Richmond daily times. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1853, 1852-03-22

that the whole matter is now before the Ameri-
can Secretary of State.
Footprints Of the Creator-By Hugh Miller.
We are indebted to Messrs. Nash & Wood
house for a handsome copy of this celebrated
work. The writings of the author undoubtedly
furnish the most eloquent and instructive expo
sition of geological science that is to be met
with in the whole range of Brisish or American
literature.
| None of the material sciences have made
more rapid progress during the present centu-
ry than Geology, and none have been productive
| gilmore striking and interesting results. Fifty
years ago the physical structure of our globe was
comparatively unknown, even to the learned
; few, whose province it is to explore the mystic
ries of nature, and the great history inscribed
upon its statifed rocks was an unintelligible re-
cord. Astronomy had long since ascertained
the sublime laws that govern the movements of
the planetary bodies, and revealed the glories
of the stellar universe. Chemistry had dis
played the wonders of the animal, vegetable and
mineral kindoms, whilst Botany, Zoology, COM
maintained the rank of independent sciences,
and were illustrated by the labors of the great
est scientific geniuses of the age. At the period
to which we refer the philosophers of nature
had bestowed but little study on the materials
of the earth's structure, and few, we imagine,
at that day, INDUCED the conjecture that these
materials, furnished the basis of new science,
destined in the lapse ola half century to attain
that high dignity which geology now claims
and enjoys. Few, we imagine, would have
credited the tale, had they been told that an ac-
curate and connected history of the planet we
inhabit, from the dawn of time down to the pre-
sent day, was locked up in its earthly and rocky
strata, and that upon these buried monuments
might be decyphered a record far more Won
derful than was ever traced by the pen of the
historian, wrapped in the mystery of Egyp-
tan hieroglyphics. Such however, is the truth
which geological investigations have brought to
light. Modern science has pored over these
mute and apparently uninterestng memorials
of past ages and extinct orders of existence
until it has read in them the ''thrilling secrets
of the birth of time" Voices have come forth
from sepulchres Of stone, revealing the history
of the primeval seas and forests, and of their
early inhabitants and tracing the successive strc-
tural changes which the earth has undergone
from the epoch when it was without form and
void, incapable of supporting either animal or
vegetable life, until it reached its present state
of adaptation to the wants of the most highly
endowed of all created beings The fossil re-
licts imbedded in the rocks have furnished the
geoogist key with which to unlock the mys-
teries of the past, and to ascertain the condi-
tions Of animal life in times long anterior to the
appearance of man upon the stage, with as
much accuracy as if the record had been traced
by a human hand. With the flowers and fruits of
those remote eras. the trees of the forest, the
fishes, reptiles, birds and quadrupeds he is almost
as Familiarity acquainted with existing species.
He cassifes them without difficulty, and can des-
cribe the exact order in which they rose, flour
lshed and passed away. With the aid ofcompara-
tive anatomy, he reconstructs the entire skeleton
of animals long extinct, from the disjecta men,
bra entombed in the fossilferous strata and in
fers their instincts and habits oflife with entire
certainty from the structure of their bony appa-
ratus.
Few studies, we think, possess greaterattrac
ton than Geology, when viewed in it's general
aspect, apart from its minute details. It is in |
fact grand history, in whose pages of stone are
written the rise and fall of dyaasties, more an
cient in date and more extended in duration
than those of the Assyrian, the Persian, the
Greek or the Roman, embracing eras in compa-
rison with which the eras of human chronicle
gy mere points of time. 1t is true that no
mention of man is to be found in this record, in
asmuch as no fossil relicts either of him OF of
his arts have been discovered in the old strata.
He is but creature of yesterday in compare
son with the other animal races, and this
science unfolds to US neither the secrets of his
birth nor the memorials of his power But its
teachings do not appeal less powerfully to the
mag inatiOn on that account. They carry us
back to that distant period when the surface of
our globe was blank and desolate waste: when
no forests clothed the mountain side; no heritage
waved on the widespread plain, and no spot of |
verdure relieved the drear expanse of mani
mate nature; when no living thing swan in the
great deep, moved upon the land, or fioated in |
the atmosphere.
How long this condition Of things continued, |
has not been aseertained, but at length life was
breathed into the waters, and what biologists
call the ''fish dynasty was introduced. The sea
swarmed with living creatures, and the huge
leviathan roamed for ages the undisputed mon
arch, not only of his native element, but of the
whole earth. But, after the lapse of an indefi-
mite pesod of time, higher class of animals, the
reptiles, was brought upon the scene, who, in
turn, lorded it over creation. The giants of this
class have been handed down to us in their rocky
tombs, and their petrified remains are well cal
cuated to put to shame their degenerate descen-
dants of the present day. Huge in bulk, gro
tesque apd horrible in shape, they might pass
Tor the originals of those monstrous creations
which figure 50 largely in the fables of antiqu-
tY. They are the ssroruopu bx-droc nd oL.a,a