DENMARK. SINCE our last No. was issued, we have seen a letter from an officer of the Northern Society of Antiquaries at Copenhagen, describing more fully one of the great enterprises of the Society, the publication of the ANTIQUITATES AMERICANAE, or the historical proofs of the discovery of this continent by the Northmen before the time of Columbus. We make one or two quotations. "The announced work is intended to comprise as complete a collection as possible of the ancient records referred to, consisting partly of Historical Sagas in an entire form, partly of extracts from old Geographical writings, and Icelandic annals; and will be published in the original Icelandic, with accompanying Danish and Latin translations, and a full critical apparatus of variorum readings, and explanatory notes in Latin, Chronological and Genealogical tables, (the latter exhibiting the descent of many celebrated characters in Icelandic, Danish, and Norwegian history from the first discoveries of America) Geographical and Archeological disquisitions, concerning the first landing places and the earliest settlements of the Northmen, in America, as well as concerning vestiges, some suppositive, some unquestionable, of their immigration to and residence in that country. "In the compilation of this work, we have availed ourselves of an abundant store of the most valuable materials, the property of our Libraries, or MS collections, among which are not a few parchment codices never before used or even known. "The entire Ms. of this work has been long since completed, as well as the body of notes and researches pertaining to it, and twenty-five sheets are already printed. The maps too, plates, and fac-similes are in course of preparation. "It is proper to add that 300 copies will be struck off for America, printed on paper of superior quality. The precise number of sheets, of which the work will consist, it is impossible to determine, but keeping in mind the expense of publication, and of getting up the maps, fac-similes, and other illustrations, we may fix the price, for subscribers, at twelve dollars." The gentleman, in a neighboring State, to whom this letter was addressed, has in press a Grammar of the Icelandic language in English. FINLAND. AT Helsingfors has been published the odes of Anacreon and Sappho, translated into Finnish by Erich Alex. Ingemann.-Dr. Löurot, physician at Kajana, has made a very large collection of ancient Finland songs and ballads, which he is now arranging, and which will be published by the Finland Literary Society at Helsingfors. PERSIA. A series of works has been received in England, which were published at the Abbas Mirza's press at Teheran. A carefully edited Koran in Arabic, for the first time printed in a Mussulman country, is among the number. Also commentaries on the laws of Mohammed adapted to the Sheeah sect. THE BIBLICAL REPOSITORY AND Quarterly Observer. No. XX. OCTOBER, 1835. ARTICLE I. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN Geology and the MOSAIC HISTORY OF THE CREATION. By Edward Hitchcock, Professor of Chemistry and Nat. Hist. in Amherst College. HAVING in the 18th No. of this work prepared the way, by pointing out several unexpected coincidences between the two subjects, we are now prepared, as the second part of the discussion, to inquire into the nature, and means of reconciling the supposed discrepancy between geology and revelation. This alleged disagreement is chiefly chronological. Moses represents the work of creation as completed in the space of six days; whereas the geologist asserts that the formation of the crust of the globe, with its numerous groups of extinct animals and plants, after the original production of the matter of the globe, must have occupied immense periods of time, whose duration we cannot estimate. Other minor discrepancies between the two records are supposed to exist. But we can conveniently notice them all in examining the chronological difficulty. It is important to ascertain whether this demand of the geologist for such indefinite periods of time, be really called for VOL. VI. No. 20. 34 by the established facts of his science. These facts are principally derived from the fossiliferous rocks: that is, such rocks as contain organic remains, and appear to have been formed, in part at least, by mechanical agencies. 1. More than two thirds of existing continents are covered with these rocks; which contain numerous remains of marine animals, so preserved as to prove incontestibly that they died. on the spot where they are now found, and became gradually enveloped in the sand, or other stony matter, which accumulated around them, their most delicate spines and processes being preserved. In fine these rocks present every appearance of having been formed, just as sand, clay, gravel, and limestone are now accumulating in the bottom of the ocean, by a very slow process. Except in extraordinary cases, indeed, it requires a century to produce accumulations of this kind even a few inches in thickness. 2. But geologists think they have ascertained that the fossiliferous strata in Europe are not less than eight or ten miles in thickness: How immense the period requisite for the production of such vast masses! 3. This mass is divided into hundreds of distinct strata, or groups of strata; each group containing peculiar organic remains, and arranged in as much order, one above another, as the drawers of a well regulated cabinet. Such changes, not only of mineral composition but of organic remains, show that there must have been more or less of change of circumstances in the waters from which the successive strata and groups were deposited. And such changes must have demanded periods of time of long duration, for they appear to have been for the most part extremely slow. We hence derive confirmatory evidence of the views that have been presented concerning the vast periods that have been employed in the production of the fossiliferous strata. 