Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot. Gosse Philip Henry

the side of its dam with well-worn grinders. The fossil excrement is seen not only dropped, but even in the alimentary canal. Bones bear the marks of gnawing teeth that dragged them and cracked them, and fed upon them. The foot-prints of birds and frogs, of crabs and worms, are imprinted in the soil, like the faithful impression of a seal.47

      9. Millions of forest-trees sprang up, towered to heaven, and fell, to be crushed into the coal strata which make our winter fires. Hundreds of feet measure the thickness of what were once succulent plants, but pressed together like paper-pulp, and consolidated under a weight absolutely immensurable. Yet there remain the scales of their stems, the elegant reticulated patterns of their bark, the delicate tracery of their leaf-nerves, indelibly depicted by an unpatented process of "nature-printing." And when we examine the record, – the forms of the leaves, the structure of the tissues, we get the same result as before, that the plants belonged to a flora which had no species in common with that which adorns the modern earth. Very gradually, and only after many successions, not of individual generations, but of the cycles of species, genera, and even families, did the vegetable creation conform itself to ours.48

      1

      Dr. Lardner; Museum of Science and Art, vol. i. p. 81.

      2

      As Cuvier, Buckland, and many others. On the question whether the phenomena of Geology can be comprised within the short period formerly assigned to them, the Rev. Samuel Charles Wilts long ago observed: "Buckland, Sedgwick, Faber, Chalmers, Conybeare, and many other Christian geologists, strove long with themselves to believe that they could: and they did n

1

Dr. Lardner; Museum of Science and Art, vol. i. p. 81.

2

As Cuvier, Buckland, and many others. On the question whether the phenomena of Geology can be comprised within the short period formerly assigned to them, the Rev. Samuel Charles Wilts long ago observed: "Buckland, Sedgwick, Faber, Chalmers, Conybeare, and many other Christian geologists, strove long with themselves to believe that they could: and they did not give up the hope, or seek for a new interpretation of the sacred text, till they considered themselves driven from their position by such facts as we have stated. If, even now, a reasonable, or we might say possible solution were offered, they would, we feel persuaded, gladly revert to their original opinion." —Christian Observer, August, 1834.

3

Reflections on Geology.

4

Geology and Geologists.

5

New System of Geology.

6

Mineral and Mosaic Geologies, p. 430.

7

Geology of Scripture.

8

Scriptural Geology, passim.

9

Letter to Buckland, 15, et seq.

10

Origen, Augustine, &c.

11

Testimony of the Rocks, p. 144

12

Discourse (5th Ed.), 115.

13

Sac. Hist. of World.

14

Rec. of Creation.

15

Nat. Theology.

16

Pre-Adamite Earth.

17

Harmony of Scripture and Geology.

18

Christian Observer, 1834.

19

Religion of Geology, Lect. ii.

20

Scripture and Geology.

21

I am not replying to any of these conflicting opinions; else, with respect to this one, I might consider it sufficient to adduce the ipsissima verba of the inspired text. Not a word is said of Adam's being "nine hundred and thirty years old;" the plain statement is as follows: – "And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years." (Gen. v. 5.)

22

"Protoplast," pp. 58, 59; p. 325; 2d. Ed.

23

Unity of Worlds (1856), pp. 488, 493.

24

"A geological truth must command our assent as powerfully as that of the existence of our own minds, or of the Deity himself; and any revelation which stands opposed to such truths must be false. The geologist has therefore nothing to do with revealed religion in his scientific inquiries." —Edinb. Review, xv. 16.

25

Ansted's Ancient World, 18.

26

Ansted's Ancient World, 30.

27

Scripture and Geology, 371. (Ed. 1855.)

28

"It is by no means unlikely that some beds of coal were derived from the mass of vegetable matter present at one time on the surface, and submerged suddenly. It is only necessary to refer to the accounts of vegetation in some of the extremely moist, warm islands in the southern hemisphere, where the ground is occasionally covered with eight or ten feet of decaying vegetable matter at one time, to be satisfied that this is at least possible."

29

Ansted's Anc. World, 75.

30

M'Culloch's System of Geology, i. 506.

31

Origin of Coal.

32

Testimony of the Rocks, p. 78.

33

Mr. Newman suggests that they were "marsupial bats" (Zoologist, p. 129). I have adopted his attitudes, but have not ventured to give them mammalian ears.

34

In Tennant's "List of Brit. Fossils" (1847), but two species – a Brachiopod and a Gastropod – are mentioned as common to the Chalk and the London Clay. They are Terebratula striatula, and Pyrula Smithii.

35

Ansted's Anc. World, 267.

36

Reliquiæ Diluvianæ.

37

Travels through the Alps, p. 19.

38

Prof. Owen, in his admirable account of the Mylodon, has mentioned a fact which brings us very vividly into contact with its personal history. He shows that the animal got its living by overturning vast trees, doing the work by main strength, and feeding on the leaves. The fall of the tree might occasionally put the animal in peril; and in the specimen examined there is proof of such danger having been incurred. The skull had undergone two fractures during the life of the animal, one of which was entirely healed, and the other partially.

47

"One of the laminated formations [in Auvergne] may be said to furnish a chronometer for itself. It consists of sixty feet of siliceous and calcareous deposits, each as thin as pasteboard, and bearing upon their separating surfaces the stems and seed-vessels of small water-plants in infinite numbers; and countless multitudes of minute shells, resembling some species of our common snail-shells. These layers have been formed with evident regularity, and to each of them we may reasonably assign the term of one season, that is a year. Now thirty of such layers frequently do not exceed one inch in thickness. Let us average them at twenty-five. The thickness of the stratum is at least sixty feet; and thus we gain, for the whole of this formation alone, eighteen thousand years." – Dr. J. P. Smith, Scripture and Geology, 5th Edition, p. 137.

48

"This fact has now been verified in almost all parts of the globe, and has led to a conviction that at successive periods of the past the same area of land and water has been inhabited by species of animals and plants as distinct as those which now people the antipodes, or which now co-exist in the arctic, temperate, and tropical zones. It appears that from the remotest periods there has been ever a coming in of new organic forms, and an extinction of those which pre-existed on the earth; some species having endured for a longer, others for a shorter time; but none having ever re-appeared, after once dying out." – Lyell's Elements of Geology, p. 275.