LECTURE VIII.

UNITY OF THE DIVINE PLAN AND OPERATION IN ALL AGES OF THE WORLD’S HISTORY.

Contrivance, adaptation, and design are some of the most striking features of the natural world. They are obvious throughout the whole range of creation, in the minutest as well as in the most magnificent objects; in the most complicated as well as in the most simple. So universally present are they, that whenever we meet with any thing in nature which seems imperfectly adapted to other objects, as the organ of an animal or plant, which exhibits malformation, it excites general attention, and the mere child need not be told that, in its want of adaptation to other objects, it is an exception in the natural world.

In order to illustrate what I mean by contrivance, adaptation, and design, let me refer to a familiar example—the human eye. Made up of three coats and three humors, of solids and fluids, of nerves, blood-vessels, and muscles, and rivalling the most perfect optical instrument, it must have required the most consummate contrivance to give the requisite quantity and position to parts so numerous and unlike, for producing the phenomena of vision. Yet how perfectly it is done! How few, out of the hundreds of millions of eyes of men and other animals, fail of vision through any natural defect!

No less marvellous are the adaptations of the eye. In order to be adapted to the wonderful effect which we call light, its coats and humors must be transparent, and possess a certain density and opacity, that the rays may form an image on the retina. Yet to prevent confusion in the image, the transparency must be confined to the central parts of the eye, and a dark plexus of veins and muscles must be so situated as to absorb the scattering rays. In order to adapt the eye to different distances, and to the greater or less intensity of the light, delicate muscles must be so situated as to contract and dilate the pupil, and lengthen and shorten the axis. That the eye might be directed to different objects, strong muscles must be attached to its posterior surface; and that the eyelid might defend it from injuries in front, a very peculiar muscle must give it power to close. No less perfect is the adaptation of the eye to the atmosphere, or, rather, there is a mutual adaptation; and it is as proper to say that the atmosphere is adapted to the eye, as that the eye is adapted to the atmosphere. In like manner, there is a striking relation between the eye and the sun and other heavenly bodies, and between the eye and day and night; so that we cannot doubt but they were made for one another. We might, indeed, extend the relations of the eye to every object in the universe; and the same may be said of every organ of plants and animals. The adaptation between them is as wide as creation. And it is the wonderful harmony between so many millions of objects that makes us feel that infinite wisdom alone could have produced it.

The design of the multiplied contrivances and adaptations exhibited by the eye is too obvious to need a formal statement. Comparatively few understand the wonderful mechanism of the eye; but we should consider it proof of idiotism, or insanity, for the weakest mind to doubt what is the object of the eye. This is, to be sure, a striking example. But out of the many organs of animals, how few are there of which we do not see the design! And as the subject is more examined, the few excepted cases are made still fewer. They are more numerous in plants, because we cannot so well understand them, and because of their microscopic littleness. They are so few, however, throughout all nature, that they never produce a doubt that, for every individual thing in creation, there is a distinct object. If we confine our views to the most simple parts of matter, we can see design in them. If we take a wider view, and examine those minor systems which are produced by the grouping of the elements of matter, we shall see design there; and if we rise still higher in our examination, and compare systems still more extensive, until we group all material things, wise and beautiful design is still inscribed upon all. In fine, creation is but a series of harmonies, wheel within wheel, in countless variety, yet all forming one vast and perfect machine. Examine nature as widely and as minutely as we may, we never find one part clashing with another part; no laws, governing one portion of creation, different from those governing the others. Amid nature’s infinitely diversified productions and operations we find but one original model or pattern. As Dr. Paley finely expresses it, “We never get amongst such original or totally different modes of existence as to indicate that we are come into the province of a different Creator, or under the direction of a different will.” All appears to have been the work of one mighty mind, capable of devising and creating the vast system so perfectly that every part shall beautifully harmonize with every other part; a mind capable of holding in its capacious grasp at once the entire system, and seeing the relation and dependence of all its parts, from the minutest atom up to the mightiest world. In short, the unity of design which pervades all creation is perfect, more so than we witness in the most finished machine of human construction; for

Such are the wonderful contrivance, adaptation, and design which the material world every where exhibits. But the geologist carries us back through periods of immense antiquity, and digs out from the deep strata evidences of other systems of organic life, which have flourished and passed away; other economies, which have existed on the globe anterior to the present. And how was it with these? Had they any relation to the existing system? Were they governed by different laws, or are they all but parts of one great and harmonious system, embracing the whole of the earth’s past duration? We could not decide these questions beforehand; but geology brings to light unequivocal evidence that the latter supposition is the true one; that is, in the language of the poet,—

To present the evidence of this conclusion will be my object in this lecture.

In the first place, the laws of chemistry and crystallography, electricity and magnetism, have ever been the same in all past conditions of the earth.

