Whatever may be thought of the apparent scope or tendency of some of the geological theories which are rife in the present day, no person who has really considered the subject in its principal bearings has any doubt that the surface of our globe, both as to the land and the water, was once very different from what it is now. All sound argument must allow this to be possible: all careful investigation pronounces it to be the fact.

There are potent “menstrua” and mighty furnaces in the laboratory of Nature; and while the actual amount of MATTER in existence has, we suppose, never varied since the original creative act which gave birth to “the heaven and the earth,” the conditions, sensible or chemical, under which that matter presents itself have altered from century to century and from moment to moment.

It is impossible to deem otherwise, if we believe that the “laws” which are established now in this creation were established then.

Let us take, for instance, the law of Universal Gravitation, that law by which the heavenly bodies move in their orbits, and a seconds’ pendulum measures time at the surface of our Earth.

We feel assured that this law has never varied; but it is almost equally certain that it must have begun to operate under different conditions from those which obtain at this day.

Newton, who always maintained that the commencing axillary movement of the Earth was due to an impulse from the hand of the Creator when He launched it into space,[5] and who declared that without this he could in no way account for its having rotatory motion at all, was nevertheless willing to allow that the time occupied in the first rotation may not have been, as now, twenty-four hours, but possibly an entire year. And as the Earth, once projected, would fulfil, according to the Law of Gravity, the conditions of “a body falling through space,” we find that taking the nth term (2n-1) of the arithmetical series … 1. 3. 5. 7. … (2n-1) … where the successive terms represent the velocities acquired in successive annual periods, about 183 such terms must elapse before 365 rotations would be accomplished within the space of one year, or, in other words, the rotation of the earth be diurnal, as at present. This point of speed once reached, the centrifugal and centripetal forces balanced one another, and the axillary movement became steady.

Of course, in the above hypothesis, the assuming of one year for the first period is arbitrary; it may have been more, it may have been less; but within certain limits there is no absolute reason for supposing that it was a span of twenty-four hours, as now. Revelation nowhere asserts such a dogma.

Supposing, then, amid confessed ignorance as to how the fact stood, that the Earth’s early times of rotation were far longer than now, and taking, say, one year as the first period, how would this influence other features in a scene which has now long gone by? How would it influence the Tides of the Ocean?

Assuming a correspondingly slow motion of the Moon in her orbit, we should, it seems, have in the lapse of the first year one rotation of the Earth and two Tides of the Ocean; in the second year, three rotations of the Earth and six Tides answering to them; and so on.

Now these flowing Tides would, in fact, have been vast inundations, the sea rising steadily for many months together; and in like manner the prolonged ebb which followed upon each flood would have given rise to a subsidence and to the deposition of such particles of mud, lime, silex, &c., as the waters then held in solution after their visiting the higher land.

And thus we see at once, without going further, that the agency exerted by the ocean in ancient times may probably have been different from and greater than any with which we are now actually acquainted, save in the account given to us, in the inspired Record, of the Deluge in the days of Noah.

When such mighty agencies were in operation, it is not unreasonable to suppose that great changes took place in the way of partial extinction of animal life, and the substitution of new forms to fill up the apparent gap left by the perishing creatures. The contents of the upper chalk, of the greensand, gault, and sandstones, as has already been observed, point to such revolutions and cycles in the history of animated nature.

MAN, who is himself an evident exception to all this, may perhaps, as an exception, be said to prove that such had been the rule. For, it must be remembered, all the creatures were pre-Adamitic. Not only those vast saurians and mammals, whose fossil remains we have exhumed, and cannot contemplate without wonder, were prior to our race in their actual possession of the domain of the earth’s surface, but every bird, reptile, fish, and zoophyte were certainly made before the man. Now, as the man came last in order, but first in dignity, created in his Maker’s image, and endowed with dominion over all the works of His hand, there was no longer place or argument for extinction, substitution, or change, among the creatures. Death was excluded, and could not enter into the world, unless by a moral delinquency of the chiefest creature.

But already it is probable, although he perhaps knew it not, Man stood, even in the day of his innocence and happiness, in the midst indeed of a blooming creation, but upon the crust of a fossil world.

Moreover, we know from Scripture that minerals find metals abounded; so that the presence of these near the Earth’s surface ought not to be referred (as by some they have been) to the epoch of Noah’s Deluge. “Gold and bdellium and the onyx-stone” were already in the “land of Havilah;” and Tubal-Cain was “an artificer in brass and iron,” which must therefore have been exposed in veins of the upper rocks.

And if the Earth already showed her nuggets of gold and lumps of onyx, it is not likely that she was deficient in beautiful fossils. Certainly, such substances as manganese and native iron did not find their way into the heart of siliceous pebbles in modern times.

