This is seen from the immense formations at early epochs of granite, of which none, so far as is known, is now in the process of production.

It is seen from the vast masses of porphyry, greenstone, basalt, and other rocks of that class that are of volcanic origin, which are wholly the product, it is generally held, of the secondary, or the first stages of the tertiary period.

It is seen also from the great number of volcanoes in every part of the globe, once active and disgorging immense masses of lava, that have now for many ages been wholly extinct. The number that now burn without intermission is very small. They once amounted, there is reason to believe, to many thousands.

It is demonstrated in a still more striking manner, in the universal changes they produced in the surface in the upheaval and dislocation of the strata, and the elevation of the hills and mountains. These great effects are now referred by geologists universally to subterranean fires, or the evolution of heat by processes causing an intense fusion and expansion of the materials on which it acted; and the energies by which they were wrought must have immeasurably surpassed the most powerful that are now exerted in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. All the expansive forces that have shaken the earth for ages united, would have been wholly inadequate, there is reason to believe, to throw up the Andes, the Himalaya, or

the Alps. This is admitted by many geologists, who nevertheless maintain that vast periods have been occupied in the formation of the strata.

"If now we withdraw ourselves from the turmoil of volcanoes and earthquakes, and cease to measure them by the effects which they have produced upon our imaginations, we shall find that the real changes they cause on the earth's surface are but small, and quite irreconcilable with those. theories which propose to account for the elevation of vast mountain ranges, and for enormous and sudden dislocations of strata, by repeated earthquakes acting invariably in the same line, thus raising the mountains by successive starts of five or ten feet at a time, or by catastrophes of no greater importance than a modern earthquake. It is useless to appeal to time; time can effect no more than its powers are capable of performing; if a mouse be harnessed to a large piece of ordnance, it will never move it, even if centuries on centuries could be allowed; but attach the necessary force, and the resistance is overcome in a minute."-H. T. De La Beche's Manual, p. 131.

The vast changes indeed that have been produced on the earth's surface, so far transcend the forces that are now in activity, as to render the supposition that they have resulted from their operation, an extravagance unworthy of the support of men of judgment and science.

This great postulate of their theory is thus, like the

other, wholly irreconcilable with the facts of geology, and the laws of chemical and mechanical forces. So far from having resulted from the agents that are now producing changes on the crust of the globe, and acting with their present energy, all the great processes by which the principal rocks, from the earliest to the latest, have been formed, have sprung from causes and conditions that were peculiar to the epochs when they were produced, and are no longer in existence; while the energy exerted at former periods by some of the agents that are now in activity, and the spaces on which they acted, were immeasurably greater than at present. The overthrow of that postulate involves the confutation accordingly of the inference founded on it of the vast age of the world. As the strata cannot have been formed by the feeble agents and slow processes which that postulate represents, the inadequacy of those agents to a rapid production of such stupendous effects, is no proof that immeasurable periods—which would add nothing to the strength or efficiency of such causes-must have been occupied in their production. That an insect would be unable to drag a heavy mass of matter from its place, though the effort was prolonged for countless ages, presents no ground for the conclusion that a similar period would be required for its removal by an elephant or a steam locomotive. Yet it is on such a transparent fallacy that the whole deduction proceeds of the vast

age of the world, from the tardy rate at which geological causes are now giving birth to their several effects.

These main foundations of their theory being thus overthrown, the only ground that remains for its support, is that which is supposed to be furnished by the vegetable and animal relics that are imbedded in the strata. But their inference from them of the great age of the world, is equally unauthorized and unphilosophical.

In the first place, it is, like their other arguments, founded, in a great measure, on their theory of the agents and processes by which the strata were formed; not on the nature, condition, or mass of those relics themselves; and is built, therefore, on an assumption of the point which it professes to demonstrate.

In the next place: Neither the masses of those fossilized relics, nor the conditions in which they are preserved, present any decisive, or probable evidence that the immense periods which geologists assume were occupied in their growth and deposition. In respect to the coal formations, for example, lignites, and other vegetable fossils, the supposition of vast periods is not requisite at all to account for the growth of sufficient masses of vegetables to constitute such deposits. The vegetables existing on the globe at a single epoch, were they gathered into spaces commensurate with those that are occupied by the mine

ralized vegetables, are enough, not improbably, to constitute deposits of equal bulk. The difficulty, accordingly, of accounting for their vast dimensions, does not lie at all in their quantity, but in their transportation to the places of their deposition. But that is not obviated in any degree, by the supposition that great periods were occupied in its accomplishment. That supposition, indeed, is forbidden by the condition of the coal strata. That the leaves, stems, and trunks, of which they are formed, neither grew in the places of their deposition, nor were transported there gradually through a series of ages, is clear from the fact that they had undergone no decay, but retained their structure and forms uninjured when the process of their fossilization commenced. Had a long period passed during the accumulation of a stratum, those that were first deposited would have been decomposed, and changed into vegetable mould. The lowest layers, however, of beds that are ten, twelve, or fourteen feet in thickness, exhibit no traces of such a decomposition. The forms of the stems and leaves are there as distinct and perfect as in the layers at the upper surface. Had they been transported, and slowly accumulated there by streams and currents charged by detritus from continents or islands, there would have been a large mixture in them of earthy particles, such as now takes place in the deposition of trees, plants, and leaves at the mouths of rivers. But