Chemistry has attained to such a degree of perfection that the analyst can now determine the composition of the various vegetable, animal, and mineral substances which he meets, with an extreme degree of accuracy. In many instances, he can do this in two ways. He can always separate the elements which exist in a compound, and ascertain their relative quantity; and this is called analysis. And sometimes he can take those elements and cause them to unite, so as to form a particular compound; and this is called synthesis. By these methods he has ascertained that, amid the vast variety of substances in nature, there are only about sixty-four which cannot be reduced to a more simple form, and are therefore called elements, or simple substances. Now, the chemist finds that, when these elements unite to form compounds, certain fixed laws are invariably followed. They combine in definite quantities, which are always the same, or some multiple of the same weight; so that each element has its peculiar and invariable combining weight; and it cannot be made to combine in any other proportion. You may mix two or more elements together in any proportion, but it is only a certain definite quantity of each that will combine, while the rest will remain in excess. Hence the same compound substance, from whatever part of the world it comes, or under however diverse circumstances produced, consists of the same ingredients in the same proportion. These laws are followed with mathematical precision, and we have reason to believe that the same compound substance, produced in different parts of the world, never differs in its composition by the smallest conceivable particle. Indeed, with the exception of the planetary motions and crystallography, chemical combination is the most perfect example of practical mathematics to be found in nature.

Such are the laws which the chemist finds invariably to regulate all the changes that now take place in the constitution of bodies. What evidence is there that the same laws have ever prevailed? In the rocks we have chemical compounds, produced in all ages of the world’s history, since fire and water began to form solid masses. Now, these may be, and have been, analyzed; and the same laws of definite proportion in the ingredients, which now operate, are found to have controlled their formation. The oldest granite and gneiss, which must have been the earliest rocks produced, are just as invariable in their composition as the most recent salt formed in the laboratory. And the same is true of the silicates, the carbonates, the sulphates, the oxides, chlorides, fluorides, and other compounds which constitute the rocks of different ages. We never find any produced under the operation of different laws.

Now, the almost invariable opinion among chemists is, that the reason why the elements unite thus definitely is, that they are in different electrical states, and therefore attract one another. Hence the most important laws of electricity have been coeval with those of chemistry; indeed, they are identical; nor can we doubt, if such be the fact, that every other electrical law has remained unchanged from the beginning. And from the intimate connection, if not complete identity, between electricity and magnetism, it is impossible to doubt that the laws which regulate the latter are of equal antiquity with those of the former. Indeed, we find evidence in all the rocks, especially those which are prismatic and concretionary, of the active influence of galvanism and electro-magnetism in their production.

The reasoning is equally decisive to prove the unchanging character of the laws which regulate the formation of crystals. The chemist finds that the same substance, when it crystallizes, invariably takes the same geometrical forms. The nucleus or primary form, with a few exceptions, of no importance in the present argument, to which all these secondary forms may be reduced by change, is one particular solid, with unvarying angles; and all the secondary forms, built upon the primary, correspond in their angles. In short, in crystallography we have another example of perfect practical mathematics, as perfect as the theory.

Now, the oldest rocks in the globe contain crystals, and so do the rocks of all ages, sometimes of the same kind as those produced in the chemist’s laboratory. And they are found to correspond precisely. It matters not whether they were the produce of nature’s laboratory countless ages ago, or of the skill of the nineteenth century,—the same mathematics ruled in their formation with a precision which infinite wisdom alone could secure.

In the second place, the laws of meteorology have ever been the same as at present.

Under meteorological laws I include all atmospheric phenomena. And although we have no direct proof from geology in respect to the more rare of these phenomena, such as the aurora borealis and australis, and transient meteors, yet in respect to the existence of clouds, wind, and rain, the evidence is quite striking. In several places in Europe, and in many in this country, are found, upon layers of the new red sandstone, the distinct impressions of rain drops, made when the rock was fine mud. They correspond precisely with the indentations which falling rain-drops now make upon mud, and they show us that the phenomena of clouds and storms existed in that remote period, and that the vapor was condensed as at present. In the fact that the animals entombed in the rocks of various ages are found to have had organs of respiration, we also infer the existence of an atmosphere analogous to that which we now breathe. The rain-drops enable us to proceed one step farther; for often they are elongated in one direction, showing that they struck the ground obliquely, doubtless in consequence of wind. In short, the facts stated enable us to infer, with strong probability, that atmospheric phenomena were then essentially the same as at present; and analogy leads us to a similar conclusion as to all the past periods of the world’s history, certainly since animals were placed upon it. What a curious register do these rain-drops present us! an engraving on stone of a shower that fell thousands and thousands of ages ago! They often become, too, an anemoscope, pointing out the direction of the wind, while the petrified surface shows us just how many drops fell, quite as accurately as the most delicate pluviameter. What events in the earth’s pre-Adamic history would seem less likely to come down to us than the pattering of a shower?

In the third place, the agents of geological change appear to have been always the same on the earth.

Whoever goes into a careful examination of the rocks will soon become satisfied that no fragment of them all remains in the condition in which it was originally created. Whatever was the original form in which matter was produced, there is no longer any example of it to be found. The evidence of these changes is as strong almost as that constant changes are going on in human society. And we find them constantly progressing among the rocks, as well as among men; nor do the agents by which they are produced appear to have been ever different from those now in operation. The two most important are heat and water; and it is doubtful whether there is a single particle of the globe which has not experienced the metamorphic action of the one or the other. Indeed, it is nearly certain that every portion of the globe has been melted, if not volatilized. All the unstratified rocks have certainly been fused, and probably all the stratified rocks originated from the unstratified, and have been modified by water and heat. In many of these rocks, especially the oldest, we perceive evidence of the joint action of both these agents. Evidently they were once aqueous deposits; but they appear to have been subsequently subjected to powerful heat. As we ascend on the scale of the stratified rocks, the marks of fire diminish, and those of water multiply, so that the latest are mere mechanical or chemical depositions from water.

