We are now, in reasoning from principles, come to a point decisive of
the question, and which will either confirm the theory, if it be just,
or confute our reasoning, if we have erred. Let us, therefore, open
the book of Nature, and read in her records, if there had been a world
bearing plants, at the time when this present world was forming at the
bottom of the sea.
Here the cabinets of the curious are to be examined; but here some
caution is required, in order to distinguish things perfectly different,
which sometimes are confounded.
Fossil wood, to naturalists in general, is wood dug up from under
ground, without inquiring whether this had been the production of the
present earth, or that which had preceded it in the circulation of land
and water. The question is important, and the solution of it is, in
general, easy. The vegetable productions of the present earth, however
deep they may be found buried beneath its surface, and however ancient
they may appear, compared with the records of our known times, are new,
compared with the solid land on which they grew; and they are only
covered with the produce of a vegetable soil, or the alluvion of the
present land on which we dwell, and on which they had grown.
Pages:
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178