Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1864-11-10
Hints on Geology.

Ofthat great mystery of mysteries" as
Sir John Herschel terms 1.-THE first ap
pearance of organic life upon our globe,
who shall discover the date, who predicate
the form, who determine the locality? What
an awful and inscrutable enigma is vitality.
How immeasurable the distance and the diff
ferance between inert, unconditional matter,
and sentient existence, with its marvellous
capacities; and yet, as all life ends in death,
so almost all material death seems to have
originated in life! That vast islands and
continents are but the selfconstructing
monuments of myriad generations of coral
insects, is a familiar fact; and the recent
discovery of fossal infnsora, in granite, so
minute that many millions Of their silicious
skeletons are condensed into a cubic inch,
goes far to establish the startling fact that
even the primitive rocks were once alive.
Can it be that such magnificent boon as
life was first bestowed upon invisible
animalcu!es? May we not rather imagine
this glorious gift to have oeen primally
transferred, by touch of divine hand,
to the great globe itself when it oheyed the
occult law of gravitation, and commenced
its majestic and eternal march around the
central sun? Why may not this beautiful
and august earth be living and a con-
scious mass, its respiratory organs the
volcanoes, its blood and water circulating
through its innumerable veins, its bones
the granite rocks, it's pulses the ocean
tides, its voice melodious concord Of wind
and waves, its shout of wrath the vault
|resounding thunder? And the so often
chanted music ofthe spheres, is it, in sooth,
a mere fiction of the poets, or may we not
rather more justly deem that all the planets
of our system, not without living conscious
ness and enjoyment of their glorious
destiny, move through their sublime orbits
to the sol,mn, yet dulcet and symphonious
harmony Of space-filling ard ever renewed
anthems?
How lnscrutable the laws which the
Deity seems to have prescribed. to himself
in.the creation of life! What infinite va
rlety OF size, type, and character, from the
god-llke image of man to the shapeless mass
OF animated jelly that floats upon the wave
from the elephant and whale to the insect
and the animalculae, of which five hundred
millions may be contained in drop of
water. Each new creation of the great
geological eras, whether vegetable or
animal, teens with an inexhaustible origi-
nality and, even where the same types
recur, what infinite varieties in the sizes
and species Nor has it been sufficiently
perpended that every new creation of an
animal involved a new moral invention
whereby its character. habits, instincts.
and passions, were to receive an immutable
impress. Contemplate only the, countless
varieties in the notification of birds, each
last nest exactly resembling the first, and so
destined to continue until time or the race
shall cease, thus distinctly marking the
| impossible barrier between instinct and
reason, the former being stationary, and the
latter progressive. Of the causes, too, by
which the duration of life was originally
regulated, who shall solve the enigma? Why
should toad, tortoise, a parrot, a goose,
raven, a carp, enjoy, a longer existence
than philosopher 2. Why should whale,
whose gigantic span oftime has been SUBJ
posed to ospread over eight or ten centuries,
out-noat dynasty or an empire? Why
should Methuseleh's birthright be taken
from man that it might be conferred upon a
fish! Truly, these are answerIess oues-
tions.