rmations, and separated them into the four great
divisions which they are now recognized as forming. And of these, the
very names indicate that certain proportions of their organisms still
continue to exist. It is a great fact, now fully established in the
course of geological discovery, that between the plants which in the
present time cover the earth, and the animals which inhabit it, and the
animals and plants of the later extinct creations, there occurred no
break or blank, but that, on the contrary, many of the existing
organisms were contemporary during the morning of their being, with many
of the extinct ones during the evening of theirs. We know further, that
not a few of the shells which now live on our coasts, and several of
even the wild animals which continue to survive amid our tracts of hill
and forest, were in existence many ages ere the human age began. Instead
of dating their beginning only a single natural day, or at most two
natural days, in advance of man, they must have preceded him by many
thousands of years. In fine, in consequence of that comparatively recent
extension of geologic fact in the direction of the later systems and
formations, through which we are led to know that the present creation
was not cut off abruptly from the preceding one, but that, on the
contrary, it dovetailed into it at a thousand different points, we are
led also to know, that any scheme of reconciliation which would
separate between the recent and the extinct existences by a chaotic gulf
of death and darkness, is a scheme which no longer meets the necessities
of the case. Though perfectly adequate forty years ago, it has been
greatly outgrown by the progress of geological discovery, and is, as I
have said, adequate no longer; and it becomes a not unimportant matter
to determine the special scheme that would bring into completest harmony
the course of creation, as now ascertained by the geologist, and that
brief but sublime narrative of its progress which forms a meet
introduction in Holy Writ to the history of the human family. The first
question to which we must address ourselves in any such inquiry is of
course a very obvious one,--_What are the facts scientifically
determined which now demand a new scheme of reconciliation?_

There runs around the shores of Great Britain and Ireland a flat terrace
of unequal breadth, backed by an escarpment of varied height and
character, which is known to geologists as the old coast