entions by the summary
operations of law? It might be consistent with the weakness and
ignorance of man to be reduced to the necessity of personal intervention
for the accomplishment of his plans, but would not that be the very
result of such ignorance? Does not absolute knowledge actually imply
procedure by preconceived and unvarying law? Is not momentary
intervention altogether derogatory to the thorough and absolute
sovereignty of God? The astronomical calculation of ancient events, as
well as the prediction of those to come, is essentially founded on the
principle that there has not in the times under consideration, and that
there will never be in the future, any exercise of an arbitrary or
overriding will. The corner-stone of astronomy is this, that the solar
system--nay, even the universe, is ruled by necessity. To operate by
expedients is for the creature, to operate by law for the Creator; and
so far from the doctrine that creations and extinctions are carried on
by a foreseen and predestined ordinance--a system which works of itself
without need of any intermeddling--being an unworthy, an ignoble
conception, it is completely in unison with the resistless movements of
the mechanism of the universe, with whatever is orderly, symmetrical,
and beautiful upon earth, and with all the dread magnificence of the
heavens.

[Sidenote: Historical sketch of early Palaeontology.] It was in Italy
that particular attention was first given to organic remains. Leonardo
da Vinci asserts that they are real shells, or the remains thereof, and
hence that the land and sea must have changed their relative position.
At this time fossils were looked upon as rare curiosities, no one
supposing that they were at all numerous, and many were the fantastic
hypotheses proposed to account for their occurrence. Some referred them
to the general deluge mentioned in Scripture; some to a certain plastic
power obscurely attributed to the earth; some thought that they were
engendered by the sunlight, heat, and rain. To Da Vinci is due the first
clear assertion of their true nature, that they are actually the remains
of organic beings. Soon the subject was taken up by other eminent
Italians. Fracaster wrote on the petrifactions of Verona; Scilla, a
Sicilian, on marine bodies turned into stone, illustrating his work by
engravings. Still later, Vallisneri, 1721, published letters on marine
bodies found in rocks, attempting by their aid to determine the