But it by no means follows from the above, that all these fossil forms belonged to creatures whose species are wholly extinct. Indeed, in some instances, this cannot be allowed for a moment. Probably, the “choanite” is extinct. I doubt whether the “ventriculite” be so. Dr. Mantell was pleased to assume that this last-mentioned zoophyte grew—like one of the “mushroom” class of plants—rooted to one spot. There is no evidence for this whatever, and my impression leans another way. In the class of marine “Acrita” termed AcalephÆ, there is a family which bears the name of Rhizostoma. These animals are composed mainly of a large, mushroom-shaped, gelatinous disc, and of a supporting central pedicle. In structure and function this latter organ much resembles the root of a plant; and, no doubt, it absorbs nourishment by seizing upon the minute animalculÆ which abound in the water where the “rhizostome” is floating about. The entire animal is very like a toadstool, or “agaricus,” in form; but for all that, he does not grow, as a plant, in one spot, but is always sailing about by means of his large disc above-mentioned. His general appearance closely resembles that of a “ventriculite” from the flint; and I think it a probable guess to assign them to the same species.

The “branching alcyonite,” on the other hand, did, I imagine, grow, like a Coral or “Encrinite,” in one place; and I suppose it was much like an ice-plant in form, but that it had the power of drawing back at will all its branches and suckers—which were, in fact, the creature’s arms and tentacles—into the root or bulb which formed its base. The “sponges,” a large family, we know are not extinct; and the conformation of the living individuals fully bears out all the marvels which have been predicated of the fossil animal. I have handled these creatures, fresh from the sea, at Brighton; and I had an unpleasant consciousness, while holding one in my hand, that the round, greenish, jelly-like bush was only his house; but that the gummy fluid, which held possession of it after squirting out the sea-water, was the individual himself, though independent of the accessories of bone and muscle. This kind of “sponge” floats about: there is another, well-known among submerged rocks, which is fixed, and grows. I believe the fossil specimens to have belonged to the migratory class.

I once picked up, near Hove, a pebble which contained a fragment of the lungs of a tortoise; the elevated ridges, and depressed pulmonary cells, appeared to have left their peculiar structure in the flint. I have mislaid this specimen, and so cannot give a sketch of it here.

The “holothurida,” or “sea-cucumber,” is found occasionally in the Isle of Wight, beautifully fossilized. A specimen was shown to me, from the beach near Chale; it was a variety, but unquestionably of this class of animals.

A fossil, figured in one of the “chromo-plates” to this volume, has obtained the name of a “troglodyte;” I do not know why. I suspect it was one of the “asteridÆ” when alive, but that in the death-struggle, the long arms collapsed and twisted together.

I have frequently found what I believe to have been some such organ as the stomach of a star-fish in the centre of hard pebbles. The form was always pentagonal, like the corolla of certain flowers pressed flat.

The “myriapod,” depicted in Plate V., I should at once conclude to have been a marine insect, answering to some of our “scolopendridÆ,” if the head were not lacking. But since the back or spine in this fossil is all in one piece, and there are no lateral plates or divisions for the several pairs of feelers, it may be, in accordance with such a frame, that the head fitted on without the apparent juncture of a neck; and if so, this may be an entire insect. It is right however to add, that I feel some doubts about this.

The Plate VI. contains a figure of a fossil to which I have attached the name of “Spindle-choanite.” In fact, the specimen, until cut in twain, was fusiform; and, I have no doubt, a complete animal.

The choanite from Eastbourne, uncut, Pl. IV., portrays a creature who, I think, expired in a vehement struggle. This would keep him on the surface of the siliceous flood; and it would harden, for the most part, beneath him, leaving his limbs sprawled out on the top of the pebble, as now seen. The beautiful “pyriform” specimen, Pl. VI., shows a similar struggle, amidst liquid agate and manganese. In the large Actinia, or “star-choanite,” portrayed in the frontispiece, the happy animal died quite quietly; and that is why his fossil mummy is of such a noble size and development.

The figure called “Nondescript,” Pl. IV., I do not think represents any complete animal, but a part of the organization of one. I have traced its likeness, in the “Animal Kingdom,” by T. Rymer Jones; and think it not improvable that a woodcut at p. 364 of that most interesting volume depicts, in the arms of one of the “Brachiopoda,” in that “calcareous loop” with its curved “crura,” the exact structure which, in the living animal, served to open or shut the bivalve shell, but in the fossil specimen looks like a miniature-painting on ivory, to perpetuate some curious organism in the liveliest colours of the pallet. “Terebratula Chilensis” is Mr. Rymer Jones’s animal; and in the very vicinity where I found my fossil in question, I have since obtained, in a flint pebble from the cliff, a beautifully petrified “Pecten” (same species of shell) in agate.

