No. ILLUSTRATIONS. Trenton High Falls.. 1. Fossil Bivalve-view of ventral valve.......... 2. Fossil Bivalve-edge view of both valves.. 3. Common River Mussel-view of left valve.. 4. Common River Mussel-view of both valves along hinge line.. 5. View of the Temple of Serapis at Puzzuoli in 1836.. 6. View of Graham's Island, July 18, 1831.. 7. New Volcano of Santorin, 1866... 8. Work of the Elements at Cape Stevens, Arctic Ocean. 11. Comparative Volumes of the gaseous and solid Earth. 15. Shore Erosion and distribution of Sediments... 16. Diagram of Chemical Reactions in the Primeval Ocean.. 17. Structure of the oldest known Fossil.... 18. The Humblest of Living Creatures (Amoeba princeps). 19. Disturbed Condition of Eozoic Strata.. 20. The Germ of the North American Continent.. 21. A St. John's Trilobite (Paradoxides Harlani).. 22. Cliffs of Potsdam Sandstone, New York.. 23. A Potsdam Bivalve (Lingula prima). 24. A Potsdam Bivalve (Lingula antiqua). 25. Modern Lingulas anchored to a Support... 26. A Potsdam Trilobite (Dicellocephalus Minnesotensis).. 27. A Trilobite rolled up... 28. Eye of a Trilobite magnified... 29. A Potsdam Sea-weed (Palæophycus arthrophycus). 30. Outlines of Lake Superior..... 31. Section across Lake Superior.. 32. The Miner's Castle, "Pictured Rocks," Lake Superior 33. The Sail Rock, "Pictured Rocks," Lake Superior... 34. The Grand Portal, "Pictured Rocks," Lake Superior.. 35. Camp on the Beach, near the Chapel.. 36. The Chapel, "Pictured Rocks," Lake Superior. 37. Chapel Falls, "Pictured Rocks," Lake Superior.. 38. Section across the Continent of North America. 39. Hydrographic and Orographic Outlines of North America.. 40. A living Crinoid (Pentacrinus caput-Medusa).. 41. A Trenton Trilobite (Asaphus gigas).. 42. The Paper Nautilus (Argonauta Argo).. 43. Paper Nautilus with the arms spread.. 44. The Eight-armed Cuttle-fish... 45. A "Kraken Octopod" scuttling a Three-master. Page Frontispiece. 14 14 14 14 20 23 24 27 31 34 39 43 53 55 57 61 68 70 74 74 76 77 79 79 79 80 80 81 83 84 84 86 88 89 90 91 92 95 96 107 108 110 111 112 113 114 115 115 116 56. An Upper Silurian Sea-weed (Arthrophycus Harlani).. 124 57. Ideal Landscape of the Devonian Age...... 130 59. Portrait of Hugh Miller, the Scottish Geologist.. 61. View in an English Coal Mine..... 63. Miner at Work-old manner of working. 58. Trends of the great Limestone Masses of the United States.. 60. Miners going down a Shaft.. 62. Explosion in a Coal Mine... 64. Coal-plants on Shale.... 135 137 140 142 144 146 147 79. Portrait of David Dale Owen, the eminent Western Geologist. 76. A gigantic extinct Reptile of North America (Hadrosaurus Foulki) 78. The Bad Lands of Dakotah.. 80. Great Glacier, Bute Inlet, Alaska.... 81. Glacier Furrows and Scratches in Michigan.. 82. River issuing from a Swiss Glacier... 83. Phenomena of Wells and Springs in Drift Materials. 84. Former High Waters of the Great Lakes. 85. Sugar Loaf, Mackinac Island. 86. Arched Rock, Mackinac Island.. 87. Mining Cedar Logs in a buried Swamp.. 88. The Noble Oil Well, Pennsylvania.... 89. Blowing and Flowing Oil Wells... 90. View of the Sait Works, Mason City, West Virginia.. 91. Section across the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.. 193 200 206 211 216 218 223 233 244 247 24S 258 274 285 294 299 92. Section of the Onondaga Salt Basin, New York.. 303 93. Portrait of Professor James D. Dana... 312 94. A Reminiscence of the Trilobites (Glyptonotus Antarcticus) 95. Section across the Basin of Middle Tennessee. 322 342 96. Upper Cataract Creek, near Big Cañon, Colorado.. 100. Engraving by a Pre-historic Artist-the Hairy Mammoth. 