In these facts, then, we see proof that heat and water have been the chief agents of geological change since the first formation of a solid crust on the globe; for some of the rocks now accessible, as already stated, date their origin at that early period. We might also trace back the agency of heat much farther, if the hypothesis adopted by not a few eminent geologists be true, which supposes the earth to have been once in a gaseous state from intense heat. But to press this point will add very little to my argument, even could I sustain it by plausible reasoning. I will only say, that, so far as we know any thing of the state of the earth previous to the consolidation of its crust, heat appears to have been the chief agent concerned in its geological changes.

Among other agencies of less importance, that have always operated geologically, is gravity. Its chief effect, at present is to bring the earth’s surface nearer and nearer to a level, by causing the materials, which other agencies have loosened from its salient parts, to subside into its cavities and valleys. It also condenses many substances from a gaseous to a liquid or solid state, especially those deep in the earth’s crust, and thus brings the particles more within the reach of cohesive attraction and chemical affinity, often changing the constitution, and always the solidity, of bodies. And in the position of the ancient mechanical rocks, occupying as they do the former basins of the surface, and in the superior consolidation of the earlier strata, we find proof of the action of gravity in all past geological time.

Electricity too, in the form of galvanism, has never been idle. We have reason to think that it operates at this moment in accumulating metallic ores in veins; and this segregation appears to have operated in all ages, not only in filling veins, but also, probably, in giving a laminated character and jointed structure to mountains of slate, as well as a concretionary and prismatic form to others.

Last, though not least, we may reckon among the agents of geological change the forces of cohesion and affinity. When water and heat, gravity and galvanism, have brought the atoms of bodies into a proper state, these agents are always ready to change their form and constitution; and they have ever been at hand to operate by the same laws, and we witness their effects in the oldest as well as the newest rocks found in the earth’s crust. This point, however, has been sufficiently considered, when treating of the unvarying uniformity of the laws of chemistry and crystallography.

But though the nature of the agencies above considered has never changed, the intensity or amount of their action has varied; how much is a point not yet settled among geologists. Some regard that intensity, as it has existed during the present or alluvial period, as a standard for all preceding periods; that is, the intensity of these forces has never varied more during any period of the earth’s history than it has since the alluvial period commenced. Most geologists, however, regard this as an extreme opinion, and think they see evidence in geology of a far greater intensity in these agencies in past periods than exists at present. They think they have proof that the world was once only a molten mass of matter, and some evidence that previously it was in a state of vapor. They believe that vast mountains, and even continents, have sometimes been thrown up from the ocean’s bed by a single mighty paroxysmal effort; and such effects they know to be far greater than the causes of change now in operation can produce, without a vast increase of their intensity. But this question need neither be discussed nor decided for the sake of my present argument, since my object is to prove an identity in the nature and laws, not in the intensity, of geological agencies.

In the fourth place, the laws of zoölogy and botany have always been the same on the globe.

An examination of the animals now living, amounting to some hundred thousand species, perhaps to one or two millions, shows that they may be arranged in four great classes. The first class embraces the vertebral animals, distinguished by having a vertebral column, or back-bone, a regular skeleton, and a regular nervous system. It comprehends all the quadrupeds and bipeds, with man at their head, and is much superior to all other classes in complexity of organization and strength of the mental powers. The second class embraces the mollusks, or animals inhabiting shells. They are destitute of a spinal marrow, and for the most part their muscles are attached to the external covering, called the shell, although this shell is sometimes internal. The third class are called articulated animals, having envelopes connected by annulated plates, or rings. It includes such animals as the lobster, bloodsucker, spider, and insects generally. The fourth class have a radiated structure, and often resemble plants, or their habitation is a stony structure. Hence they are sometimes called zoöphytes, which means animal plants; or lithophytes, which means stony plants. They swarm in the ocean, and some of them build up those extensive stony structures called coral reefs.

Now, if we examine the descriptions of the organic remains in the rocks, we find that in all ages of the world these four great classes of animals have existed. But in the earliest times, the three last classes—the mollusks, the articulated, and the radiated tribes—vastly preponderated, while the vertebral class had only a few representatives; and it is not till we rise as high as the new red sandstone, that we meet with any, except fishes, save a few batrachians in the old red sandstone, and the carboniferous group, detected alone by their tracks. Then the reptiles began to appear in abundance, with tortoises and enormous birds of a low organization, but no mammiferous animal is found, until we reach the oölite; and scarcely any till we rise to the tertiary strata, when they became abundant; but not so numerous as at present, though for the most part of larger size. Thus we find that the more perfect animals have been developed gradually, becoming more and more complex as we rise on the scale of the rocks. But in the three other classes, there does not appear to have been much advance upon the original types, although in numbers and variety there has been a great increase.

The plants now growing upon the globe, amounting probably to nearly one hundred thousand species, are divided into two great classes, by a very decided character. Some of them have distinct flowers, and others are destitute of them. The former are called phenogamian, or flowering plants; and the latter cryptogamian, or flowerless plants.

