VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION

THE BODIES OF SPACE, THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. 

It is familiar knowledge that the earth which we inhabit is a globeof somewhat less than 8000 miles in diameter, being one of a seriesof eleven which revolve at different distances around the sun, andsome of which have satellites in like manner revolving around them. The sun, planets, and satellites, with the less intelligible orbstermed comets, are comprehensively called the solar system, and if wetake as the uttermost bounds of this system the orbit of Uranus(though the comets actually have a wider range), we shall find thatit occupies a portion of space not less than three thousand sixhundred millions of miles in extent. The mind fails to form an exactnotion of a portion of space so immense; but some faint idea of itmay be obtained from the fact, that, if the swiftest race-horse everknown had begun to traverse it, at full speed, at the time of thebirth of Moses, he would only as yet have accomplished half hisjourney. 

It has long been concluded amongst astronomers, that the stars, though they only appear to our eyes as brilliant points, are all tobe considered as suns, representing so many solar systems, eachbearing a general resemblance to our own. The stars have abrilliancy and apparent magnitude which we may safely presume to bein proportion to their actual size and the distance at which they areplaced from us. Attempts have been made to ascertain the distance ofsome of the stars by calculations founded on parallax, it beingpreviously understood that, if a parallax of so much as one second, or the 3600th of a degree, could be ascertained in any one instance, the distance might be assumed in that instance as not less than19, 200 millions of miles! In the case of the most brilliant star, Sirius, even this minute parallax could not be found; from which ofcourse it was to be inferred that the distance of that star issomething beyond the vast distance which has been stated. In someothers, on which the experiment has been tried, no sensible parallaxcould be detected; from which the same inference was to be made intheir case. But a sensible parallax of about one second has beenascertained in the case of the double star, alpha alpha, of theconstellation of the Centaur, {3} and one of the third of that amountfor the double star, 61 Cygni; which gave reason to presume that thedistance of the former might be about twenty thousand millions ofmiles, and the latter of much greater amount. If we suppose thatsimilar intervals exist between all the stars, we shall readily seethat the space occupied by even the comparatively small numbervisible to the naked eye, must be vast beyond all powers ofconception. 

The number visible to the eye is about three thousand; but when atelescope of small power is directed to the heavens, a great numbermore come into view, and the number is ever increased in proportionto the increased power of the instrument. In one place, where theyare more thickly sown than elsewhere, Sir William Herschel reckonedthat fifty thousand passed over a field of view two degrees inbreadth in a single hour. It was first surmised by the ancientphilosopher, Democritus, that the faintly white zone which spans thesky under the name of the Milky Way, might be only a dense collectionof stars too remote to be distinguished. This conjecture has beenverified by the instruments of modern astronomers, and somespeculations of a most remarkable kind have been formed in connexionwith it. By the joint labours of the two Herschels, the sky has been"gauged" in all directions by the telescope, so as to ascertain theconditions of different parts with respect to the frequency of thestars. The result has been a conviction that, as the planets areparts of solar systems, so are solar systems parts of what may becalled astral systems--that is, systems composed of a multitude ofstars, bearing a certain relation to each other. The astral systemto which we belong, is conceived to be of an oblong, flattish form, with a space wholly or comparatively vacant in the centre, while theextremity in one direction parts into two. The stars are mostthickly sown in the outer parts of this vast ring, and theseconstitute the Milky Way. Our sun is believed to be placed in thesouthern portion of the ring, near its inner edge, so that we arepresented with many more stars, and see the Milky Way much moreclearly, in that direction, than towards the north, in which line oureye has to traverse the vacant central space. Nor is this all. SirWilliam Herschel, so early as 1783, detected a motion in our solarsystem with respect to the stars, and announced that it was tendingtowards the star ?, in the constellation Hercules. This has beengenerally verified by recent and more exact calculations, {5} whichfix on a point in Hercules, near the star 143 of the 17th hour, according to Piozzi's catalogue, as that towards which our sun isproceeding. It is, therefore, receding from the inner edge of thering. Motions of this kind, through such vast regions of space, mustbe long in producing any change sensible to the inhabitants of ourplanet, and it is not easy to grasp their general character; butgrounds have nevertheless been found for supposing that not only oursun, but the other suns of the system pursue a wavy course round thering FROM WEST TO EAST, crossing and recrossing the middle of theannular circle. "Some stars will depart more, others less, fromeither side of the circumference of equilibrium, according to theplaces in which they are situated, and according to the direction andthe velocity with which they are put in motion. Our sun is probablyone of those which depart furthest from it, and descend furthest intothe empty space within the ring. " {6} According to this view, a timemay come when we shall be much more in the thick of the stars of ourastral system than we are now, and have of course much more brilliantnocturnal skies; but it may be countless ages before the eyes whichare to see this added resplendence shall exist. 

The evidence of the existence of other astral systems besides our ownis much more decided than might be expected, when we consider thatthe nearest of them must needs be placed at a mighty interval beyondour own. The elder Herschel, directing his wonderful tube towardsthe SIDES of our system, where stars are planted most rarely, andraising the powers of the instrument to the required pitch, wasenabled with awe-struck mind to see suspended in the vast empyreanastral systems, or, as he called them, firmaments, resembling ourown. Like light cloudlets to a certain power of the telescope, theyresolved themselves, under a greater power, into stars, though thesegenerally seemed no larger than the finest particles of diamond dust. The general forms of these systems are various; but one at least hasbeen detected as bearing a striking resemblance to the supposed formof our own. The distances are also various, as proved by thedifferent degrees of telescopic power necessary to bring them intoview. The farthest observed by the astronomer were estimated by himas thirty-five thousand times more remote than Sirius, supposing itsdistance to be about twenty thousand millions of miles. It wouldthus appear, that not only does gravitation keep our earth in itsplace in the solar system, and the solar system in its place in ourastral system, but it also may be presumed to have the mightier dutyof preserving a local arrangement between that astral system and animmensity of others, through which the imagination is left to wanderon and on without limit or stay, save that which is given by itsinability to grasp the unbounded. 

The two Herschels have in succession made some other most remarkableobservations on the regions of space. They have found within thelimits of our astral system, and generally in its outer fields, agreat number of objects which, from their foggy appearance, arecalled nebulae; some of vast extent and irregular figure, as that inthe sword of Orion, which is visible to the naked eye; others ofshape more defined; others, again, in which small bright nucleiappear here and there over the surface. Between this last form andanother class of objects, which appear as clusters of nuclei withnebulous matter around each nucleus, there is but a step in whatappears a chain of related things. Then, again, our astral spaceshews what are called nebulous stars, --namely, luminous sphericalobjects, bright in the centre and dull towards the extremities. These appear to be only an advanced condition of the class of objectsabove described. Finally, nebulous stars exist in every stage ofconcentration, down to that state in which we see only a common starwith a slight BUR around it. It may be presumed that all these arebut stages in a progress, just as if, seeing a child, a boy, a youth, a middle-aged, and an old man together, we might presume that thewhole were only variations of one being. Are we to suppose that wehave got a glimpse of the process through which a sun goes betweenits original condition, as a mass of diffused nebulous matter, andits full-formed state as a compact body? We shall see how far suchan idea is supported by other things known with regard to theoccupants of space, and the laws of matter. 

A superficial view of the astronomy of the solar system gives us onlythe idea of a vast luminous body (the sun) in the centre, and a fewsmaller, though various sized bodies, revolving at differentdistances around it; some of these, again, having smaller planets(satellites) revolving around them. There are, however, some generalfeatures of the solar system, which, when a profounder attentionmakes us acquainted with them, strike the mind very forcibly. 

It is, in the first place, remarkable, that the planets all movenearly IN ONE PLANE, corresponding with the centre of the sun's body. Next, it is not less remarkable that the motion of the sun on itsaxis, those of the planets around the sun, and the satellites aroundtheir primaries, {9} and the motions of all on their axes, are IN ONEDIRECTION--namely, from west to east. Had all these matters beenleft to accident, the chances against the uniformity which we findwould have been, though calculable, inconceivably great. Laplacestates them at four millions of millions to one. It is thuspowerfully impressed on us, that the uniformity of the motions, aswell as their general adjustment to one plane, must have been aconsequence of some cause acting throughout the whole system. 

Some of the other relations of the bodies are not less remarkable. The primary planets shew a progressive increase of bulk anddiminution of density, from the one nearest to the sun to that whichis most distant. With respect to density alone, we find, takingwater as a measure and counting it as one, that Saturn is 13/32, orless than half; Jupiter, 1 1/24; Mars, 3 2/7; Earth, 4 1/2; Venus, 511/15; Mercury 9 9/10, or about the weight of lead. Then thedistances are curiously relative. It has been found that if we placethe following line of numbers, -

0 3 6 12 24 48 96 192, and add 4 to each, we shall have a series denoting the respectivedistances of the planets from the sun. It will stand thus -

4 7 10 16 28 52 100 196Merc. Venus. Earth. Mars. Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. 

It will be observed that the first row of figures goes on from thesecond on the left hand in a succession of duplications, ormultiplications by 2. Surely there is here a most surprising proofof the unity which I am claiming for the solar system. It wasremarked when this curious relation was first detected, that therewas a want of a planet corresponding to 28; the difficulty wasafterwards considered as in a great measure overcome, by thediscovery of four small planets revolving at nearly one mean distancefrom the sun, between Mars and Jupiter. The distances bear anequally interesting mathematical relation to the times of therevolutions round the sun. It has been found that, with respect toany two planets, the squares of the times of revolution are to eachother in the same proportion as the cubes of their mean distances, --amost surprising result, for the discovery of which the world wasindebted to the illustrious Kepler. Sir John Herschel trulyobserves--"When we contemplate the constituents of the planetarysystem from the point of view which this relation affords us, it isno longer mere analogy which strikes us, no longer a generalresemblance among them, as individuals independent of each other, andcirculating about the sun, each according to its own peculiar nature, and connected with it by its own peculiar tie. The resemblance isnow perceived to be a true FAMILY LIKENESS; they are bound up in onechain--interwoven in one web of mutual relation and harmoniousagreement, subjected to one pervading influence which extends fromthe centre to the farthest limits of that great system, of which allof them, the Earth included, must henceforth be regarded as members. "{12}

Connecting what has been observed of the series of nebulous starswith this wonderful relationship seen to exist among the constituentsof our system, and further taking advantage of the light afforded bythe ascertained laws of matter, modern astronomers have suggested thefollowing hypothesis of the formation of that system. 

Of nebulous matter in its original state we know too little to enableus to suggest how nuclei should be established in it. But, supposingthat, from a peculiarity in its constitution, nuclei are formed, weknow very well how, by virtue of the law of gravitation, the processof an aggregation of the neighbouring matter to those nuclei shouldproceed, until masses more or less solid should become detached fromthe rest. It is a well-known law in physics that, when fluid mattercollects towards or meets in a centre, it establishes a rotatorymotion. See minor results of this law in the whirlwind and thewhirlpool--nay, on so humble a scale as the water sinking through theaperture of a funnel. It thus becomes certain that when we arrive atthe stage of a nebulous star, we have a rotation on an axiscommenced. 

Now, mechanical philosophy informs us that, the instant a mass beginsto rotate, there is generated a tendency to fling off its outerportions--in other words, the law of centrifugal force begins tooperate. There are, then, two forces acting in opposition to eachother, the one attracting TO, the other throwing FROM, the centre. While these remain exactly counterpoised, the mass necessarilycontinues entire; but the least excess of the centrifugal over theattractive force would be attended with the effect of separating themass and its outer parts. These outer parts would, then, be left asa ring round the central body, which ring would continue to revolvewith the velocity possessed by the central mass at the moment ofseparation, but not necessarily participating in any changesafterwards undergone by that body. This is a process which might berepeated as soon as a new excess arose in the centrifugal over theattractive forces working in the parent mass. It might, indeed, continue to be repeated, until the mass attained the ultimate limitsof the condensation which its constitution imposed upon it. Fromwhat cause might arise the periodical occurrence of an excess of thecentrifugal force? If we suppose the agglomeration of a nebulousmass to be a process attended by refrigeration or cooling, which manyfacts render likely, we can easily understand why the outer parts, hardening under this process, might, by virtue of the greatersolidity thence acquired, begin to present some resistance to theattractive force. As the solidification proceeded, this resistancewould become greater, though there would still be a tendency toadhere. Meanwhile, the condensation of the central mass would begoing on, tending to produce a separation from what may now be termedthe SOLIDIFYING CRUST. During the contention between the attractionsof these two bodies, or parts of one body, there would probably be aring of attenuation between the mass and its crust. At length, whenthe central mass had reached a certain stage in its advance towardssolidification, a separation would take place, and the crust wouldbecome a detached ring. It is clear, of course, that some lawpresiding over the refrigeration of heated gaseous bodies woulddetermine the stages at which rings were thus formed and detached. We do not know any such law, but what we have seen assures us it isone observing and reducible to mathematical formulae. 

If these rings consisted of matter nearly uniform throughout, theywould probably continue each in its original form; but there are manychances against their being uniform in constitution. The unavoidableeffects of irregularity in their constitution would be to cause themto gather towards centres of superior solidity, by which the annularform would, of course, be destroyed. The ring would, in short, breakinto several masses, the largest of which would be likely to attractthe lesser into itself. The whole mass would then necessarily settleinto a spherical form by virtue of the law of gravitation; in short, would then become a planet revolving round the sun. Its rotatorymotion would, of course, continue, and satellites might then bethrown off in turn from its body in exactly the same way as theprimary planets had been thrown off from the sun. The rule, if I canbe allowed so to call it, receives a striking support from whatappear to be its exceptions. While there are many chances againstthe matter of the rings being sufficiently equable to remain in theannular form till they were consolidated, it might nevertheless beotherwise in some instances; that is to say, the equableness might, in those instances, be sufficiently great. Such was probably thecase with the two rings around the body of Saturn, which remain aliving picture of the arrangement, if not the condition, in which allthe planetary masses at one time stood. It may also be admittedthat, when a ring broke up, it was possible that the fragments mightspherify separately. Such seems to be the actual history of the ringbetween Jupiter and Mars, in whose place we now find four planetsmuch beneath the smallest of the rest in size, and moving nearly atthe same distance from the sun, though in orbits so elliptical, andof such different planes, that they keep apart. 

It has been seen that there are mathematical proportions in therelative distances and revolutions of the planets of our system. Ithas also been suggested that the periods in the condensation of thenebulous mass, at which rings were disengaged, must have depended onsome particular crises in the condition of that mass, in connexionwith the laws of centrifugal force and attraction. M. Compte, ofParis, has made some approach to the verification of the hypothesis, by calculating what ought to have been the rotation of the solar massat the successive times when its surface extended to the variousplanetary orbits. He ascertained that THAT ROTATION CORRESPONDED INEVERY CASE WITH THE ACTUAL SIDEREAL REVOLUTION OF THE PLANETS, ANDTHAT THE ROTATION OF THE PRIMARY PLANETS IN LIKE MANNER CORRESPONDEDWITH THE ORBITUAL PERIODS OF THE SECONDARIES. The process by whichhe arrived at this conclusion is not to be readily comprehended bythe unlearned; but those who are otherwise, allow that it is apowerful support to the present hypothesis of the formation of theglobes of space. {17}

The nebular hypothesis, as it has been called, obtains a remarkablesupport in what would at first seem to militate against it--theexistence in our firmament of several thousands of solar systems, inwhich there are more than one sun. These are called double andtriple stars. Some double stars, upon which careful observationshave been made, are found to have a regular revolutionary motionround each other in ellipses. This kind of solar system has alsobeen observed in what appears to be its rudimental state, for thereare examples of nebulous stars containing two and three nuclei innear association. At a certain point in the confluence of the matterof these nebulous stars, they would all become involved in a commonrevolutionary motion, linked inextricably with each other, though itmight be at sufficient distances to allow of each distinct centrehaving afterwards its attendant planets. We have seen that the lawwhich causes rotation in the single solar masses, is exactly the samewhich produces the familiar phenomenon of a small whirlpool or dimplein the surface of a stream. Such dimples are not always single. Upon the face of a river where there are various contending currents, it may often be observed that two or more dimples are formed neareach other with more or less regularity. These fantastic eddies, which the musing poet will sometimes watch abstractedly for an hour, little thinking of the law which produces and connects them, are anillustration of the wonders of binary and ternary solar systems. 

The nebular hypothesis is, indeed, supported by so many ascertainedfeatures of the celestial scenery, and by so many calculations ofexact science, that it is impossible for a candid mind to refrainfrom giving it a cordial reception, if not to repose full relianceupon it, even without seeking for it support of any other kind. Someother support I trust yet to bring to it; but in the meantime, assuming its truth, let us see what idea it gives of the constitutionof what we term the universe, of the development of its variousparts, and of its original condition. 

Reverting to a former illustration--if we could suppose a number ofpersons of various ages presented to the inspection of an intelligentbeing newly introduced into the world, we cannot doubt that he wouldsoon become convinced that men had once been boys, that boys had oncebeen infants, and, finally, that all had been brought into the worldin exactly the same circumstances. Precisely thus, seeing in ourastral system many thousands of worlds in all stages of formation, from the most rudimental to that immediately preceding the presentcondition of those we deem perfect, it is unavoidable to concludethat all the perfect have gone through the various stages which wesee in the rudimental. This leads us at once to the conclusion thatthe whole of our firmament was at one time a diffused mass ofnebulous matter, extending through the space which it still occupies. So also, of course, must have been the other astral systems. Indeed, we must presume the whole to have been originally in one connectedmass, the astral systems being only the first division into parts, and solar systems the second. 

The first idea which all this impresses upon us is, that theformation of bodies in space is STILL AND AT PRESENT IN PROGRESS. Welive at a time when many have been formed, and many are stillforming. Our own solar system is to be regarded as completed, supposing its perfection to consist in the formation of a series ofplanets, for there are mathematical reasons for concluding thatMercury is the nearest planet to the sun, which can, according to thelaws of the system, exist. But there are other solar systems withinour astral system, which are as yet in a less advanced state, andeven some quantities of nebulous matter which have scarcely begun toadvance towards the stellar form. On the other hand, there are vastnumbers of stars which have all the appearance of being fully formedsystems, if we are to judge from the complete and definite appearancewhich they present to our vision through the telescope. We have nomeans of judging of the seniority of systems; but it is reasonable tosuppose that, among the many, some are older than ours. There is, indeed, one piece of evidence for the probability of the comparativeyouth of our system, altogether apart from human traditions and thegeognostic appearances of the surface of our planet. This consistsin a thin nebulous matter, which is diffused around the sun to nearlythe orbit of Mercury, of a very oblately spheroidal shape. Thismatter, which sometimes appears to our naked eyes, at sunset, in theform of a cone projecting upwards in the line of the sun's path, andwhich bears the name of the Zodiacal Light, has been thought aresiduum or last remnant of the concentrating matter of our system, and thus may be supposed to indicate the comparative recentness ofthe principal events of our cosmogony. Supposing the surmise andinference to be correct, and they may be held as so far supported bymore familiar evidence, we might with the more confidence speak ofour system as not amongst the elder born of Heaven, but one whosevarious phenomena, physical and moral, as yet lay undeveloped, whilemyriads of others were fully fashioned and in complete arrangement. Thus, in the sublime chronology to which we are directing ourinquiries, we first find ourselves called upon to consider the globewhich we inhabit as a child of the sun, elder than Venus and heryounger brother Mercury, but posterior in date of birth to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; next to regard our whole system asprobably of recent formation in comparison with many of the stars ofour firmament. We must, however, be on our guard against supposingthe earth as a recent globe in our ordinary conceptions of time. From evidence afterwards to be adduced, it will be seen that itcannot be presumed to be less than many hundreds of centuries old. How much older Uranus may be no one can tell, much less how more agedmay be many of the stars of our firmament, or the stars of otherfirmaments than ours. 

Another and more important consideration arises from the hypothesis;namely, as to the means by which the grand process is conducted. Thenebulous matter collects around nuclei by virtue of the law ofattraction. The agglomeration brings into operation another physicallaw, by force of which the separate masses of matter are either madeto rotate singly, or, in addition to that single motion, are set intoa coupled revolution in ellipses. Next centrifugal force comes intoplay, flinging off portions of the rotating masses, which becomespheres by virtue of the same law of attraction, and are held inorbits of revolution round the central body by means of a compositionbetween the centrifugal and gravitating forces. All, we see, is doneby certain laws of matter, so that it becomes a question of extremeinterest, what are such laws? All that can yet be said, in answer, is, that we see certain natural events proceeding in an invariableorder under certain conditions, and thence infer the existence ofsome fundamental arrangement which, for the bringing about of theseevents, has a force and certainty of action similar to, but moreprecise and unerring than those arrangements which human societymakes for its own benefit, and calls laws. It is remarkable ofphysical laws, that we see them operating on every kind of scale asto magnitude, with the same regularity and perseverance. The tearthat falls from childhood's cheek is globular, through the efficacyof that same law of mutual attraction of particles which made the sunand planets round. The rapidity of Mercury is quicker than that ofSaturn, for the same reason that, when we wheel a ball round by astring and make the string wind up round our fingers, the ball alwaysflies quicker and quicker as the string is shortened. Two eddies ina stream, as has been stated, fall into a mutual revolution at thedistance of a couple of inches, through the same cause which makes apair of suns link in mutual revolution at the distance of millions ofmiles. There is, we might say, a sublime simplicity in thisindifference of the grand regulations to the vastness or minutenessof the field of their operation. Their being uniform, too, throughout space, as far as we can scan it, and their being sounfailing in their tendency to operate, so that only the properconditions are presented, afford to our minds matter for the gravestconsideration. Nor should it escape our careful notice that theregulations on which all the laws of matter operate, are establishedon a rigidly accurate mathematical basis. Proportions of numbers andgeometrical figures rest at the bottom of the whole. All theseconsiderations, when the mind is thoroughly prepared for them, tendto raise our ideas with respect to the character of physical laws, even though we do not go a single step further in the investigation. But it is impossible for an intelligent mind to stop there. Weadvance from law to the cause of law, and ask, What is that? Whencehave come all these beautiful regulations? Here science leaves us, but only to conclude, from other grounds, that there is a First Causeto which all others are secondary and ministrative, a primitivealmighty will, of which these laws are merely the mandates. Thatgreat Being, who shall say where is his dwelling-place, or what hishistory! Man pauses breathless at the contemplation of a subject somuch above his finite faculties, and only can wonder and adore!

CONSTITUENT MATERIALS OF THE EARTH AND OF THE OTHER BODIES OF SPACE. 

The nebular hypothesis almost necessarily supposes matter to haveoriginally formed one mass. We have seen that the same physical lawspreside over the whole. Are we also to presume that the constitutionof the whole was uniform?--that is to say, that the whole consistedof similar elements. It seems difficult to avoid coming to thisconclusion, at least under the qualification that, possibly, variousbodies, under peculiar circumstances attending their formation, maycontain elements which are wanting, and lack some which are presentin others, or that some may entirely consist of elements in whichothers are entirely deficient. 

What are elements? This is a term applied by the chemist to acertain limited number of substances, (fifty-four or fifty-five areascertained, ) which, in their combinations, form all the matters ofevery kind present in and about our globe. They are called elements, or simple substances, because it has hitherto been found impossibleto reduce them into others, wherefore they are presumed to be theprimary bases of all matters. It has, indeed, been surmised thatthese so-called elements are only modifications of a primordial formof matter, brought about under certain conditions; but if this shouldprove to be the case, it would little affect the view which we aretaking of cosmical arrangements. Analogy would lead us to concludethat the combinations of the primordial matter, forming our so-calledelements, are as universal or as liable to take place everywhere asare the laws of gravitation and centrifugal force. We must thereforepresume that the gases, the metals, the earths, and other simplesubstances, (besides whatever more of which we have no acquaintance, )exist or are liable to come into existence under proper conditions, as well in the astral system, which is thirty-five thousand timesmore distant than Sirius, as within the bounds of our own solarsystem or our own globe. 

Matter, whether it consist of about fifty-five ingredients, or onlyone, is liable to infinite varieties of condition under differentcircumstances, or, to speak more philosophically, under differentlaws. As a familiar illustration, water, when subjected to atemperature under 32 degrees Fahrenheit, becomes ice; raise thetemperature to 212 degrees, and it becomes steam, occupying a vastdeal more space than it formerly did. The gases, when subjected topressure, become liquids; for example, carbonic acid gas, whensubjected to a weight equal to a column of water 1230 feet high, at atemperature of 32 degrees, takes this form: the other gases requirevarious amounts of pressure for this transformation, but all appearto be liable to it when the pressure proper in each case isadministered. Heat is a power greatly concerned in regulating thevolume and other conditions of matter. A chemist can reckon withconsiderable precision what additional amount of heat would berequired to vaporise all the water of our globe; how much more todisengage the oxygen which is diffused in nearly a proportion of one-half throughout its solids; and, finally, how much more would berequired to cause the whole to become vaporiform, which we mayconsider as equivalent to its being restored to its original nebulousstate. He can calculate with equal certainty what would be theeffect of a considerable diminution of the earth's temperature--whatchanges would take place in each of its component substances, and howmuch the whole would shrink in bulk. 

The earth and all its various substances have at present a certainvolume in consequence of the temperature which actually exists. When, then, we find that its matter and that of the associate planetswas at one time diffused throughout the whole space, nowcircumscribed by the orbit of Uranus, we cannot doubt, after what weknow of the power of heat, that the nebulous form of matter wasattended by the condition of a very high temperature. The nebulousmatter of space, previously to the formation of stellar and planetarybodies, must have been a universal Fire Mist, an idea which we canscarcely comprehend, though the reasons for arriving at it seemirresistible. The formation of systems out of this matter implies achange of some kind with regard to the condition of the heat. Hadthis power continued to act with its full original repulsive energy, the process of agglomeration by attraction could not have gone on. We do not know enough of the laws of heat to enable us to surmise howthe necessary change in this respect was brought about, but we cantrace some of the steps and consequences of the process. Uranuswould be formed at the time when the heat of our system's matter wasat the greatest, Saturn at the next, and so on. Now this talliesperfectly with the exceeding diffuseness of the matter of those elderplanets, Saturn being not more dense or heavy than the substancecork. It may be that a sufficiency of heat still remains in thoseplanets to make up for their distance from the sun, and theconsequent smallness of the heat which they derive from his rays. And it may equally be, since Mercury is twice the density of theearth, that its matter exists under a degree of cold for which thatplanet's large enjoyment of the sun's rays is no more than acompensation. Thus there may be upon the whole a nearly equalexperience of heat amongst all these children of the sun. Where, meanwhile, is the heat once diffused through the system over andabove what remains in the planets? May we not rationally presume itto have gone to constitute that luminous envelope of the sun, inwhich his warmth-giving power is now held to reside? It could not bedestroyed--it cannot be supposed to have gone off into space--it musthave simply been reserved to constitute, at the last, a means ofsustaining the many operations of which the planets were destined tobe the theatre. 

