CHAPTER IX

Summary

We have considered, in the preceding chapters, many of the most popular grounds of opposition to the doctrine, that all former changes of the organic and inorganic creation are referrible to one uninterrupted succession of physical events, governed by the laws now in operation.

As the principles of the science must always remain unsettled so long as no fixed opinions are entertained on this fundamental question, we shall proceed to examine other objections which have been urged against the assumption of uniformity in the order of nature. We shall cite the words of a late distinguished writer, who has formally advanced some of the weightiest of these objections. “It is impossible,” he affirms, “to defend the proposition, that the present order of things is the ancient and constant order of nature, only modified by existing laws—in those strata which are deepest, and which must, consequently, be supposed to be the earliest deposited forms, even of vegetable life, are rare; shells and vegetable remains are found in the next order; the bones of fishes and oviparous reptiles exist in the following class; the remains of birds, with those of the same genera mentioned before, in the next order; those of quadrupeds of extinct species in a still more recent class; and it is only in the loose and slightly-consolidated strata of gravel and sand, and which are usually called diluvian formations, that the remains of animals such as now people the globe are found, with others belonging to extinct species.