The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Representative Prose and Verse
Science
The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Representative Prose and Verse
English literature -- 19th century; Literature, Modern; Science; Science in literature
In the great Carboniferous formation, whence America derives so vast a
proportion of her actual and potential wealth, in the beds of coal which
have been formed from the vegetation of that period, we find abundant
evidence of the existence of terrestrial animals. They have been
described, not only by European but by American naturalists. There are to
be found numerous insects allied to our cockroaches. There are to be found
spiders and scorpions of large size, the latter so similar to existing
scorpions that it requires the practised eye of the naturalist to
distinguish them. Inasmuch as these animals can be proved to have been
alive in the Carboniferous epoch, it is perfectly clear that, if the
Miltonic account is to be accepted, the huge mass of rocks extending from
the middle of the Palæozoic formations to the uppermost members of the
series must belong to the day which is termed by Milton the sixth.
But, further, it is expressly stated that aquatic animals took their
origin upon the fifth day, and not before; hence, all formations in which
remains of aquatic animals can be proved to exist, and which therefore
testify that such animals lived at the time when these formations were in
course of deposition, must have been deposited during or since the period
which Milton speaks of as the fifth day. But there is absolutely no
fossiliferous formation in which the remains of aquatic animals are
absent. The oldest fossils in the Silurian rocks are exuviæ of marine
animals; and if the view which is entertained by Principal Dawson and Dr.
Carpenter respecting the nature of the Eozoön be well founded, aquatic
animals existed at a period as far antecedent to the deposition of the
coal as the coal is from us; inasmuch as the Eozoön is met with in those
Laurentian strata which lie at the bottom of the series of stratified
rocks. Hence it follows, plainly enough, that the whole series of
stratified rocks, if they are to be brought into harmony with Milton, must
be referred to the fifth and sixth days, and that we cannot hope to find
the slightest trace of the products of the earlier days in the geological
record. When we consider these simple facts, we see how absolutely futile
are the attempts that have been made to draw a parallel between the story
told by so much of the crust of the earth as is known to us and the story
that Milton tells. The whole series of fossiliferous stratified rocks
must be referred to the last two days; and neither the Carboniferous nor
any other formation can afford evidence of the work of the third day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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