The tendency of the whole of the preceding considerations is to bringthe conviction that our globe is a specimen of all the similarly-placed bodies of space, as respects its constituent matter and thephysical and chemical laws governing it, with only thisqualification, that there are POSSIBLY shades of variation withrespect to the component materials, and UNDOUBTEDLY with respect tothe conditions under which the laws operate, and consequently theeffects which they produce. Thus, there may be substances here whichare not in some other bodies, and substances here solid may beelsewhere liquid or vaporiform. We are the more entitled to drawsuch conclusions, seeing that there is nothing at all singular orspecial in the astronomical situation of the earth. It takes itsplace third in a series of planets, which series is only one ofnumberless other systems forming one group. It is strikingly--if Imay use such an expression--a member of a democracy. Hence, wecannot suppose that there is any peculiarity about it which does notprobably attach to multitudes of other bodies--in fact, to all thatare analogous to it in respect of cosmical arrangements. 

It therefore becomes a point of great interest--what are thematerials of this specimen? What is the constitutional character ofthis object, which may be said to be a sample, presented to ourimmediate observation, of those crowds of worlds which seem to us asthe particles of the desert sand-cloud in number, and to whoseprofusion there are no conceivable local limits?

The solids, liquids, and aeriform fluids of our globe are all, as hasbeen stated, reducible into fifty-five substances hitherto calledelementary. Six are gases; oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen being thechief. Forty-two are metals, of which eleven are remarkable ascomposing, in combination with oxygen, certain earths, as magnesia, lime, alumin. The remaining six, including carbon, silicon, sulphur, have not any general appellation. 

The gas oxygen is considered as by far the most abundant substance inour globe. It constitutes a fifth part of our atmosphere, a thirdpart of water, and a large proportion of every kind of rock in thecrust of the earth. Hydrogen, which forms two-thirds of water, andenters into some mineral substances, is perhaps next. Nitrogen, ofwhich the atmosphere is four-fifths composed, must be considered asan abundant substance. The metal silicium, which unites with oxygenin nearly equal parts to form silica, the basis of nearly a half ofthe rocks in the earth's crust, is, of course, an importantingredient. Aluminium, the metallic basis of alumin, a largematerial in many rocks, is another abundant elementary substance. So, also, is carbon a small ingredient in the atmosphere, but thechief constituent of animal and vegetable substances, and of allfossils which ever were in the latter condition, amongst which coaltakes a conspicuous place. The familiarly-known metals, as iron, tin, lead, silver, gold, are elements of comparatively smallmagnitude in that exterior part of the earth's body which we are ableto investigate. 

It is remarkable of the simple substances that they are generally insome compound form. Thus, oxygen and nitrogen, though in union theyform the aerial envelope of the globe, are never found separate innature. Carbon is pure only in the diamond. And the metallic basesof the earths, though the chemist can disengage them, may well besupposed unlikely to remain long uncombined, seeing that contact withmoisture makes them burn. Combination and re-combination areprinciples largely pervading nature. There are few rocks, forexample, that are not composed of at least two varieties of matter, each of which is again a compound of elementary substances. What isstill more wonderful with respect to this principle of combination, all the elementary substances observe certain mathematicalproportions in their unions. One volume of them unites with one, two, three, or more volumes of another, any extra quantity being sureto be left over, if such there should be. It is hence supposed thatmatter is composed of infinitely minute particles or atoms, each ofwhich belonging to any one substance, can only (through the operationof some as yet hidden law) associate with a certain number of theatoms of any other. There are also strange predilections amongstsubstances for each other's company. One will remain combined insolution with another, till a third is added, when it will abandonthe former and attach itself to the latter. A fourth being added, the third will perhaps leave the first, and join the new comer. 

Such is an outline of the information which chemistry gives usregarding the constituent materials of our globe. How infinitely isthe knowledge increased in interest, when we consider the probabilityof such being the materials of the whole of the bodies of space, andthe laws under which these everywhere combine, subject only to localand accidental variations!

In considering the cosmogenic arrangements of our globe, ourattention is called in a special degree to the moon. 

In the nebular hypothesis, satellites are considered as masses thrownoff from their primaries, exactly as the primaries had previouslybeen from the sun. The orbit of any satellite is also to be regardedas marking the bounds of the mass of the primary at the time whenthat satellite was thrown off; its speed likewise denotes therapidity of the rotatory motion of the primary at that particularjuncture. For example, the outermost of the four satellites ofJupiter revolves round his body at the distance of 1, 180, 582 miles, shewing that the planet was once 3, 675, 501 miles in circumference, instead of being, as now, only 89, 170 miles in diameter. This largemass took rather more than sixteen days six hours and a half (thepresent revolutionary period of the outermost satellite) to rotate onits axis. The innermost satellite must have been formed when theplanet was reduced to a circumference of 309, 075 miles, and rotatedin about forty-two hours and a half. 

From similar inferences, we find that the mass of the earth, at acertain point of time after it was thrown off from the sun, was noless than 482, 000 miles in diameter, being sixty times what it hassince shrunk to. At that time, the mass must have taken rather morethan twenty-nine and a half days to rotate, (being the revolutionaryperiod of the moon, ) instead of as now, rather less than twenty-fourhours. 

The time intervening between the formation of the moon and theearth's diminution to its present size, was probably one of thosevast sums in which astronomy deals so largely, but which the mindaltogether fails to grasp. 

The observations made upon the surface of the moon by telescopes, tend strongly to support the hypothesis as to all the bodies of spacebeing composed of similar matters, subject to certain variations. Itdoes not appear that our satellite is provided with that gaseousenvelope which, on earth, performs so many important functions. Neither is there any appearance of water upon the surface; yet thatsurface is, like that of our globe, marked by inequalities and theappearance of volcanic operations. These inequalities and volcanicoperations are upon a scale far greater than any which now exist uponthe earth's surface. Although, from the greater force of gravitationupon its exterior, the mountains, other circumstances being equal, might have been expected to be much smaller than ours, they are, inmany instances, equal in height to nearly the highest of our Andes. They are generally of extreme steepness, and sharp of outline, apeculiarity which might be looked for in a planet deficient in waterand atmosphere, seeing that these are the agents which wear downruggedness on the surface of our earth. The volcanic operations areon a stupendous scale. They are the cause of the bright spots of themoon, while the want of them is what distinguishes the dullerportions, usually but erroneously called SEAS. In some parts, brightvolcanic matter, besides covering one large patch, radiates out inlong streams, which appear studded with subordinate foci of the samekind of energy. Other objects of a most remarkable character arering mountains, mounts like those of the craters of earthlyvolcanoes, surrounded immediately by vast and profound circular pits, hollowed under the general surface, these again being surrounded by acircular wall of mountain, rising far above the central one, and inthe inside of which are terraces about the same height as the innereminence. The well-known bright spot in the south-east quarter, called by astronomers Tycho, and which can be readily distinguishedby the naked eye, is one of these ring-mountains. There is one of200 miles in diameter, with a pit 22, 000 feet deep; that is, twicethe height of AEtna. It is remarkable, that the maps given byHumboldt of a volcanic district in South America, and oneillustrative of the formerly volcanic district of Auvergne, inFrance, present features strikingly like many parts of the moon'ssurface, as seen through a good glass. 

These characteristics of the moon forbid the idea that it can be atpresent a theatre of life like the earth, and almost seem to declarethat it never can become so. But we must not rashly draw any suchconclusions. The moon may be only in an earlier stage of theprogress through which the earth has already gone. The elementswhich seem wanting may be only in combinations different in thosewhich exist here, and may yet be developed as we here find them. Seas may yet fill the profound hollows of the surface; an atmospheremay spread over the whole. Should these events take place, meteorological phenomena, and all the phenomena of organic life, willcommence, and the moon, like the earth, will become a green andinhabited world. 

It is unavoidably held as a strong proof in favour of any hypothesis, when all the relative phenomena are in harmony with it. This iseminently the case with the nebulous hypothesis, for here theassociated facts cannot be explained on any other supposition. Wehave seen reason to conclude that the primary condition of matter wasthat of a diffused mass, in which the component molecules wereprobably kept apart through the efficacy of heat; that portions ofthis agglomerated into suns, which threw off planets; that theseplanets were at first very much diffused, but gradually contracted bycooling to their present dimensions. Now, as to our own globe, thereis a remarkable proof of its having been in a fluid state at the timewhen it was finally solidifying, in the fact of its being bulged atthe equator, the very form which a soft revolving body takes, andmust inevitably take, under the influence of centrifugal force. Thisbulging makes the equatorial exceed the polar diameter as 230 to 229, which has been demonstrated to be precisely the departure from acorrect sphere which might be predicated from a knowledge of theamount of the mass and the rate of rotation. There is an almostequally distinct memorial of the original high temperature of thematerials, in the store of heat which still exists in the interior. The immediate surface of the earth, be it observed, exhibits only thetemperature which might be expected to be imparted to such materials, by the heat of the sun. There is a point, very short way down, butvarying in different climes, where all effect from the sun's raysceases. Then, however, commences a temperature from an entirelydifferent cause, one which evidently has its source in the interiorof the earth, and which regularly increases as we descend to greaterand greater depths, the rate of increment being about one degreeFahrenheit for every sixty feet; and of this high temperature thereare other evidences, in the phenomena of volcanoes and thermalsprings, as well as in what is ascertained with regard to the densityof the entire mass of the earth. This, it will be remembered, isfour and a half times the weight of water; but the actual weight ofthe principal solid substances composing the outer crust is as twoand a half times the weight of water; and this, we know, if the globewere solid and cold, should increase vastly towards the centre, wateracquiring the density of quicksilver at 362 miles below the surface, and other things in proportion, and these densities becoming muchgreater at greater depths; so that the entire mass of a cool globeshould be of a gravity infinitely exceeding four and a half times theweight of water. The only alternative supposition is, that thecentral materials are greatly expanded or diffused by some means; andby what means could they be so expanded but by heat? Indeed, theexistence of this central heat, a residuum of that which kept allmatter in a vaporiform chaos at first, is amongst the most soliddiscoveries of modern science, {42} and the support which it gives toHerschel's explanation of the formation of worlds is most important. We shall hereafter see what appear to be traces of an operation ofthis heat upon the surface of the earth in very remote times; aneffect, however, which has long passed entirely away. The centralheat has, for ages, reached a fixed point, at which it will probablyremain for ever, as the non-conducting quality of the cool crustabsolutely prevents it from suffering any diminution. 

THE EARTH FORMED--ERA OF THE PRIMARY ROCKS. 

Although the earth has not been actually penetrated to a greaterdepth than three thousand feet, the nature of its substance can, inmany instances, be inferred for the depth of many miles by othermeans of observation. We see a mountain composed of a particularsubstance, with strata, or beds of other rock, lying against itssloped sides; we, of course, infer that the substance of the mountaindips away under the strata which we see lying against it. Supposethat we walk away from the mountain across the turned up edges of thestratified rocks, and that for many miles we continue to pass overother stratified rocks, all disposed in the same way, till by and byewe come to a place where we begin to cross the opposite edges of thesame beds; after which we pass over these rocks all in reverse ordertill we come to another extensive mountain composed of similarmaterial to the first, and shelving away under the strata in the sameway. We should then infer that the stratified rocks occupied a basinformed by the rock of these two mountains, and by calculating thethickness right through these strata, could be able to say to whatdepth the rock of the mountain extended below. By such means, thekind of rock existing many miles below the surface can often beinferred with considerable confidence. 

The interior of the globe has now been inspected in this way in manyplaces, and a tolerably distinct notion of its general arrangementshas consequently been arrived at. It appears that the basis rock ofthe earth, as it may be called, is of hard texture, and crystallinein its constitution. Of this rock, granite may be said to be thetype, though it runs into many varieties. Over this, except in thecomparatively few places where it projects above the general level inmountains, other rocks are disposed in sheets or strata, with theappearance of having been deposited originally from water; but theselast rocks have nowhere been allowed to rest in their originalarrangement. Uneasy movements from below have broken them up ingreat inclined masses, while in many cases there has been projectedthrough the rents rocky matter more or less resembling the greatinferior crystalline mass. This rocky matter must have been in astate of fusion from heat at the time of its projection, for it isoften found to have run into and filled up lateral chinks in theserents. There are even instances where it has been rent again, and anewer melted matter of the same character sent through the opening. Finally, in the crust as thus arranged there are, in many places, chinks containing veins of metal. Thus, there is first a greatinferior mass, composed of crystalline rock, and probably restingimmediately on the fused and expanded matter of the interior: next, layers or strata of aqueous origin; next, irregular masses of meltedinferior rock that have been sent up volcanically and confusedly atvarious times amongst the aqueous rocks, breaking up these intomasses, and tossing them out of their original levels. This is anoutline of the arrangements of the crust of the earth, as far as wecan observe it. It is, at first sight, a most confused scene; butafter some careful observation, we readily detect in it a regularityand order from which much instruction in the history of our globe isto be derived. 

The deposition of the aqueous rocks, and the projection of thevolcanic, have unquestionably taken place since the settlement of theearth in its present form. They are indeed of an order of eventswhich we see going on, under the agency of more or less intelligiblecauses, even down to the present day. We may therefore consider themgenerally as comparatively recent transactions. Abstracting themfrom the investigations before us, we arrive at the idea of the earthin its first condition as a globe of its present size--namely, as amass, externally at least, consisting of the crystalline kind ofrock, with the waters of the present seas and the present atmospherearound it, though these were probably in considerably differentconditions, both as to temperature and their constituent materials, from what they now are. We are thus to presume that that crystallinetexture of rock which we see exemplified in granite is the conditioninto which the great bulk of the solids of our earth wereagglomerated directly from the nebulous or vaporiform state. It is acondition eminently of combination, for such rock is invariablycomposed of two or more of four substances--silica, mica, quartz, andhornblende--which associate in it in the form of grains or crystals, and which are themselves each composed of a group of the simple orelementary substances. 

Judging from the results and from still remaining conditions, we mustsuppose that the heat retained in the interior of the globe was moreintense, or had greater freedom to act, in some places than inothers. These became the scenes of volcanic operations, and in timemarked their situations by the extrusion of traps and basalts frombelow--namely, rocks composed of the crystalline matter fused byintense heat, and developed on the surface in various conditions, according to the particular circumstances under which it was sent up;some, for example, being thrown up under water, and some in the openair, which conditions are found to have made considerable differencein its texture and appearance. The great stores of subterranean heatalso served an important purpose in the formation of the aqueousrocks. These rocks might, according to Sir John Herschel, becomesubject to heat in the following manner:- While the surface of aparticular mass of rock forms the bed of the sea, the heat is kept ata certain distance from that surface by the contact of the water;philosophically speaking, it radiates away the heat into the sea, and(to resort to common language) is cooled a good way down. But whennew sediment settles at the bottom of that sea, the heat rises up towhat was formerly the surface; and when a second quantity of sedimentis laid down, it continues to rise through the first of the deposits, which then becomes subjected to those changes which heat iscalculated to produce. This process is precisely the same as that ofputting additional coats upon our own bodies; when, of course, theinternal heat rises through each coat in succession, and the third(supposing there is a fourth above it) becomes as warm as perhaps thefirst originally was. 

In speaking of sedimentary rocks, we may be said to be anticipating. It is necessary, first, to shew how such rocks were formed, or howstratification commenced. 

Geology tells us as plainly as possible, that the originalcrystalline mass was not a perfectly smooth ball, with air and waterplaying round it. There were vast irregularities in the surface, --irregularities trifling, perhaps, compared with the whole bulk of theglobe, but assuredly vast in comparison with any which now exist uponit. These irregularities might be occasioned by inequalities in thecooling of the substance, or by accidental and local sluggishness ofthe materials, or by local effects of the concentrated internal heat. From whatever cause they arose, there they were--enormous graniticmountains, interspersed with seas which sunk to a depth equallyprofound, and by which, perhaps, the mountains were wholly orpartially covered. Now, it is a fact of which the very firstprinciples of geology assure us, that the solids of the globe cannotfor a moment be exposed to water, or to the atmosphere, withoutbecoming liable to change. They instantly begin to wear down. Thisoperation, we may be assured, proceeded with as much certainty in theearliest ages of our earth's history, as it does now, but upon a muchmore magnificent scale. There is the clearest evidence that the seasof those days were not in some instances less than a hundred miles indepth, however much more. The sub-aqueous mountains must necessarilyhave been of at least equal magnitude. The system of disintegrationconsequent upon such conditions would be enormous. The matters wornoff, being carried into the neighbouring depths, and there deposited, became the components of the earliest stratified rocks, the firstseries of which is the Gneiss and Mica Slate System, or series, examples of which are exposed to view in the Highlands of Scotlandand in the West of England. The vast thickness of these beds, insome instances, is what attests the profoundness of the primevaloceans in which they were formed; the Pensylvanian grawacke, a memberof the next highest series, is not less than a hundred miles indirect thickness. We have also evidence that the earliest stratawere formed in the presence of a stronger degree of heat than whatoperated in subsequent stages of the world, for the laminae of thegneiss and of the mica and chlorite schists are contorted in a waywhich could only be the result of a very high temperature. Itappears as if the seas in which these deposits were formed, had beenin the troubled state of a caldron of water nearly at boiling heat. Such a condition would probably add not a little to thedisintegrating power of the ocean. 

The earliest stratified rocks contain no matters which are not to befound in the primitive granite. They are the same in material, butonly changed into new forms and combinations; hence they have beencalled by Mr. Lyell, metamorphic rocks. But how comes it that someof them are composed almost exclusively of one of the materials ofgranite; the mica schists, for example, of mica--the quartz rocks, ofquartz, &c. ? For this there are both chemical and mechanical causes. Suppose that a river has a certain quantity of material to carrydown, it is evident that it will soonest drop the larger particles, and carry the lightest farthest on. To such a cause is it owing thatsome of the materials of the worn-down granite have settled in oneplace and some in another. {52} Again, some of these materials mustbe presumed to have been in a state of chemical solution in theprimeval seas. It would be, of course, in conformity with chemicallaws, that certain of these materials would be precipitated singly, or in modified combinations, to the bottom, so as to form rocks bythemselves. 

The rocks hitherto spoken of contain none of those petrified remainsof vegetables and animals which abound so much in subsequently formedrocks, and tell so wondrous a tale of the past history of our globe. They simply contain, as has been said, mineral materials derived fromthe primitive mass, and which appear to have been formed into stratain seas of vast depth. The absence from these rocks of all traces ofvegetable and animal life, joined to a consideration of the excessivetemperature which seems to have prevailed in their epoch, has led tothe inference that no plants or animals of any kind then existed. Afew geologists have indeed endeavoured to shew that the absence oforganic remains is no proof of the globe having been then unfruitfulor uninhabited, as the heat to which these rocks have been subjectedat the time of their solidification, might have obliterated anyremains of either plants or animals which were included in them. Butthis is only an hypothesis of negation; and it certainly seems veryunlikely that a degree of heat sufficient to obliterate the remainsof plants or animals when dead, would ever allow of their coming intoor continuing in existence. 

COMMENCEMENT OF ORGANIC LIFE--SEA PLANTS, CORALS, ETC. 

We can scarcely be said to have passed out of these rocks, when webegin to find new conditions in the earth. It is here to be observedthat the subsequent rocks are formed, in a great measure, of mattersderived from the substance of those which went before, but containalso beds of limestone, which is to no small extent composed of aningredient which has not hitherto appeared. Limestone is a carbonateof lime, a secondary compound, of which one of the ingredients, carbonic acid gas, presents the element CARBON, a perfect novelty inour progress. Whence this substance? The question is the moreinteresting, from our knowing that carbon is the main ingredient inorganic things. There is reason to believe that its primevalcondition was that of a gas, confined in the interior of the earth, and diffused in the atmosphere. The atmosphere still contains abouta two-thousandth part of carbonic acid gas, forming the grand storefrom which the substance of each year's crop of herbage and grain isderived, passing from herbage and grain into animal substance, andfrom animals again rendered back to the atmosphere in their expiredbreath, so that its amount is never impaired. Knowing this, when wehear of carbon beginning to appear in the ascending series of rocks, we are unavoidably led to consider it as marking a time of someimportance in the earth's history, a new era of natural conditions, one in which organic life has probably played a part. 

It is not easy to suppose that, at this period, carbon was adopteddirectly in its gaseous form into rocks; for, if so, why should itnot have been taken into earlier ones also? But we know that plantstake it in, and transform it into substance; and we also know thatthere are classes of animals (marine polypes) which are capable ofappropriating it, in connexion with lime, (carbonate of lime, ) fromthe waters of the ocean, provided it be there in solution; and thissubstance do these animals deposit in masses (coral reefs) equal inextent to many strata. It has even been suggested, on strong groundsof probability, that a class of limestone beds are simply these reefssubjected to subsequent heat and pressure. 

The appearance, then, of limestone beds in the early part of thestratified series, may be presumed to be connected with the fact ofthe commencement of organic life upon our planet, and, indeed, aconsequent and a symptom of it. 

It may not be out of place here to remark, that carbon is presumed toexist largely in the interior of the earth, from the fact of suchconsiderable quantities of it issuing at this day, in the form ofcarbonic acid gas, from fissures and springs. The primeval andsubsequent history of this element is worthy of much attention, andwe shall have to revert to it as a matter greatly concerning oursubject. Delabeche estimates the quantity of carbonic acid gaslocked up in every cubic yard of limestone, at 16, 000 cubic feet. The quantity locked up in coal, in which it forms from 64 to 75 percent. , must also be enormous. If all this were disengaged in agaseous form, the constitution of the atmosphere would undergo achange, of which the first effect would be the extinction of life inall land animals. But a large proportion of it must have at one timebeen in the atmosphere. The atmosphere would then, of course, beincapable of supporting life in land animals. It is important, however, to observe that such an atmosphere would not be inconsistentwith a luxuriant land vegetation; for experiment has proved thatplants will flourish in air containing ONE-TWELFTH of this gas, or166 times more than the present charge of our atmosphere. Theresults which we observe are perfectly consistent with, and may besaid to presuppose an atmosphere highly charged with this gas, fromabout the close of the primary non-fossiliferous rocks to thetermination of the carboniferous series, for there we see vastdeposits (coal) containing carbon as a large ingredient, while at thesame time the leaves of the Stone Book present no record of thecontemporaneous existence of land animals. 

The hypothesis of the connexion of the first limestone beds with thecommencement of organic life upon our planet is supported by thefact, that in these beds we find the first remains of the bodies ofanimated creatures. My hypothesis may indeed be unsound; but, whether or not, it is clear, taking organic remains as upon the wholea faithful chronicle, that the deposition of these limestone beds wascoeval with the existence of the earliest, or all but the earliest, living creatures upon earth. 

And what were those creatures? It might well be with a kind of awethat the uninstructed inquirer would wait for an answer to thisquestion. But nature is simpler than man's wit would make her, andbehold, the interrogation only brings before us the unpretendingforms of various zoophytes and polypes, together with a few singleand double-valved shell-fish (mollusks), all of them creatures of thesea. It is rather surprising to find these before any vegetableforms, considering that vegetables appear to us as forming thenecessary first link in the chain of nutrition; but it is probablethat there were sea plants, and also some simpler forms of animallife, before this period, although of too slight a substance to leaveany fossil trace of their existence. 

The exact point in the ascending stratified series at which the firsttraces of organic life are to be found is not clearly determined. Dr. M'Culloch states that he found fossil orthocerata (a kind ofshell-fish) so early as the gneiss tract of Loch Eribol, inSutherland; but Messrs. Sedgwick and Murchison, on a subsequentsearch, could not verify the discovery. It has also been stated, that the gneiss and mica tract of Bohemia contains some seams ofgrawacke, in which are organic remains; but British geologists havenot as yet attached much importance to this statement. We have tolook a little higher in the series for indubitable traces of organiclife. 

Above the gneiss and mica slate system, or group of strata, is theClay Slate and Grawacke Slate System; that is to say, it is higher inthe ORDER OF SUPRAPOSITION, though very often it rests immediately onthe primitive granite. The sub-groups of this system are in thefollowing succession upwards:- 1, hornblende slate; 2, chiastoliteslate; 3, clay slate; 4, Snowdon rocks, (grawacke and conglomerates;)5, Bala limestone; 6, Plynlymmon rocks, (grawacke and grawackeslates, with beds of conglomerates. ) This system is largelydeveloped in the west and north of England, and it has been wellexamined, partly because some of the slate beds are extensivelyquarried for domestic purposes. If we overlook the dubiousstatements respecting Sutherland and Bohemia, we have in this"system" the first appearances of life upon our planet. The animalremains are chiefly confined to the slate beds, those named fromBala, in Wales, being the most prolific. Zoophyta, polyparia, crinoidea, conchifera, and crustacea, {60} are the orders of theanimal kingdom thus found in the earliest of earth's sepulchres. TheORDERS are distinguished without difficulty, from the generalcharacters of the creatures whose remains are found; but it is onlyin this general character that they bear a general resemblance to anycreatures now existing. When we come to consider specificcharacters, we see that a difference exists--that, in short, thespecies and even genera are no longer represented upon earth. Morethan this, it will be found that the earliest species comparativelysoon gave place to others, and that they are not represented even inthe next higher group of rocks. One important remark has been made, that a comparatively small variety of species is found in the olderrocks, although of some particular ones the remains are veryabundant; as, for instance, of a species of asaphus, which is foundbetween the laminae of some of the slate rocks of Wales, and thecorresponding rocks of Normandy and Germany in enormous quantities. 

