Notice of some remarks by the late Mr. Hugh Miller, author of The testimony of the rocks, The old red sandstone, &c. &c.

Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notice of some remarks by the late Mr. Hugh Miller, author of The testimony of the rocks, The old red sandstone, &c. &c. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    THE TESTIMONY OP THE ROCKS, OR GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES, NATURAL AND REVEALED. By Hugh Miller, Author of The Old Red Sandstone, Footprints of the Creator, &c. &c.' Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1857. IPaffea 159, 160, 161.] Lecture III.—The Two Records, Mosaic and Geological. First printed in the U. S. in 1854. The geologist, in his attempts to collate the Divine with the geologic record, has, I repeat, only three of the six periods of creation to account for,—the period of plants, the period of great sea monsters and creeping things, and the period of cattle and beasts of the earth. He is called on to question his systems and formations regarding the remains of these three great pe- riods, and of these only. And the question once fairly stated, what, I ask, is the reply ? All geologists agree in holding that the vast geological scale naturally divides into three great parts. There are many lesser divisions,—divisions into systems, forma- tions, deposits, beds, strata ; but the master divisions, in each of which we find a type of life so unlike that of the others, that even the unpractised eye can detect the difference, are simply three,—the Palaeozoic, or oldest fossilifcrous division; the Se- condary, or middle fossilifcrous division; and the Tertiary, or latest fossiliferous division. In the first, or Palaeozoic division, we find corals, crustaceans molluscs, fishes, and, in its later formations, a few reptiles. But none of these classes of organisms give its leading character to the Palaeozoic ; they do not constitute its prominent feature, or