I might multiply remarks and instances such as these; but it is not needed. Every one will form their own opinion, in collecting fossil pebbles, as to what the originals were; but I think they will generally agree with me, that while our living individuals differ in many points, still we have mostly types of the same species actually existing in our present seas.

What all connoisseurs, and even amateurs, should do, is to preserve every remarkable specimen they may obtain, along with an accurate note of where they got it. It is a great pity that, among so many persons who have at once discernment and a liking for this branch of Mineralogy, there are so few who will be at the trouble of what lawyers call “taking minutes” of the evidence which comes before them in the course of the pursuit. I have looked over several fair enough collections made by amateurs; but, with one exception, I never knew an instance in which the collector could tell me, with any degree of certainty, from what particular beach he had gathered this or that specimen. Of course, when a scientific investigation is proposed, such omission renders the most valuable part of the collection comparatively useless. For the locality is all-important. A pebble may thus be always traced to its geological “home” or birthplace. It can only have had one of three sources: either it was first dropped here, where you find it; or, it is a “travelled” pebble, having come round from some distant beach; or, it is an offering from the deep sea. The latter case is of exceedingly rare occurrence, and need hardly be taken into account; nevertheless, for truth’s sake, and to include all possible varieties, I cite it here.

A genuine deep-sea pebble is a waif which I have only twice, as yet, met with in my sea-side experience. One of these was, I think, fished up in a dredging-net; the other was thrown on the beach during a storm. In both instances, the fossil was a “choanite,” and bore the marks of having been washed out of a limestone rock. The age of such fossil could not have been less than 4000 years, the date of Noah’s deluge, for obvious reasons; but it may have been considerably greater.

If there were any known method of softening these pebbles to a consistency like that of melted glue, we might learn something concerning their past history; but I am not aware of the existence of any such process at present. Silex, once hardened into the condition in which we meet with it, is a most intractable substance to deal with; and the very fact of its having at one time been viscous, renders it highly improbable that, in the course of nature, its texture will ever assume a plastic character again. Moreover, while the majority of our flints are concretions, there are some which are semi-crystalline. These latter, it is evident, cannot now advance to the stage of perfect crystals; but neither can they retrograde: the next change which awaits so hard a substance must be, to crumble away.

Sometimes, on our beaches, hollow globes of flint are picked up, which, when you break them open, are found to be full of a white, powdery substance, like the chemist’s magnesia. This is much the same as the “rock-milk” of mineralogists, a very fine deposition of lime, occasionally met with in beds of the chalk strata, and considered to be a result of some filtering process, when the water, after being long pent up, had escaped by small crevices. But in the flint-globes no such straining can have taken place; and in sundry specimens which I have examined, I generally came to the conclusion that some conchiferous animal had been inclosed in the nodule, and his shell had afterwards broken and been pulverized. Sometimes I found within the “rock-milk” a dark-brown, carbonaceous spot; this would be the creature’s body, as Dr. Mantell supposes of his “molluskite.” The cavity is never quite filled up. I imagine many of these “powder-horns” to be altogether modern in their date.

A much more curious phenomenon than the above occurs from time to time in solid agate-pebbles, which, when picked up, are found to contain in a central chamber, visible to the eye, a drop of water. These are scarce, and fetch a high price at the museums. As much as twenty pounds has been more than once given for an undoubted specimen. How the above-mentioned singular effect was arrived at, has, I believe, never been explained; at least, not so as to satisfy a close reasoner. The same lusus naturÆ is met with, I think more frequently, in rock-crystal and in the dark fluor-spars.

The last apparent animal organism which I shall notice, as having more than once occurred to me as a possible explanation of the patterns disclosed in certain sections of agate-pebbles, is that of some creature’s “ovary.” The eggs of the whelk, and those of the cuttle-fish, are deposited in clusters, like some of the “grapes” on sea-weed. I have found, in some of the Isle of Wight pebbles, a conformation closely resembling this, but on a much smaller scale. That the original substance was part of an animal, I have no doubt whatever; and the arrangement of the lobes or spherules, composing the mass, more resembles that of the spawn of the above-named fishes than anything else which I am acquainted with. Still, resemblance is not identity. The thing may be only a curious coincidence, resulting from some unexplained freak of nature; as when she carved the profile of Napoleon’s face in the outline of a part of Mont Blanc, and also (quite as distinctly) in that of a hill which overlooks the town of Belfast.

[5] See his Letter to Dr. Burnet.