There are many points, however, and questions of the deepest importance, that are far from being satisfactorily determined.—The progress of vegetable and animal life, for example, is supposed to correspond with the varying conditions and changes of the earth’s surface, when the races are summoned into existence, not at once, nor after short intervals, but successively, and after ages of unfathomable extent. The record, even as a chronicle of mere life and death, is a marvelous one, full of singular revelations, and disclosing types of organized being that have long been obliterated. But when as yet there was no rational head in this mundane scene, the assumption is, that the inferior tribes were for MILLIONS of years the sole living occupants of the planet! Can all the data be sound, rightly understood, and properly interpreted, that lead to such conclusions? The epic of this lengthened series of events is yet, it may be said, without a hero. The tragedy of wild revolution and carnage lacks romance in the very monotony of its devastation. And destitute alike of a _moral_, and of a fitting audience, the brilliancy of the representation loses half its attractions in losing all its humanity. One established principle of the science connected with this point is, that there are certain groups of animal species found fossil in the different sets of strata which compose the earth’s crust, and that these demonstrate something like a series of distinct faunas corresponding to the number of formations. Seven or eight sets of rocks, at least, are as distinctly characterized by particular sets of fossils. But the exceptions to the law are likewise very numerous, inasmuch as both species and genera have been carried forward, and are identically the same, from one formation and epoch into another. Hence, points neither of difference nor of resemblance, from age to age, are absolute, and cannot very minutely be applied as regards the several formations and their organic contents. The types of one formation are repeatedly mingled with those of another. And the value of all the evidence collected from fossil remains, while it establishes undeniably a succession in the mineral deposits, leaves the question as to the limits of the epochs, and their relation to Time, still partially undetermined. The theory too of progressive development, or that of independent acts of creation—the causes of the extinction of old, and the introduction of new races—the extent of time implied or indicated in the whole series of events—and the all-important point involved in this chronology, whether all or any of the geological series are alluded to in the Mosaic account of creation—are questions that necessarily press upon the attention, as we would solve or not the inquiries suggested. The sounding-line of geology is not to be despised, or cast at once aside, should it fail in furnishing a just estimate and measure of such profound investigations.