At present, the flowering plants very much predominate in the flora of every country. But in the earliest periods of organic existence, the reverse was the case. We find, indeed but very few flowering plants, and these of a character somewhat intermediate between flowering and flowerless; such as the coniferæ and cycadeæ, including the pine tribe. A few palms appeared almost as early, and some other monocotyledons. But most of the dicotyledons did not appear till the tertiary period, where more than two hundred species have been found. Of the three hundred species found in and beneath the carboniferous group, two thirds are tree ferns, or gigantic equisetaceæ. More than one third of the entire flora of the secondary formation consists of cycadeæ; whereas, this family of plants forms not more than the two thousandth part of the existing flora. In short, we find the more perfect plants as well as animals to be few in the earliest periods, and to have been gradually introduced up to the present time. But as to the flowerless plants, most of them seem to have been as perfect at first as they now are.

These facts teach us conclusively that the outlines of organic life on the globe have always been the same; that the great classes of animals and plants have always had their representatives, and that the variations which have been introduced, have been merely adaptations to the varying condition of the earth’s surface. The higher and more complex natures, both of animals and plants, were not introduced at first, because the surface was not adapted to their existence; and they were brought in only as circumstances, favorable to their development, prepared the way.

There is another fact of great interest on this subject. Even a cursory examination of the animals and plants now on the globe, shows such a gradation of their characters that they form a sort of chain, extending from the most to the least perfect species. But we see at once that the links of this chain are of very unequal length; or, rather, that there are in some instances wide intervals between the nearest species, as if one or more links had dropped out. How remarkable that some of these lost links should be found among the fossil species! I will refer to a few examples.

Among existing animals no genera or tribes are more widely separated than those with thick skins, denominated pachydermata; such as the rhinoceros and the elephant. But among the fossil animals of the tertiary strata, this tribe of animals was much more common; and many of them fill up the blanks in the existing families, and thus render more perfect and uniform the great chain of being which binds together into one great system the present and past periods of organic life.

A similar case occurs among fossil plants. In tropical climates we find a few species—not much over twenty—of a singular family of plants, the cycadeæ connecting the great families of coniferæ, or dicotyledons, with the palms, which are monocotyledonous, and the ferns, which are acotyledonous. The chasm, however, between those great and dissimilar classes of plants is but imperfectly filled by the few living species of cycadeæ. But of the fossil species hitherto found above the coal formation, almost one half are cycadeæ; so that here, too, the lost links of the chain are supplied.

“Facts like these,” says Dr. Buckland, “are inestimably precious to the natural theologian, for they identify, as it were, the Artificer, by details of manipulation throughout his works. They appeal to the physiologist, in language more commanding than human eloquence; the voice of very stocks and stones, that have been buried for countless ages in the deep recesses of the earth, proclaiming the universal agency of one all-directing, all-sustaining Creator, in whose will and power these harmonious systems originated, and by whose universal providence they are, and have at all times been, maintained.”—Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i. p. 502.

One other fact, showing the identity of former zoölogical laws with those which now prevail, must not be omitted. I refer to the existence on the globe in all past periods of organic life of the two great classes of carnivorous and herbivorous animals; and they have always existed, too, in about the same proportion. To the harmony and happiness of the present system, we know that the existence and proper relative number of these different classes are indispensable. For in order that the greatest possible number of animals that live on vegetable food should exist, they must possess the power of rapid multiplication, so that there should be born a much larger number than is necessary to people the earth. But if there existed no carnivorous races to keep in check this redundancy of population, the world would soon become so filled with the herbivorous races that famine would be the consequence, and thus a much greater amount of suffering result than the sudden death inflicted by carnivorous races now produces. To preserve, then, a proper balance between the different species is, doubtless, the object of the creation of the carnivorous. This system has been aptly denominated “the police of nature.” And we find it to have always existed. The earliest vertebral animals—the sauroid fishes and sharks—were of this description. The sharks have always lived, but the sauroid fishes became less numerous when other marine saurians were created; and when they both nearly disappeared, during the tertiary period, other predaceous families were introduced, more like those now in existence.

The history of the mollusks, or animals inhabiting shells, furnishes us with an example still more striking. These animals, as they now exist, are divisible into the two great classes of carnivorous and herbivorous species, being distinguished by their anatomical structure; and so has it ever been. In the fossiliferous rocks below the tertiary, we find immense numbers of nautili, ammonites, and other kindred genera of polythalamous shells, called cephalopods, which were all carnivorous. And when they nearly disappeared with the cretaceous period, there was created another race with carnivorous propensities and organs, called trachelipods; and those continue still to swarm in the ocean. Had they not appeared when the cephalopods passed away, the herbivorous tribes would have multiplied to such an extent as ultimately to destroy marine vegetation, and bring on famine among themselves.

These examples are sufficient to prove the existence of the carnivorous and herbivorous races in all ages and in about the same relative numbers. And it certainly furnishes most decisive evidence of the oneness of all these systems of organic life on the globe.

In the fifth place, the laws of anatomy have always been the same since organic structures began to exist.

It had long been known that the organs of animals were beautifully adapted to perform the functions for which they were intended. But it was not till the investigations of Baron Cuvier, within the last half century, that it was known how mathematically exact is the relation between the different parts of the animal frame, nor how precise are the laws of variation in the different species, by which they are fitted to different elements, climates, and food. It is now well known, that each animal structure contains a perfect system of correlation, and yet the whole forms a harmonious part of the entire animal system on the globe. But the language of Cuvier himself will best elucidate this subject, so far as it is capable of popular explanation.

