pernicus and Galileo announced and proved the true system of Astronomy, the alarm was dreadful. The philosopher found it contrary to Ptolemy, the divine contrary to the Bible, and the unlearned contrary to his senses; and all joined to condemn men who could contradict Ptolemy, the Bible, and common sense. Inoculation, an immense benefit to the human race, was regarded as wicked, and contrary to the Bible, which forbids bringing the pest into a house. Harvey, for teaching the circulation of the blood, was condemned by the physicians of Europe, and no physician in Europe, over forty years of age, embraced his opinion, because it could not be proved to rest on the maxims of Hippocrates and Galen. Even the man who first printed and sold Bibles in Paris was supposed to be in league with the devil. Pious and learned men have generally been opposed to new things, and improvements in old. They are too proud to be taught, and not willing to be contradicted.

The science of geology has attracted general attention only in the present century, although reflecting men have long observed many interesting facts. Pythagoras appears

to have had correct ideas of the causes of the

geological changes on the earth, and was as nearly right as he could be, considering the deficiency of chemistry, mineralogy, and general observation in his time. Strabo supposes the bottom of the seas and oceans to have been elevated, bearing up with them the remains of marine animals. The power of elevation he supposed to be earthquakes and volcanoes.

The subject has been more or less agitated for nearly three hundred years by learned men in England, Germany, France, and Italy. Many facts have been brought to light and published, exceedingly contrary to the received opinions of the world. The learned and the unlearned have taken the alarm, and geology is extensively regarded as unfavorable to divine revelation. The infidel boasts that he has proof of its fallacy, and geology is therefore denounced as favoring infidelity; and causes are assigned for undeniable facts, which are easily demonstrated inadequate to produce such effects. Yet, like the other sciences, investigation of facts, careful study, and time, will find this science, now regarded with so much suspicion by so many men of worth, one of the great evidences of the truth of the Bible.

The careless observer looks around him on the plains, hills, and mountains; streams, rivers, and lakes; seas and oceans; and imagines such exactly to have been the state of the earth from the beginning, commencing with the week of seven days of Moses. He finds much to admire-much of beauty-much of usefulness. Of this class are the admirers of natural scenery. A man carefully and well informed, while he sees all that the other saw, sees a vast deal more. He sees that very great changes have taken place, perhaps in the very neighborhood where he resides.

If the side of any hill be examined when broken by excavation, an observer will notice different strata, or, as they are commonly called, layers of sand, gravel, or mixtures of both, and clay of different colors, all indicating that they have lain at the bottom of bodies of water or along shores.

A few miles north of the village of Herkimer, on the West Canada Creek, where the plank-road passes, there is a very remarkable locality of rocks, in alternate layers, each about eight inches thick, exposed to view by the excavation made for the plank-road. There are seven or eight of these layers of sand and

stone and slate alternately. The sand-stone is very hard, and pale yellow where exposed to the air, and blue where broken. The slate, dark colored, shelly, and soft. The long time necessary to their formation, and different agencies in that formation, are exceedingly obvious, and the action of heat, pressure, and water, is clear. In the rocks of various kinds he finds the remains of organized bodies, once living, of various forms and magnitudes, and evidently so organized as to perform the functions of living creatures; the great mass of these are shell animals. In some fish and reptiles, and at length in the earth, he finds the remains of mammalia, resembling the races now on earth.

But the most wonderful fact is the great thickness of the fossil-bearing rocks. The best geologists estimate their thickness more than seven miles of the earth's crust. Organic remains are dug out of the earth thousands of feet below the surface. Immense beds of rocks appear to be composed entirely of the remains of animals and plants. The most wonderful of all is the amazing accumulation of the ruins of animalcula, which are found in some rocks. They are so small that four or five hundred would scarcely weigh one grain.

Such is the Hastings and Purbeck limestone in England, more than 1,000 feet in thickness, 20 miles wide, and 80 miles long-and also in Auvergne, in France, there is a deposit of 700 feet thick composed chiefly of microscopic In Germany there is a bed 14 feet thick, composed of the fossil remains of animalcula so small that it takes 41 millions to make a cubic inch. The observer necessarily concludes that an immense length of time has passed since these rocks were a living mass.

creatures.

He likewise sees great changes effected by water; he can trace the shores of a great lake; now drained, and in the bottom of which he is now living. In some countries he sees great changes effected by fire. If well informed of general facts, he will come to the conclusion that one or both have been the agents of change on the earth. The effects of water will be the most obvious in many countries, and he will perhaps go back to the flood of Noah to account for the appearances of the surface of the earth; and many interesting and beautiful things have been written to prove the deluge from the present state of the earth. If he stop here he has not entered on the threshold of the science of geology. The surface