Ascending to the next group of rocks, we find the traces of lifebecome more abundant, the number of species extended, and importantadditions made in certain vestiges of fuci, or sea-plants, and offishes. This group of rocks has been called by English geologists, the Silurian System, because largely developed at the surface of adistrict of western England, formerly occupied by a people whom theRoman historians call Silures. It is a series of sandstones, limestones, and beds of shale (hardened mud), which are classed inthe following sub-groups, beginning with the undermost: --1, Llandillo rocks, (darkish calcareous flagstones;) 2 and 3, two groupscalled Caradoc rocks; 4, Wenlock shale; 5, Wenlock limestone; 6, Lower Ludlow rocks, (shales and limestones;) 7, Aymestry limestone;8, Upper Ludlow rocks, (shales and limestone, chiefly micaceous. )From the lowest beds upwards, there are polypiaria, though mostprevalent in the Wenlock limestone; conchifera, a vast number ofgenera, but all of the order brachiopoda, (including terebratula, pentamerus, spirifer, orthis, leptaena;) mollusca, of several ordersand many genera, (including turritella, orthoceras, nautilus, bellerophon;) crustacea, all of them trilobites, (includingtrinucleus, asaphus, calamene. ) A little above the Llandillo rocks, there have been discovered certain convoluted forms, which are nowestablished as annelids, or sea-worms, a tribe of creatures stillexisting, (nereidina and serpulina, ) and which may often be foundbeneath stones on a sea-beach. One of these, figured by Mr. Murchison, is furnished with feet in vast numbers all along its body, like a centipede. The occurrence of annelids is important, onaccount of their character and status in the animal kingdom. Theyare red-blooded and hermaphrodite, and form a link of connexionbetween the annulosa (white-blooded worms) and a humble class of thevertebrata. {62} The Wenlock limestone is most remarkable amongstall the rocks of the Silurian system, for organic remains. Manyslabs of it are wholly composed of corals, shells, and trilobites, held together by shale. It contains many genera of crinoidea andpolypiaria, and it is thought that some beds of it are wholly theproduction of the latter creatures, or are, in other words, coralreefs transformed by heat and pressure into rocks. Remains offishes, of a very minute size, have been detected by Mr. Philips inthe Aymestry limestone, being apparently the first examples ofvertebrated animals which breathed upon our planet. In the upperLudlow rocks, remains of six genera of fish have been for a longerperiod known; they belong to the order of cartilaginous fishes, anorder of mean organization and ferocious habits, of which the sharkand sturgeon are living specimens. "Some were furnished with longpalates, and squat, firmly-based teeth, well adapted for crushing thestrong-cased zoophytes and shells of the period, fragments of whichoccur in the foecal remains; some with teeth that, like the fossilsharks of the later formations, resemble lines of miniature pyramids, larger and smaller alternating; some with teeth sharp, thin, and sodeeply serrated, that every individual tooth resembles a row ofponiards set up against the walls of an armory; and these last, saysAgassiz, furnished with weapons so murderous, must have been thepirates of the period. Some had their fins guarded with long spines, hooked like the beak of an eagle; some with spines of straighter andmore slender form, and ribbed and furrowed longitudinally likecolumns; some were shielded by an armour of bony points, and somethickly covered with glistening scales. " {64}

The traces of fuci in this system are all but sufficient to allow ofa distinction of genera. In some parts of North America, extensivethough thin beds of them have been found. A distinguished Frenchgeologist, M. Brogniart, has shewn that all existing marine plantsare classifiable with regard to the zones of climate; some beingfitted for the torrid zone, some for the temperate, some for thefrigid. And he establishes that the fuci of these early rocks speakof a torrid climate, although they may be found in what are nowtemperate regions; he also states that those of the higher rocksbetoken, as we ascend, a gradually diminishing temperature. 

We thus early begin to find proofs of the general uniformity oforganic life over the surface of the earth, at the time when eachparticular system of rocks was formed. Species identical with theremains in the Wenlock limestone occur in the corresponding class ofrocks in the Eifel, and partially in the Harz, Norway, Russia, andBrittany. The situations of the remains in Russia are fifteenhundred miles from the Wenlock beds; but at the distance of betweensix and seven thousand from those, --namely, in the vale ofMississippi, the same species are discovered. Uniformity in animallife over large geographical areas argues uniformity in theconditions of animal life; and hence arise some curious inferences. Species, in the same low class of animals, are now much more limited;for instance, the Red Sea gives different polypiaria, zoophytes, andshell-fish, from the Mediterranean. It is the opinion of M. Brogniart, that the uniformity which existed in the primeval timescan only be attributed to the temperature arising from the internalheat, which had yet, as he supposes, been sufficiently great tooverpower the ordinary meteorological influences, and spread atropical clime all over the globe. 

ERA OF THE OLD RED SANDSTONE--FISHES ABUNDANT. 

We advance to a new chapter in this marvellous history--the era ofthe Old Red Sandstone System. This term has been recently applied toa series of strata, of enormous thickness in the whole mass, largelydeveloped in Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, and SouthWales; also in the counties of Fife, Forfar, Moray, Cromarty, andCaithness; and in Russia and North America, if not in many otherparts of the world. The particular strata forming the system aresomewhat different in different countries; but there is a generalcharacter to the extent of these being a mixture of flagstones, marlyrocks, and sandstones, usually of a laminous structure, withconglomerates. There is also a schist shewing the presence ofbitumen; a remarkable new ingredient, since it is a vegetableproduction. In the conglomerates, of great extent and thickness, which form, in at least one district, the basis or leading feature ofthe system, inclosing water-worn fragments of quartz and other rocks, we have evidence of the seas of that period having been subjected toa violent and long-continued agitation, probably from volcaniccauses. The upper members of the series bear the appearance ofhaving been deposited in comparatively tranquil seas. The Englishspecimens of this system shew a remarkable freedom from thosedisturbances which result in the interjection of trap; and they arethus defective in mineral ores. In some parts of England the old redsandstone system has been stated as 10, 000 feet in thickness. 

In this era, the forms of life which existed in the Silurian arecontinued: we have the same orders of marine creatures, zoophyta, polypiaria, conchifera, crustacea; but to these are added numerousfishes, some of which are of most extraordinary and surprising forms. Several of the strata are crowded with remains of fish, shewing thatthe seas in which those beds were deposited had swarmed with thatclass of inhabitants. The investigation of this system is recent;but already {68} M. Agassiz has ascertained about twenty genera, andthrice the number of species. And it is remarkable that the Silurianfishes are here only represented in genera; the whole of the SPECIESof that era had already passed away. Even throughout the sub-groupsof the system itself, the species are changed; and these arephenomena observed throughout all the subsequent systems orgeological eras; apparently arguing that, during the deposition ofall the rocks, a gradual change of physical conditions was constantlygoing on. A varying temperature, or even a varying depth of sea, would at present be attended with similar changes in marine life; andby analogy we are entitled to assume that such variations in theancient seas might be amongst the causes of that constant change ofgenera and species in the inhabitants of those seas to which theorganic contents of the rocks bear witness. 

Some of the fossils of this system, --the cephalaspis, coccosteus, pterichthys, holoptychius--are, in form and structure, entirelydifferent from any fishes now existing, only the sturgeon familyhaving any trace of affinity to them in any respect. They seem toform a sort of connecting link between the crustacea and true fishes. 

The cephalaspis may be considered as making the smallest advance fromthe crustacean character; it very much resembles in form the asaphusof lower formations, having a longish tail-like body inserted withinthe cusp of a large crescent-shaped head, somewhat like a saddler'scutting-knife. The body is covered with strong plates of bone, enamelled, and the head was protected on the upper side with onelarge plate, as with a buckler--hence the name, implying buckler-head. A range of small fins conveys the idea of its having been asweak in motion as it is strong in structure. The coccosteus may besaid to mark the next advance to fish creation. The outline of itsbody is of the form of a short thick coffin, rounded, covered withstrong bony plates, and terminating in a long tail, which seems tohave been the sole organ of motion. It is very remarkable, that, while the tail establishes this creature among the vertebrata and thefishes, its mouth has been opened vertically, like those of thecrustaceans, but which is contrary to the mode of vertebratagenerally. This seems a pretty strong mark of the link character ofthe coccosteus between these two great departments of the animalkingdom. The pterichthys has also strong bony plates over its body, arranged much like those of a tortoise, and has a long tail; but itsmost remarkable feature, and that which has suggested its name, is apair of long and narrow wing-like appendages attached to theshoulders, which the creature is supposed to have erected for itsdefence when attacked by an enemy. 

The holoptychius is of a flat oval form, furnished with fins, andending in a long tail; the whole body covered with strong plateswhich overlap each other, and the head forming only a slight roundedprojection from the general figure. The specimens in the lower bedsare not above the size of a flounder; but in the higher strata, tojudge by the size of the scales or plates which have been found, thecreature attained a comparatively monstrous size. 

The other fishes of the system, --the osteolepis, glyptolepis, dipterus, &c. , are, in general outline, much like fishes stillexisting, but their organization has, nevertheless, some strikingpeculiarities. They have been entirely covered with bony scales orplates, enamelled externally; their spines are tipped with bone, and, as one striking and unvarying feature, the tail is only finned on thelower side. The internal skeleton, of which no traces have beenpreserved, is presumed to have been cartilaginous. They thereforeunite the character of cartilaginous fishes with a character peculiarto themselves, and in which we see pretty clear vestiges of the pre-existent crustaceous form. 

With regard to the link character of these animals, some curiousfacts are mentioned. It appears that in the imperfect condition ofthe vertebral column, and the inferior situation of the mouth in thepterichthys, coccosteus, &c. , there is an analogy to the form of thedorsal cord and position of the mouth in the embryo of perfectfishes. The one-sided form of the tail in the osteolepis &c. Finds asimilar analogy in the form of the tail in the embryo of the salmon. It is not premature to remark how broadly these facts seem to hint ata parity of law affecting the progress of general creation, and theprogress of an individual foetus of one of the more perfect animals. 

It is equally ascertained of the types of being prevalent in the oldred, as of those of the preceding system, that they are uniform inthe corresponding strata of distant parts of the earth; for instance, Russia and North America. 

In the old red sandstone, the marine plants, of which faint tracesare observable in the Silurians, continue to appear. It would seemas if less change took place in the vegetation than in the animals ofthose early seas; and for this, as Mr. Miller has remarked, it iseasy to imagine reasons. For example, an infusion of lime into thesea would destroy animal life, but be favourable to vegetation. 

As yet there were no land animals or plants, and for this thepresumable reason is, that no dry land as yet existed. We are notleft to make this inference solely from the absence of land animalsand plants; in the arrangement of the primary (stratified) rocks, wehave further evidence of it. That these rocks were formed in agenerally horizontal position, we are as well assured as that theywere formed at the bottom of seas. But they are always found greatlyinclined in position, tilted up against the slopes of the graniticmasses which are beneath them in geological order, though oftenshooting up to a higher point in the atmosphere. No doubt can beentertained that these granitic masses, forming our principalmountain ranges, have been protruded from below, or, at least, thrustmuch further up, SINCE the deposition of the primary rocks. Theprotrusion was what tilted up the primary rocks; and the inferenceis, of course, unavoidable, that these mountains have risen chiefly, at least, since the primary rocks were laid down. It is remarkablethat, while the primary rocks thus incline towards granitic nuclei oraxes, the strata higher in the series rest against these again, generally at a less inclination, or none at all, shewing that thesestrata were laid down after the swelling mountain eminences had, bytheir protrusion, tilted up the primary strata. And thus it may besaid an era of local upthrowing of the primitive and (perhaps)central matter of our planet, is established as happening about theclose of the primary strata, and beginning of the next ensuingsystem. It may be called the Era of the Oldest Mountains, or, moreboldly, of the formation of the detached portions of dry land overthe hitherto watery surface of the globe--an important part of thedesigns of Providence, for which the time was now apparently come. It may be remarked, that volcanic disturbances and protrusions oftrap took place throughout the whole period of the deposition of theprimary rocks; but they were upon a comparatively limited scale, andprobably all took place under water. It was only now that thecentral granitic masses of the great mountain ranges were thrown up, carrying up with them broken edges of the primary strata; a processwhich seems to have had this difference from the other, that it wasthe effect of a more tremendous force exerted at a lower depth in theearth, and generally acting in lines pervading a considerable portionof the earth's surface. We shall by-and-by see that the protrusionof some of the mountain ranges was not completed, or did not stop, atthat period. There is no part of geological science more clear thanthat which refers to the ages of mountains. It is as certain thatthe Grampian mountains of Scotland are older than the Alps andApennines, as it is that civilization had visited Italy, and hadenabled her to subdue the world, while Scotland was the residence of"roving barbarians. " The Pyrenees, Carpathians, and other ranges ofcontinental Europe, are all younger than the Grampians, or even theinsignificant Mendip Hills of southern England. Stratification tellsthis tale as plainly as Livy tells the history of the Roman republic. It tells us--to use the words of Professor Philips--that at the timewhen the Grampians sent streams and detritus to straits where now thevalleys of the Forth and Clyde meet, the greater part of Europe was awide ocean. 

The last three systems--called, in England, the Cumbrian, Silurian, and Devonian, and collectively the palaeozoic rocks, from theircontaining the remains of the earliest inhabitants of the globe--areof vast thickness; in England, not much less than 30, 000 feet, ornearly six miles. In other parts of the world, as we have seen, theearliest of these systems alone is of much greater depth--arguing anenormous profundity in the ocean in which they were formed. 

SECONDARY ROCKS. ERA OF THE CARBONIFEROUS FORMATION. LAND FORMED. COMMENCEMENT OF LAND PLANTS. 

We now enter upon a new great epoch in the history of our globe. There was now dry land. As a consequence of this fact, there wasfresh water, for rain, instead of immediately returning to the sea, as formerly, was now gathered in channels of the earth, and becamesprings, rivers, and lakes. There was now a theatre for theexistence of land plants and animals, and it remains to be inquiredif these accordingly were produced. 

The Secondary Rocks, in which our further researches are to beprosecuted, consist of a great and varied series, resting, generallyunconformably, against flanks of the upturned primary rocks, sometimes themselves considerably inclined, at others, formingextensive basin-like beds, nearly horizontal; in many places, muchbroken up and shifted by disturbances from below. They have all beenformed out of the materials of the older rocks, by virtue of thewearing power of air and water, which is still every day carryingdown vast quantities of the elevated matter of the globe into thesea. But the separate strata are each much more distinct in thematter of its composition than might be expected. Some are siliceousor arenaceous (sandstones), composed mainly of fine grains from thequartz rocks--the most abundant of the primary strata. Others areargillaceous--clays, shales, &c. , chiefly derived, probably, from theslate beds of the primary series. Others are calcareous, derivedfrom the early limestone. As a general feature, they are softer andless crystalline than the primary rocks, as if they had endured lessof both heat and pressure than the senior formation. There are beds(coal) formed solely of vegetable matter, and some others in whichthe main ingredient is particles of iron, (the iron black band. ) Thesecondary rocks are quite as communicative with regard to theirportion of the earth's history as the primitive were. 

The first, or lowest, group of the secondary rocks is called theCarboniferous Formation, from the remarkable feature of its numerousinterspersed beds of coal. It commences with the beds of theMOUNTAIN LIMESTONE, which, in some situations, as in Derbyshire andIreland, are of great thickness, being alternated with chert (asiliceous sandstone), sandstones, shales, and beds of coal, generallyof the harder and less bituminous kind (anthracite), the whole beingcovered in some places by the millstone grit, a siliceousconglomerate composed of the detritus of the primary rocks. Themountain limestone, attaining in England to a depth of eight hundredyards, greatly exceeds in volume any of the primary limestone beds, and shews an enormous addition of power to the causes formerlysuggested as having produced this substance. In fact, remains ofcorals, crinoidea, and shells, are so abundant in it, as to composethree-fourths of the mass in some parts. Above the mountainlimestone commence the more conspicuous COAL BEDS, alternating withsandstones, shales, beds of limestone, and ironstone. Coal isaltogether composed of the matter of a terrestrial vegetation, transmuted by pressure. Some fresh-water shells have been found init, but few of marine origin, and no remains of those zoophytes andcrinoidea so abundant in the mountain limestone and other rocks. Coal beds exist in Europe, Asia, and America, and have hitherto beenesteemed as the most valuable of mineral productions, from theimportant services which the substance renders in manufactures and indomestic economy. It is to be remarked, that there are some localvariations in the arrangement of coal beds. In France, they restimmediately on the granite and other primary rocks, the intermediatestrata not having been found at those places. In America, the kindcalled anthracite occurs among the slate beds, and this species alsoabounds more in the mountain limestone than with us. These lastcircumstances only shew that different parts of the earth's surfacedid not all witness the same events of a certain fixed series exactlyat the same time. There had been an exhibition of dry land about thesite of America, a little earlier than in Europe. 

Some features of the condition of the earth during the deposition ofthe carboniferous group, are made out with a clearness which mustsatisfy most minds. First we are told of a time when carbonate oflime was formed in vast abundance at the bottoms of profound seas, accompanied by an unusually large population of corals andencrinites; while in some parts of the earth there were patches ofdry land, covered with a luxuriant vegetation. Next we have acomparatively brief period of volcanic disturbance, (when theconglomerate was formed. ) Then the causes favourable to the soabundant production of limestone, and the large population of marineacrita, decline, and we find the masses of dry land increase innumber and extent, and begin to bear an amount of forest vegetation, far exceeding that of the most sheltered tropical spots of thepresent surface. The climate, even in the latitude of Baffin's Bay, was torrid, and perhaps the atmosphere contained a larger charge ofcarbonic acid gas (the material of vegetation) than it now does. Theforests or thickets of the period, included no species of plants nowknown upon earth. They mainly consisted of gigantic shrubs, whichare either not represented by any existing types, or are akin tokinds which are now only found in small and lowly forms. That theseforests grew upon a Polynesia, or multitude of small islands, isconsidered probable, from similar vegetation being now found in suchsituations within the tropics. With regard to the circumstancesunder which the masses of vegetable matter were transformed intosuccessive coal strata, geologists are divided. From examples seenat the present day, at the mouths of such rivers as the Mississippi, which traverse extensive sylvan regions, and from other circumstancesto be adverted to, it is held likely by some that the vegetablematter, the rubbish of decayed forests, was carried by rivers intoestuaries, and there accumulated in vast natural rafts, until it sunkto the bottom, where an overlayer of sand or mud would prepare it forbecoming a stratum of coal. Others conceive that the vegetationfirst went into the condition of a peat moss, that a sink in thelevel then exposed it to be overrun by the sea, and covered with alayer of sand or mud; that a subsequent uprise made the mud dry land, and fitted it to bear a new forest, which afterwards, like itspredecessor, became a bed of peat; that, in short, by repetitions ofthis process, the alternate layers of coal, sandstone, and shale, constituting the carboniferous group, were formed. It is favourableto this last view that marine fossils are scarcely found in the bodyof the coal itself, though abundant in the shale layers above andbelow it; also that in several places erect stems of trees are foundwith their roots still fixed in the shale beds, and crossing thesandstone beds at almost right angles, shewing that these, at least, had not been drifted from their original situations. On the otherhand, it is not easy to admit such repeated risings and sinkings ofsurface as would be required, on this hypothesis, to form a series ofcoal strata. Perhaps we may most safely rest at present with thesupposition that coal has been formed under both classes ofcircumstances, though in the latter only as an exception to theformer. 

Upwards of three hundred species of plants have been ascertained toexist in the coal formation; but it is not necessary to suppose thatthe whole contained in that system are now, or ever will bedistinguished. Experiments shew that some great classes of plantsbecome decomposed in water in a much less space of time than others, and it is remarkable that those which decompose soonest, are of theclasses found most rare, or not at all, in the coal strata. It isconsequently to be inferred that there may have been grasses andmosses at this era, and many species of trees, the remains of whichhad lost all trace of organic form before their substance sunk intothe mass of which coal was formed. In speaking, therefore, of thevegetation of this period, we must bear in mind that it may havecomprehended forms of which we have no memorial. 

Supposing, nevertheless, that, in the main, the ascertainedvegetation of the coal system is that which grew at the time of itsformation, it is interesting to find that the terrestrial botany ofour globe begins with classes of comparatively simple forms andstructure. In the ranks of the vegetable kingdom, the lowest placeis taken by plants of cellular tissue, and which have no flowers, (cryptogamia, ) as lichens, mosses, fungi, ferns, sea-weeds. Abovethese stand plants of vascular tissue, and bearing flowers, in whichagain there are two great subdivisions; first, plants having oneseed-lobe, (monocotyledons, ) and in which the new matter is addedwithin, (endogenous, ) of which the cane and palm are examples;second, plants having two seed-lobes, (dicotyledons, ) and in whichthe new matter is added on the outside under the bark, (exogenous, )of which the pine, elm, oak, and most of the British forest-trees areexamples; these subdivisions also ranking in the order in which theyare here stated. Now it is clear that a predominance of these formsin succession marked the successive epochs developed by fossilgeology; the simple abounding first, and the complex afterwards. 

Two-thirds of the plants of the carboniferous era are of the cellularor cryptogamic kind, a proportion which would probably be muchincreased if we knew the whole Flora of that era. The ascertaineddicotyledons, or higher-class plants, are comparatively few in thisformation; but it will be found that they constantly increased as theglobe grew older. 

The master-form or type of the era was the fern, or breckan, of whichabout one hundred and thirty species have already been ascertained asentering into the composition of coal. {84a} The fern is a plantwhich thrives best in warm, shaded, and moist situations. Intropical countries, where these conditions abound, there are manymore species than in temperate climes, and some of these arearborescent, or of a tree-like size and luxuriance. {84b} The fernsof the coal strata have been of this magnitude, and that withoutregard to the parts of the earth where they are found. In the coalof Baffin's Bay, of Newcastle, and of the torrid zone alike, are thefossil ferns arborescent, shewing clearly that, in that era, thepresent tropical temperature, or one even higher, existed in veryhigh latitudes. 

In the swamps and ditches of England there grows a plant called thehorse-tail (equisetum), having a succulent, erect, jointed stem, withslender leaves, and a scaly catkin at the top. A second largesection of the plants of the carboniferous era were of this kind(equisetaceae), but, like the fern, reaching the magnitudes of trees. While existing equiseta rarely exceed three feet in height, and thestems are generally under half an inch in diameter, their kindred, entombed in the coal beds, seem to have been generally fourteen orfifteen feet high, with stems from six inches to a foot in thickness. Arborescent plants of this family, like the arborescent ferns, nowgrow only in tropical countries, and their being found in the coalbeds in all latitudes is consequently held as an additional proof, that at this era a warm climate was extended much farther to thenorth than at present. It is to be remarked that plants of this kind(forming two genera, the most abundant of which is the calamites) areonly represented on the present surface by plants of the same FAMILY:the SPECIES which flourished at this era gradually lessen in numberas we advance upwards in the series of rocks, and disappear before wearrive at the tertiary formation. 

The club-moss family (lycopodiaceae) are other plants of the presentsurface, usually seen in a lowly and creeping form in temperatelatitudes, but presenting species which rise to a greater magnitudewithin the tropics. Many specimens of this family are found in thecoal beds; it is thought they have contributed more to the substanceof the coal than any other family. But, like the ferns andequisetaceae, they rise to a prodigious magnitude. The lepidodendra(so the fossil genus is called) have probably been from sixty-five toeighty feet in height, having at their base a diameter of about threefeet, while their leaves measured twenty inches in length. In theforests of the coal era, the lepidodendra would enjoy the rank offirs in our forests, affording shade to the only less stately fernsand calamites. The internal structure of the stem, and the characterof the seed-vessels, shew them to have been a link between single-lobed and double-lobed plants, a fact worthy of note, as it favoursthe idea that, in vegetable, as well as animal creation, a progresshas been observed, in conformity with advancing conditions. It isalso curious to find a missing link of so much importance in a genusof plants which has long ceased to have a living place upon earth. 

The other leading plants of the coal era are without representativeson the present surface, and their characters are in general lessclearly ascertained. Amongst the most remarkable are--thesigillaria, of which large stems are very abundant, shewing that theinterior has been soft, and the exterior fluted with separate leavesinserted in vertical rows along the flutings--and the stigmaria, plants apparently calculated to flourish in marshes or pools, havinga short, thick, fleshy stem, with a dome-shaped top, from whichsprung branches of from twenty to thirty feet long. Amongstmonocotyledons were some palms, (flabellaria and naeggerathia, )besides a few not distinctly assignable to any class. 

The dicotyledons of the coal are comparatively few, though on thepresent surface they are the most numerous sub-class. Besides someof doubtful affinity, (annularia, asterophyllites, &c. , ) there were afew of the pine family, which seem to have been the highest class oftrees of this era, and are only as yet found in isolated cases, andin sandstone beds. The first discovered lay in the Craigleithquarry, near Edinburgh, and consisted of a stem about two feet thick, and forty-seven feet in length. Others have since been found, bothin the same situation, and at Newcastle. Leaves and fruit beingwanting, an ingenious mode of detecting the nature of these trees washit upon by Mr. Witham of Lartington. Taking thin polished crossslices of the stem, and subjecting them to the microscope, hedetected the structure of the wood to be that of a cone-bearing tree, by the presence of certain "reticulations" which distinguish thatfamily, in addition to the usual radiating and concentric lines. That particular tree was concluded to be an araucaria, a species nowfound in Norfolk Island, in the South Sea, and in a few other remotesituations. The coniferae of this era form the dawn ofdicotyledenous trees, of which they may be said to be the simplesttype, and to which, it has already been noticed, the lepidodendra area link from the monocotyledons. The concentric rings of theCraigleith and other coniferae of this era have been mentioned. Itis interesting to find in these a record of the changing seasons ofthose early ages, when as yet there were no human beings to observetime or tide. They are clearly traced; but it is observed that theyare more slightly marked than is the case with their family at thepresent day, as if the changes of temperature had been within anarrower range. 

Such was the vegetation of the carbonigenous era, composed of formsat the bottom of the botanical scale, flowerless, fruitless, butluxuriant and abundant beyond what the most favoured spots on earthcan now shew. The rigidity of the leaves of its plants, and theabsence of fleshy fruits and farinaceous seeds, unfitted it to affordnutriment to animals; and, monotonous in its forms, and destitute ofbrilliant colouring, its sward probably unenlivened by any of thesmaller flowering herbs, its shades uncheered by the hum of insects, or the music of birds, it must have been but a sombre scene to ahuman visitant. But neither man nor any other animals were then inexistence to look for such uses or such beauties in this vegetation. It was serving other and equally important ends, clearing (probably)the atmosphere of matter noxious to animal life, and storing upmineral masses which were in long subsequent ages to prove of thegreatest service to the human race, even to the extent of favouringthe progress of its civilization. 

The animal remains of this era are not numerous, in comparison withthose which go before, or those which come after. The mountainlimestone, indeed, deposited at the commencement of it, aboundsunusually in polypiaria and crinoidea; but when we ascend to thecoal-beds themselves, the case is altered, and these marine remainsaltogether disappear. We have then only a limited variety ofconchifers and shell mollusks, with fragments of a few species offishes, and these are rarely or never found in the coal seams, but inthe shales alternating with them. Some of the fishes are of asauroid character, that is, partake of the nature of the lizard, agenus of the reptilia, a land class of animals, so that we may besaid here to have the first approach to a kind of animals calculatedto breathe the atmosphere. Such is the Megalichthys Hibbertii, foundby Dr. Hibbert Ware, in a limestone bed of fresh-water origin, underneath the coal at Burdiehouse, near Edinburgh. Others of thesame kind have been found in the coal measures in Yorkshire, and inthe low coal shales at Manchester. This is no more than might beexpected, as collections of fresh water now existed, and it ispresumable that they would be peopled. The chief other fishes of thecoal era are named palaeothrissum, palaeoniscus, diperdus. 

