reatest part of the
surface; the columns of Paestum or of Agrigentum, or the immense iron and
granite bridges of the Thames, would offer a striking contrast to the
bones of the crocodiles or sauri in the older rocks, or even to those of
the mammoth or elephas primogenius in the diluvial strata. And whoever
dwells upon this subject must be convinced that the present order of
things, and the comparatively recent existence of man as the master of
the globe, is as certain as the destruction of a former and a different
order and the extinction of a number of living forms which have now no
types in being, and which have left their remains wonderful monuments of
the revolutions of Nature.

_Onu_.--I am not quite convinced by your arguments. Supposing the lands
of New Holland were to be washed into the depths of the ocean, and to be
raised according to the Huttonian view, as a secondary stratum, by
subterraneous fire, they would contain the remains of both vegetables and
animals entirely different from any found in the strata of the old
continents; and may not those peculiar formations to which you have
referred be, as it were, accidents of Nature belonging to peculiar parts
of the globe? And you speak of a diluvian formation, which I conclude
you would identify with that belonging to the catastrophe described in
the sacred writings, in which no human remains are found. Now, you
surely will not deny that man existed at the time of this catastrophe,
and he consequently may have existed at the period of the other
revolutions, which are supposed to be produced in the Huttonian views by
subterraneous fire.

_The Unknown_.--I have made use of the term "diluvian," because it has
been adopted by geologists, but without meaning to identify the cause of
the formations with the deluge described in the sacred writings. I apply
the term merely to signify loose and water-worn strata not at all
consolidated, and deposited by an inundation of water, and in these
countries which they have covered man certainly did not exist. With
respect to your argument derived from New Holland, it appears to me to be
without weight. In a variety of climates, and in very distant parts of
the globe, secondary strata of the same order are found, and they contain
always the same kind of organic remains, which are entirely different
from any of those now afforded by beings belonging to the existing order
of things. The catastrophes which produced the sec