and the same period.... It was in vain to urge
as an objection the improbability of the hypothesis which implies
that all the moving waters on the globe were once simultaneously
charged with sediment of a red colour. But the rashness of
pretending to identify, in age, all the red sandstones and marls in
question, has at length been sufficiently exposed, by the discovery
that, even in Europe, they belong decidedly to many different
epochs."

Nevertheless, while in this and many kindred passages Sir C. Lyell
protests against the bias here illustrated, he seems himself not
completely free from it. Though he utterly rejects the old hypothesis
that all over the Earth the same continuous strata lie one upon another
in regular order, like the coats of an onion, he still writes as though
geologic "systems" do thus succeed each other. A reader of his _Manual_
would certainly suppose him to believe, that the Primary epoch ended,
and the secondary epoch began, all over the world at the same time--that
these terms really correspond to distinct universal eras. When he
assumes, as he does, that the division between Cambrian and Lower
Silurian in America, answers chronologically to the division between
Cambrian and Lower Silurian in Wales--when he takes for granted that
the partings of Lower from Middle Silurian, and of Middle Silurian from
Upper, in the one region, are of the same dates as the like partings in
the other region; does it not seem that he believes geologic "systems"
to be universal, in the sense that their separations were in all places
contemporaneous? Though he would, doubtless, disown this as an article
of faith, is not his thinking unconsciously influenced by it? Must we
not say that, though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is
traceable, under a transcendental form, even in the conclusions of its
antagonists?

* * * * *

Let us now consider another leading geological doctrine,--the doctrine
that strata of the same age contain like fossils; and that, therefore,
the age and relative position of any stratum may be known by its
fossils. While the theory that strata of like mineral characters were
everywhere deposited simultaneously, has been ostensibly abandoned,
there has been accepted the theory that in each geologic epoch similar
plants and animals existed everywhere; and that, therefore, the epoch to
which any formation belongs may be