4. Another circumstance still further confirms these views. In very many instances, each successive group of the strata above referred to, contains rounded pebbles derived from some of the preceding groups. Those strata then, from which such pebbles were derived, must not only have been deposited, but consolidated and eroded by water, so as to produce these pebbles, before the rocks now containing them could have been formed. It is impossible that such changes, numerous as they must have been, could have taken place in short periods of time. There must certainly have been long intervals between the formation of the successive groups. 5. The history of the repeated elevations which the strata have undergone conducts us to the same conclusion. Different unstratified rocks have been intruded among the stratified ones of various epochs, and the strata have been elevated at each epoch. But the oldest strata were partially elevated before the newer ones were deposited for the latter rest in an unconformable position upon the former. Indeed, we often find numerous groups of strata resting unconformably upon one another, the lowest being most tilted up, the next higher less so, and the third still less, until the latest is frequently horizontal; having never been disturbed by any internal protruding agency. It is obvious, then, that after the first elevation of the lowest group, there must have been an interval of repose sufficiently long to permit the deposition of the second group, before the second elevation; then a second period of repose, succeeded by a third elevation; and so on to the top of the series. Here then, we have the same evidence of the slow formation of the stratified rocks as is taught us by their lithological characters and their organic remains. It is impossible to exhibit the preceding arguments in a light as striking as they present themselves to the practical observer. Such a person, indeed, needs no labored argument to satisfy him, that if the stratified rocks were deposited in the manner the work is now going on, immense periods of time were requisite. Even if he admit, what we are not disposed with some geologists to deny, that the causes now in operation did formerly act with greater energy than at present, yet he will still see the necessity of allowing periods of time vastly extended to form the fossiliferous rocks, unless he admit, without any proof, that the laws of nature have been changed. God could, indeed, have performed the work miraculously in a moment of time: But the supposition is wholly gratuitous, and even worse than this, as we shall show in the proper place. It is one thing to admit what God can do, and quite a different thing to show what he has done. There is one geological fact, however, adduced by those who deny these long periods, that deserves attention. In the coal formation large stems of vegetables from 30 to 80 feet long, have been found standing upright, or somewhat inclined, and perforating the strata nearly at right angles. Hence it is in ferred, that the strata of that thickness were deposited around these trunks, during a comparatively short period; as they must have decayed ere many years, if left exposed. This fact certainly deserves very serious consideration. Geologists have usually explained it by supposing that gravity alone would cause the lower portion of water-logged stems to subside in loose mud and sand so as to bring them more or less into a vertical position. Yet it is hardly conceivable, that a stratum even fifty feet thick, should continue in all its parts from century to century in a semi-fluid state, so as to permit such a subsidence of the trunks: though we know of no facts that show how long it may remain in that state; nor how long water-logged stems may resist decomposition. But why not admit that in some cases there may be a very rapid accumulation of detritus in particular places; so that even in the course of a few years, a deposition may take place sufficiently thick to surround these stems? Suppose they happen to be situated at the mouth of a rapid river, coming from a mountainous region, and liable to repeated floods. It is well known that in such cases the accumulation of detritus is very rapid. Thus the Rhone has formed a delta in the lake of Geneva, within the last 800 years, two miles long and from 600 to 900 feet thick; and the delta of the Po has advanced 18 miles within the last 2000 years. * But these facts do not prove that, taken as a whole, the deposition of detritus over large areas is not a very slow process. The whole ocean has not probably been raised a single inch, since the creation of man, by the detritus of rivers; and even inland seas and lakes become shallow so slowly, that hitherto man has scarcely been able to measure it. In short, were we even to admit that the case of these upright stems in the coal fields did prove a more rapid rate of deposition of rocky matter in early times than at present, yet in ninety nine cases out of a hundred, the evidence is the other way; and this would be regarded only as one exception in a hundred. 6. Finally, there appear to have been several almost entire changes of organic life upon the globe since the deposition of the fossiliferous rocks began. And comparative anatomy teaches us, that so different from one another were the successive groups which we find in the different strata, that they could not have been contemporaries. But each group appears to have * Lyell's Geology, Vol. I. p. 236. seq. |