101. The Hairy Mammoth (restored) 358 359 SKETCHES OF CREATION. W CHAPTER I. DISCLOSURE OF THE SUBJECT. HAT is this which I have opened from the solid rock? It has the appearance of a bivalve shell, like a clam or an oyster. I was passing a delightful summerday amid the romantic scenery of Trenton Falls, and broke from the rocky wall of the deep-cut gorge these unexpected forms. Who has not stumbled upon similar shapes at. the foot of some beetling cliff, or washed from the weathered soil of some cultivated field? Pause a moment, for these are remarkable and unexpected discoveries. Let us interrogate these forms. They can not be the shells of oysters or clams; for, in the first place, they are only stone in substance, with a peculiarly dead and mineralized appearance. In the next place, they are nearly three hundred miles from salt water, and as many feet above the level of the sea. Perhaps, then, they are the dead and petrified shells of some freshwater molluscs, like mussels. This can not be, because the resemblance is not sufficiently close. The beak, or most prominent part of these shell-like forms, is exactly in the middle (Fig. 1, a; see page 14), while the beak of the mussel is always nearer to one end (Fig. 3, a; see page 14). And; farther, one piece or valve of these problematic waifs has a different degree of convexity from the other (Fig. 2), while with mussels both valves are equally con 6 Fig. 1. Fossil bivalve from Fig. 2. Edge view of the vex (Fig. 4). In fact, the more we study these things, the less they look like mussel-shells-the less they look like any thing else with which we are acquainted. I have Fig. 3. Common River Mussel. View of left tures, frequently valve. a. The "beak." en countered in cultivated fields, they designate as "petrified honey-comb" and "petrified wasps'-nests." But a few moments' careful observation suffices to show that these things differ materially from the objects whose names have been bestowed upon Fig. 4. View of "hinge line" of the same, show them. ing the equal convexity of the two valves. It seems unreasonable to suppose, therefore, that these shell-like forms have ever belonged to living animals. They are probably but "mere freaks of nature." Perhaps they have been produced by "the influences of the stars." Or, it may be, there is some mysterious "principle" in the earth which, by some sort of "fermentation," produces these semblances to living forms. Or, still again, as these rocks existed before animals were created, it may be that the Creator moulded these lifeless shapes to serve as "prototypes" or "models" from which the living forms of animals were to be copied. Or, who knows, finally, but the old conjecture of Epicurus may be truth? Since matter must exist in some form, may we not regard these as some of the possible forms under which the particles of matter fortuitously fall? So reasoned the world prior to the sixteenth century. But this was when the philosopher sat in his closet and argued how things ought to be, instead of going forth to observe how things are. We have learned to contemplate Nature with a different spirit. We have pulled down the house of many a speculatist about his ears. We have demolished many a universe constructed of the cobwebs of logic. We do not despise first principles and necessary deductions, but we have discovered a more direct and a more certain way of arriving at a history of the universe. We interrogate the facts which surround us, and have found them able to narrate a history which never entered the imaginations of the schoolmen. The phenomena of Nature are the premises of our reasoning instead of its conclusions. We have learned to look upon Nature with a profounder respect; and, though the alphabet of our philosophy be trees, and birds, and rocks, and fossils, and other material things which metaphysics affects to despise, we have found that they combine themselves into a language freighted with grand conceptions, and rich in utterances of the unseen, the high, and the holy. It has been revealed to us that the vast system of Nature is the expression of a divine thought-that the wide, blue, restless |