The testimony of the rocks; or, Geology in its bearings on the two theologies, natural and revealed

I. The Old Red Sandstone; Or, New Walks In An Old Field

Illustrated with Plates and Geological Sections. 12rao, cloth. Price $1.00. "It is withal one of the most beautiful specimens of English composition to be found, conveying information on a most difficult and profound science, in a style at once novel, pleasing and elegant." — Dr. Spkague, Albany Spectatoe.

II. My First Impressions Oe England And Its People

With a fine Engraving of the Author. 12mo, cloth. Price $1.00.

A thrillingly interesting and instructive book of travels ; presenting the most perfectly life-like views of England and its People to be found in the language.

III. Tile Footprints Of The Creator

OR, THE ASTEROLEPIS OF STROMNESS.

With numerous Illustrations. With a Memoir of the Author, by Louis Agassiz.

12mo, cloth. Price $1.00.

Dr. Buckland said he would give his left hand to possess such powers of description AS THIS MAN.

IV. My Schools And Schoolmasters

OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

With a full length Portrait of the Author. 12mo, cloth. Price $1.25.

This is a personal narrative of a deeply interesting and instructive character, concerning one of the most remarkable men of the age. It should be read and studied by every young man io the land.

V. Testimony Of The Rocks

OR, GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS ON THE TWO THEOLOGIES, NATURAL AND REVEALED.

••Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field."— Job.

With numerous elegant Illustrations. One volume, royal 12mo. Price $1.25.

This is the largest and most comprehensive geological work of this distinguished author. It exhibits the profound learning, the felicitous style, and the scientific perception, which characterize his former works, while it embraces the latest results of geological discovery. But the great charm of the book lies in those passages of glowing eloquence, in which, having spread out his facts, the author proceeds to make deductions from them of the most striking and exciting character.

O 3 " The above works may be had in sets of unifc m size and style of binding.

mH bg l0l]tt f wis, S-8*,

PUBLISHED BY

GOULD AND LINCOLN,

69 WASHINGTON STREET

THE GREAT TEACHER; or, Characteristics of our Lord's Ministry. With an Introductory Essay by Heman Humphrey, D. D. 12mo, cloth. Price 85 cents.

II.

THE GREAT COMMISSION; or, the Christian Church constituted and charged to

convey the Gospel to the world. A Prize Essay. With an Introductory Essay by

William R. Williams, D. D. 12mo, cloth. Price $1.00.

III.

THE PRE-ADAMITE EARTH; Contributions to Theological Science. New and Revised edition. 12mo, cloth. Price $1.00.

IV.

MAN PRIMEVAL; or, the Constitution and Primitive Condition of the Human Being. With a finely engraved Portrait of the Author. 12mo, cloth, Price $1.25.

PATRIARCHY; or, The Family, its Constitution and Probation. Contributions to Theological Science. 12mo, cloth. Price $1.25.

V£r~ The immense sale of Dr. Harris's Works, both in this country and in Europe, attest their intrinsic worth and great popularity. (11)

SPHENOPTERIS AFFINIS.

A Fern of the Lower Coal Measures.

{Restored.)

THE

TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS;

OR,

TWO THEOLOGIES, NATURAL AND REVEALED.

B T

HUGH MILLER,

AUTHOR OP " THE OLD RED SANDSTONE," " FOOTPRINTS OP THE CREATOR," ETC., ETC.

"WITH

MEMORIALS OP THE DEATH AND CHARACTER OE THE AUTHOR.

** Thou ehalt be in league with, the stones of the field."— Job.

BOSTON:

COULD AND LINCOLN,

59 WASHINGTON STREET.

NEW YORK: S HELD ON, BL A KE M AN & CO.

CINCINNATI : GEORGE S. BLANCHARD.

D Gu I

.tA5

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by

GOULD AND LINCOLN,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

1 (,JSr

By Transfer from U.S. Naval Academy Aug. 26 1932

FlUfrTED fit GEORGE C. RAND & AVERY.

Eleotro-Stereotyped

BY GEO. J. STILES,

23 Congress St., Boston.

TO

JAMES MILLER, ESQ., E.R.S.E.

PROFESSOR OF SURGERY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.

My Dear Sir,

This volume is chiefly taken up in answering, to the best of its author's knowledge and ability, the various questions which the old theology of Scotland has been asking for the last few years of the newest of the sciences. Will you pardon me the liberty I take in dedicating it to you ? In compliance with the peculiar demand of the time, that what a man knows of science or of art he should freely communicate to his neighbors, we took the field nearly together as popular lecturers, and have at least so far resembled each other in our measure of success, that the same class of censors have been severe upon both. For while you have been condemned as a physiologist for asserting that the human framework, when fairly wrought during the week, is greatly the better for the rest of the Sabbath, 1 have been described by the same pen as one of the wretched class of persons who teach that geology, rightly understood, does not conflict with revelation. Besides, I owe it to your kindness that, when set aside by the indisposition which renders it doubtful whether I shall ever again address a popular audience, you enabled me creditably to fulfil one of my engagements by reading for me in public two of the following discourses, and by doing them an amount of justice on that occasion which could never have been done them by their author. Further, your kind atten-

VI DEDICATION.

tions and advice during the crisis of my illness were certainly every way suited to remind me of those so gratefully acknowledged by the wit of the last century, when he bethought him of

" kind Arbuthnot's aid, Who knew bis art, but not his trade."

