History of British animals - University of Guam Marine Laboratory

XviiiPREFACE,presented as having taken place previous to the existing order ofthings, and it is assumed that the present races of animals andvegetables, the companions of Man, did not exist on the globeduring any of the antecedent epochs. But the most sincerefriend of Revelation need be under no alarm, even should he beanxious to establish the authority of his Bible over a wider fieldthan the Moral Historyof our race. If the Sacred Historianbe considered as referringto the earlier seras in the commencementof his narrative only, In the beginning, God created the"Heaven and the Earth, 1' and to have contemplated, in whatfollows, the creation of the animals and vegetablesof the ModernEpoch, it will be found that the deductions of science andthe records of inspiration harmonize,— as the Word and theWorks of God must do, if rightly interpreted. The question,indeed, lies within very narrow bounds. Are the Zoological andGeological Epochs established as true in science ? If those whoare to qualified judge shall pronounce in the affirmative, thenmust every interpretationof that brief portionof the sacredpage, inconsistent therewith, be rejected as spurious, and theadvocates of error consigned to occupy a page in the Historyof Prejudice, along with the persecutorsof Galileo.There is one bed occurring in England, and fruitful inthe remains of animals, denominated Crag, the relations ofwhich seem as yet imperfectlyunderstood. By some it issupposed to be identical with the upper marine formationof the Penult Epoch by others as a newer ; deposite, butstill older than any of the members of the Modern Epoch.Even in the 99th Number of the Mineral Conchology, MrSowerby, under the article Pecten rcconditus, seems to view itas of the same zoologicalera with the London Clay. Judgingfrom specimensof recent speciesof shells from the Crag, andthe evidence of portionsof the bones of the mammoth, an extinctquadruped of the Modern Epoch, having been found associatedwith the shells, the author is inclined to view it as a MarineDiluvium belonging to the presentera.In the enumeration of British Animals contained in this volume,the author has referred to the extinct or fossil species so