On the Relative Antiquity of Fossil Species.
All that can be said on the relative antiquity of species, may perhaps be deduced from the preceding observations on the different subjects which this chapter includes. If the difficulties which beset this inquiry have been justly stated, it is nearly fruitless, except as a question of the most general nature. Yet as many celebrated naturalists have dwelt with some affection on this subject, it perhaps merits a few words more. Cuvier imagines that ovipa rous quadrupeds are more ancient than viviparous ones, that they existed simultaneously with fishes, and that the mammife•a were not created till long after. Some of these unknown mamtnifera are found in the lowest marine formation of the Paris basin; others occur in some of the alluvia, and are therefore supposed to be of much more recent origin; and the last, which most perfectly coincide with the known species, belong to the most recent of the alluvial deposits. If such abstract evidence as this could be considered applicable to so important and general a question, Cuvier's theory might be admitted. But this is to erect general hypotheses out of facts far too local and limited; a fault, of which geologists have, and too often with great reason, been accused. It is unnecessary, however, to say more on this subject, as the objections to this mode of reasoning have already been sufficiently stated. Of the absolute or relative antiquity of certain animals, we have that evidence from position, in some cases, which has already been indicated; but the proofs are deficient in all those other circumstances which would be required to establish the exclusive antiquity or modern origin of species, or a progressive increase or change of these.
On Successive Creations of Organized Beings.
As far as the questions that have thus been discussed related to the creation of organized beings considered as a general physical inquiry, there is little or nothing in the nature of the evidence that can lead to any conclu sions. The main point in that inquiry is, whether there have been succesive and interrupted creations of plants and animals, or whether all the present appearances are to be explained by the mere extinction of species and genera, from occasional and local causes. The next is, whether all the present beings have formerly existed, or whether there has been a gradual increase of them by an addition of new species; whether creation, in short, as far as it relates to organized beings, has been simultaneous, or whether it is progressive. The reader will, of course,
recollect, that these questions arc here brought forward only in as far as they rest on physical evidence or proba bility, and independently of all considerations of a moral or theological nature.
As far as the inquiry is related to the extinction or loss of species, or as far as any evidence towards any of these questions can be derived from the presence of species in the recent that do not exist in the older deposits, or from a similarity predominating between the most recent fossil species and existing ones, when it is less conspicuous in the more distant, nothing can be added to the remarks already made. The reader may draw his own conclu sions respecting the value of that evidence, as well as we can do it for him. Such evidence, also, as reposes on the fact of great and general•revolutions of the surface of the earth, has been sufficiently stated. It has been shown under what circumstances' such revolutions might have been expected to produce the total extermination of all terrestrial beings, and under what condition they might have been supposed capable of destroying a creation purely marine. Further than that it does not at present appear that we can proceed, without indulging in bound less speculations and conjectures, and we must therefore drop a subject on which every one has an equal right to form his own opinions.
We must here, however, notice one important point which geologists have been fond of discussing; but for which we would willingly have avoided it. This relates to the creation of man. We believe that the period of his creation is known, within these doubtful limits on which chronologists yet differ, because we believe the sacred historical evidence by which that period is fixed. That sacred evidence is very strongly corroborated by other testimony of a moral and historical nature; by the progress of population, of civilization, of languages, and of arts, as well as by physical proofs founded on the va rieties of the human race. On these Questions it would here he improper to enter ; nor could any thing now be added to that which for so many ages has occupied the attention of philosphers or historians.