Coal strata are nearly confined to the group termed the carboniferousformation. Thin beds are not unknown afterwards, but they occur onlyas a rare exception. It is therefore thought that the most importantof the conditions which allowed of so abundant a terrestrialvegetation, had ceased about the time when this formation was closed. The high temperature was not one of the conditions which terminated, for there are evidences of it afterwards; but probably thesuperabundance of carbonic acid gas supposed to have existed duringthis era was expended before its close. There can be little doubtthat the infusion of a large dose of this gas into the atmosphere atthe present day would be attended by precisely the same circumstancesas in the time of the carboniferous formation. Land animal lifewould not have a place on earth; vegetation would be enormous; andcoal strata would be formed from the vast accumulations of woodymatter, which would gather in every sea, near the mouths of greatrivers. On the exhaustion of the superabundance of carbonic acidgas, the coal formation would cease, and the earth might again becomea suitable theatre of being for land animals. 

The termination of the carboniferous formation is marked by symptomsof volcanic violence, which some geologists have considered to denotethe close of one system of things and the beginning of another. Coalbeds generally lie in basins, as if following the curve of the bottomof seas. But there is no such basin which is not broken up intopieces, some of which have been tossed up on edge, others allowed tosink, causing the ends of strata to be in some instances many yards, and in a few several hundred feet, removed from the correspondingends of neighbouring fragments. These are held to be results ofvolcanic movements below, the operation of which is further seen innumerous upbursts and intrusions of volcanic rock (trap). That thesedisturbances took place about the close of the formation, and notlater, is shewn in the fact of the next higher group of strata beingcomparatively undisturbed. Other symptoms of this time of violenceare seen in the beds of conglomerate which occur amongst the firststrata above the coal. These, as usual, consist of fragments of theelder rocks, more or less worn from being tumbled about in agitatedwater, and laid down in a mud paste, afterwards hardened. Volcanicdisturbances break up the rocks; the pieces are worn in seas; and adeposit of conglomerate is the consequence. Of porphyry, there aresome such pieces in the conglomerate of Devonshire, three or fourtons in weight. It is to be admitted for strict truth that, in someparts of Europe, the carboniferous formation is followed by superiordeposits, without the appearance of such disturbances between theirrespective periods; but apparently this case belongs to the class ofexceptions already noticed. {93} That disturbance was general, issupported by the further and important fact of the destruction ofmany forms of organic being previously flourishing, particularly ofthe vegetable kingdom. 

ERA OF THE NEW RED SANDSTONE. TERRESTRIAL ZOOLOGY COMMENCES WITHREPTILES. FIRST TRACES OF BIRDS. 

The next volume of the rock series refers to an era distinguished byan event of no less importance than the commencement of land animals. The New Red Sandstone System is subdivided into groups, some of whichare wanting in some places; they are pretty fully developed in thenorth of England, in the following ascending order:- 1. Lower redsandstone; 2. Magnesian limestone; 3. Red and white sandstones andconglomerate; 4. Variegated marls. Between the third and fourththere is, in Germany, another group, called the Muschelkalk, a wordexpressing a limestone full of shells. 

The first group, containing the conglomerates already adverted to, seems to have been produced during the time of disturbance whichoccurred so generally after the carbonigenous era. This new era isdistinguished by a paucity of organic remains, as might partly beexpected from the appearances of disturbance, and the red tint of therocks, the latter being communicated by a solution of oxide of iron, a substance unfavourable to animal life. 

The second group is a limestone with an infusion of magnesia. It isdeveloped less generally than some others, but occurs conspicuouslyin England and Germany. Its place, above the red sandstone, shewsthe recurrence of circumstances favourable to animal life, and weaccordingly find in it not only zoophytes, conchifera, and a fewtribes of fish, but some faint traces of land plants, and a new andstartling appearance--a reptile of saurian (lizard) character, analogous to the now existing family called monitors. Remains ofthis creature are found in cupriferous (copper-bearing) slateconnected with the mountain limestone, at Mansfield and Glucksbrunn, in Germany, which may be taken as evidence that dry land existed inthat age near those places. The magnesia limestone is alsoremarkable as the last rock in which appears the leptaena, orproducta, a conchifer of numerous species which makes a conspicuousappearance in all previous seas. It is likewise to be observed, thatthe fishes of this age, to the genera of which the namespalaeoniscus, catopterus, platysomus, &c. , have been applied, vanish, and henceforth appear no more. 

The third group, chiefly sandstones, variously coloured according tothe amount and nature of the metallic oxide infused into them, shewsa recurrence of agitation, and a consequent diminution of the amountof animal life. In the upper part, however, of this group, there areabundant symptoms of a revival of proper conditions for such life. There are marl beds, the origin of which substance in decomposedshells is obvious; and in Germany, though not in England, here occursthe muschelkalk, containing numerous organic remains, (generallydifferent from those of the magnesian limestone, ) and noted for thespecimens of land animals, which it is the first to present in anyconsiderable abundance to our notice. 

These animals are of the vertebrate sub-kingdom, but of its lowestclass next after fishes, --namely, reptiles, --a portion of theterrestrial tribes whose imperfect respiratory system perhaps fittedthem for enduring an atmosphere not yet quite suitable for birds ormammifers. {97} The specimens found in the muschelkalk are allied tothe crocodile and lizard tribes of the present day, but in the latterinstance are upon a scale of magnitude as much superior to presentforms as the lepidodendron of the coal era was superior to the dwarfclub-mosses of our time. These saurians also combine somepeculiarities of structure of a most extraordinary character. 

The animal to which the name ichthyosaurus has been given, was aslong as a young whale, and it was fitted for living in the water, though breathing the atmosphere. It had the vertebral column andgeneral bodily form of a fish, but to that were added the head andbreast-bone of a lizard, and the paddles of the whale tribes. Thebeak, moreover, was that of a porpoise, and the teeth were those of acrocodile. It must have been a most destructive creature to the fishof those early seas. 

The plesiosaurus was of similar bulk, with a turtle-like body andpaddles, shewing that the sea was its element, but with a longserpent-like neck, terminating in a saurian head, calculated to reachprey at a considerable distance. These two animals, of which manyvarieties have been discovered, constituting distinct species, aresupposed to have lived in the shallow borders of the seas of this andsubsequent formations, devouring immense quantities of the finnytribes. It was at first thought that no creatures approaching themin character now inhabit the earth; but latterly Mr. Darwin hasdiscovered, in the reptile-peopled Galapagos Islands, in the SouthSea, a marine saurian from three to four feet long. 

The megalosaurus was an enormous lizard--a land creature, alsocarnivorous. The pterodactyle was another lizard, but furnished withwings to pursue its prey in the air, and varying in size between acormorant and a snipe. Crocodiles abounded, and some of these wereherbivorous. Such was the iguanodon, a creature of the character ofthe iguana of the Ganges, but reaching a hundred feet in length, ortwenty times that of its modern representative. 

There were also numerous tortoises, some of them reaching a greatsize; and Professor Owen has found in Warwickshire some remains of ananimal of the batrachian order, {99} to which, from the peculiar formof the teeth, he has given the name of labyrinthidon. Thus, three ofCuvier's four orders of reptilia (sauria, chelonia, and batrachia)are represented in this formation, the serpent order (ophidia) beingalone wanting. 

The variegated marl beds which constitute the uppermost group of theformation, present two additional genera of huge saurians, --thephytosaurus and mastodonsaurus. 

It is in the upper beds of the red sandstone that beds of salt firstoccur. These are sometimes of such thickness, that the mine fromwhich the material has been excavated looks like a lofty church. Wesee in the present world no circumstances calculated to produce theformation of a bed of rock salt; yet it is not difficult tounderstand how such strata were formed in an age marked by ultra-tropical heat and frequent volcanic disturbances. An estuary, cutoff by an upthrow of trap, or a change of level, and left to dry upunder the heat of the sun, would quickly become the bed of a denselayer of rock salt. A second shift of level, or some other volcanicdisturbance, connecting it again with the sea, would expose thisstratum to being covered over with a layer of sand or mud, destinedin time to form the next stratum of rock above it. 

The plants of this era are few and unobtrusive. Equiseta, calamites, ferns, Voltzia, and a few of the other families found so abundantlyin the preceding formation, here present themselves, but indiminished size and quantity. 

This seems to be the proper place to advert to certain memorials of apeculiar and unexpected character respecting these early ages in thesandstones. So low as the bottom of the carboniferous system, slabsare found marked over a great extent of surface with that peculiarcorrugation or wrinkling which the receding tide leaves upon a sandybeach when the sea is but slightly agitated; and not only are theseripple-marks, as they are called, found on the surfaces, but casts ofthem are found on the under sides of slabs lying above. Thephenomena suggests the time when the sand ultimately formed intothese stone slabs, was part of the beach of a sea of thecarbonigenous era; when, left wavy by one tide, it was covered overwith a thin layer of fresh sand by the next, and so on, precisely assuch circumstances might be expected to take place at the presentday. Sandstone surfaces, ripple-marked, are found throughout thesubsequent formations: in those of the new red, at more than oneplace in England, they further bear impressions of rain-drops whichhave fallen upon them--the rain, of course, of the inconceivablyremote age in which the sandstones were formed. In the Greensillsandstone, near Shrewsbury, it has even been possible to tell fromwhat direction the shower came which impressed the sandy surface, therims of the marks being somewhat raised on one side, exactly as mightbe expected from a slanting shower falling at this day upon one ofour beaches. These facts have the same sort of interest as theseason rings of the Craigleith conifers, as speaking of a paritybetween some of the familiar processes of nature in those early agesand our own. 

In the new red sandstone, impressions still more important in theinferences to which they tend, have been observed, --namely, thefootmarks of various animals. In a quarry of this formation, atCorncockle Muir, in Dumfriesshire, where the slabs incline at anangle of thirty-eight degrees, the vestiges of an animal supposed tohave been a tortoise are distinctly traced up and down the slope, asif the creature had had occasion to pass backwards and forwards inthat direction only, possibly in its daily visits to the sea. Someslabs similarly impressed, in the Stourton quarries in Cheshire, arefurther marked with a shower of rain which we know must have fallenAFTERWARDS, for its little hollows are impressed in the footmarksalso, though more slightly than on the rest of the surface, thecomparative hardness of a trodden place having apparently preventedso deep an impression being made. At Hessberg, in Saxony, thevestiges of four distinct animals have been traced, one of them aweb-footed animal of small size, considered as a congener of thecrocodile; another, whose footsteps having a resemblance to animpression of a swelled human hand, has caused it to be named thecheirotherium. The footsteps of the cheirotherium have been foundalso in the Stourton quarries above mentioned. Professor Owen, whostands at the head of comparative anatomy in the present day, hasexpressed his belief that this last animal was the same batrachian ofwhich he has found fragments in the new red sandstone ofWarwickshire. At Runcorn, near Manchester, and elsewhere, have beendiscovered the tracks of an animal which Mr. Owen calls therynchosaurus, uniting with the body of a reptile the beak and feet ofa bird, and which clearly had been a LINK between these two classes. 

If geologists shall ultimately give their approbation to theinferences made from a recent discovery in America, we shall have theaddition of perfect birds, though probably of a low type, to theanimal forms of this era. It is stated to be in quarries of thisrock, in the valley of Connecticut, that footprints have been found, apparently produced by birds of the order grallae, or waders. "Thefootsteps appear in regular succession on the continuous track of ananimal, in the act of walking or running, with the right and leftfoot always in their relative places. The distance of the intervalsbetween each footstep on the same track is occasionally varied, butto no greater amount than may be explained by the bird having alteredits pace. Many tracks of different individuals and different speciesare often found crossing each other, and crowded, like impressions offeet upon the shores of a muddy stream, where ducks and geeseresort. " {103} Some of these prints indicate small animals, butothers denote birds of what would now be an unusually large size. One animal, having a foot fifteen inches in length, (one-half morethan that of the ostrich, ) and a stride of from four to six feet, hasbeen appropriately entitled, ornithichnites giganteus. 

ERA OF THE OOLITE. COMMENCEMENT OF MAMMALIA. 

The chronicles of this period consist of a series of beds, mostlycalcareous, taking their general name (Oolite System) from aconspicuous member of them--the oolite--a limestone composed of anaggregation of small round grains or spherules, and so called fromits fancied resemblance to a cluster of eggs, or the roe of a fish. This texture of stone is novel and striking. It is supposed to be ofchemical origin, each spherule being an aggregation of particlesround a central nucleus. The oolite system is largely developed inEngland, France, Westphalia, and Northern Italy; it appears inNorthern India and Africa, and patches of it exist in Scotland, andin the vale of the Mississippi. It may of course be yet discoveredin many other parts of the world. 

The series, as shewn in the neighbourhood of Bath, is (beginning withthe lowest) as follows:- 1. Lias, a set of strata variously composedof limestone, clay, marl, and shale, clay being predominant; 2. Lower oolitic formation, including, besides the great oolite bed ofcentral England, fullers' earth beds, forest marble, and cornbrash;3. Middle oolitic formation, composed of two sub-groups, the Oxfordclay and coral rag, the latter being a mere layer of the works of thecoral polype; 4. Upper oolitic formation, including what are calledKimmeridge clay and Portland oolite. In Yorkshire there is anadditional group above the lias, and in Sutherlandshire there isanother group above that again. In the wealds (moorlands) of Kentand Sussex, there is, in like manner, above the fourth of the Bathseries, another additional group, to which the name of the Wealdenhas been given, from its situation, and which, composed of sandstonesand clays, is subdivided into Purbeck beds, Hastings sand, and Wealdclay. 

There are no particular appearances of disturbance between the closeof the new red sandstone and the beginning of the oolite system, asfar as has been observed in England. Yet there is a great change inthe materials of the rocks of the two formations, shewing that whilethe bottoms of the seas of the one period had been chieflyarenaceous, those of the other were chiefly clayey and limy. Andthere is an equal difference between the two periods in respect ofboth botany and zoology. While the new red sandstone shewscomparatively scanty traces of organic creation, those in the ooliteare extremely abundant, particularly in the department of animals, and more particularly still of sea mollusca, which, it has beenobserved, are always the more conspicuous in proportion to thepredominance of calcareous rocks. It is also remarkable that theanimals of the oolitic system are entirely different in species fromthose of the preceding age, and that these species cease before thenext. In this system we likewise find that uniformity over greatspace which has been remarked of the Faunas of earlier formations. "In the equivalent deposits in the Himalaya Mountains, at FernandoPo, in the region north of the Cape of Good Hope, and in the Run ofCutch, and other parts of Hindostan, fossils have been discovered, which, as far as English naturalists who have seen them candetermine, are undistinguishable from certain oolite and lias fossilsof Europe. " {108a}

The dry land of this age presented cycadeae, "a beautiful class ofplants between the palms and conifers, having a tall, straight trunk, terminating in a magnificent crown of foliage. " {108b} There weretree ferns, but in smaller proportion than in former ages; alsoequisetaceae, lilia, and conifers. The vegetation was generallyanalogous to that of the Cape of Good Hope and Australia, which seemsto argue a climate (we must remember, a universal climate) betweenthe tropical and temperate. It was, however, sufficiently luxuriantin some instances to produce thin seams of coal, for such are foundin the oolite formation of both Yorkshire and Sutherland. The sea, as for ages before, contained algae, of which, however, only a fewspecies have been preserved to our day. The lower classes of theinhabitants of the ocean were unprecedentedly abundant. Thepolypiaria were in such abundance as to form whole strata ofthemselves. The crinoidea and echinites were also extremelynumerous. Shell mollusks, in hundreds of new species, occupied thebottoms of the seas of those ages, while of the swimming shell-fish, ammonites and belemnites, there were also many scores of varieties. The belemnite here calls for some particular notice. It commences inthe oolite, and terminates in the next formation. It is anelongated, conical shell, terminating in a point, and having, at thelarger end, a cavity for the residence of the animal, with a seriesof air-chambers below. The animal, placed in the upper cavity, couldraise or depress itself in the water at pleasure by a pneumaticoperation upon the entral air tube pervading its shell. Itstentacula, sent abroad over the summit of the shell, searched the seafor prey. The creature had an ink-bag, with which it could muddlethe water around it, to protect itself from more powerful animals, and, strange to say, this has been found so well preserved that anartist has used it in one instance as a paint, wherewith to delineatethe belemnite itself. 

The crustacea discovered in this formation are less numerous. Thereare many fishes, some of which (acrodus, psammodus, &c. , ) arepresumed from remains of their palatal bones, to have been of thegigantic cartilaginous class, now represented by such as thecestraceon. It has been considered by Professor Owen as worthy ofnotice, that, the cestraceon being an inhabitant of the Australianseas, we have, in both the botany and ichthyology of this period, ananalogy to that continent. The pycnodontes, (thick-toothed, ) andlepidoides, (having thick scales, ) are other families described by M. Agassiz as extensively prevalent. In the shallow waters of theoolitic formation, the ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, and other hugesaurian carnivora of the preceding age, plied, in increased numbers, their destructive vocation. {110} To them were added new genera, thecetiosaurus, mososaurus, and some others, all of similar characterand habits. 

Land reptiles abounded, including species of the pterodactyle of thepreceding age--tortoises, trionyces, crocodilians--and thepliosaurus, a creature which appears to have formed a link betweenthe plesiosaurus and the crocodile. We know of at least six speciesof the flying saurian, the pterodactyle, in this formation. 

Now, for the first time, we find remains of insects, an order ofanimals not well calculated for fossil preservation, and which aretherefore amongst the rarest of the animal tribes found in rocks, though they are the most numerous of all living families. A singlelibellula (dragon-fly) was found in the Stonesfield slate, a memberof the lower oolitic group quarried near Oxford; and this was forseveral years the only specimen known to exist so early; but now manyspecies have been found in a corresponding rock at Solenhofen, inGermany. It is remarkable that the remains of insects are found mostplentifully near the remains of pterodactyles, to which undoubtedlythey served as prey. 

The first glimpse of the highest class of the vertebrate sub-kingdom--mammalia--is obtained from the Stonesfield slate, where there hasbeen found the jaw-bone of a quadruped evidently insectivorous, andinferred, from peculiarities in the structure of that small fragment, to have belonged to the marsupial family, (pouched animals). It maybe observed, although no specimens of so high a class of animals asmammalia are found earlier, such may nevertheless have existed: thedefect may be in our not having found them; but, other thingsconsidered, the probability is that heretofore there were nomammifers. It is an interesting circumstance that the firstmammifers found should have belonged to the marsupialia, when theplace of that order in the scale of creation is considered. In theimperfect structure of their brain, deficient in the organsconnecting the two hemispheres--and in the mode of gestation, whichis only in small part uterine--this family is clearly a link betweenthe oviparous vertebrata (birds, reptiles, and fishes) and the highermammifers. This is further established by their possessing a faintdevelopment of two canals passing from near the anus to the externalsurface of the viscera, which are fully possessed in reptiles andfishes, for the purpose of supplying aerated water to the bloodcirculating in particular vessels, but which are unneeded bymammifers. Such rudiments of organs in certain species which do notrequire them in any degree, are common in both the animal andvegetable kingdoms, but are always most conspicuous in familiesapproaching in character to those classes to which the full organsare proper. This subject will be more particularly adverted to inthe sequel. 

The highest part of the oolitic formation presents some phenomena ofan unusual and interesting character, which demand special notice. Immediately above the upper oolitic group in Buckinghamshire, in thevicinity of Weymouth, and other situations, there is a thin stratum, usually called by workmen the DIRT-BED, which appears, fromincontestable evidence, to have been a soil, formed, like soils ofthe present day, in the course of time, upon a surface which hadpreviously been the bottom of the sea. The dirt-bed contains exuviaeof tropical trees, accumulated through time, as the forest shed itshonours on the spot where it grew, and became itself decayed. NearWeymouth there is a piece of this stratum, in which stumps of treesremain rooted, mostly erect or slightly inclined, and from one tothree feet high; while trunks of the same forest, also silicified, lie imbedded on the surface of the soil in which they grew. 

Above this bed lie those which have been called the Wealden, fromtheir full development in the Weald of Sussex; and these asincontestably argue that the dry land forming the dirt-bed had nextafterwards become the area of brackish estuaries, or lakes partiallyconnected with the sea; for the Wealden strata contain exuviae offresh-water tribes, besides those of the great saurians and chelonia. The area of this estuary comprehends the whole south-east province ofEngland. A geologist thus confidently narrates the subsequentevents: "Much calcareous matter was first deposited [in thisestuary], and in it were entombed myriads of shells, apparentlyanalogous to those of the vivipara. Then came a thick envelope ofsand, sometimes interstratified with mud; and, finally, muddy matterprevailed. The solid surface beneath the waters would appear to havesuffered a long continued and gradual depression, which was asgradually filled, or nearly so, with transported matter; in the end, however, after a depression of several hundred feet, the sea againentered upon the area, not suddenly or violently--for the Wealdenrocks pass gradually into the superincumbent cretaceous series--butso quietly, that the mud containing the remains of terrestrial andfresh-water creatures was tranquilly covered up by sands replete withmarine exuviae. " {114} A subsequent depression of the same area, tothe depth of at least three hundred fathoms, is believed to havetaken place, to admit of the deposition of the cretaceous beds lyingabove. 

From the scattered way in which remains of the larger terrestrialanimals occur in the Wealden, and the intermixture of pebbles of thespecial appearance of those worn in rivers, it is also inferred thatthe estuary which once covered the south-east part of England was themouth of a river of that far-descending class of which theMississippi and Amazon are examples. What part of the earth'ssurface presented the dry land through which that and other similarrivers flowed, no one can tell for certain. It has been surmised, that the particular one here spoken of may have flowed from a pointnot nearer than the site of the present Newfoundland. ProfessorPhilips has suggested, from the analogy of the mineral composition, that anciently elevated coal strata may have composed the dry landfrom which the sandy matters of these strata were washed. Such adeposit as the Wealden almost necessarily implies a local, not ageneral condition; yet it has been thought that similar strata andremains exist in the Pays de Bray, near Beauvais. This leads to thesupposition that there may have been, in that age, a series of river-receiving estuaries along the border of some such great ocean as theAtlantic, of which that of modern Sussex is only an example. 

ERA OF THE CRETACEOUS FORMATION. 

The record of this period consists of a series of strata, in whichchalk beds make a conspicuous appearance, and which is thereforecalled the cretaceous system or formation. In England, a longstripe, extending from Yorkshire to Kent, presents the cretaceousbeds upon the surface, generally lying conformably upon the oolite, and in many instances rising into bold escarpments towards the west. The celebrated cliffs of Dover are of this formation. It extendsinto northern France, and thence north-westward into Germany, whenceit is traced into Scandinavia and Russia. The same system exists inNorth America, and probably in other parts of the earth not yetgeologically investigated. Being a marine deposit, it establishesthat seas existed at the time of its formation on the tracts occupiedby it, while some of its organic remains prove that, in theneighbourhood of those seas, there were tracts of dry land. 

The cretaceous formation in England presents beds chiefly sandy inthe lowest part, chiefly clayey in the middle, and chiefly of chalkin the upper part, the chalk beds being never absent, which some ofthe lower are in several places. In the vale of the Mississippi, again, the true chalk is wholly, or all but wholly absent. In thesouth of England, the lower beds are, (reckoning from the lowestupwards), 1. Shankland or greensand, "a triple alternation of sandsand sandstones with clay;" 2. Galt, "a stiff blue or black clay, abounding in shells, which frequently possess a pearly lustre;" 3. Hard chalk; 4. Chalk with flints; these two last being generallywhite, but in some districts red, and in others yellow. The wholeare, in England, about 1200 feet thick, shewing the considerabledepths of the ocean in which the deposits were made. 

Chalk is a carbonate of lime, and the manner of its production insuch vast quantities was long a subject of speculation amonggeologists. Some light seemed to be thrown upon the subject a fewyears ago, when it was observed, that the detritus of coral reefs inthe present tropical seas gave a powder, undistinguishable, whendried, from ordinary chalk. It then appeared likely that the chalkbeds were the detritus of the corals which were in the oceans of thatera. Mr. Darwin, who made some curious inquiries on this point, further suggested, that the matter might have intermediately passedthrough the bodies of worms and fish, such as feed on the corals ofthe present day, and in whose stomachs he has found impure chalk. This, however, cannot be a full explanation of the production ofchalk, if we admit some more recent discoveries of ProfessorEhrenberg. That master of microscopic investigation announces, thatchalk is composed partly of "inorganic particles of irregularelliptical structure and granular slaty disposition, " and partly ofshells of inconceivable minuteness, "varying from the one-twelfth tothe two hundred and eighty-eighth part of a line"--a cubic inch ofthe substance containing above ten millions of them! The chalk ofthe north of Europe contains, he says, a larger proportion of theinorganic matter; that of the south, a larger proportion of theorganic matter, being in some instances almost entirely composed ofit. He has been able to classify many of these creatures, some ofthem being allied to the nautili, nummuli, cyprides, &c. The shellsof some are calcareous, of others siliceous. M. Ehrenberg haslikewise detected microscopic sea-plants in the chalk. 

The distinctive feature of the uppermost chalk beds in England, isthe presence of flint nodules. These are generally disposed inlayers parallel to each other. It was readily presumed by geologiststhat these masses were formed by a chemical aggregation of particlesof silica, originally held in solution in the mass of the chalk. Butwhence the silica in a substance so different from it? Ehrenbergsuggests that it is composed of the siliceous coverings of a portionof the microscopic creatures, whose shells he has in other instancesdetected in their original condition. It is remarkable that thechalk WITH flint abounds in the north of Europe; that WITHOUT flintsin the south; while in the northern chalk siliceous animalcules arewanting, and in the southern present in great quantities. Theconclusion seems but natural, that in the one case the siliceousexuviae have been left in their original form; in the other dissolvedchemically, and aggregated on the common principle of chemicalaffinity into nodules of flint, probably concentrating, in everyinstance, upon a piece of decaying organic matter, as has been thecase with the nodules of ironstone in the earlier rocks, and thespherules of the oolite. 

What is more remarkable, M. Ehrenberg has ascertained that at leastfifty-seven species of the microscopic animals of the chalk, beinginfusoria and calcareous-shelled polythalamia, are still found livingin various parts of the earth. These species are the most abundantin the rock. Singly they are the most unimportant of all animals, but in the mass, forming as they do such enormous strata over a largepart of the earth's surface, they have an importance greatlyexceeding that of the largest and noblest of the beasts of the field. Moreover, these species have a peculiar interest, as the onlyspecific types of that early age which are reproduced in the presentday. Species of sea mollusks, of reptiles, and of mammifers, havebeen changed again and again, since the cretaceous era; and it is nottill a long subsequent age that we find the first traces of any otherof even the humblest species which now exist; but here have thesehumble infusoria and polythalamia kept their place on earth throughall its revolutions since that time, --are we to say, safe in theirvery humility, which might adapt them to a greater variety ofcircumstances than most other animals, or are we required to look forsome other explanation of the phenomenon?