“Every organized individual,” says he, “forms an entire system of its own; all the parts of which mutually correspond, and concur to produce a certain definite purpose, by reciprocal reaction, or by combining towards the same end. Hence none of these separate parts can change their forms without a corresponding change in the other parts of the same animal, and consequently each of these parts, taken separately, indicates all the other parts to which it has belonged. Thus, if the viscera of any animal are so organized as only to be fitted for the digestion of recent flesh, it is also requisite that the jaws should be so constructed as to fit them for devouring prey; the claws must be constructed for seizing and tearing it to pieces; the teeth for cutting and dividing its flesh; the entire system of the limbs, or organs of motion, for pursuing and overtaking it; and the organs of sense, for discovering it at a distance. Nature, also, must have endowed the brain of the animal with instinct sufficient for concealing itself, and for laying plans to catch its necessary victims.

“In order that the jaw may be well adapted for laying hold of objects, it is necessary that its condyle should have a certain form; that the resistance, the moving power, and the fulcrum, should have a certain relative position with respect to each other, and that the temporal muscles should be of a certain size; the hollow, or depression, too, in which these muscles are lodged, must have a certain depth; and the zygomatic arch, under which they pass, must not only have a certain degree of convexity, but it must be sufficiently strong to support the action of the masseter.

“To enable the animal to carry of its prey when seized, a corresponding force is requisite in the muscles which elevate the head; and this necessarily gives rise to a determinate form of the vertebræ, to which these muscles are attached, and of the occiput into which they are inserted.

“In order that the teeth of a carnivorous animal may be able to cut the flesh, they require to be sharp, more or less so in proportion to the greater or less quantity of flesh which they have to cut. It is requisite that their roots should be solid and strong, in proportion to the greater quantity and size of the bones which they have to break to pieces. The whole of these circumstances must necessarily influence the development and form of all the parts which contribute to move the jaws.

“To enable the claws of a carnivorous animal to seize its prey, a considerable degree of mobility is necessary in their paws and toes, and a considerable strength in the claws themselves. From these circumstances, there necessarily result certain determinate forms in all the bones of their paws, and in the distribution of the muscles and tendons by which they are moved. The fore arm must possess a certain facility of moving in various directions, and consequently requires certain determinate forms in the bones of which it is composed. As the bones of the fore arm are articulated with the arm bone, or humerus, no change can take place in the form or structure of the former, without occasioning correspondent changes in the form of the latter. The shoulder-blade, also, or scapula, requires a correspondent degree of strength in all animals destined for catching prey, by which it likewise must necessarily have an appropriate form. The play and action of all these parts require certain proportions in the muscles which set them in motion, and the impressions formed by these muscles must still farther determine the form of all these bones.

“After these observations it will easily be seen that similar conclusions may be drawn with respect to the hinder limbs of carnivorous animals, which require particular conformations to fit them for rapidity of motion in general; and that similar considerations must influence the forms and connections of the vertebræ and other bones constituting the trunk of the body, and to fit them for flexibility and readiness of motion in all directions. The bones, also, of the nose, of the orbit, and of the ears, require certain forms and structures to fit them for giving perfection to the senses of smell, sight, and hearing, so necessary to animals of prey. In short, the shape and structure of the teeth regulate the forms of the condyle, of the shoulder-blade, and the claws, in the same manner as the equation of a curve regulates all its other properties; and as, in regard to a particular curve, all its properties may be ascertained by assuming each separate property as the foundation of a particular equation, in the same manner a claw, a shoulder-blade, a condyle, a leg, an arm bone, or any other bone, separately considered, enables us to discover the description of teeth to which they have belonged; and so, also, reciprocally, we may determine the form of the other bones from the teeth. Thus commencing our investigations by a careful survey of any one bone by itself, a person who is sufficiently master of the laws of organic structure may, as it were, reconstruct the whole animal to which that bone had belonged.”

After applying the same principle to animals with hoofs, Cuvier comes to a conclusion even more surprising. “Hence,” says he, “any one who observes merely the print of a cloven hoof, may conclude that it has been left by a ruminant animal, and regard the conclusion as equally certain with any other in physics or in morals. Consequently this single footmark clearly indicates to the observer the forms of the teeth, of all the leg bones, thighs, shoulders, and of the trunk of the body of the animal which left the mark. It is much surer than all the marks of Zadig.

“By thus employing the method of observation, where theory is no longer able to direct our views, we procure astonishing, results. The smallest fragment of bone, even the most apparently insignificant apophysis, possesses a fixed and determinate character relative to the class, order, genus, and species of the animal to which it belonged; insomuch that when we find merely the extremity of a well-preserved bone, we are able, by a careful examination, assisted by analogy and exact comparison, to determine the species to which it once belonged, as certainly as if we had the entire animal before us. Before venturing to put entire confidence in this method of investigation, in regard to fossil bones, I have very frequently tried it with portions of bones belonging to well-known animals, and always with such complete success, that I now entertain no doubts with regard to the results which it affords.”