And so, though the old style of dedication has been long out of fashion, I avail myself of the opportunity it affords me of expressing my entire, concurrence in your physiological views, my heartfelt gratitude for your good services and friendship, and my sincere respect for the disinterested part you have taken in the important work of elevating and informing your humbler countryfolk, — while at the same time maintaining professionally, with Simpson and with Goodsir, the reputation of that school of anatomy and medicine for which the Scottish capital has been long so famous.

I am,

My Dear Sir,

With sincere respect and regard,

Yours affectionately,

HUGH MILLER.

TO THE READER.

Of the twelve following Lectures, four (the First, Second, Fifth, and Sixth) were delivered before the members of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution (1852 and 1855). One (the Third) was read at Exeter Hall before the Young Men's Christian Association (1854), and the substance of two of the others (the Eleventh and Twelfth) at Glasgow, before the Geological Section of the British Association (1855). Of the five others, — written mainly to complete and impart a character of unity to the volume of which they form a part, — only three (the Fourth, Seventh, and Eighth) were addressed viva voce to popular audiences. The Third Lecture was published both in this country and America, and translated into some of the Continental languages. The rest now appear in print for the first time. Though their writer has had certainly no reason to complain of the measure of favor with which the read or spoken ones have been received, they are perhaps all better adapted for perusal in the closet than for delivery in the public hall or lecture-room ; while the two concluding Lectures are mayhap suited to interest only geologists who, having already acquainted themselves with the generally ascertained facts of their science, are curious to cultivate a further knowledge with such new facts as in the course of discovery are from time to time added to the common fund. In such of the following Lectures as deal with but the established geologic phenomena, and owe whatever little merit they may possess to the inferences drawn from these, or on the conclusions based upon them, most of the figured illustrations, though not all, will be recognized as familiar : in the two concluding Lectures, on the contrary, they will be found to be almost entirely new. They are contributions, representative of the patient gleanings of years, to the geologic records of Scotland ; and exhibit, in a more or less perfect state, no inconsiderable portion of all the forms yet detected in the rocks of her earlier Palagozoic and Secondary floras.

It will be seen that I adopt, in my Third and Fourth Lectures, that scheme of reconciliation between the Geologic and Mosaic Records which accepts the six days of creation as vastly extended periods ; and I have been reminded by a somewhat captious critic that I once held a very different view, and twitted with what he terms inconsistency. I certainly did once believe with Chalmers and with Buckland that the six days were simply natural days of twenty-four hours each, —that they had compressed the entire work of the existing creation, — and that the latest of the geologic ages was separated by a great chaotic gap from our own. My labors at the time as a practical geologist had been very much

VIII TO THE READER.

restricted to the Palaeozoio and Secondary rocks, more especially to the Old Red and Carboniferous Systems of the one division, and the Oolitic System of the other; and the long extinct organisms which I found in them certainly did not conflict with the view of Chalmers. All I found necessary at the time to the work of reconciliation was some scheme that would permit me to assign to the earth a high antiquity, and to regard it as the scene of many succeeding creations. During the last nine years, however, I have spent a few weeks every autumn in exploring the later formations, and acquainting myself with their peculiar organisms. I have traced them upwards from the raised beaches and old coast lines of the human period, to the brick clays, Clyde beds, and drift and boulder deposits of the Pleistocene era,' and again from these, with the help of museums and collections, up through the mammaliferous crag of England, to its Red and its Coral crags. And the conclusion at which I have been compelled to arrive is, that for many long ages ere man was ushered into being, not a few of his humbler contemporaries of the fields and woods enjoyed life in their present haunts, and that for thousands of years anterior to even their appearance, many of the existing molluscs lived in our seas. That day during which the present creation came into being, and in which God, Avhen he had made "the beast of the earth after his kind, and the cattle after their kind," at length terminated the work by moulding a creature in his own image, to whom he gave dominion over them all, was not a brief period of a few hours' duration, but extended over mayhap millenniums of centuries. No blank chaotic gap of death and darkness separated the creation to which man belongs from that of the old extinct elephant, hippopotamus, and hyaena; for familiar animals such as the red deer, the roe, the fox, the wild cat, and the badger, lived throughout the period which connected their times with our own ; and so I have been compelled to hold, that the days of creation were not natural, but prophetic days, and stretched far back into the bygone eternity. After in some degree committing myself to the other side, I have yielded to evidence which I found it impossible to resist: and such in this matter has been my inconsistency, — an inconsistency of which the world has furnished examples in all the sciences, and will, I trust, in its onward progress, continue to furnish many more

Edinburgh, December, 1856.

[The last proofs of this preface were despatched by the Author to his printer only the day before that melancholy termination of his life, the details of which will be found in the " Memorials " following. —Am. Publishers.]