All the ordinary and more observable orders of the inhabitants of thesea, except the cetacea, have been found in the cretaceous formation--zoophytes, radiaria, mollusks, crustacea, (in great variety ofspecies, ) and fishes in smaller variety. In Europe, remains of themarine saurians have been found; they may be presumed to have becomeextinct in that part of the globe before this time, their place anddestructive office being perhaps supplied by cartilaginous fishes, ofwhich the teeth are found in great quantities. In America, however, remains of the plesiosaurus have been discovered in this part of thestratified series. The reptiles, too, so numerous in the twopreceding periods, appear to have now much diminished in numbers. One, entitled the mosaesaurus, seems to have held an intermediateplace between the monitor and iguana, and to have been about twenty-five feet long, with a tail calculated to assist it powerfully inswimming. Crocodiles and turtles existed, and amongst the fisheswere some of a saurian character. 

Fuci abounded in the seas of this era. Confervae are found enclosedin flints. Of terrestrial vegetation, as of terrestrial animals, thespecimens in the European area are comparatively rare, rendering itprobable that there was no dry land near. The remains are chiefly offerns, conifers, and cycadeae, but in the two former cases we haveonly cones and leaves. There have been discovered many pieces ofwood, containing holes drilled by the teredo, and thus shewing thatthey had been long drifted about in the ocean before being entombedat the bottom. 

The series in America corresponding to this, entitled the ferruginoussand formation, presents fossils generally identical with those ofEurope, not excepting the fragments of drilled wood; shewing that, inthis, as in earlier ages, there was a parity of conditions for animallife over a vast tract of the earth's surface. To European reptiles, the American formation adds a gigantic one, styled the saurodon, fromthe lizard-like character of its teeth. 

We have seen that footsteps of birds are considered to have beendiscovered in America, in the new red sandstone. Some similarisolated phenomena occur in the subsequent formations. Mr. Mantelldiscovered some bones of birds, apparently waders, in the Wealden. The immediate connexion of that set of birds with land, may account, of course, for their containing a terrestrial organic relic, whichthe marine beds above and below did not possess. In the slate ofGlarus, in Switzerland, corresponding to the English galt, in thechalk formation, the remains of a bird have been found. From a chalkbed near Maidstone, have likewise been extracted some remains of abird, supposed to have been of the long-winged swimmer family, andequal in size to the albatross. These, it must be owned, are lessstrong traces of the birds than we possess of the reptiles and othertribes; but it must be remembered, that the evidence of fossils, asto the absence of any class of animals from a certain period of theearth's history, can never be considered as more than negative. Animals, of which we find no remains in a particular formation, may, nevertheless, have lived at the time, and it may have only been fromunfavourable circumstances that their remains have not been preservedfor our inspection. The single circumstance of their being littleliable to be carried down into seas, might be the cause of their non-appearance in our quarries. There is at the same time a limit touncertainty on this point. We see, from what remains have been foundin the whole series, a clear progress throughout, from humble tosuperior types of being. Hence we derive a light as to what animalsmay have existed at particular times, which is in some measureindependent of the specialties of fossilology. The birds are belowthe mammalia in the animal scale; and therefore they may be supposedto have existed about the time of the new red sandstone and oolite, although we find but slight traces of them in those formations, and, it may be said, till a considerably later period. 

ERA OF THE TERTIARY FORMATION. --MAMMALIA ABUNDANT. 

The chalk-beds are the highest which extend over a considerablespace; but in hollows of these beds, comparatively limited in extent, there have been formed series of strata--clays, limestones, marls, alternating--to which the name of the Tertiary Formation has beenapplied. London and Paris alike rest on basins of this formation, and another such basin extends from near Winchester, underSouthampton, and re-appears in the Isle of Wight. There is a patch, or fragment of the formation in one of the Hebrides. A stripe of itextends along the east coast of North America, from Massachusetts toFlorida. It is also found in Sicily and Italy, insensibly blendedwith formations still in progress. Though comparatively a localformation, it is not of the less importance as a record of thecondition of the earth during a certain period. As in otherformations, it is marked, in the most distant localities, by identityof organic remains. 

The hollows filled by the tertiary formation must be considered asthe beds of estuaries left at the conclusion of the cretaceousperiod. We have seen that an estuary, either by the drifting up ofits mouth, or a change of level in that quarter, may be supposed tohave become an inland sheet of water, and that, by another change, ofthe reverse kind, it may be supposed to have become an estuary again. Such changes the Paris basin appears to have undergone oftener thanonce, for, first, we have there a fresh-water formation of clay andlimestone beds; then, a marine-limestone formation; next, a secondfresh water formation, in which the material of the celebratedplaster of Paris (gypsum) is included; then, a second marineformation of sandy and limy beds; and finally, a third series offresh-water strata. Such alternations occur in other examples of thetertiary formation likewise. 

The tertiary beds present all but an entirely new set of animals, andas we ascend in the series, we find more and more of these identicalwith species still existing upon earth, as if we had now reached thedawn of the present state of the zoology of our planet. By the studyof the shells alone, Mr. Lyell has been enabled to divide the wholeterm into four sub-periods, to which he has given names withreference to the proportions which they respectively present ofsurviving species--first, the eocene, (from [Greek], the dawn;[Greek], recent;) second, the miocene, ([Greek], less;) third, olderpliocene, ([Greek], more;) fourth, newer pliocene. 

EOCENE SUB-PERIOD. 

The eocene period presents, in three continental groups, 1238 speciesof shells, of which forty-two, or 3. 5 per cent, yet flourish. Someof these are remarkable enough; but they all sink into insignificancebeside the mammalian remains which the lower eocene deposits of theParis basin present to us, shewing that the land had now become thetheatre of an extensive creation of the highest class of animals. Cuvier ascertained about fifty species of these, all of them longsince extinct. A considerable number are pachydermata, {127} of acharacter approximating to the South American tapir: the names, palaeotherium, anthracotherium, anoplotherium, lophiodon, &c. , havebeen applied to them with a consideration of more or less conspicuouspeculiarities; but a description of the first may give some generalidea of the whole. It was about the size of a horse, but more squatand clumsy, and with a heavier head, and a lower jaw shorter than theupper; the feet, also, instead of hooves, presented three large toes, rounded, and unprovided with claws. These animals were allherbivorous. Amongst an immense number of others are found many newreptiles, some of them adapted for fresh water; species of birdsallied to the sea-lark, curlew, quail, buzzard, owl, and pelican;species allied to the dormouse and squirrel; also the opossum andracoon; and species allied to the genette, fox, and wolf. 

MIOCENE SUB-PERIOD. 

In the miocene sub-period, the shells give eighteen per cent. Ofexisting species, shewing a considerable advance from the precedingera, with respect to the inhabitants of the sea. The advance in theland animals is less marked, but yet considerable. The predominatingforms are still pachydermatous, and the tapir type continues to beconspicuous. One animal of this kind, called the dinotherium, issupposed to have been not less than eighteen feet long; it had amole-like form of the shoulder-blade, conferring the power of diggingfor food, and a couple of tusks turning down from the lower jaw, bywhich it could have attached itself, like the walrus, to a shore orbank, while its body floated in the water. Dr. Buckland considersthis and some similar miocene animals, as adapted for a semi-aquaticlife, in a region where lakes abounded. Besides the tapirs, we havein this era animals allied to the glutton, the bear, the dog, thehorse, the hog, and lastly, several felinae, (creatures of which thelion is the type;) all of which are new forms, as far as we know. There was also an abundance of marine mammalia, seals, dolphins, lamantins, walruses, and whales, none of which had previouslyappeared. 

PLIOCENE SUB-PERIOD. 

The shells of the older pliocene give from thirty-five to fifty;those of the newer, from ninety to ninety-five per cent. Of existingspecies. The pachydermata of the preceding era now disappear, andare replaced by others belonging to still existing families--elephant, hippopotamus, rhinoceros--though now extinct as species. Some of these are startling, from their enormous magnitude. Thegreat mastodon, whose remains are found in abundance in America, wasa species of elephant, judged, from peculiarities of its teeth, tohave lived on aquatic plants, and reaching the height of twelve feet. The mammoth was another elephant, but supposed to have survived tillcomparatively recent times, as a specimen, in all respects entire, was found in 1801, preserved in ice, in Siberia. We are moresurprised by finding such gigantic proportions in an animal calledthe megatherium, which ranks in an order now assuming much humblerforms--the edentata--to which the sloth, ant-eater, and armadillobelong. The megatherium had a skeleton of enormous solidity, with anarmour-clad body, and five toes, terminating in huge claws, wherewithto grasp the branches, from which, like its existing congener, thesloth, it derived its food. The megalonyx was a similar animal, onlysomewhat less than the preceding. Finally, the pliocene gives us forthe first time, oxen, deer, camels, and other specimens of theruminantia. 

Such is an outline of the fauna of the tertiary era, as ascertainedby the illustrious naturalists who first devoted their attention toit. It will be observed that it brings us up to the felinae, orcarnivora, a considerably elevated point in the animal scale, butstill leaving a blank for the quadrumana (monkeys) and for man, whocollectively form, as will be afterwards seen, the first group inthat scale. It sometimes happens, however, as we have seen, that afew rare traces of a particular class of animals are in time found informations originally thought to be destitute of them, displaying asit were a dawn of that department of creation. Such seems to be thecase with at least the quadrumana. A jaw-bone and tooth of an animalof this order, and belonging to the genus macacus, were found in theLondon clay, (eocene, ) at Kyson, near Woodbridge, in 1839. Anotherjaw-bone, containing several teeth, supposed to have belonged to aspecies of monkey about three feet high, was discovered about thesame time in a stratum of marl surmounted by compact limestone, inthe department of Gers, at the foot of the Pyrenees. Associated withthis last were remains of not less than thirty mammiferousquadrupeds, including three species of rhinoceros, a largeanoplotherium, three species of deer, two antelopes, a true dog, alarge cat, an animal like a weasel, a small hare, and a huge speciesof the edentata. Both of these places are considerably to the northof any region now inhabited by the monkey tribes. Fossil remains ofquadrumana have been found in at least two other parts of the earth, --namely, the sub-Himalayan hills, near the Sutlej, and in Brazil, (both in the tertiary strata;) the first being a large species ofsemnopithecus, and the second, a still larger animal belonging to theAmerican group of monkeys, but a new genus, and denominated by itsdiscoverer, Dr. Lund, protopithecus. The latter would be four feetin height. 

One remarkable circumstance connected with the tertiary formationremains to be noticed, --namely, the prevalence of volcanic action atthat era. In Auvergne, in Catalonia, near Venice, and in thevicinity of Rome and Naples, lavas exactly resembling the produce ofexisting volcanoes, are associated and intermixed with the lacustrineas well as marine tertiaries. The superficies of tertiaries inEngland is disturbed by two great swells, forming what are calledanticlinal axes, one of which divides the London from the Hampshirebasin, while the other passes through the Isle of Wight, boththrowing the strata down at violent inclination towards the north, asif the subterranean disturbing force had WAVED forward in thatdirection. The Pyrenees, too, and Alps, have both undergoneelevation since the deposition of the tertiaries; and in Sicily thereare mountains which have risen three thousand feet since thedeposition of some of the most recent of these rocks. The generaleffect of these operations was of course to extend the land surface, and to increase the variety of its features, thus improving thenatural drainage, and generally adapting the earth for the receptionof higher classes of animals. 

ERA OF THE SUPERFICIAL FORMATIONS. COMMENCEMENT OF PRESENT SPECIES. 

We have now completed our survey of the series of stratified rocks, and traced in their fossils the progress of organic creation down toa time which seems not long antecedent to the appearance of man. There are, nevertheless, monuments of still another era or space oftime which it is all but certain did also precede that event. 

Over the rock formations of all eras, in various parts of the globe, but confined in general to situations not very elevated, there is alayer of stiff clay, mostly of a blue colour, mingled with fragmentsof rock of all sizes, travel-worn, and otherwise, and to whichgeologists give the name of diluvium, as being apparently the produceof some vast flood, or of the sea thrown into an unusual agitation. It seems to indicate that, at the time when it was laid down, much ofthe present dry land was under the ocean, a supposition which weshall see supported by other evidence. The included masses of rockhave been carefully inspected in many places, and traced toparticular parent beds at considerable distances. Connected withthese phenomena are certain rock surfaces on the slopes of hills andelsewhere, which exhibit groovings and scratchings, such as we mightsuppose would be produced by a quantity of loose blocks hurried alongover them by a flood. Another associated phenomenon is that calledcrag and tail, which exists in many places, --namely, a rockymountain, or lesser elevation, presenting on one side the naked rockin a more or less abrupt form, and on the other a gentle slope; thesites of Windsor, Edinburgh, and Stirling, with their respectivecastles, are specimens of crag and tail. Finally, we may advert tocertain long ridges of clay and gravel which arrest the attention oftravellers on the surface of Sweden and Finland, and which are alsofound in the United States, where, indeed, the whole of thesephenomena have been observed over a large surface, as well as inEurope. It is very remarkable that the direction from which thediluvial blocks have generally come, the lines of the grooved rocksurfaces, the direction of the crag and tail eminences, and that ofthe clay and gravel ridges--phenomena, be it observed, extending overthe northern parts of both Europe and America--are ALL FROM THE NORTHAND NORTH-WEST TOWARDS THE SOUTH-EAST. We thus acquire the idea of apowerful current moving in a direction from north-west to south-east, carrying, besides mud, masses of rock which furrowed the solidsurfaces as they passed along, abrading the north-west faces of manyhills, but leaving the slopes in the opposite direction uninjured, and in some instances forming long ridges of detritus along thesurface. These are curious considerations, and it has become aquestion of much interest, by what means, and under whatcircumstances, was such a current produced. One hypothetical answerhas some plausibility about it. From an investigation of the natureof glaciers, and some observations which seem to indicate that thesehave at one time extended to lower levels, and existed in regions(the Scottish Highlands an example) where there is now no perennialsnow, it has been surmised that there was a time, subsequent to thetertiary era, when the circumpolar ice extended far into thetemperate zone, and formed a lofty, as well as extensiveaccumulation. A change to a higher temperature, producing a suddenthaw of this mass, might set free such a quantity of water as wouldform a large flood, and the southward flow of this deluge, joined tothe direction which it would obtain from the rotatory motion of theglobe, would of course produce that compound or south-easterlydirection which the phenomena require. All of these speculations areas yet far too deficient in facts to be of much value; and I mustfreely own that, for one, I attach little importance to them. Allthat we can legitimately infer from the diluvium is, that thenorthern parts of Europe and America were then under the sea, andthat a strong current set over them. 

Connected with the diluvium is the history of ossiferous caverns, ofwhich specimens singly exist at Kirkdale in Yorkshire, Gailenreuth inFranconia, and other places. They occur in the calcareous strata, asthe great caverns generally do, but have in all instances beennaturally closed up till the recent period of their discovery. Thefloors are covered with what appears to be a bed of the diluvialclay, over which rests a crust of stalagmite, the result of thedroppings from the roof since the time when the clay-bed was laiddown. In the instances above specified, and several others, therehave been found, under the clay bed, assemblages of the bones ofanimals, of many various kinds. At Kirkdale, for example, theremains of twenty-four species were ascertained--namely, pigeon, lark, raven, duck, and partridge; mouse, water-rat, rabbit, hare, deer, (three species, ) ox, horse, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant, weazel, fox, wolf, bear, tiger, hyena. From many of the bones of thegentler of these animals being found in a broken state, it issupposed that the cave was a haunt of hyenas and other predaceousanimals, by which the smaller ones were here consumed. This musthave been at a time antecedent to the submersion which produced thediluvium, since the bones are covered by a bed of that formation. Itis impossible not to see here a very natural series of incidents. First, the cave is frequented by wild beasts, who make it a kind ofcharnel-house. Then, submerged in the current which has been spokenof, it receives a clay flooring from the waters containing thatmatter in suspension. Finally, raised from the water, but with nomouth to the open air, it remains unintruded on for a long series ofages, during which the clay flooring receives a new calcareouscovering, from the droppings of the roof. Dr. Buckland, who examinedand described the Kirkdale cave, was at first of opinion that itpresented a physical evidence of the Noachian deluge; but heafterwards saw reason to consider its phenomena as of a time farapart from that event, which rests on evidence of an entirelydifferent kind. 

Our attention is next drawn to the erratic blocks or boulders, whichin many parts of the earth are thickly strewn over the surface, particularly in the north of Europe. Some of these blocks are manytons in weight, yet are clearly ascertained to have belongedoriginally to situations at a great distance. Fragments, forexample, of the granite of Shap Fell are found in every directionaround to the distance of fifty miles, one piece being placed highupon Criffel Mountain, on the opposite side of the Solway estuary; soalso are fragments of the Alps found far up the slopes of the Jura. There are even blocks on the east coast of England, supposed to havetravelled from Norway. The only rational conjecture which can beformed as to the transport of such masses from so great a distance, is one which presumes them to have been carried and dropped byicebergs, while the space between their original and final sites wasunder ocean. Icebergs do even now carry off such masses from thepolar coasts, which, falling when the retaining ice melts, must takeup situations at the bottom of the sea analogous to those in which wefind the erratic blocks of the present day. 

As the diluvium and erratic blocks clearly suppose one last longsubmersion of the surface, (LAST, geologically speaking, ) there isanother set of appearances which as manifestly shew the steps bywhich the land was made afterwards to reappear. These consist ofterraces, which have been detected near, and at some distance inlandfrom, the coast lines of Scandinavia, Britain, America, and otherregions; being evidently ancient beaches, or platforms, on which themargin of the sea at one time rested. They have been observed atdifferent heights above the present sea-level, from twenty to abovetwelve hundred feet; and in many places they are seen rising aboveeach other in succession, to the number of three, four, and evenmore. The smooth flatness of these terraces, with generally a slightinclination towards the sea, the sandy composition of many of them, and, in some instances, the preservation of marine shells in theground, identify them perfectly with existing sea-beaches, notwithstanding the cuts and scoopings which have every here andthere been effected in them by water-courses. The irresistibleinference from the phenomena is, that the highest was first the coastline; then an elevation took place, and the second highest became so, the first being now raised into the air and thrown inland. Then, upon another elevation, the sea began to form, at its new point ofcontact with the land, the third highest beach, and so on down to theplatform nearest to the present sea-beach. Phenomena of this kindbecome comparatively familiar to us, when we hear of evidence thatthe last sixty feet of the elevation of Sweden, and the last eighty-five of that of Chili, have taken place since man first dwelt inthose countries; nay, that the elevation of the former country goeson at this time at the rate of about forty-five inches in a century, and that a thousand miles of the Chilian coast rose four feet in onenight, under the influence of a powerful earthquake, so lately as1822. Subterranean forces, of the kind then exemplified in Chili, supply a ready explanation of the whole phenomena, though some otheroperating causes have been suggested. In an inquiry on this point, it becomes of consequence to learn some particulars respecting thelevels. Taking a particular beach, it is generally observed that thelevel continues the same along a considerable number of miles, andnothing like breaks or hitches has as yet been detected in any case. A second and a third beach are also observed to be exactly parallelto the first. These facts would seem to indicate quiet elevatingmovements, uniform over a large tract. It must, however, be remarkedthat the raised beaches at one part of a coast rarely coincide withthose at another part forty or fifty miles off. We might supposethis to indicate a limit in that extent of the uniformity of theelevating cause, but it would be rash to conclude positively thatsuch is the case. In the present sea, as is well known, there aredifferent levels at different places, owing to the operation ofpeculiar local causes, as currents, evaporation, and the influx oflarge rivers into narrow-mouthed estuaries. The differences of levelin the ancient beaches might be occasioned by some such causes. But, whatever doubt may rest on this minor point, enough has beenascertained to settle the main one, that we have in these platformsindubitable monuments of the last rise of the land from the sea, andthe concluding great event of the geological history. 

The idea of such a wide-spread and possibly universal submersionunavoidably suggests some considerations as to the effect which itmight have upon terrestrial animal life. It seems likely that thiswould be, on such an occasion, extensively, if not universallydestroyed. Nor does the idea of its universal destruction seem theless plausible, when we remark, that none of the species of landanimals heretofore discovered can be detected at a subsequent period. The whole seem to have been now changed. Some geologists appear muchinclined to think that there was at this time a new development ofterrestrial animal life upon the globe, and M. Agassiz, whose opinionon such a subject must always be worthy of attention, speaks all butdecidedly for such a conclusion. It must, however, be owned, thatproofs for it are still scanty, beyond the bare fact of a submersionwhich appears to have had a very wide range. I must therefore becontent to leave this point, as far as geological evidence isconcerned, for future affirmation. 

There are some other superficial deposits, of less consequence on thepresent occasion than the diluvium--namely, lacustrine deposits, orfilled-up lakes; alluvium, or the deposits of rivers beside theirmargins; deltas, the deposits made by great ones at their efflux intothe sea; peat mosses; and the vegetable soil. The animal remainsfound in these generally testify to a zoology on the verge of thatwhich still exists, or melting into it, there being included manyspecies which still exist. In a lacustrine deposit at Market-Weighton, in the Vale of York, there have been found bones of theelephant, rhinoceros, bison, wolf, horse, felis, deer, birds, all ornearly all extinct species; associated with thirteen species of landand fresh water shells, "exactly identical with types now living inthe vicinity. " In similar deposits in North America, are remains ofthe mammoth, mastodon, buffalo, and other animals of extinct andliving types. In short, these superficial deposits shew preciselysuch remains as might be expected from a time at which the presentsystem of things (to use a vague but not unexpressive phrase)obtained, but yet so far remote in chronology as to allow of thedropping of many species, through familiar causes, in the interval. Still, however, there is no authentic or satisfactory instance ofhuman remains being found, except in deposits obviously of verymodern date; a tolerably strong proof that the creation of our ownspecies is a comparatively recent event, and one posterior (generallyspeaking) to all the great natural transactions chronicled bygeology. 

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 

Thus concludes the wondrous chapter of the earth's history which istold by geology. It takes up our globe at the period when itsoriginal incandescent state had nearly ceased; conducts it throughwhat we have every reason to believe were vast, or at least veryconsiderable, spaces of time, in the course of which many superficialchanges took place, and vegetable and animal life was graduallydeveloped; and drops it just at the point when man was apparentlyabout to enter on the scene. The compilation of such a history, frommaterials of so extraordinary a character, and the powerful nature ofthe evidence which these materials afford, are calculated to exciteour admiration, and the result must be allowed to exalt the dignityof science, as a product of man's industry and his reason. 

If there is any thing more than another impressed on our minds by thecourse of the geological history, it is, that the same laws andconditions of nature now apparent to us have existed throughout thewhole time, though the operation of some of these laws may now beless conspicuous than in the early ages, from some of the conditionshaving come to a settlement and a close. That seas have flowed andebbed, and winds disturbed their surfaces, in the time of thesecondary rocks, we have proof on the yet preserved surfaces of thesands which constituted margins of the seas in those days. Even thefall of wind-slanted rain is evidenced on the same tablets. Thewashing down of detached matter from elevated grounds, which we seerivers constantly engaged in at the present time, and which is dailyshallowing the seas adjacent to their mouths, only appears to haveproceeded on a greater scale in earlier epochs. The volcanicsubterranean force, which we see belching forth lavas on the sides ofmountains, and throwing up new elevations by land and sea, was onlymore powerfully operative in distant ages. To turn to organicnature, vegetation seems to have proceeded then exactly as now. Thevery alternations of the seasons has been read in unmistakablecharacters in sections of the trees of those days, precisely as itmight be read in a section of a tree cut down yesterday. The systemof prey amongst animals flourished throughout the whole of the pre-human period; and the adaptation of all plants and animals to theirrespective spheres of existence was as perfect in those early ages asit is still. 

But, as has been observed, the operation of the laws may be modifiedby conditions. At one early age, if there was any dry land at all, it was perhaps enveloped in an atmosphere unfit for the existence ofterrestrial animals, and which had to go though some changes beforethat condition was altered. In the carbonigenous era, dry land seemsto have consisted only of clusters of islands, and the temperaturewas much above what now obtains at the same places. Volcanic forces, and perhaps also the disintegrating power, seem to have been on thedecrease since the first, or we have at least long enjoyed anexemption from such paroxysms of the former, as appear to haveprevailed at the close of the coal formation in England andthroughout the tertiary era. The surface has also undergone agradual progress by which it has become always more and morevariegated, and thereby fitted for the residence of a higher class ofanimals. 

In pursuing the progress of the development of both plants andanimals upon the globe, we have seen an advance in both cases, alongthe line leading to the higher forms of organization. Amongstplants, we have first sea-weeds, afterwards land plants; and amongstthese the simpler (cellular and cryptogamic) before the more complex. In the department of zoology, we see zoophytes, radiata, mollusca, articulata, existing for ages before there were any higher forms. The first step forward gives fishes, the humblest class of thevertebrata; and, moreover, the earliest fishes partake of thecharacter of the next lowest sub-kingdom, the articulata. Afterwardscome land animals, of which the first are reptiles, universallyallowed to be the type next in advance from fishes, and to beconnected with these by the links of an insensible gradation. Fromreptiles we advance to birds, and thence to mammalia, which arecommenced by marsupialia, acknowledgedly low forms in their class. That there is thus a progress of some kind, the most superficialglance at the geological history is sufficient to convince us. Indeed the doctrine of the gradation of animal forms has received aremarkable support from the discoveries of this science, as severaltypes formerly wanting to a completion of the series have been foundin a fossil state. {149}

It is scarcely less evident, from the geological record, that theprogress of organic life has observed some correspondence with theprogress of physical conditions on the surface. We do not know forcertain that the sea, at the time when it supported radiated, molluscous, and articulated families, was incapable of supportingfishes; but causes for such a limitation are far from inconceivable. The huge saurians appear to have been precisely adapted to the lowmuddy coasts and sea margins of the time when they flourished. Marsupials appear at the time when the surface was generally in thatflat, imperfectly variegated state in which we find Australia, theregion where they now live in the greatest abundance, and one whichhas no higher native mammalian type. Finally, it was not till theland and sea had come into their present relations, and the former, in its principal continents, had acquired the irregularity of surfacenecessary for man, that man appeared. We have likewise seen reasonfor supposing that land animals could not have lived before thecarbonigenous era, owing to the great charge of carbonic acid gaspresumed to have been contained in the atmosphere down to that time. The surplus of this having gone, as M. Brogniart suggests, to formthe vegetation, whose ruins became coal, and the air being thusbrought to its present state, land animals immediately appeared. Soalso, sea-plants were at first the only specimens of vegetation, because there appears to have been no place where other plants couldbe produced or supported. Land vegetation followed, at first simple, afterwards complex, probably in conformity with an advance of theconditions required by the higher class of plants. In short, we seeeverywhere throughout the geological history, strong traces of aparallel advance of the physical conditions and the organic forms. 

