Relative Positions of Trap.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CARBONIFEROUS SYSTEM—PERIOD OF GIGANTIC VEGETABLES.
The system of rocks termed the Carboniferous constitutes the most remarkable, as well as the most valuable, group in the whole range of geological investigation. The strata of which this system is composed, evince design in the clearest and the most unequivocal manner, testifying to the mandate given on the third day of Creation, that the earth was to bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind; and which, in the prodigious development of vegetable matter that so early and rapidly ensued, demonstrate such productive powers of nature to have been chiefly prospective, and preparatory to the still higher development of life that was to follow.
Milton has finely imagined a tradition in heaven, long subsisting, concerning the creation of a new world, and of man for whose habitation it was intended:
“Space may produce new worlds, whereof so rife,
There went a fame in heaven, that He ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant
A generation, whom his choice regard
Should favor equal to the sons of heaven;