The remarkable correlation between the parts of existing animals having been thus proved by the most rigid and satisfactory tests, we shall inquire with interest for the result, when Cuvier applied the same principles to the fossil animals. If the laws of anatomical structure were the same when these extinct races lived as they now are, these principles will apply equally well to the bones found in the rocks; and though often only scattered fragments are brought to light, the anatomist will be able to reconstruct the whole animal, and present him to our view. Cuvier was the first who solved this problem. The quarries around Paris had furnished a vast number of bones of strange animals, and these were thrown promiscuously into the collections of that city. Well prepared by previous study, this distinguished anatomist went among them with the inquiry, Can these bones live? The spirit of scientific prophecy was upon him, and, as he uttered his inspirations, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And the sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them. “I found myself,” says he, “as if placed in a charnel-house, surrounded by mutilated fragments of many hundred skeletons of more than twenty kinds of animals, piled confusedly around me. The task assigned me was to restore them all to their original position. At the voice of comparative anatomy, every bone and fragment of a bone resumed its place. I cannot find words to express the pleasure I experienced in seeing, as I discovered one character, how all the consequences which I predicted from it were successively confirmed; the feet were found in accordance with the characters announced by the teeth; the teeth in harmony with those indicated beforehand by the feet; the bones of the legs and thighs, and every connecting portion of the extremities, were found set together precisely as I had arranged them, before my conjectures were verified by the discovery of the parts entire; in short, each species was, as it were, reconstructed from a single one of its component elements.”

It is hardly necessary to say that, since this first successful experiment, the same principles have been more thoroughly investigated and extended with the same success into every department of fossil organic nature. The results which have crowned the labors of such men as Agassiz, Ehrenberg, Kaup, Goldfuss, Bronn, Blainville, Brongniart, Deshayes, and D’Orbigny, on the continent of Europe, and of Conybeare, Buckland, Mantell, Lindley, and Hutton, and eminently of Owen, in Great Britain, although sustained by the most rigid principles of science, are nevertheless but little short of miraculous; and they demonstrate most clearly the identity of anatomical laws, in all ages, among animals and plants of every size and character, from the lofty lepidodendra and sigillaria to the humblest moss or sea-weed, and from the gigantic dinotherium, mastodon, megatherium, and iguanodon, to the infinitesimal infusoria.

In the sixth place, physiological laws have always been the same upon the globe.

That death has reigned in all past ages over all animated tribes, as it now reigns, so that in that war there has never been a discharge, I need not attempt formally to prove. For the preserved and petrified relics of all the former races, that now lie entombed in the rocks, furnish a silent but impressive demonstration of the former triumph of that great physiological law, which is stamped by the signet of Jehovah upon all existing organic natures—Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Scarcely more necessary is it to attempt to show that the same system of reproduction for filling the chasms which death occasions, and which is now universal in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, has always existed. Indeed, such a system is a necessary counterpart to a system of dissolution. And we find the same phases to this reproductive system in ancient and in modern periods. Organic remains clearly teach us that there have always been viviparous as well as oviparous creatures, and gemmiparous as well as fissiparous animals and plants. The second great physiological law of existing nature has, then, always been the same.

The character of the nourishment by which animals and plants have been sustained has never varied. The latter have ever been nourished by inorganic, and the former by organic, matter. Some animals have ever fed upon the flesh of other animals, as their petrified remains, enclosing the masticated and half-digested fragments of other animals, testify. Other tribes have fed only upon herbs or fruits; and some were omnivorous; just, in fact, as we find the habits of existing animals.

No less certain are we that the processes of digestion and assimilation have ever been unchanged. We find the same organs for these purposes as in existing animals, viz., the mouth, the stomach, the intestines, and the blood-vessels, as the coprolites and the cololites abundantly testify. We infer, therefore, with great confidence, the existence of gastric juice and bile for completing the transformation of the food into blood. Indeed, the discovery by a lady (Miss Mary Anning, of England) of that singular secretion from which the color called India ink is prepared, with the ink-bag of the sepia, or loligo, in a petrified state, shows that the process of secretion existed in these ancient animals; and when we find that in all respects their structure was like that of existing animals, although some of the softer vessels have not been preserved, we cannot doubt but the entire process of digestion, and the conversion of blood into bone, nerve, and muscle, was precisely the same as it now is.

In the fact, also, that we find in fossil specimens organs of respiration, such as lungs, gills, and trachea, we learn that the process of a circulation of blood, and its purification by means of the oxygen of the atmosphere, have never varied. Animal heat, too, dependent as it is essentially upon this oxygenating process, was always derived from the same source as at present.

The perfectly preserved minute vessels of vegetables enable us, by means of the microscope, to identify them with the plants now alive; and they prove, too, incontestably, that the nourishment of vegetables has always been of the same kind, and has been converted into the various proximate principles of plants by the same processes.

Again. We have evidence that these ancient animals possessed the same senses as their congeneric races now on the globe. We have one good example in which that most delicate organ, the eye, is most perfectly preserved. It is well known that the visual organ of insects and of crustaceans is composed of a multitude—often several hundreds or thousands—of eyes, united into one, so as to serve the purpose of a multiplying glass; each eye producing a separate image of the object observed. Such an eye had the trilobite. Each contained at least four hundred nearly spherical lenses on the surface of the cornea, united into one organ; revealing to us the interesting fact, that the relations of light to animal organization were the same in that remote era as they now are.

But I need not multiply proof of the functional identity of organic nature in all ages. It may, however, be inquired, how this identity, as well as that of anatomical structure, is reconciled with the great anomalies, both in size and form, which have confessedly prevailed among ancient animals. Compare the plants and animals which now occupy the northern parts of the globe with those which flourished there in the remote periods of geological history, and can we believe them to be portions of one great system of organic nature?

Compare, for instance, the thirty or forty species of ferns now growing to the height of a few inches, or one or two feet, in Europe and this country, with the more than two hundred species already dug out of the coal mines, many of which were forty to forty-five feet in height; or the diminutive ground pines, and equiseta, now scarcely noticed in our forests, with the gigantic lepidodendron, sigillaria, calamites, and equiseta, of the carboniferous period; and who will not be struck with the great difference between them?