In examining the fossils of the lower marine creation, with areference to the kind of rock in connexion, with which they arefound, it is observed that some strata are attended by a much greaterabundance of both species and individuals than others. They aboundmost in calcareous rocks, which is precisely what might be expected, since lime is necessary for the formation of the shells of themollusks and articulata, and the hard substance of the crinoidea andcorals; next in the carboniferous series; next in the tertiary; nextin the new red sandstone; next in slates; and lastly, least of all, in the primary rocks. {151} This may have been the case withoutregard to the origination of new species, but more probably it wasotherwise; or why, for instance, should the polypiferous zoophyta befound almost exclusively in the limestones? There are, indeed, abundant appearances as if, throughout all the changes of thesurface, the various kinds of organic life invariably PRESSED IN, immediately on the specially suitable conditions arising, so that noplace which could support any form of organic being might be left forany length of time unoccupied. Nor is it less remarkable how variousspecies are withdrawn from the earth, when the proper conditions fortheir particular existence are changed. The trilobite, of whichfifty species existed during the earlier formations, was extirpatedbefore the secondary had commenced, and appeared no more. Theammonite does not appear above the chalk. The species, and evengenera of all the early radiata and mollusks were exchanged forothers long ago. Not one species of any creature which flourishedbefore the tertiary (Ehrenberg's infusoria excepted) now exists; andof the mammalia which arose during that series, many forms arealtogether gone, while of others we have now only kindred species. Thus to find not only frequent additions to the previously existingforms, but frequent withdrawals of forms which had apparently becomeinappropriate--a constant shifting as well as advance--is a factcalculated very forcibly to arrest attention. 

A candid consideration of all these circumstances can scarcely failto introduce into our minds a somewhat different idea of organiccreation from what has hitherto been generally entertained. That Godcreated animated beings, as well as the terraqueous theatre of theirbeing, is a fact so powerfully evidenced, and so universallyreceived, that I at once take it for granted. But in the particularsof this so highly supported idea, we surely here see cause for somere-consideration. It may now be inquired, --In what way was thecreation of animated beings effected? The ordinary notion may, Ithink, be not unjustly described as this, --that the Almighty authorproduced the progenitors of all existing species by some sort ofpersonal or immediate exertion. But how does this notion comportwith what we have seen of the gradual advance of species, from thehumblest to the highest? How can we suppose an immediate exertion ofthis creative power at one time to produce zoophytes, another time toadd a few marine mollusks, another to bring in one or two conchifers, again to produce crustaceous fishes, again perfect fishes, and so onto the end? This would surely be to take a very mean view of theCreative Power--to, in short, anthropomorphize it, or reduce it tosome such character as that borne by the ordinary proceedings ofmankind. And yet this would be unavoidable; for that the organiccreation was thus progressive through a long space of time, rests onevidence which nothing can overturn or gainsay. Some other idea mustthen be come to with regard to THE MODE in which the Divine Authorproceeded in the organic creation. Let us seek in the history of theearth's formation for a new suggestion on this point. We have seenpowerful evidence, that the construction of this globe and itsassociates, and inferentially that of all the other globes of space, was the result, not of any immediate or personal exertion on the partof the Deity, but of natural laws which are expressions of his will. What is to hinder our supposing that the organic creation is also aresult of natural laws, which are in like manner an expression of hiswill? More than this, the fact of the cosmical arrangements being aneffect of natural laws is a powerful argument for the organicarrangements being so likewise, for how can we suppose that theaugust Being who brought all these countless worlds into form by thesimple establishment of a natural principle flowing from his mind, was to interfere personally and specially on every occasion when anew shell-fish or reptile was to be ushered into existence on ONE ofthese worlds? Surely this idea is too ridiculous to be for a momententertained. 

It will be objected that the ordinary conceptions of Christiannations on this subject are directly derived from Scripture, or, atleast, are in conformity with it. If they were clearly andunequivocally supported by Scripture, it may readily be allowed thatthere would be a strong objection to the reception of any oppositehypothesis. But the fact is, however startling the presentannouncement of it may be, that the first chapter of the Mosaicrecord is not only not in harmony with the ordinary ideas of mankindrespecting cosmical and organic creation, but is opposed to them, andonly in accordance with the views here taken. When we carefullyperuse it with awakened minds, we find that all the procedure isrepresented primarily and pre-eminently as flowing FROM COMMANDS ANDEXPRESSIONS OF WILL, NOT FROM DIRECT ACTS. Let there be light--letthere be a firmament--let the dry land appear--let the earth bringforth grass, the herb, the tree--let the waters bring forth themoving creature that hath life--let the earth bring forth the livingcreature after his kind--these are the terms in which the principalacts are described. The additional expressions, --God made thefirmament--God made the beast of the earth, &c. , occur subordinately, and only in a few instances; they do not necessarily convey adifferent idea of the mode of creation, and indeed only appear asalternative phrases, in the usual duplicative manner of Easternnarrative. Keeping this in view, the words used in a subsequentplace, "God FORMED man in his own image, " cannot well be understoodas implying any more than what was implied before, --namely, that manwas produced in consequence of an expression of the Divine will tothat effect. Thus, the scriptural objection quickly vanishes, andthe prevalent ideas about the organic creation appear only as amistaken inference from the text, formed at a time when man'signorance prevented him from drawing therefrom a just conclusion. Atthe same time, I freely own that I do not think it right to adducethe Mosaic record, either in objection to, or support of any naturalhypothesis, and this for many reasons, but particularly for this, that there is not the least appearance of an intention in that bookto give philosophically exact views of nature. 

To a reasonable mind the Divine attributes must appear, notdiminished or reduced in any way, by supposing a creation by law, butinfinitely exalted. It is the narrowest of all views of the Deity, and characteristic of a humble class of intellects, to suppose himacting constantly in particular ways for particular occasions. It, for one thing, greatly detracts from his foresight, the mostundeniable of all the attributes of Omnipotence. It lowers himtowards the level of our own humble intellects. Much more worthy ofhim it surely is, to suppose that all things have been commissionedby him from the first, though neither is he absent from a particle ofthe current of natural affairs in one sense, seeing that the wholesystem is continually supported by his providence. Even in humanaffairs, if I may be allowed to adopt a familiar illustration, thereis a constant progress from specific action for particular occasions, to arrangements which, once established, shall continue to answer fora great multitude of occasions. Such plans the enlightened readilyform for themselves, and conceive as being adopted by all who have toattend to a multitude of affairs, while the ignorant suppose everyact of the greatest public functionary to be the result of somespecial consideration and care on his part alone. Are we to supposethe Deity adopting plans which harmonize only with the modes ofprocedure of the less enlightened of our race? Those who wouldobject to the hypothesis of a creation by the intervention of law, donot perhaps consider how powerful an argument in favour of theexistence of God is lost by rejecting this doctrine. When all isseen to be the result of law, the idea of an Almighty Author becomesirresistible, for the creation of a law for an endless series ofphenomena--an act of intelligence above all else that we canconceive--could have no other imaginable source, and tells, moreover, as powerfully for a sustaining as for an originating power. On thispoint a remark of Dr. Buckland seems applicable: "If the propertiesadopted by the elements at the moment of their creation adapted thembeforehand to the infinity of complicated useful purposes which theyhave already answered, and may have still farther to answer, undermany dispensations of the material world, such an aboriginalconstitution, so far from superseding an intelligent agent, wouldonly exalt our conceptions of the consummate skill and power thatcould comprehend such an infinity of future uses under futuresystems, in the original groundwork of his creation. "

A late writer, in a work embracing a vast amount of miscellaneousknowledge, but written in a dogmatic style, argues at great lengthfor the doctrine of more immediate exertions on the part of the Deityin the works of his creation. One of the most striking of hisillustrations is as follows:- "The coral polypi, united by a commonanimal bond, construct a defined form in stone; many kinds constructmany forms. An allotted instinct may permit each polypus toconstruct its own cell, but there is no superintending one to directthe pattern, nor can the workers unite by consultation for such anend. There is no recipient for an instinct by which the patternmight be constructed. It is God alone, therefore, who is thearchitect; and for this end, consequently, he must dispose of everynew polypus required to continue the pattern, in a new and peculiarposition, which the animal could not have discovered by itself. Yetmore, millions of these blind workers unite their works to form anisland, which is also wrought out according to a constant generalpattern, and of a very peculiar nature, though the separate coralworks are numerously diverse. Still less, then, here is an instinctpossible. The Great Architect himself must execute what he planned, in each case equally. He uses these little and senseless animals ashands; but they are hands which himself must direct. He must directeach one everywhere, and therefore he is ever acting. " {159} This isa most notable example of a dangerous kind of reasoning. It is nowbelieved that corals have a general life and sensation throughout thewhole mass, residing in the nervous tissue which envelops them;consequently, there is nothing more wonderful in their determinategeneral forms than in those of other animals. 

It may here be remarked that there is in our doctrine that harmony inall the associated phenomena which generally marks great truths. First, it agrees, as we have seen, with the idea of planet-creationby natural law. Secondly, upon this supposition, all that geologytells us of the succession of species appears natural andintelligible. Organic life PRESSES IN, as has been remarked, wherever there was room and encouragement for it, the forms beingalways such as suited the circumstances, and in a certain relation tothem, as, for example, where the limestone-forming seas produced anabundance of corals, crinoidea, and shell-fish. Admitting for amoment a re-origination of species after a cataclysm, as has beensurmised by some geologists, though the hypothesis is always becomingless and less tenable, it harmonizes with nothing so well as the ideaof a creation by law. The more solitary commencements of species, which would have been the most inconceivably paltry exercise for animmediately creative power, are sufficiently worthy of one operatingby laws. 

It is also to be observed, that the thing to be accounted for is notmerely the origination of organic being upon this little planet, third of a series which is but one of hundreds of thousands ofseries, the whole of which again form but one portion of anapparently infinite globe-peopled space, where all seems analogous. We have to suppose, that every one of these numberless globes iseither a theatre of organic being, or in the way of becoming so. This is a conclusion which every addition to our knowledge makes onlythe more irresistible. Is it conceivable, as a fitting mode ofexercise for creative intelligence, that it should be constantlymoving from one sphere to another, to form and plant the variousspecies which may be required in each situation at particular times?Is such an idea accordant with our general conception of the dignity, not to speak of the power, of the Great Author? Yet such is thenotion which we must form, if we adhere to the doctrine of specialexercise. Let us see, on the other hand, how the doctrine of acreation by law agrees with this expanded view of the organic world. 

Unprepared as most men may be for such an announcement, there can beno doubt that we are able, in this limited sphere, to form somesatisfactory conclusions as to the plants and animals of those otherspheres which move at such immense distances from us. Suppose thatthe first persons of an early nation who made a ship and ventured tosea in it, observed, as they sailed along, a set of objects whichthey had never before seen--namely, a fleet of other ships--wouldthey not have been justified in supposing that those ships wereoccupied, like their own, by human beings possessing hands to row andsteer, eyes to watch the signs of the weather, intelligence to guidethem from one place to another--in short, beings in all respects likethemselves, or only shewing such differences as they knew to beproducible by difference of climate and habits of life. Precisely inthis manner we can speculate on the inhabitants of remote spheres. We see that matter has originally been diffused in one mass, of whichthe spheres are portions. Consequently, inorganic matter must bepresumed to be everywhere the same, although probably withdifferences in the proportions of ingredients in different globes, and also some difference of conditions. Out of a certain number ofthe elements of inorganic matter are composed organic bodies, bothvegetable and animal; such must be the rule in Jupiter and in Sirius, as it is here. We, therefore, are all but certain that herbaceousand ligneous fibre, that flesh and blood, are the constituents of theorganic beings of all those spheres which are as yet seats of life. Gravitation we see to be an all-pervading principle: therefore theremust be a relation between the spheres and their respective organicoccupants, by virtue of which they are fixed, as far as necessary, onthe surface. Such a relation, of course, involves details as to thedensity and elasticity of structure, as well as size, of the organictenants, in proportion to the gravity of the respective planets--peculiarities, however, which may quite well consist with the idea ofa universality of general types, to which we are about to come. Electricity we also see to be universal; if, therefore, it be aprinciple concerned in life and in mental action, as science stronglysuggests, life and mental action must everywhere be of one generalcharacter. We come to comparatively a matter of detail, when weadvert to heat and light; yet it is important to consider that theseare universal agents, and that, as they bear marked relations toorganic life and structure on earth, they may be presumed to do so inother spheres also. The considerations as to light are particularlyinteresting, for, on our globe, the structure of one important organ, almost universally distributed in the animal kingdom, is in directand precise relation to it. Where there is light there will be eyes, and these, in other spheres, will be the same in all respects as theeyes of tellurian animals, with only such differences as may benecessary to accord with minor peculiarities of condition and ofsituation. It is but a small stretch of the argument to supposethat, one conspicuous organ of a large portion of our animal kingdombeing thus universal, a parity in all the other organs--species forspecies, class for class, kingdom for kingdom--is highly likely, andthat thus the inhabitants of all the other globes of space bear notonly a general, but a particular resemblance to those of our own. 

Assuming that organic beings are thus spread over all space, the ideaof their having all come into existence by the operation of lawseverywhere applicable, is only conformable to that principle, acknowledged to be so generally visible in the affairs of Providence, to have all done by the employment of the smallest possible amount ofmeans. Thus, as one set of laws produced all orbs and their motionsand geognostic arrangements, so one set of laws overspread them allwith life. The whole productive or creative arrangements aretherefore in perfect unity. 

PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATEDTRIBES. 

The general likelihood of an organic creation by law having beenshewn, we are next to inquire if science has any facts tending tobring the assumption more nearly home to nature. Such facts therecertainly are; but it cannot be surprising that they arecomparatively few and scattered, when we consider that the inquiry isinto one of nature's profoundest mysteries, and one which hashitherto engaged no direct attention in almost any quarter. 

Crystallization is confessedly a phenomenon of inorganic matter; yetthe simplest rustic observer is struck by the resemblance which theexamples of it left upon a window by frost bear to vegetable forms. In some crystallizations the mimicry is beautiful and complete; forexample, in the well-known one called the Arbor Dianae. An amalgamof four parts of silver and two of mercury being dissolved in nitricacid, and water equal to thirty weights of the metals being added, asmall piece of soft amalgam of silver suspended in the solution, quickly gathers to itself the particles of the silver of the amalgam, which form upon it a CRYSTALLIZATION PRECISELY RESEMBLING A SHRUB. The experiment may be varied in a way which serves better to detectthe influence of electricity in such operations, as noted below. {166} Vegetable figures are also presented in some of the mostordinary appearances of the electric fluid. In the marks caused bypositive electricity, or which it leaves in its passage, we see theramifications of a tree, as well as of its individual leaves; thoseof the negative, recal the bulbous or the spreading root, accordingas they are clumped or divergent. These phenomena seem to say thatthe electric energies have had something to do in determining theforms of plants. That they are intimately connected with vegetablelife is indubitable, for germination will not proceed in watercharged with negative electricity, while water charged positivelygreatly favours it; and a garden sensibly increases in luxuriance, when a number of conducting rods are made to terminate in branchesover its beds. With regard to the resemblance of the ramificationsof the branches and leaves of plants to the traces of the positiveelectricity, and that of the roots to the negative, it is acircumstance calling for especial remark, that the atmosphere, particularly its lower strata, is generally charged positively, whilethe earth is always charged negatively. The correspondence here iscurious. A plant thus appears as a thing formed on the basis of anatural electrical operation--the BRUSH realized. We can thussuppose the various forms of plants as, immediately, the result of alaw in electricity variously affecting them according to theirorganic character, or respective germinal constituents. In thepoplar, the brush is unusually vertical, and little divergent; thereverse in the beech: in the palm, a pencil has proceeded straightup for a certain distance, radiates there, and turns outwards anddownwards; and so on. We can here see at least traces of secondarymeans by which the Almighty Deviser might establish all the vegetableforms with which the earth is overspread. 

Vegetable and animal bodies are mainly composed of the same foursimple substances or elements--carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, andnitrogen. The first combinations of these in animals are into whatare called proximate principles, as albumen, fibrin, urea, alantoin, &c. , out of which the structure of the animal body is composed. Nowthe chemist, by the association of two parts oxygen, four hydrogen, two carbon, and two nitrogen, can MAKE UREA. Alantoin has also beenproduced artificially. Two of the proximate principles beingrealizable by human care, the possibility of realizing or forming allis established. Thus the chemist may be said to have it in his powerto realize the first step in organization. {169a} Indeed, it isfully acknowledged by Dr. Daubeny, that in the combinations formingthe proximate principles there is no chemical peculiarity. "It isnow certain, " he says, "that the same simple laws of compositionpervade the whole creation; and that, if the organic chemist onlytakes the requisite precautions to avoid resolving into theirultimate elements the proximate principles upon which he operates, the results of his analysis will shew that they are combinedprecisely according to the same plan as the elements of mineralbodies are known to be. " {169b} A particular fact is here worthy ofattention. "The conversion of fecula into sugar, as one of theordinary processes of vegetable economy, is effected by theproduction of a secretion termed diastose, which occasions both therupture of the starch vesicles, and the change of their contained guminto sugar. This diastose may be separately obtained by the chemist, and it acts as effectually in his laboratory as in the vegetableorganization. He can also imitate its effects by other chemicalagents. " {170} The writer quoted below adds, "No reasonable groundhas yet been adduced for supposing that, if we had the power ofbringing together the elements of any organic compound, in theirrequisite states and proportions, the result would be any other thanthat which is found in the living body. "

It is much to know the elements out of which organic bodies arecomposed. It is something more to know their first combinations, andthat these are simply chemical. How these combinations areassociated in the structure of living bodies is the next inquiry, butit is one to which as yet no satisfactory answer can be given. Theinvestigation of the minutiae of organic structure by the microscopeis of such recent origin, that its results cannot be expected to bevery clear. Some facts, however, are worthy of attention with regardto the present inquiry. It is ascertained that the basis of allvegetable and animal substances consists of nucleated cells; that is, cells having granules within them. Nutriment is converted into thesebefore being assimilated by the system. The tissues are formed fromthem. The ovum destined to become a new creature, is originally onlya cell with a contained granule. We see it acting this reproductivepart in the simplest manner in the cryptogamic plants. "The parentcell, arrived at maturity by the exercise of its organic functions, bursts, and liberates its contained granules. These, at once thrownupon their own resources, and entirely dependent for their nutritionon the surrounding elements, develop themselves into new cells, whichrepeat the life of their original. Amongst the higher tribes of thecryptogamia, the reproductive cell does not burst, but the firstcells of the new structure are developed within it, and thesegradually extend, by a similar process of multiplication, into thatprimary leaf-like expansion which is the first formed structure inall plants. " {171} HERE THE LITTLE CELL BECOMES DIRECTLY A PLANT, THE FULL FORMED LIVING BEING. It is also worthy of remark that, inthe sponges, (an animal form, ) a gemmule detached from the body ofthe parent, and trusting for sustentation only to the fluid intowhich it has been cast, becomes, without further process, the newcreature. Further, it has been recently discovered by means of themicroscope, that there is, as far as can be judged, a perfectresemblance between the ovum of the mammal tribes, during that earlystage when it is passing through the oviduct, and the young of theinfusory animalcules. One of the most remarkable of these, thevolvox globator, has exactly the form of the germ which, afterpassing through a long foetal progress, becomes a complete mammifer, an animal of the highest class. It has even been found that both arealike provided with those cilia, which, producing a revolving motion, or its appearance, is partly the cause of the name given to thisanimalcule. These resemblances are the more entitled to notice, thatthey were made by various observers, distant from each other at thetime. {172} It has likewise been noted that the globules of theblood are reproduced by the expansion of contained granules; theyare, in short, DISTINCT ORGANISMS MULTIPLIED BY THE SAME FISSIPAROUSGENERATION. So that all animated nature may be said to be based onthis mode of origin; THE FUNDAMENTAL FORM OF ORGANIC BEING IS AGLOBULE, HAVING A NEW GLOBULE FORMING WITHIN ITSELF, by which it isin time discharged, and which is again followed by another andanother, in endless succession. It is of course obvious that, ifthese globules could be produced by any process from inorganicelements, we should be entitled to say that the fact of a transitfrom the inorganic into the organic had been witnessed in thatinstance; the possibility of the commencement of animated creation bythe ordinary laws of nature might be considered as established. Nowit was given out some years ago by a French physiologist, thatGLOBULES COULD BE PRODUCED IN ALBUMEN BY ELECTRICITY. If, therefore, these globules be identical with the cells which are now held to bereproductive, it might be said that the production of albumen byartificial means is the only step in the process wanting. This hasnot yet been effected; but it is known to be only a chemical process, the mode of which may be any day discovered in the laboratory, andtwo compounds perfectly co-ordinate, urea and alantoin, have actuallybeen produced. 

In such an investigation as the present, it is not unworthy of noticethat the production of shell is a natural operation which can beprecisely imitated artificially. Such an incrustation takes place onboth the outside and inside of the wheel in a bleachingestablishment, in which cotton cloth is rinsed free of the limeemployed in its purification. From the DRESSING employed by theweaver, the cloth obtains the animal matter, gelatin; this and thelime form the constituents of the incrustation, exactly as in naturalshell. In the wheel employed at Catrine, in Ayrshire, where thephenomenon was first observed by the eye of science, it had requiredten years to produce a coating the tenth of an inch in thickness. This incrustation has all the characters of shell, displaying ahighly polished surface, beautifully iridescent, and, when broken, afoliated texture. The examination of it has even thrown some lighton the character and mode of formation of natural shell. "The platesinto which the substance is divisible have been formed in succession, and certain intervals of time have elapsed between their formation;in general, every two contiguous laminae are separated by a thiniridescent film, varying from the three to the fifty millionth partof an inch in thickness, and producing all the various colours ofthin plates which correspond to intermediate thicknesses: betweensome of the laminae no such film exists, probably in consequence ofthe interval of time between their formation being too short; andbetween others the film has been formed of unequal thickness. Therecan be no doubt that these iridescent films are formed when the dash-wheel is at rest during the night, and that when no film existsbetween two laminae, an interval too short for its formation, (arising, perhaps, from the stopping of the work during the day, ) haselapsed during the drying or induration of one lamina and thedeposition of another. " {175} From this it has been deduced, by apatient investigation, that those colours of mother-of-pearl, whichare incommunicable to wax, arise from iridescent films depositedbetween the laminae of its structure, and it is hence inferred thatTHE ANIMAL, like the wheel, RESTS PERIODICALLY FROM ITS LABOURS INFORMING THE NATURAL SUBSTANCE. 

These, it will be owned, are curious and not irrelevant facts; but itwill be asked what actual experience says respecting the originationof life. Are there, it will be said, any authentic instances ofeither plants or animals, of however humble and simple a kind, havingcome into existence otherwise than in the ordinary way of generation, since the time of which geology forms the record? It may beanswered, that the negative of this question could not be by anymeans formidable to the doctrine of law-creation, seeing that theconditions necessary for the operation of the supposed life-creatinglaws may not have existed within record to any great extent. On theother hand, as we see the physical laws of early times still actingwith more or less force, it might not be unreasonable to expect thatwe should still see some remnants, or partial and occasional workingsof the life-creating energy amidst a system of things generallystable and at rest. Are there, then, any such remnants to be tracedin our own day, or during man's existence upon earth? If there be, it clearly would form a strong evidence in favour of the doctrine, aswhat now takes place upon a confined scale and in a comparativelycasual manner may have formerly taken place on a great scale, and asthe proper and eternity-destined means of supplying a vacant globewith suitable tenants. It will at the same time be observed that, the earth being now supplied with both kinds of tenants in greatabundance, we only could expect to find the life-originating power atwork in some very special and extraordinary circumstances, andprobably only in the inferior and obscurer departments of thevegetable and animal kingdoms. 

Perhaps, if the question were asked of ten men of approved reputationin science, nine out of the number would answer in the negative. This is because, in a great number of instances where the superficialobservers of former times assumed a non-generative origin for life, (as in the celebrated case in Virgil's fourth Georgic, ) either thedirect contrary has been ascertained, or exhaustive experiments haveleft no alternative from the conclusion that ordinary generation didtake place, albeit in a manner which escapes observation. Findingthat an erroneous assumption has been formed in many cases, moderninquirers have not hesitated to assume that there can be no case inwhich generation is not concerned; an assumption not only unwarrantedby, but directly opposed to, the principles of philosophicalinvestigation. Yet this is truly the point at which the question nowrests in the scientific world. 

I have no wish here to enter largely into a subject so wide and sofull of difficulties; but I may remark, that the explanations usuallysuggested where life takes its rise without apparent generativemeans, always appear to me to partake much of the fallacy of thepetitio principii. When, for instance, lime is laid down upon apiece of waste moss ground, and a crop of white clover for which noseeds were sown is the consequence, the explanation that the seedshave been dormant there for an unknown time, and were stimulated intogermination when the lime produced the appropriate circumstances, appears extremely unsatisfactory, especially when we know that (as inan authentic case under my notice) the spot is many miles from whereclover is cultivated, and that there is nothing for six feet belowbut pure peat moss, clover seeds being, moreover, known to be tooheavy to be transported, as many other seeds are, by the winds. Mushrooms, we know, can be propagated by their seed; but another modeof raising them, well known to the gardener, is to mix cow and horsedung together, and thus form a bed in which they are expected to growwithout any seed being planted. It is assumed that the seeds arecarried by the atmosphere, unperceived by us, and, finding here anappropriate field for germination, germinate accordingly; but this isonly assumption, and though designed to be on the side of a severephilosophy, in reality makes a pretty large demand on credulity. There are several persons eminent in science who profess at least tofind great difficulties in accepting the doctrine of invariablegeneration. One of these, in the work noted below, {179a} has statedseveral considerations arising from analogical reasoning, whichappear to him to throw the balance of evidence in favour of theaboriginal production of infusoria, {179b} the vegetation calledmould, and the like. One seems to be of great force; namely, thatthe animalcules, which are supposed (altogether hypothetically) to beproduced by ova, are afterwards found increasing their numbers, notby that mode at all, but by division of their bodies. If it be thenature of these creatures to propagate in this splitting orfissiparous manner, how could they be communicated to a vegetableinfusion? Another fact of very high importance is presented in thefollowing terms:- "The nature of the animalcule, or vegetableproduction, bears a constant relation to the state of the infusion, so that, in similar circumstances, the same are always producedwithout this being influenced by the atmosphere. There seems to be acertain PROGRESSIVE ADVANCE IN THE PRODUCTIVE POWERS OF THE INFUSION, for at the first the animalcules are only of the smaller kinds, ormonades, and afterwards THEY BECOME GRADUALLY LARGER AND MORECOMPLICATED IN THEIR STRUCTURE; AFTER A TIME, THE PRODUCTION CEASES, ALTHOUGH THE MATERIALS ARE BY NO MEANS EXHAUSTED. When the quantityof water is very small, and the organic matter abundant, theproduction is usually of a vegetable nature; when there is muchwater, animalcules are more frequently produced. " It has been shewnby the opponents of this theory, that when a vegetable infusion isdebarred from the contact of the atmosphere, by being closely sealedup or covered with a layer of oil, no animalcules are produced; butit has been said, on the other hand, that the exclusion of the airmay prevent some simple condition necessary for the aboriginaldevelopment of life--and nothing is more likely. Perhaps theprevailing doctrine is in nothing placed in greater difficulties thanit is with regard to the entozoa, or creatures which live within thebodies of others. These creatures do, and apparently can, livenowhere else than in the interior of other living bodies, where theygenerally take up their abode in the viscera, but also sometimes inthe chambers of the eye, the interior of the brain, the serous sacs, and other places having no communication from without. Some areviviparous, others oviparous. Of the latter it cannot reasonably besupposed that the ova ever pass through the medium of the air, orthrough the blood-vessels, for they are too heavy for the onetransit, and too large for the other. Of the former, it cannot beconceived how they pass into young animals--certainly not bycommunication from the parent, for it has often been found thatentozoa do not appear in certain generations, and some of peculiarand noted character have only appeared at rare intervals, and in veryextraordinary circumstances. A candid view of the less populardoctrine, as to the origin of this humble form of life, is taken by adistinguished living naturalist. "To explain the beginning of theseworms within the human body, on the common doctrine that all createdbeings proceed from their likes, or a primordial egg, is sodifficult, that the moderns have been driven to speculate, as ourfathers did, on their spontaneous birth; but they have received thehypothesis with some modification. Thus it is not from putrefactionor fermentation that the entozoa are born, for both of theseprocesses are rather fatal to their existence, but from theaggregation and fit apposition of matter which is already organized, or has been thrown from organized surfaces. Their origin in thismanner is not more wonderful or more inexplicable than that of manyof the inferior animals from sections of themselves. * * Particles ofmatter fitted by digestion, and their transmission through a livingbody, for immediate assimilation with it, or flakes of lymph detachedfrom surfaces already organized, seem neither to exceed nor fallbelow that simplicity of structure which favours this wonderfuldevelopment; and the supposition that, like morsels of a planaria, they may also, when retained in contact with living parts, and inother favourable circumstances, continue to live and be graduallychanged into creatures of analogous conformation, is surely not soabsurd as to be brought into comparison with the Metamorphoses ofOvid. * * We think the hypothesis is also supported in some degree bythe fact, that the origin of the entozoa is favoured by all causeswhich tend to disturb the equality between the secerning andabsorbent systems. " {182} Here particles of organized matter aresuggested as the germinal origin of distinct and fully organizedanimals, many of which have a highly developed reproductive system. How near such particles must be to the inorganic form of matter maybe judged from what has been said within the last few pages. If, then, this view of the production of entozoa be received, it must beheld as in no small degree favourable to the general doctrine of anorganic creation by law. 

