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The Huttonian proposition that time is long had been abundantly established, and by about the close of the first third of the last century geologists had begun to speak of "ages" and "untold aeons of time" with a familiarity which their predecessors had reserved for days and decades. And now a new question pressed for solution.
I am not quite convinced by your arguments. Supposing the lands of New Holland were to be washed into the depths of the ocean, and to be raised according to the Huttonian view, as a secondary stratum, by subterraneous fire, they would contain the remains of both vegetables and animals entirely different from any found in the strata of the old continents; and may not those peculiar formations to which you have referred be, as it were, accidents of Nature belonging to peculiar parts of the globe?
It was not published in book form until the last decade of the century, when Hutton had lived with and worked over his theory for almost fifty years. Then it caught the eye of the world. A school of followers expounded the Huttonian doctrines; a rival school under Werner in Germany opposed some details of the hypothesis, and the educated world as a whole viewed the disputants askance.
The upheaval of the rocks by volcanic heat as seen in the Castle Hill, the Calton Hill, and Arthur's Seat formed in a great measure the foundation of the picturesque beauty of the city. Those were the days of the Wernerian and Huttonian controversy as to the origin of the changes on the surface of the earth.
Now, you surely will not deny that man existed at the time of this catastrophe, and he consequently may have existed at the period of the other revolutions, which are supposed to be produced in the Huttonian views by subterraneous fire. The Unknown.
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