Surely an American, before appealing, in a question of this kind, to the bare possibility of the existence somewhere or other of barely negative evidence, ought to have bethought him of the very extraordinary positive evidence furnished by the carboniferous deposits of his own great country. The coal fields of Britain and the European continent had been wrought for ages ere those of North America were known, and for ages more after it had been but ascertained that the New, like the Old World, has its Coal Measures. And during the latter period the argument of Mr. Foulke might have been employed, just as now, and some member of a learned society might have urged that, though the coal fields of Europe bore evidence to the former existence of a singularly luxuriant flora, beyond comparison more vast than the European one of the present day, the same could not be predicated of the American coal fields, whose carbonized remains might be found representative of a flora which had been at least not more largely developed than that existing American flora to which the great western forests belong. Now, however, the time for any such argument has gone by; the American coal fields have been carefully explored; and what is the result? The geologist has come to know, that even the mighty forests of America are inconsiderable, compared with its deposits of coal; nay, that all its forests gathered into one heap would fail to furnish the materials of a single coal seam equal to that of Pittsburg; and that centuries after all its thick woods shall have disappeared before the axe, and it shall have come to present the comparatively bare, unwooded aspect of the long civilized countries of Southern Europe, it will continue to derive the elements of its commercial greatness, and the cheerful blaze of its many millions of domestic hearths, from the unprecedentedly luxurious flora of the old carboniferous ages. Truly, very wonderful are the coal fields of Northern America! If geologists inferred, as they well might, that the extinct flora which had originated the European coal vastly outrivalled in luxuriance that of the existing time, what shall be said of that flora of the same age which originated the coal deposits of Nova Scotia and the United States,—deposits twenty times as great as all those of all Europe put together!
[17] Such is also the view taken by the author of a recently published work, "The Genesis of the Earth and of Man." "Christian philosophers have been compelled to acknowledge," says this writer, "that the Mosaic account of creation is only reconcileable with demonstrated facts, by its being regarded as a record of appearances; and if so, to vindicate the truth of God, we must consider it, so far as the acts are concerned, as the relation of a revelation to the sight, which was sufficient for all its purposes, rather than as one in words; though the words are perfectly true as describing the revelation itself, and the revelation is equally true as showing man the principal phenomena which he would have seen had it been possible for him to be a witness of the events. Further, if we view the narrative as the description of a series of visions, while we find it to be perfectly reconcileable with the statement in other parts of Scripture, that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, we remove, with other difficulties, the only strong objection to the opinion of those who regard the 'six days' as periods of undeflnable duration, and who may even believe that we are now in the 'seventh day,'—the day of rest or of cessation from the work of creation. Certainly, 'the day of God,' and 'the day of the Lord,' and the 'thousand two hundred and threescore days,' of the Revelation of St. John, and the 'seventy weeks' in the Prophecy of Daniel, are not to be understood in their primary and natural senses," &c., &c.
[18] "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it."
[19] Forbes and Hanley enumerate one hundred and sixty bivalves, and two hundred and thirty-two univalves,—in all three hundred and ninety-two species, as the only known shell-bearing molluscs of the existing British seas.
[20] Principles of Zoology: touching the Structure, Development, Distribution, and Natural Arrangement of the Races of Animals, living and extinct. With numerous Illustrations. For the Use of Schools and Colleges. Part I., "Comparative Physiology." By Louis Agassiz and Augustus A. Gould. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.
[21] a, Articulating surface of joint. b, Fragment of column, exhibiting laterally the tooth processes, so fitted into each other as to admit of flexure without risk of dislocation. The uppermost joint shows two lateral cavities for the articulation of auxiliary arms.
[22] Perhaps one strengthening principle more might be enumerated as occurring in this curious piece of mechanism. In the layer of the nether plate, the fibres, instead of being laid in parallel lines, like the threads in the moleskin of my illustration, seem to be felted together,—an arrangement which must have added considerably to their coherency and powers of resistance.
[23] [Fig. 102], Clymenia Sedwicki; [Fig. 103], Gyroceras Eifelensis; [Fig. 104], Cirrus Goldfussii.
[24] Berosus, Hieronymus, Mnaseas, Nicolaus, Manetho, Mochus, and Hestæus.
[25] See Cory's "Ancient Fragments."