forms--existed in
the Oolitic and Liassic ages, he might ask whether the presence in the
planet of at least four unique orders of reptilia, to wit;
Ichthyosauria, Plesiosauria, Pterosauria, Dinosauria, and perhaps, as
Professor Huxley says, 'another or two,' was not the circumstance
which a geologist would select as distinctive, and if so, whether the
coincidence between these and the creeping things and great
sea-monsters of the fifth Mosaic day is not striking. As we formerly
remarked, Miller's geological interpretation of the fifth and
succeeding day is independent of any theory as to the originally
molten state of the planet. On the sixth day-period, both in Genesis
and in the geological history of the world, we have a great
development of mammalian life, and, finally, the appearance of man.
There was a Tertiary flora, but it was not strongly marked off from
other floras; there were Tertiary reptiles, but their place was
subordinate; in respect of their beasts of the field, and in respect
of the presence of man, the Tertiary ages stand alone. The mammoths
and mastodons, the rhinoceri and hippopotami, 'the enormous
dinotherium and colossal megatherium,' elephants whose bones,
preserved in Siberian ice, have furnished 'ivory quarries,'
unexhausted by the working of upwards of a hundred years, tigers as
large again as the largest Asiatic species, distinguish the Tertiary
times from all others known to the geologist. In stating his views,
Miller availed himself of the hypothesis, put forward by Kurtz and
others, that the phenomena of the geological ages passed before the
eyes of Moses by way of panoramic vision. This, we need hardly say, is
a pure hypothesis, favourable to pictorial description, but not
essentially connected with the logic of the question. Perhaps, the
weakest point in Miller's theory--always presuming him to be right as
to the originally molten state of the planet--is the apportionment of
the present time to the seventh Mosaic day and to the Sabbatic rest of
the Creator. Geologists would now, with one voice, refuse to admit
that any essential alteration can be traced in the processes by which
the face of the earth, and the character of its living creatures, are
modified in the present geological epoch, as compared with those of,
at least, the two or three preceding epochs. Man, doubtless, effects
changes in the aspect of the world on a far greater scale than any
other animal. He can reclaim wide regions from the sea, he can arrest
the rains far up in the mountains, and lead them to water his
terraces, he can temper climates, he can people continents with new
animals and plants. It is allowable in Goethe, talking poetically, to
style him 'the little god of earth.' But his entire activity, and its
results, depend not upon a suspension of the laws and processes of
nature--not upon a withdrawal of creative energy--but upon his
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