as a
glass-blower blows up a bottle, or as a little yeast blows up into
similar but greatly smaller cavities a bit of leaven. And the
stalactites and stalagmites which encrust the Kirkdale Cave are, Mr.
Penn holds, simply the last runnings of the lime that exuded after the
general mass had begun to set. Certainly any one disposed to take such
liberties with the Bible on the one hand, and with geologic science on
the other, as those taken in the given instances by this most formidable
of the anti-geologists, could have but little difficulty in making
either Scripture as geological or geology as Scriptural as he had a
mind. His chief danger would be that of making the sounder theologians
just a little angry, and of escaping, unless quoted for the joke's sake,
the notice of the geologists altogether. In truth, the extreme absurdity
of our later anti-geologists in virtually contending, in the
controversy, that _their_ ignorance of an interesting science, founded
on millions of determined facts, ought to be permitted to weigh against
the knowledge of the men who have studied it most thoroughly, forms
their best defence. It secures them against all save neglect. As,
however, some of their number are well meaning men, who would not be
ridiculous if they could help it, and only oppose themselves to the
geologists because they deem them mischievous and in error, it may be
worth while showing them, by an example or two, the ludicrous nature of
the positions which in their honest ignorance they permit themselves to
occupy, and the real scope and bearing of the arguments which they
unwittingly permit themselves to use. I shall adduce two several
instances of reasoning, directed by the anti-geologists _against_ their
antagonists (as they themselves believed), but which, from their
ignorance of the true state of the argument, and of the bearing of the
facts with which they dealt, in reality made out for these antagonists
as strong a case as they could possibly have made out for themselves.
And I am sure that, rather than be found siding with their opponents,
the anti-geologists would be content even to acquire a little geology.

I shall select my first instance from the records of the annual
controversy which used to rage some ten or fifteen years ago, in
sermons, newspapers, and magazines, immediately after every meeting of
the British Association. A religious Dublin newspaper,--the "Statesman
and Record,"--since extinct, took alwa