Note 46 — III.

"Though perfect knowledge is not possessed, yet there are reasons for believing that the duration of life to testacean individuals of the present race is several years. But who can state the proportion which the average length of life to the individual mollusc or conchifer, bears to the duration appointed by the Creator to the species? Take any one of the six or seven thousand known recent species; let it be a Buccinum, of which 120 species are ascertained, (one of which is the commonly known whelk;) or a Cypræa, comprising about as many, (a well-known species is on almost every mantel-piece, the tiger-cowry;) or an Ostrea (oyster), of which 130 species are described. We have reason to think that the individuals have a natural life of at least six or seven years; but we have no reason to suppose that any one species has died out, since the Adamic creation. May we then, for the sake of an illustrative argument, take the duration of testacean species, one with another, at one thousand times the life of the individual? May we say six thousand years? We are dealing very liberally with our opponents. Yet in examining the vertical evidences of the cessations of the fossil species, marks are found of an entire change in the forms of animal life; we find such cessations and changes to have occurred many times in the thickness of but a few hundred feet of these late-rocks."—Dr. J. Pye Smith, Scripture and Geology, 5th Ed. p. 376.