Or go to Germany, and imagine the bones of the dinotherium to start out of the soil, and become clothed with flesh and instinct with life. You have before you a quadruped eighteen feet in length, and of proportional height, much larger than the elephant, and with curved tusks reaching two or three feet below its lower jaw, while no other living animal would be found there larger than the ox, or the horse—mere pygmies by the side of such a monster, and evidently unfit to be his contemporaries.

Again. Let the megatherium be brought back to life on the pampas of South America, and you have an animal twelve feet long and eight feet high, with proportions perfectly colossal. Its fore feet were a yard long, its thigh bone three times thicker than that of the elephant, its width across the haunches five feet, its spinal marrow a foot in diameter, and its tail, where it was inserted into the body, two feet in diameter. What a giant in comparison with the sloth, the anteater, and the armadillo, to which it was allied by anatomical structure!

Still more unequal in size, as compared with living batrachians, was the labyrinthidon, once common in England and Germany, if, indeed, the tracks on sandstone were made by that animal. It was, in fact, a frog as large as an ox, and perhaps as large as an elephant. Think of such animals swarming in our morasses at the present day!

But coming back from Europe, and turning our thoughts to the animals that trod along the shores of the estuary that once washed the base of Mount Holyoke, in New England, we shall encounter an animal, probably of the batrachian family, of more gigantic proportions. It was the Otozoum Moodii, a biped, with feet twenty inches long, more than twice the size of those of the labyrinthidon; yet its tracks on the imperishable sandstone show that such a giant once trod upon the muddy shore of that ancient estuary.

Along that same shore, also, enormous struthious birds moved in flocks, making strides from three to five feet long, with feet eighteen inches long, lifting their heads, it may be, from twelve to eighteen feet above the ground, surpassing, as it appears, even the gigantic dinornis of New Zealand, now that the feet of the latter have been discovered. I refer to the Brontozoum giganteum, whose tracks are so common on the new red sandstone of the Connecticut valley. What dwarfs are we in comparison, who now consider ourselves lords of that valley!

Still more remarkable for peculiarities of structure was the tribe of saurians, which were once so numerous in the northern parts of Europe and America. The ichthyosaurus, a carnivorous marine reptile, sometimes thirty feet long, had the snout of a porpoise, the teeth of a crocodile, the head of a lizard, the vertebræ of a fish, the sternum of an ornithorhynchus, and the paddles of a whale. Those paddles, corresponding to the fins of a fish, or the web feet of water birds, were composed, each of them, of more than one hundred bones. In short, we find in this animal a combination of mechanical contrivances, which are now found among three distinct classes of the animal kingdom. Its eye, also, having an orbital cavity, in one species, of fourteen inches in its longest diameter, was proportionally larger than that of any living animal.

The plesiosaurus had the general structure of the ichthyosaurus; but its neck was nearly as long as its whole body—longer, in proportion to its size, than even that of the swan.

The iguanodon was an herbivorous terrestrial reptile that formerly inhabited England. It approaches nearest in structure to the iguana, a reptile four or five feet long, inhabiting the marine parts of this continent. Yet the iguanodon was thirty feet long, with a thigh six feet, and a body fourteen feet in circumference. What an alarm would it now produce, to have such a monster start into life in the forests of England, where no analogous animal could be found more than half a foot in length! Surely this must have been one of the fabulous monsters of antiquity.

Still more heteroclitic and unlike existing nature was the pterodactyle, a small lizard, contemporary with the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus. At one time anatomists regarded it as a bird, at another as a bat, and finally as a reptile, having the head and neck of a bird, the body and tail of a quadruped, the wings of a bat, and the teeth of a saurian reptile. With its wings it could fly or swim; it could walk on two feet or four; with its claws it could climb or creep. “Thus,” says Dr. Buckland, “like Milton’s fiend, all qualified for all services, and all elements, the pterodactyle was a fit companion for the kindred reptiles that swarmed in the seas, or crawled on the shores of a turbulent planet.”

Now, when the details of such facts are brought before us, it is very natural to feel that it is the history of monsters, and that the Centaurs, the Gorgons, and Chimeras of the ancients, are no more unlike existing animals than these resurrections from the rocks. But further examination rectifies our mistake, and we recognize them as parts of one great system. All the peculiarities of size, and structure, and form, which we meet, we find to be only wise and benevolent adaptations to the different circumstances in which animals have been placed. The gigantic size of many of them, compared with existing races, may be explained by the tropical, or even ultra tropical character of the climate; and not a single anomaly of structure and form can be pointed out, which did not contribute to the convenience and happiness of the species, in the circumstances in which they were placed. It is our ignorance and narrow views alone that give any of them the aspect of monsters. Listen to the opinion of Sir Charles Bell, one of the ablest of modern anatomists. “The animals of the antediluvian world,” says he, “were not monsters; there is no lusus, or extravagance. Hideous as they appear to us, and like the phantoms of a dream, they were adapted to the condition of the earth when they existed.” “Judging by these indications of the habits of the animals, we acquire a knowledge of the condition of the earth during their period of existence; that it was suited at one time to the scaly tribe of the lacertæ, with languid motion; at another, to animals of higher organization, with more varied and lively habits; and, finally, we learn that, at any period previous to man’s creation, the surface of the earth would have been unsuitable to him.”—Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 35 and 31.

