the records of the fossil kingdom" (123). Playfair clearly cares about old for old's sake, and he notes with pleasure that continents wasted to produce vertical strata below the unconformity represent a world "third in succession" (123) back from our present earth.

Continuing the historical sequence, Playfair discusses vertical strata below the unconformity and marvels at the vicissitudes of history. These rocks were broken and raised, lowered to receive sediments above the unconformity, then raised onto continents a second time—"so that they have twice visited the superior and twice the inferior regions" (123). They also represent the second world of this historical sequence. Playfair then moves on to the horizontal strata above the unconformity—the third world—and brings his narrative to the latest event of erosion, "the shaping of all the present inequalities of the surface" (124). Whereas Hutton disdained to record sequential events, Playfair orders all these stages into history. He concludes: "These phenomena, then, are all so many marks of the lapse of time, among which the principles of geology enable us to distinguish a certain order, so that we may know some of them to be more, and others to be less distant" (124–125).

Playfair's historical descriptions seem so simple, so innocent, so obvious. How could they mark a major departure? Yet you may read a thousand pages of Hutton's Theory and never find a phrase written in this mode. In short, Playfair won greater acceptability for Hutton by portraying his field evidence in the traditional, historical style that Hutton himself had consistently shunned. Even Hutton's Boswell could not follow his friend's rigorously ahistorical tastes, a predilection so contrary to our ordinary interest in the distinctive arrangement of things in time.

A Word in Conclusion and Prospect

Hutton "discovered" deep time by imposing his rigid view of time's cycle upon a complex earth. He did so, in part, to resolve a paradox in final cause—an issue that is no longer part of science. But his