Page:First impressions of England and its people.djvu/92

proving to demonstration that the oldest known fossil fish belongs to the highest type of that division of the vertebrata.'

A strange debut this, and of deep interest to the student of nature. The veil of mystery must forever rest over the act of creation; but it is something to know of its order, to know that, as exhibited in the great geologic register, graven, like the decalogue of old, on tables of stone, there is an analogy maintained, that indicates identity of style with the order specified in the Mosaic record as that observed by the Creator in producing the scene of things to which we ourselves belong. In both records,—the sculptured and the written,—periods of creative energy are indicated as alternating with periods of rest,—days in which the Creator labored, with nights in which He ceased from his labors, again to resume them in the morning. According to both records, higher and lower existences were called into being successively, not simultaneously;—according to both, after each interval of repose, the succeeding period of activity witnessed loftier and yet loftier efforts of production;—according to both, though in the earlier stages there was incompleteness in the scale of existence, there was yet no imperfection in the individual existences of which the scale was composed;—at the termination of the first, as of the last day of creation, all in its kind was good. Ere any of the higher natures existed,

I quitted the quarry in the hill-side, and walked on through the village of Sedgley, towards a second and much more striking hill, well known to geologists and lovers of the picturesque as the "Wren's Nest." A third hill, that of Dudley, beautifully wooded and capped by its fine old castle, lies direct in the same