A similar view is given of this subject by England’s geological poet, (Rev. Mr. Wilks,) in whose playful verses we find more of true science and just inference than in many a ponderous tome of grave prose. In one of his poems he says,—

The facts and reasonings which have now been presented will sustain the following important inferences:—

In the first place, we learn that the notions which have so widely prevailed, in ancient and modern times, respecting a chaos, are without foundation.

Among all heathen nations of antiquity, the belief in a primeval chaos was almost universal; and from the heathen philosophers it was transmitted to the Christian world, and incorporated with the Mosaic cosmogony. It is not, indeed, easy to ascertain what is the precise idea which has been attached to a chaos. It is generally described, however, as “a confused assemblage of elements,” “an unformed and undigested mass of heterogeneous matter;” not, of course, subject to those laws which now govern it, and which have arranged it all in beautiful order, even if we leave out of the account vegetable and animal organization. Now, I have attempted to show that there never was a period on the globe when these laws, with the exception of the organic, did not operate as they now do. Nay, the geologist, when he examines the oldest rocks, finds the results of these laws at the supposed period when chaos reigned; that is, in the earliest times of our planet. And what are these results? The most splendid crystallizations which nature furnishes. The emerald, the topaz, the sapphire, and other kindred gems, were elaborated during the supposed chaotic state of the globe; for no earlier products have yet been discovered than these most perfect illustrations of crystallographical, chemical, and electrical laws. If, indeed, any should say, that by a chaos they mean only that state of the world when no animals or plants existed,—in other words, when no organic laws had been established,—to such a chaos I have no objection. And this is the chaos described in the Bible, where it is said that, before the creation of animals and plants, the earth was without form and void. The tohu vau bohu of Moses, which is thus translated in our English Bible, means, simply and literally, invisible and unfurnished—invisible, both because the ocean covered the present land, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and unfurnished, because as yet no organic natures had been called into existence. This is the meaning which the old Jewish writers, as Philo and Josephus, attached to these words; and they have been followed by some of the ablest modern commentators. “It is wonderful,” says Rosenmuller the elder, “that so many interpreters could have persuaded themselves that it was possible to detect a chaos in the words תֹחדּ דָבֹהדּ. That notion unquestionably derived its origin from the fictions of the Greek and Latin poets, which were transferred by those interpreters to Moses. If we follow the practice of the language, the Hebrew phrase has this signification: The earth was waste and desert, or, as others prefer, empty and vacuous; that is, uncultured and unfurnished with those things with which the Creator afterwards adorned it.”—Antiquiss. Tell. Hist. p. 19-23.

Upon the whole, there is no evidence whatever, either in nature or revelation, that the earth has ever been in a state corresponding to the common notions of a chaos; while, on the other hand, there is strong proof that the present laws of nature have been in operation from the beginning. These laws have varied in the intensity of their action, and we have strong reason to believe that organic laws did not always exist; but none of these laws have ever been suspended, to leave the elements to mix in wild disorder in a formless mass. It is high time that religion was freed from the indescribable incubus of a chaos.

Finally, the most important conclusion to which the mind is conducted by this subject is, that the present and past conditions of this world are only parts of one and the same great system of infinite wisdom and benevolence.

We have seen that the same wise and benevolent laws, organic and inorganic, have always controlled, as they now control, this lower world. It is true we find modified conditions of the globe in its past history; but they were always the foreseen result of the same laws, and in harmony with the same great plan. And the modifications of organic structure, which were great in the successive economies, were always in perfect correspondence with the earth’s physical changes. Nowhere do we meet with conflicting plans; but throughout all nature, from the earliest zoöphyte and sea-weed of the silurian rocks to the young animals and plants that came into existence to-day, and from the choice gems that were produced when the earth was without form and void, to the crystals which are now forming in the chemist’s laboratory, one golden chain of harmony links all together, and identifies all as the work of the same infinite mind.

“In all the numerous examples of design which we have selected from the various animal and vegetable remains that occur in a fossil state,” says Dr. Buckland, “there is such a never-failing identity in the fundamental principles of their construction, and such uniform adoption of analogous means to produce various ends, with so much only of departure from one common type of mechanism as was requisite to adapt each instrument to its own especial function, and to fit each species to its peculiar place and office in the scale of created beings, that we can scarcely fail to acknowledge in all these facts a demonstration of the unity of the intelligence in which such transcendent harmony originated; and we may almost dare to assert that neither atheism nor polytheism would ever have found acceptance in the world, had the evidences of high intelligence and unity of design which have been disclosed by modern discoveries in physical science been fully known to the authors or the abetters of systems to which they are so diametrically opposed. It is the same handwriting that we read, the same system and contrivance that we trace, the same unity of object and relation to final causes which we see maintained throughout, and constantly proclaiming the unity of the great divine original.”—Bridgewater Treatise, p. 584.

“The earth, from her deep foundations, unites with the celestial orbs, that roll throughout boundless space, to declare the glory and show forth the praise of their common Author and Preserver; and the voice of natural religion accords harmoniously with the testimonies of revelation, in ascribing the origin of the universe to the will of one eternal and dominant intelligence, the almighty Lord and supreme First Cause of all things that subsist; the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, God from everlasting and without end.”—Bridgewater Treatise, p. 596.