Alexander Ramsay, Jr.

“ We cannot roam all over the globe, or fathom the abysses of geological time, but the interest and scope of the inquiry into the mode in which organisms are grouped together may, perhaps, be imparted if we confine ourselves to some of the more recent fluctuations of plants and animals in point of space and time. ”

“ But as he does not depend for information solely upon the experience of a lifetime, having his reason to guide him in his inferences as to the former states of our globe, he learns that from the earliest period of the world’s history there ever has been change, not only in the organic world, but also in the inorganic, even in the very hills which the poet fondly calls everlasting. ”

“ The work of time is seen in many ways. Men come and go; empires rise, flourish, and fade, and even their memories are swept away under the devastating influence of time; but of what time? An acknowledged authority says: “There is no more an absolutely long or short time than there is an absolutely great or little space.” The historian, taking the lifetime of a man as a scale of measurement, regards Babylon as an ancient empire ”