There is another series of facts, akin to the above, and whichdeserve not less attention. The pig, in its domestic state, issubject to the attacks of a hydatid, from which the wild animal isfree; hence the disease called measles in pork. The domestication ofthe pig is of course an event subsequent to the origin of man;indeed, comparatively speaking, a recent event. Whence, then, thefirst progenitor of this hydatid? So also there is a tinea whichattacks dressed wool, but never touches it in its unwashed state. Aparticular insect disdains all food but chocolate, and the larva ofthe OINOPOTA CELLARIS lives nowhere but in wine and beer, all ofthese being articles manufactured by man. There is likewise acreature called the PIMELODES CYCLOPUM, which is only found insubterranean cavities connected with certain specimens of thevolcanic formation in South America, dating from a time posterior tothe arrangements of the earth for our species. Whence the firstpymelodes cyclopum? Will it, to a geologist, appear irrational tosuppose that, just as the pterodactyle was added in the era of thenew red sandstone, when the earth had become suited for such acreature, so may these creatures have been added when media suitablefor their existence arose, and that such phenomena may take place anyday, the only cause for their taking place seldom being the rarity ofthe rise of new physical conditions on a globe which seems to havealready undergone the principal part of its destined mutations?

Between such isolated facts and the greater changes which attendedvarious geological eras, it is not easy to see any difference, besides simply that of the scale on which the respective phenomenatook place, as the throwing off of one copy from an engraved plate isexactly the same process as that by which a thousand are thrown off. Nothing is more easy to conceive than that to Creative Providence, the numbers of such phenomena, the time when, and the circumstancesunder which they take place, are indifferent matters. The EternalOne has arranged for everything beforehand, and trusted all to theoperation of the laws of his appointment, himself being ever presentin all things. We can even conceive that man, in his many doingsupon the surface of the earth, may occasionally, without his beingaware of it, or otherwise, act as an instrument in preparing theassociation of conditions under which the creative laws work; andperhaps some instances of his having acted as such an instrument haveactually occurred in our own time. 

I allude, of course, to the experiments conducted a few years ago byMr. Crosse, which seemed to result in the production of a heretoforeunknown species of insect in considerable numbers. Various causeshave prevented these experiments and their results from receivingcandid treatment, but they may perhaps be yet found to have opened upa new and most interesting chapter of nature's mysteries. Mr. Crossewas pursuing some experiments in crystallization, causing a powerfulvoltaic battery to operate upon a saturated solution of silicate ofpotash, when the insects unexpectedly made their appearance. Heafterwards tried nitrate of copper, which is a deadly poison, andfrom that fluid also did live insects emerge. Discouraged by thereception of his experiments, Mr. Crosse soon discontinued them; butthey were some years after pursued by Mr. Weekes, of Sandwich, withprecisely the same results. This gentleman, besides trying the firstof the above substances, employed ferro-cyanet of potash, on accountof its containing a larger proportion of carbon, the principalelement of organic bodies; and from this substance the insects wereproduced IN INCREASED NUMBERS. A few weeks sufficed for thisexperiment, with the powerful battery of Mr. Crosse; but the firstattempts of Mr. Weekes required about eleven months, a ground ofpresumption in itself that the electricity was chiefly concerned inthe phenomenon. The changes undergone by the fluid operated upon, were in both cases remarkable, and nearly alike. In Mr. Weekes'apparatus, the silicate of potash became first turbid, then of amilky appearance; round the negative wire of the battery, dipped intothe fluid, there gathered a quantity of GELATINOUS MATTER, a part ofthe process of considerable importance, considering that gelatin isone of the proximate principles, or first compounds, of which animalbodies are formed. From this matter Mr. Weekes observed one of theinsects in the very act of emerging, immediately after which, itascended to the surface of the fluid, and sought concealment in anobscure corner of the apparatus. The insects produced by bothexperimentalists seem to have been the same, a species of acarus, minute and semi-transparent, and furnished with long bristles, whichcan only be seen by the aid of the microscope. It is worthy ofremark, that some of these insects, soon after their existence hadcommenced, were found to be likely to extend their species. Theywere sometimes observed to go back to the fluid to feed, andoccasionally they devoured each other. {187}

The reception of novelties in science must ever be regulated verymuch by the amount of kindred or relative phenomena which the publicmind already possesses and acknowledges, to which the new can beassimilated. A novelty, however true, if there be no received truthswith which it can be shewn in harmonious relation, has little chanceof a favourable hearing. In fact, as has been often observed, thereis a measure of incredulity from our ignorance as well as from ourknowledge, and if the most distinguished philosopher three hundredyears ago had ventured to develop any striking new fact which onlycould harmonize with the as yet unknown Copernican solar system, wecannot doubt that it would have been universally scoffed at in thescientific world, such as it then was, or at the best interpreted ina thousand wrong ways in conformity with ideas already familiar. Theexperiments above described, finding a public mind which had neverdiscovered a fact or conceived an idea at all analogous, were ofcourse ungraciously received. It was held to be impious, even tosurmise that animals could have been formed through anyinstrumentality of an apparatus devised by human skill. The morelikely account of the phenomena was said to be, that the insects wereonly developed from ova, resting either in the fluid, or in thewooden frame on which the experiments took place. On theseobjections the following remarks may be made. The supposition ofimpiety arises from an entire misconception of what is implied by anaboriginal creation of insects. The experimentalist could never beconsidered as the author of the existence of these creatures, exceptby the most unreasoning ignorance. The utmost that can be claimedfor, or imputed to him is that he arranged the natural conditionsunder which the true creative energy--that of the Divine Author ofall things--was pleased to work in that instance. On the hypothesishere brought forward, the acarus Crossii was a type of being ordainedfrom the beginning, and destined to be realized under certainphysical conditions. When a human hand brought these conditions intothe proper arrangement, it did an act akin to hundreds of familiarones which we execute every day, and which are followed by naturalresults; but it did nothing more. The production of the insect, ifit did take place as assumed, was as clearly an act of the Almightyhimself, as if he had fashioned it with hands. For the presumptionthat an act of aboriginal creation did take place, there is this tobe said, that, in Mr. Weekes's experiment, every care that ingenuitycould devise was taken to exclude the possibility of a development ofthe insects from ova. The wood of the frame was baked in a powerfulheat; a bell-shaped glass covered the apparatus, and from this theatmosphere was excluded by the constantly rising fumes from theliquid, for the emission of which there was an aperture so arrangedat the top of the glass, that only these fumes could pass. The waterwas distilled, and the substance of the silicate had been subjectedto white heat. Thus every source of fallacy seemed to be shut up. In such circumstances, a candid mind, which sees nothing eitherimpious or unphilosophical in the idea of a new creation, will bedisposed to think that there is less difficulty in believing in sucha creation having actually taken place, than in believing that, intwo instances, separated in place and time, exactly the same insectsshould have chanced to arise from concealed ova, and these a speciesheretofore unknown. 

HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 

It has been already intimated, as a general fact, that there is anobvious gradation amongst the families of both the vegetable andanimal kingdoms, from the simple lichen and animalcule respectivelyup to the highest order of dicotyledonous trees and the mammalia. Confining our attention, in the meantime, to the animal kingdom--itdoes not appear that this gradation passes along one line, on whichevery form of animal life can be, as it were, strung; there may bebranching or double lines at some places; or the whole may be in acircle composed of minor circles, as has been recently suggested. But still it is incontestable that there are general appearances of ascale beginning with the simple and advancing to the complicated. The animal kingdom was divided by Cuvier into four sub-kingdoms, ordivisions, and these exhibit an unequivocal gradation in the order inwhich they are here enumerated:- Radiata, (polypes, &c. ;) mollusca, (pulpy animals;) articulata, (jointed animals;) vertebrata, (animalswith internal skeleton. ) The gradation can, in like manner, beclearly traced in the CLASSES into which the sub-kingdoms aresubdivided, as, for instance, when we take those of the vertebrata inthis order--reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals. 

While the external forms of all these various animals are sodifferent, it is very remarkable that the whole are, after all, variations of a fundamental plan, which can be traced as a basisthroughout the whole, the variations being merely modifications ofthat plan to suit the particular conditions in which each particularanimal has been designed to live. Starting from the primeval germ, which, as we have seen, is the representative of a particular orderof full-grown animals, we find all others to be merely advances fromthat type, with the extension of endowments and modification of formswhich are required in each particular case; each form, also, retaining a strong affinity to that which precedes it, and tending toimpress its own features on that which succeeds. This unity ofstructure, as it is called, becomes the more remarkable, when weobserve that the organs, while preserving a resemblance, are oftenput to different uses. For example: the ribs become, in theserpent, organs of locomotion, and the snout is extended, in theelephant, into a prehensile instrument. 

It is equally remarkable that analogous purposes are served indifferent animals by organs essentially different. Thus, themammalia breathe by lungs; the fishes, by gills. These are notmodifications of one organ, but distinct organs. In mammifers, thegills exist and act at an early stage of the foetal state, butafterwards go back and appear no more; while the lungs are developed. In fishes, again, the gills only are fully developed; while the lungstructure either makes no advance at all, or only appears in therudimentary form of an air-bladder. So, also, the baleen of thewhale and the teeth of the land mammalia are different organs. Thewhale, in embryo, shews the rudiments of teeth; but these, not beingwanted, are not developed, and the baleen is brought forward instead. The land animals, we may also be sure, have the rudiments of baleenin their organization. In many instances, a particular structure isfound advanced to a certain point in a particular set of animals, (for instance, feet in the serpent tribe, ) although it is not thererequired in any degree; but the peculiarity, being carried a littlefarther forward, is perhaps useful in the next set of animals in thescale. Such are called rudimentary organs. With this class ofphenomena are to be ranked the useless mammae of the male humanbeing, and the unrequired process of bone in the male opossum, whichis needed in the female for supporting her pouch. Such curiousfeatures are most conspicuous in animals which form links betweenvarious classes. 

As formerly stated, the marsupials, standing at the bottom of themammalia, shew their affinity to the oviparous vertebrata, by therudiments of two canals passing from near the anus to the externalsurfaces of the viscera, which are fully developed in fishes, beingrequired by them for the respiration of aerated waters, but which arenot needed by the atmosphere-breathing marsupials. We have also thepeculiar form of the sternum and rib-bones of the lizards REPRESENTEDin the mammalia in certain white cartilaginous lines traceable amongtheir abdominal muscles. The struphionidae (birds of the ostrichtype) form a link between birds and mammalia, and in them we find thewings imperfectly or not at all developed, a diaphragm and urinarysac, (organs wanting in other birds, ) and feathers approaching thenature of hair. Again, the ornithorynchus belongs to a class at thebottom of the mammalia, and approximating to birds, and in it beholdthe bill and web-feet of that order!

For further illustration, it is obvious that, various as may be thelengths of the upper part of the vertebral column in the mammalia, italways consists of the same parts. The giraffe has in its tall neckthe same number of bones with the pig, which scarcely appears to havea neck at all. {195} Man, again, has no tail; but the notion of amuch-ridiculed philosopher of the last century is not altogether, asit happens, without foundation, for the bones of a caudal extremityexist in an undeveloped state in the os coccygis of the humansubject. The limbs of all the vertebrate animals are, in likemanner, on one plan, however various they may appear. In the hind-leg of a horse, for example, the angle called the hock is the samepart which in us forms the heel; and the horse, and all otherquadrupeds, with almost the solitary exception of the bear, walk, inreality, upon what answers to the toes of a human being. In this andmany other quadrupeds the fore part of the extremities is shrunk upin a hoof, as the tail of the human being is shrunk up in the bonymass at the bottom of the back. The bat, on the other hand, hasthese parts largely developed. The membrane, commonly called itswing, is framed chiefly upon bones answering precisely to those ofthe human hand; its extinct congener, the pterodactyle, had the samemembrane extended upon the fore-finger only, which in that animal wasprolonged to an extraordinary extent. In the paddles of the whaleand other animals of its order, we see the same bones as in the morehighly developed extremities of the land mammifers; and even theserpent tribes, which present no external appearance of suchextremities, possess them in reality, but in an undeveloped orrudimental state. 

The same law of development presides over the vegetable kingdom. Amongst phanerogamous plants, a certain number of organs appear to bealways present, either in a developed or rudimentary state; and thosewhich are rudimentary can be developed by cultivation. The flowerswhich bear stamens on one stalk and pistils on another, can be causedto produce both, or to become perfect flowers, by having asufficiency of nourishment supplied to them. So also, where aspecial function is required for particular circumstances, nature hasprovided for it, not by a new organ, but by a modification of acommon one, which she has effected in development. Thus, forinstance, some plants destined to live in arid situations, require tohave a store of water which they may slowly absorb. The need isarranged for by a cup-like expansion round the stalk, in which waterremains after a shower. Now the pitcher, as this is called, is not anew organ, but simply a metamorphose of a leaf. 

These facts clearly shew how all the various organic forms of ourworld are bound up in one--how a fundamental unity pervades andembraces them all, collecting them, from the humblest lichen up tothe highest mammifer, in one system, the whole creation of which musthave depended upon one law or decree of the Almighty, though it didnot all come forth at one time. After what we have seen, the idea ofa separate exertion for each must appear totally inadmissible. Thesingle fact of abortive or rudimentary organs condemns it; for these, on such a supposition, could be regarded in no other light than asblemishes or blunders--the thing of all others most irreconcilablewith that idea of Almighty Perfection which a general view of natureso irresistibly conveys. On the other hand, when the organiccreation is admitted to have been effected by a general law, we seenothing in these abortive parts but harmless peculiarities ofdevelopment, and interesting evidences of the manner in which theDivine Author has been pleased to work. 

We have yet to advert to the most interesting class of factsconnected with the laws of organic development. It is only in recenttimes that physiologists have observed that each animal passes, inthe course of its germinal history, through a series of changesresembling the PERMANENT FORMS of the various orders of animalsinferior to it in the scale. Thus, for instance, an insect, standingat the head of the articulated animals, is, in the larva state, atrue annelid, or worm, the annelida being the lowest in the sameclass. The embryo of a crab resembles the perfect animal of theinferior order myriapoda, and passes through all the forms oftransition which characterize the intermediate tribes of crustacea. The frog, for some time after its birth, is a fish with externalgills, and other organs fitting it for an aquatic life, all of whichare changed as it advances to maturity, and becomes a land animal. The mammifer only passes through still more stages, according to itshigher place in the scale. Nor is man himself exempt from this law. His first form is that which is permanent in the animalcule. Hisorganization gradually passes through conditions generally resemblinga fish, a reptile, a bird, and the lower mammalia, before it attainsits specific maturity. At one of the last stages of his foetalcareer, he exhibits an intermaxillary bone, which is characteristicof the perfect ape; this is suppressed, and he may then be said totake leave of the simial type, and become a true human creature. Even, as we shall see, the varieties of his race are represented inthe progressive development of an individual of the highest, beforewe see the adult Caucasian, the highest point yet attained in theanimal scale. 

To come to particular points of the organization. The brain of man, which exceeds that of all other animals in complexity of organizationand fulness of development, is, at one early period, only "a simplefold of nervous matter, with difficulty distinguishable into threeparts, while a little tail-like prolongation towards the hinderparts, and which had been the first to appear, is the onlyrepresentation of a spinal marrow. Now, in this state it perfectlyresembles the brain of an adult fish, thus assuming in transitu theform that in the fish is permanent. In a short time, however, thestructure is become more complex, the parts more distinct, the spinalmarrow better marked; it is now the brain of a reptile. The changecontinues; by a singular motion, certain parts (corpora quadragemina)which had hitherto appeared on the upper surface, now pass towardsthe lower; the former is their permanent situation in fishes andreptiles, the latter in birds and mammalia. This is another advancein the scale, but more remains yet to be done. The complication ofthe organ increases; cavities termed ventricles are formed, which donot exist in fishes, reptiles, or birds; curiously organized parts, such as the corpora striata, are added; it is now the brain of themammalia. Its last and final change alone seems wanting, that whichshall render it the brain of MAN. " {201} And this change in timetakes place. 

So also with the heart. This organ, in the mammalia, consists offour cavities, but in the reptiles of only three, and in fishes oftwo only, while in the articulated animals it is merely a prolongedtube. Now in the mammal foetus, at a certain early stage, the organhas the form of a prolonged tube; and a human being may be said tohave then the heart of an insect. Subsequently it is shortened andwidened, and becomes divided by a contraction into two parts, aventricle and an auricle; it is now the heart of a fish. Asubdivision of the auricle afterwards makes a triple-chambered form, as in the heart of the reptile tribes; lastly, the ventricle beingalso subdivided, it becomes a full mammal heart. 

Another illustration here presents itself with the force of the mostpowerful and interesting analogy. Some of the earliest fishes of ourglobe, those of the Old Red Sandstone, present, as we have seen, certain peculiarities, as the one-sided tail and an inferior positionof the mouth. No fishes of the present day, in a mature state, areso characterized; but some, at a certain stage of their existence, have such peculiarities. It occurred to a geologist to inquire ifthe fish which existed before the Old Red Sandstone had anypeculiarities assimilating them to the foetal condition of existingfish, and particularly if they were small. The first which occurbefore the time of the Old Red Sandstone, are those described by Mr. Murchison, as belonging to the Upper Ludlow Rocks; THEY ARE ALLRATHER SMALL. Still older are those detected by Mr. Philips, in theAymestry Limestone, being the most ancient of the class which have asyet been discovered; THESE ARE SO EXTREMELY MINUTE AS ONLY TO BEDISTINGUISHABLE BY THE MICROSCOPE. Here we apparently have veryclear demonstrations of a parity, or rather identity, of lawspresiding over the development of the animated tribes on the face ofthe earth, and that of the individual in embryo. 

The tendency of all these illustrations is to make us look toDEVELOPMENT as the principle which has been immediately concerned inthe peopling of this globe, a process extending over a vast space oftime, but which is nevertheless connected in character with thebriefer process by which an individual being is evoked from a simplegerm. What mystery is there here--and how shall I proceed toenunciate the conception which I have ventured to form of what mayprove to be its proper solution! It is an idea by no meanscalculated to impress by its greatness, or to puzzle by itsprofoundness. It is an idea more marked by simplicity than perhapsany other of those which have explained the great secrets of nature. But in this lies, perhaps, one of its strongest claims to the faithof mankind. 

The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest upto the highest and most recent, are, then, to be regarded as a seriesof ADVANCES OF THE PRINCIPLE OF DEVELOPMENT, which have depended uponexternal physical circumstances, to which the resulting animals areappropriate. I contemplate the whole phenomena as having been in thefirst place arranged in the counsels of Divine Wisdom, to take place, not only upon this sphere, but upon all the others in space, undernecessary modifications, and as being carried on, from first to last, here and elsewhere, under immediate favour of the creative will orenergy. {204} The nucleated vesicle, the fundamental form of allorganization, we must regard as the meeting-point between theinorganic and the organic--the end of the mineral and beginning ofthe vegetable and animal kingdoms, which thence start in differentdirections, but in perfect parallelism and analogy. We have alreadyseen that this nucleated vesicle is itself a type of mature andindependent being in the infusory animalcules, as well as thestarting point of the foetal progress of every higher individual increation, both animal and vegetable. We have seen that it is a formof being which electric agency will produce--though not perhaps usherinto full life--in albumen, one of those compound elements of animalbodies, of which another (urea) has been made by artificial means. Remembering these things, we are drawn on to the supposition, thatthe first step in the creation of life upon this planet was ACHEMICO-ELECTRIC OPERATION, BY WHICH SIMPLE GERMINAL VESICLES WEREPRODUCED. This is so much, but what were the next steps? Let acommon vegetable infusion help us to an answer. There, as we haveseen, simple forms are produced at first, but afterwards they becomemore complicated, until at length the life-producing powers of theinfusion are exhausted. Are we to presume that, in this case, thesimple engender the complicated? Undoubtedly, this would not be morewonderful as a natural process than one which we never think ofwondering at, because familiar to us--namely, that in the gestationof the mammals, the animalcule-like ovum of a few days is the parent, in a sense, of the chick-like form of a few weeks, and that in allthe subsequent stages--fish, reptile, &c. --the one may, with scarcelya metaphor, be said to be the progenitor of the other. I suggest, then, as an hypothesis already countenanced by much that isascertained, and likely to be further sanctioned by much that remainsto be known, that the first step was AN ADVANCE UNDER FAVOUR OFPECULIAR CONDITIONS, FROM THE SIMPLEST FORMS OF BEING, TO THE NEXTMORE COMPLICATED, AND THIS THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF THE ORDINARY PROCESSOF GENERATION. 

Unquestionably, what we ordinarily see of nature is calculated toimpress a conviction that each species invariably produces its like. But I would here call attention to a remarkable illustration ofnatural law which has been brought forward by Mr. Babbage, in hisNinth Bridgewater Treatise. The reader is requested to supposehimself seated before the calculating machine, and observing it. Itis moved by a weight, and there is a wheel which revolves through asmall angle round its axis, at short intervals, presenting to his eyesuccessively, a series of numbers engraved on its dividedcircumference. 

Let the figures thus seen be the series, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c. , ofnatural numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate antecedent byunity. 

"Now, reader, " says Mr. Babbage, "let me ask you how long you willhave counted before you are firmly convinced that the engine has beenso adjusted, that it will continue, while its motion is maintained, to produce the same series of natural numbers? Some minds are soconstituted, that, after passing the first hundred terms, they willbe satisfied that they are acquainted with the law. After seeingfive hundred terms few will doubt, and after the fifty thousandthterm the propensity to believe that the succeeding term will be fiftythousand and one, will be almost irresistible. That term WILL befifty thousand and one; and the same regular succession willcontinue; the five millionth and the fifty millionth term will stillappear in their expected order, and one unbroken chain of naturalnumbers will pass before your eyes, from ONE up to ONE HUNDREDMILLION. 

"True to the vast induction which has been made, the next succeedingterm will be one hundred million and one; but the next numberpresented by the rim of the wheel, instead of being one hundredmillion and two, is one hundred million TEN THOUSAND and two. Thewhole series from the commencement being thus, -

12345. . . . . . 99, 999, 999100, 000, 000regularly as far as 100, 000, 001100, 010, 002 the law changes. 100, 030, 003100, 060, 004100, 100, 005100, 150, 006100, 210, 007100, 280, 008. . . . . . . . . 

"The law which seemed at first to govern this series failed at thehundred million and second term. This term is larger than weexpected by 10, 000. The next term is larger than was anticipated by30, 000, and the excess of each term above what we had expected formsthe following table:-

10, 00030, 00060, 000100, 000150, 000. . . . . . 

being, in fact, the series of TRIANGULAR NUMBERS, {208} eachmultiplied by 10, 000. 

"If we now continue to observe the numbers presented by the wheel, weshall find, that for a hundred, or even for a thousand terms, theycontinue to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers;but after watching them for 2761 terms, we find that this law failsin the case of the 2762d term. 

"If we continue to observe, we shall discover another law then cominginto action, which also is dependent, but in a different manner, ontriangular numbers. This will continue through about 1430 terms, when a new law is again introduced which extends over about 950terms, and this, too, like all its predecessors, fails, and givesplace to other laws, which appear at different intervals. 

"Now it must be observed that THE LAW THAT EACH NUMBER PRESENTED BYTHE ENGINE IS GREATER BY UNITY THAN THE PRECEDING NUMBER, which lawthe observer had deduced from an induction of a hundred millioninstances, WAS NOT THE TRUE LAW THAT REGULATED ITS ACTION, and thatthe occurrence of the number 100, 010, 002 at the 100, 000, 002nd termwas AS NECESSARY A CONSEQUENCE OF THE ORIGINAL ADJUSTMENT, AND MIGHTHAVE BEEN AS FULLY FOREKNOWN AT THE COMMENCEMENT, AS WAS THE REGULARSUCCESSION OF ANY ONE OF THE INTERMEDIATE NUMBERS TO ITS IMMEDIATEANTECEDENT. The same remark applies to the next apparent deviationfrom the new law, which was founded on an induction of 2761 terms, and also to the succeeding law, with this limitation only--that, whilst their consecutive introduction at various definite intervals, is a necessary consequence of the mechanical structure of the engine, our knowledge of analysis does not enable us to predict the periodsthemselves at which the more distant laws will be introduced. "

It is not difficult to apply the philosophy of this passage to thequestion under consideration. It must be borne in mind that thegestation of a single organism is the work of but a few days, weeks, or months; but the gestation (so to speak) of a whole creation is amatter probably involving enormous spaces of time. Suppose that anephemeron, hovering over a pool for its one April day of life, werecapable of observing the fry of the frog in the water below. In itsaged afternoon, having seen no change upon them for such a long time, it would be little qualified to conceive that the external branchiaeof these creatures were to decay, and be replaced by internal lungs, that feet were to be developed, the tail erased, and the animal thento become a denizen of the land. Precisely such may be ourdifficulty in conceiving that any of the species which people ourearth is capable of advancing by generation to a higher type ofbeing. During the whole time which we call the historical era, thelimits of species have been, to ordinary observation, rigidly adheredto. But the historical era is, we know, only a small portion of theentire age of our globe. We do not know what may have happenedduring the ages which preceded its commencement, as we do not knowwhat may happen in ages yet in the distant future. All, therefore, that we can properly infer from the apparently invariable productionof like by like is, that such is the ordinary procedure of nature inthe time immediately passing before our eyes. Mr. Babbage'sillustration powerfully suggests that this ordinary procedure may besubordinate to a higher law which only PERMITS it for a time, and inproper season interrupts and changes it. We shall soon see somephilosophical evidence for this very conclusion. 

