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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    [Pages in, 172, 173, 174, 175.] Let me yet further remark, that in each of these three gi'eat periods we find, with respect to the classes of existences, vege- table or animal, by which they are most prominently character- ized, cei'tain well marked culminating points together, if I may so express myself,—twilight periods of morning dawn and even- ing decline. The plants of the earlier and terminal systems of the Palaeozoic division are few and small: it was onlydm-ingthe protracted eons of the Carboniferous period that they received their amazing development, unequalled in any previous or suc- ceeding time. In like manner, in the earlier or Triassic deposits of the Secondary division, the reptilian remains are compara- tively inconsiderable ; and they are almost equally so in its Cretaceous or later deposits. It was during those middle ages of the division, represented by its Liassic, Oolitic, and Wealden formations, that the class existed in that abundance which ren- dered it so peculiarly, above every other age, an age of creeping things and great sea monsters. And so also, in the Tertiary, regarded as but an early portion of the human division, there was a period of increase and diminution,—a morning and even- ing of mammalian life. The mammals of its early Eocene age were comparatively small in bulk and low in standing; in its concluding ages, too, immediately ere the appearance of man, or just as he had appeared, they exhibited, both in size and number, a reduced and less imposing aspect. It was chiefly in its middle and latter, or Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene ages, that the myriads of its huger giants,—its dinotheria, mastodons, and mammoths,—cumbered the soil. I, of course, restrict my remarks to the three periods of organic life, and have not inquired whether aught analogous to these mornings and evenings of increase and diminution need be sought after in any of the others.