No true geologist holds by the development hypothesis;-it has been resigned to sciolists and smatterers;-and there is but one other alternative. They began to be, through the miracle of creation. From the evidence furnished by these rocks we are shut down either to belief in miracle, or to something else infinitely harder of reception, and as thoroughly unsupported by testimony as it is contrary to experience. Hume is at length answered by the severe truths of the stony science.
Hugh MillerIt is an excellent circumstance that hospitality grows best where it is most needed. In the thick of men it dwindles and disappears, life fruit in the thick of a wood; but where people are planted sparely it blossoms and matures, like apples on a standard or an espalier. It flourishes where the inn and lodging-house cannot exist.
Hugh MillerThe primary rocks, ... I regard as the deposits of a period in which the earth's crust had sufficiently cooled down to permit the existence of a sea, with the necessary denuding agencies,-waves and currents,-and, in consequence, of deposition also; but in which the internal heat acted so near the surface, that whatever was deposited came, matter of course, to be metamorphosed into semi-plutonic forms, that retained only the stratification.
Hugh MillerBut, in truth, the existing premises, wholly altered by geologic science, are no longer those of Hume. The footprint on the sand — to refer to his happy illustration — does not now stand alone. Instead of one, we see many footprints, each in turn in advance of the print behind it, and on a higher level.
Hugh Miller