. The testimony of the rocks; . intellect and its results,that in certain departments of mind, such as that whichdeals with the arrangement and development of the schemeof organic being, human thought is not profitlessly revolv-ing in an idle circle, but progressing Godwards, and gradu-ally unlocking the order of creation. And, on the otherhand, it will be equally Ms proper business to demand ofthe Pantheist how, — seeing that only persons (such as theCuviers and Lindleys) could have wrought out for themselvesthe real arrangement of this scheme,—how, I say, or on whatprinciple, it is to be hel
. The testimony of the rocks; . intellect and its results,that in certain departments of mind, such as that whichdeals with the arrangement and development of the schemeof organic being, human thought is not profitlessly revolv-ing in an idle circle, but progressing Godwards, and gradu-ally unlocking the order of creation. And, on the otherhand, it will be equally Ms proper business to demand ofthe Pantheist how, — seeing that only persons (such as theCuviers and Lindleys) could have wrought out for themselvesthe real arrangement of this scheme,—how, I say, or on whatprinciple, it is to be held that it was a scheme originatedand estabhshed at the beginning, not by a personal, but byan impersonal God. But our present business is with thefact of the parallel arrangements. Divine and human,—not with the inferences legitimately deducible from it. Beginning with the plants, let us, however, remark, thatthey do not precede in the order of their appearance thehumbler animals. No more ancient organism than the Fig. OLDHAMiA antiqua; — the oldest known Zoophyte.^ Wrae Head, Ireland. Oldhamia of the Lowest Irish Silurians, a plant-like zoo-phyte somewhat resembling our modern sertularia, has yet HISTORY OF PLANTS. 49 been detected by the geologist; though only a few monthsago the researches of Mr. Salter in the ancient rocks of theLongmynd, Shropshire, previously deemed unfossiliferous,have given to it what seem to be contemporary vegetableorganisms, in a few ill-preserved fucoids. So far as is yetknown, plants and animals appear together. The long u^-ward march of the animal kingdom takes its departure atits starting point from a thick forest of algae. In Bohemia,in Xorway, in Sweden, in the British Islands, in NorthAmerica, wherever, in fine, what appears to be the lowest, orat least one of the lowest, zones of life has yet been detected,the rocks are found to be darkened by the remains of algae,so abundantly developed in some cases, that they compose,as in the
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