It has been seen that, in the reproduction of the higher animals, thenew being passes through stages in which it is successively fish-likeand reptile-like. But the resemblance is not to the adult fish orthe adult reptile, but to the fish and reptile at a certain point intheir foetal progress; this holds true with regard to the vascular, nervous, and other systems alike. It may be illustrated by a simplediagram. The foetus of all the four classes may be supposed toadvance in an identical condition to the point A. 

 M | | B |/D + R |/C + F |/A + | |

The fish there diverges and passes along a line apart, and peculiarto A itself, to its mature state at F. The reptile, bird, andmammal, go on together to C, where the reptile diverges in likemanner, and advances by itself to R. The bird diverges at D, andgoes on to B. The mammal then goes forward in a straight line to thehighest point of organization at M. This diagram shews only the mainramifications; but the reader must suppose minor ones, representingthe subordinate differences of orders, tribes, families, genera, &c. , if he wishes to extend his views to the whole varieties of being inthe animal kingdom. Limiting ourselves at present to the outlineafforded by this diagram, it is apparent that the only thing requiredfor an advance from one type to another in the generative process isthat, for example, the fish embryo should not diverge at A, but go onto C before it diverges, in which case the progeny will be, not afish, but a reptile. To protract the STRAIGHTFORWARD PART OF THEGESTATION OVER A SMALL SPACE--and from species to species the spacewould be small indeed--is all that is necessary. 

This might be done by the force of certain external conditionsoperating upon the parturient system. The nature of these conditionswe can only conjecture, for their operation, which in the geologicaleras was so powerful, has in its main strength been long interrupted, and is now perhaps only allowed to work in some of the lowestdepartments of the organic world, or under extraordinary casualtiesin some of the higher, and to these points the attention of sciencehas as yet been little directed. But though this knowledge werenever to be clearly attained, it need not much affect the presentargument, provided it be satisfactorily shewn that there must be somesuch influence within the range of natural things. 

To this conclusion it must be greatly conducive that the law oforganic development is still daily seen at work to certain effects, only somewhat short of a transition from species to species. Sex wehave seen to be a matter of development. There is an instance, in ahumble department of the animal world, of arrangements being made bythe animals themselves for adjusting this law to the production of aparticular sex. Amongst bees, as amongst several other insecttribes, there is in each community but one true female, the queenbee, the workers being false females or neuters; that is to say, sexis carried on in them to a point where it is attended by sterility. The preparatory states of the queen bee occupy sixteen days; those ofthe neuters, twenty; and those of males, twenty-four. Now it is afact, settled by innumerable observations and experiments, that thebees can so modify a worker in the larva state, that, when it emergesfrom the pupa, it is found to be a queen or true female. For thispurpose they enlarge its cell, make a pyramidal hollow to allow ofits assuming a vertical instead of a horizontal position, keep itwarmer than other larvae are kept, and feed it with a peculiar kindof food. From these simple circumstances, leading to a shortening ofthe embryotic condition, results a creature different in form, andalso in dispositions, from what would have otherwise been produced. Some of the organs possessed by the worker are here altogetherwanting. We have a creature "destined to enjoy love, to burn withjealousy and anger, to be incited to vengeance, and to pass her timewithout labour, " instead of one "zealous for the good of thecommunity, a defender of the public rights, enjoying an immunity fromthe stimulus of sexual appetite and the pains of parturition;laborious, industrious, patient, ingenious, skilful; incessantlyengaged in the nurture of the young, in collecting honey and pollen, in elaborating wax, in constructing cells and the like!--paying themost respectful and assiduous attention to objects which, had itsovaries been developed, it would have hated and pursued with the mostvindictive fury till it had destroyed them!" {215} All these changesmay be produced by a mere modification of the embryotic progress, which it is within the power of the adult animals to effect. But itis important to observe that this modification is different fromworking a direct change upon the embryo. It is not the differentfood which effects a metamorphosis. All that is done is merely toaccelerate the period of the insect's perfection. By thearrangements made and the food given, the embryo becomes sooner fitfor being ushered forth in its imago or perfect state. Developmentmay be said to be thus arrested at a particular stage--that early oneat which the female sex is complete. In the other circumstances, itis allowed to go on four days longer, and a stage is then reachedbetween the two sexes, which in this species is designed to be theperfect condition of a large portion of the community. Four daysmore make it a perfect male. It is at the same time to be observedthat there is, from the period of oviposition, a destined distinctionbetween the sexes of the young bees. The queen lays the whole of theeggs which are designed to become workers, before she begins to laythose which become males. But probably the condition of herreproductive system governs the matter of sex, for it is remarkedthat when her impregnation is delayed beyond the twenty-eighth day ofher entire existence, she lays only eggs which become males. 

We have here, it will be admitted, a most remarkable illustration ofthe principle of development, although in an operation limited to theproduction of sex only. Let it not be said that the phenomenaconcerned in the generation of bees may be very different from thoseconcerned in the reproduction of the higher animals. There is aunity throughout nature which makes the one case an instructivereflection of the other. 

We shall now see an instance of development operating within theproduction of what approaches to the character of variety of species. It is fully established that a human family, tribe, or nation, isliable, in the course of generations, to be either advanced from amean form to a higher one, or degraded from a higher to a lower, bythe influence of the physical conditions in which it lives. Thecoarse features, and other structural peculiarities of the negro raceonly continue while these people live amidst the circumstancesusually associated with barbarism. In a more temperate clime, andhigher social state, the face and figure become greatly refined. Thefew African nations which possess any civilization also exhibit formsapproaching the European; and when the same people in the UnitedStates of America have enjoyed a within-door life for severalgenerations, they assimilate to the whites amongst whom they live. On the other hand, there are authentic instances of a peopleoriginally well-formed and good-looking, being brought, by imperfectdiet and a variety of physical hardships, to a meaner form. It isremarkable that prominence of the jaws, a recession and diminution ofthe cranium, and an elongation and attenuation of the limbs, arepeculiarities always produced by these miserable conditions, for theyindicate an unequivocal retrogression towards the type of the loweranimals. Thus we see nature alike willing to go back and to goforward. Both effects are simply the result of the operation of thelaw of development in the generative system. Give good conditions, it advances; bad ones, it recedes. Now, perhaps, it is only becausethere is no longer a possibility, in the higher types of being, ofgiving sufficiently favourable conditions to carry on species tospecies, that we see the operation of the law so far limited. 

Let us trace this law also in the production of certain classes ofmonstrosities. A human foetus is often left with one of the mostimportant parts of its frame imperfectly developed: the heart, forinstance, goes no farther than the three-chambered form, so that itis the heart of a reptile. There are even instances of this organbeing left in the two-chambered or fish form. Such defects are theresult of nothing more than a failure of the power of development inthe system of the mother, occasioned by weak health or misery. Herewe have apparently a realization of the converse of those conditionswhich carry on species to species, so far, at least, as one organ isconcerned. Seeing a complete specific retrogression in this onepoint, how easy it is to imagine an access of favourable conditionssufficient to reverse the phenomenon, and make a fish mother developa reptile heart, or a reptile mother develop a mammal one. It is nogreat boldness to surmise that a super-adequacy in the measure ofthis under-adequacy (and the one thing seems as natural an occurrenceas the other) would suffice in a goose to give its progeny the bodyof a rat, and produce the ornithorynchus, or might give the progenyof an ornithorynchus the mouth and feet of a true rodent, and thuscomplete at two stages the passage from the aves to the mammalia. 

Perhaps even the transition from species to species does still takeplace in some of the obscurer fields of creation, or underextraordinary casualties, though science professes to have no suchfacts on record. It is here to be remarked, that such facts mightoften happen, and yet no record be taken of them, for so strong isthe prepossession for the doctrine of invariable like-production, that such circumstances, on occurring, would be almost sure to beexplained away on some other supposition, or, if presented, would bedisbelieved and neglected. Science, therefore, has no such facts, for the very same reason that some small sects are said to have nodiscreditable members--namely, that they do not receive such persons, and extrude all who begin to verge upon the character. There are, nevertheless, some facts which have chanced to be reported withoutany reference to this hypothesis, and which it seems extremelydifficult to explain satisfactorily upon any other. One of these hasalready been mentioned--a progression in the forms of the animalculesin a vegetable infusion from the simpler to the more complicated, asort of microcosm, representing the whole history of the progress ofanimal creation as displayed by geology. Another is given in thehistory of the Acarus Crossii, which may be only the ultimate stageof a series of similar transformations effected by electric agency inthe solution subjected to it. There is, however, one direct case ofa translation of species, which has been presented with a respectableamount of authority. {221} It appears that, whenever oats sown atthe usual time are kept cropped down during summer and autumn, andallowed to remain over the winter, a thin crop of rye is the harvestpresented at the close of the ensuing summer. This experiment hasbeen tried repeatedly, with but one result; invariably the secalecereale is the crop reaped where the avena sativa, a recogniseddifferent species, was sown. Now it will not satisfy a strictinquirer to be told that the seeds of the rye were latent in theground and only superseded the dead product of the oats; for if anysuch fact were in the case, why should the usurping grain be alwaysrye? Perhaps those curious facts which have been stated with regardto forests of one kind of trees, when burnt down, being succeeded(without planting) by other kinds, may yet be found most explicable, as this is, upon the hypothesis of a progression of species whichtakes place under certain favouring conditions, now apparently ofcomparatively rare occurrence. The case of the oats is the morevaluable, as bearing upon the suggestion as to a protraction of thegestation at a particular part of its course. Here, the generativeprocess is, by the simple mode of cropping down, kept up for a wholeyear beyond its usual term. The type is thus allowed to advance, andwhat was oats becomes rye. 

The idea, then, which I form of the progress of organic life upon theglobe--and the hypothesis is applicable to all similar theatres ofvital being--is, THAT THE SIMPLEST AND MOST PRIMITIVE TYPE, UNDER ALAW TO WHICH THAT OF LIKE-PRODUCTION IS SUBORDINATE, GAVE BIRTH TOTHE TYPE NEXT ABOVE IT, THAT THIS AGAIN PRODUCED THE NEXT HIGHER, ANDSO ON TO THE VERY HIGHEST, the stages of advance being in all casesvery small--namely, from one species only to another; so that thephenomenon has always been of a simple and modest character. Whetherthe whole of any species was at once translated forward, or only afew parents were employed to give birth to the new type, must remainundetermined; but, supposing that the former was the case, we mustpresume that the moves along the line or lines were simultaneous, sothat the place vacated by one species was immediately taken by thenext in succession, and so on back to the first, for the supply ofwhich the formation of a new germinal vesicle out of inorganic matterwas alone necessary. Thus, the production of new forms, as shewn inthe pages of the geological record, has never been anything more thana new stage of progress in gestation, an event as simply natural, andattended as little by any circumstances of a wonderful or startlingkind, as the silent advance of an ordinary mother from one week toanother of her pregnancy. Yet, be it remembered, the whole phenomenaare, in another point of view, wonders of the highest kind, for ineach of them we have to trace the effect of an Almighty Will whichhad arranged the whole in such harmony with external physicalcircumstances, that both were developed in parallel steps--andprobably this development upon our planet is but a sample of what hastaken place, through the same cause, in all the other countlesstheatres of being which are suspended in space. 

This may be the proper place at which to introduce the precedingillustrations in a form calculated to bring them more forcibly beforethe mind of the reader. The following table was suggested to me, inconsequence of seeing the scale of animated nature presented in Dr. Fletcher's Rudiments of Physiology. Taking that scale as its basis, it shews the wonderful parity observed in the progress of creation, as presented to our observation in the succession of fossils, andalso in the foetal progress of one of the principal human organs. {224} This scale, it may be remarked, was not made up with a view tosupport such an hypothesis as the present, nor with any apparentregard to the history of fossils, but merely to express theappearance of advancement in the orders of the Cuvierian system, assuming, as the criterion of that advancement, "an increase in thenumber and extent of the manifestations of life, or of the relationswhich an organized being bears to the external world. " Excepting inthe relative situation of the annelida and a few of the mammalorders, the parity is perfect; nor may even these small discrepanciesappear when the order of fossils shall have been furtherinvestigated, or a more correct scale shall have been formed. Meanwhile, it is a wonderful evidence in favour of our hypothesis, that a scale formed so arbitrarily should coincide to such a nearnesswith our present knowledge of the succession of animal forms uponearth, and also that both of these series should harmonize so wellwith the view given by modern physiologists of the embryotic progressof one of the organs of the highest order of animals. 

TABLE {226}

Table shows: scale of animal kingdom (the numbers indicate orders);order of animals in; ascending series of rocks; foetal human brainresembles, in

(The numbers indicate orders)

Rocks: 1. Gneiss and Mica Slate systemFoetal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;

Scale: RADIATA (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)Order: Zoophyta, PolypiariaRocks: 2. Clay Slate and Grawacke systemFoetal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;

Scale: MOLLUSCA (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)Order: Conchifera, Double-shelled MollusksRocks: 3. Silurian systemFoetal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;

Scale: ARTICULATA Annelida (12, 13, 14)Rocks: 3. Silurian systemFoetal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;

Scale: ARTICULATA Crustacea (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)Order: Crustacea, Annelida, Crustaceous FishesRocks: 3. Silurian systemFoetal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;

Scale: ARTICULATA Arachnida & Insecta (21-31)Order: Crustaceous FishesRocks: 4. Old Red SandstoneFoetal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;

Scale: VERTEBRATA Pisces (32, 33, 34, 35, 36)Order: True FishesRocks: 5. Carboniferous formationFoetal: 2nd month, that of a fish;

Scale: VERTEBRATA Reptilia (37, 38, 39, 40)Order: Piscine Saurians (ichthyosaurus, &c. ), Pterodactyles, Crocodiles, Tortoises, BatrachiansRocks: 6. New Red SandstoneFoetal: 3rd month, that of a turtle;

Scale: VERTEBRATA Aves (41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46)Order: BirdsRocks: 6. New Red SandstoneFoetal: 4th month, that of a bird;

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 47 CetaceaOrder: (Bone of a marsupial animal)Rocks: 7. Oolite

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 48 RuminantiaOrder: (Bone of a marsupial animal)Rocks: 8. Cretaceous formation

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 49 PachydermataOrder: Pachydermata (tapirs, horses, &c. )Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 50 EdentataOrder: Pachydermata (tapirs, horses, &c. )Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 51 RodentiaOrder: Rodentia (dormouse, squirrel, &c. )Rocks: 9. Lower EoceneFoetal: 5th month, that of a rodent;

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 52 MarsupialiaOrder: Marsupialia (racoon, opossum, &c. )Rocks: 9. Lower EoceneFoetal: 6th month, that of a ruminant;

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 53 AmphibiaOrder: Marsupialia (racoon, opossum, &c. )Rocks: 9. Lower EoceneFoetal: 6th month, that of a ruminant;

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 54 DigitigradaOrder: Digitigrada (genette, fox, wolf, &c. )Rocks: 10. MioceneFoetal: 7th month, that of a digitigrade animal;

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 55 PlantigradaOrder: Plantigrada (bear)Rocks: 10. Miocene

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 55 PlantigradaOrder: Cetacea (lamantins, seals, whales)Rocks: 10. Miocene

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 56 InsectivoraOrder: Edentata (sloths, &c. )Rocks: 11. Pliocene

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 56 InsectivoraOrder: Ruminantia (oxen, deer, &c. )Rocks: 11. Pliocene

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 57 CheiropteraRocks: 11. Pliocene

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 58 QuadrumanaOrder: Quadrumana (monkeys)Rocks: 11. PlioceneFoetal: 8th month, that of the quadrumana;

Scale: VERTEBRATA Mammalia: 59 BimanaOrder: Bimana (man)Rocks: 12. Superficial depositsFoetal: 9th month, attains full human character;

The reader has seen physical conditions several times referred to, asto be presumed to have in some way governed the progress of thedevelopment of the zoological circle. This language may seem vague, and, it may be asked, --can any particular physical condition beadduced as likely to have affected development? To this it may beanswered, that air and light are probably amongst the principalagencies of this kind which operated in educing the various forms ofbeing. Light is found to be essential to the development of theindividual embryo. When tadpoles were placed in a perforated box, and that box sunk in the Seine, light being the only condition thusabstracted, they grew to a great size in their original form, but didnot pass through the usual metamorphose which brings them to theirmature state as frogs. The proteus, an animal of the frog kind, inhabiting the subterraneous waters of Carniola, and which neveracquires perfect lungs so as to become a land animal, is presumed tobe an example of arrested development, from the same cause. When, inconnexion with these facts, we learn that human mothers living indark and close cells under ground, --that is to say, with aninadequate provision of air and light, --are found to produce anunusual proportion of defective children, {229} we can appreciate theimportant effects of both these physical conditions in ordinaryreproduction. Now there is nothing to forbid the supposition thatthe earth has been at different stages of its career under differentconditions, as to both air and light. On the contrary, we have seenreason for supposing that the proportion of carbonic acid gas (theelement fatal to animal life) was larger at the time of thecarboniferous formation than it afterwards became. We have also seenthat astronomers regard the zodiacal light as a residuum of matterenveloping the sun, and which was probably at one time denser than itis now. Here we have the indications of causes for a progress in thepurification of the atmosphere and in the diffusion of light duringthe earlier ages of the earth's history, with which the progress oforganic life may have been conformable. An accession to theproportion of oxygen, and the effulgence of the central luminary, mayhave been the immediate prompting cause of all those advances fromspecies to species which we have seen, upon other grounds, to benecessarily supposed as having taken place. And causes of the likenature may well be supposed to operate on other spheres of being, aswell as on this. I do not indeed present these ideas as furnishingthe true explanation of the progress of organic creation; they aremerely thrown out as hints towards the formation of a justhypothesis, the completion of which is only to be looked for whensome considerable advances shall have been made in the amount andcharacter of our stock of knowledge. 

Early in this century, M. Lamarck, a naturalist of the highestcharacter, suggested an hypothesis of organic progress whichdeservedly incurred much ridicule, although it contained a glimmer ofthe truth. He surmised, and endeavoured, with a great deal ofingenuity, to prove, that one being advanced in the course ofgenerations to another, in consequence merely of its experience ofwants calling for the exercise of its faculties in a particulardirection, by which exercise new developments of organs took place, ending in variations sufficient to constitute a new species. Thus hethought that a bird would be driven by necessity to seek its food inthe water, and that, in its efforts to swim, the outstretching of itsclaws would lead to the expansion of the intermediate membranes, andit would thus become web-footed. Now it is possible that wants andthe exercise of faculties have entered in some manner into theproduction of the phenomena which we have been considering; butcertainly not in the way suggested by Lamarck, whose whole notion isobviously so inadequate to account for the rise of the organickingdoms, that we only can place it with pity among the follies ofthe wise. Had the laws of organic development been known in histime, his theory might have been of a more imposing kind. It is uponthese that the present hypothesis is mainly founded. I take existingnatural means, and shew them to have been capable of producing allthe existing organisms, with the simple and easily conceivable aid ofa higher generative law, which we perhaps still see operating upon alimited scale. I also go beyond the French philosopher to a veryimportant point, the original Divine conception of all the forms ofbeing which these natural laws were only instruments in working outand realizing. The actuality of such a conception I hold to bestrikingly demonstrated by the discoveries of Macleay, Vigors, andSwainson, with respect to the affinities and analogies of animal (andby implication vegetable) organisms. {232} Such a regularity in theSTRUCTURE, as we may call it, of the CLASSIFICATION OF ANIMALS, as isshewn in their systems, is totally irreconcilable with the idea ofform going on to form merely as needs and wishes in the animalsthemselves dictated. Had such been the case, all would have beenirregular, as things arbitrary necessarily are. But, lo, the wholeplan of being is as symmetrical as the plan of a house, or the layingout of an old-fashioned garden! This must needs have been devisedand arranged for beforehand. And what a preconception or forethoughthave we here! Let us only for a moment consider how various are theexternal physical conditions in which animals live--climate, soil, temperature, land, water, air--the peculiarities of food, and thevarious ways in which it is to be sought; the peculiar circumstancesin which the business of reproduction and the care-taking of theyoung are to be attended to--all these required to be taken intoaccount, and thousands of animals were to be formed suitable inorganization and mental character for the concerns they were to havewith these various conditions and circumstances--here a tooth fittedfor crushing nuts; there a claw fitted to serve as a hook forsuspension; here to repress teeth and develop a bony net-workinstead; there to arrange for a bronchial apparatus, to last only fora certain brief time; and all these animals were to be schemed out, each as a part of a great range, which was on the whole to be rigidlyregular: let us, I say, only consider these things, and we shall seethat the decreeing of laws to bring the whole about was an actinvolving such a degree of wisdom and device as we only canattribute, adoringly, to the one Eternal and Unchangeable. It may beasked, how does this reflection comport with that timid philosophywhich would have us to draw back from the investigation of God'sworks, lest the knowledge of them should make us undervalue hisgreatness and forget his paternal character? Does it not ratherappear that our ideas of the Deity can only be worthy of him in theratio in which we advance in a knowledge of his works and ways; andthat the acquisition of this knowledge is consequently an availablemeans of our growing in a genuine reverence for him!

But the idea that any of the lower animals have been concerned in anyway with the origin of man--is not this degrading? Degrading is aterm, expressive of a notion of the human mind, and the human mind isliable to prejudices which prevent its notions from being invariablycorrect. Were we acquainted for the first time with thecircumstances attending the production of an individual of our race, we might equally think them degrading, and be eager to deny them, andexclude them from the admitted truths of nature. Knowing this factfamiliarly and beyond contradiction, a healthy and natural mind findsno difficulty in regarding it complacently. Creative Providence hasbeen pleased to order that it should be so, and it must therefore besubmitted to. Now the idea as to the progress of organic creation, if we become satisfied of its truth, ought to be received preciselyin this spirit. It has pleased Providence to arrange that onespecies should give birth to another, until the second highest gavebirth to man, who is the very highest: be it so, it is our part toadmire and to submit. The very faintest notion of there beinganything ridiculous or degrading in the theory--how absurd does itappear, when we remember that every individual amongst us actuallypasses through the characters of the insect, the fish, and reptile, (to speak nothing of others, ) before he is permitted to breathe thebreath of life! But such notions are mere emanations of false prideand ignorant prejudice. He who conceives them little reflects thatthey, in reality, involve the principle of a contempt for the worksand ways of God. For it may be asked, if He, as appears, has chosento employ inferior organisms as a generative medium for theproduction of higher ones, even including ourselves, what right havewe, his humble creatures, to find fault? There is, also, in thisprejudice, an element of unkindliness towards the lower animals, which is utterly out of place. These creatures are all of them partproducts of the Almighty Conception, as well as ourselves. All ofthem display wondrous evidences of his wisdom and benevolence. Allof them have had assigned to them by their Great Father a part in thedrama of the organic world, as well as ourselves. Why should they beheld in such contempt? Let us regard them in a proper spirit, asparts of the grand plan, instead of contemplating them in the lightof frivolous prejudices, and we shall be altogether at a loss to seehow there should be any degradation in the idea of our race havingbeen genealogically connected with them. 

MACLEAY SYSTEM OF ANIMATED NATURE. THIS SYSTEM CONSIDERED INCONNEXION WITH THE PROGRESS OF ORGANIC CREATION, AND AS INDICATINGTHE NATURAL STATUS OF MAN. 

It is now high time to advert to the system formed by the animatedtribes, both with a view to the possible illustration of thepreceding argument, and for the light which it throws upon thatgeneral system of nature which it is the more comprehensive object ofthis book to ascertain. 

The vegetable and animal kingdoms are arranged upon a scale, startingfrom simply organized forms, and going on to the more complex, eachof these forms being but slightly different from those next to it onboth sides. The lowest and most slightly developed forms in the twokingdoms are so closely connected, that it is impossible to say wherevegetable ends and animal begins. United at what may be called theirbases, they start away in different directions, but not altogether tolose sight of each other. On the contrary, they maintain a strictanalogy throughout the whole of their subsequent courses, sub-kingdomfor sub-kingdom, class for class; shewing a beautiful, though as yetobscure relation between the two grand forms of being, andconsequently a unity in the laws which brought them both intoexistence. So complete does this analogy appear, even in the presentimperfect state of science, that I fully expect in a few years to seethe animal and vegetable kingdoms duly ranked up against each otherin a system of parallels, which will admit of our assigning to eachspecies in the former the particular shrub or tree corresponding toit in the latter, all marked by unmistakable analogies of the mostinteresting kind. 

It is as yet but a few years since a system of subordinate analogiesnot less remarkable began to be speculated upon as within the rangeof the animal kingdom. Probably it also exists in the vegetablekingdom; but to this point no direct attention has been given; so weare left to infer that such is the case from theoreticalconsiderations only. We are indebted for what we know of thesebeautiful analogies to three naturalists--Macleay, Vigors, andSwainson, whose labours tempt us to dismiss in a great measure theartificial classifications hitherto used, and make an entirely newconspectus of the animal kingdom, not to speak of the correspondingreform which will be required in our systems of botany also. 

The Macleay system, as it may be called in honour of its principalauthor, announces that, whether we take the whole animal kingdom, orany definite division of it, we shall find that we are examining agroup of beings which is capable of being arranged along a series ofclose affinities, IN A CIRCULAR FORM, --that is to say, starting fromany one portion of the group, when it is properly arranged, we canproceed from one to another by minute gradations, till at length, having run through the whole, we return to the point whence we setout. All natural groups of animals are, therefore, in the languageof Mr. Macleay, CIRCULAR; and the possibility of throwing anysupposed group into a circular arrangement is held as a decisive testof its being a real or natural one. It is of course to be understoodthat each circle is composed of a set of inferior circles: forexample, a set of TRIBE circles composes an ORDER; a set of ORDERcircles, again, forms a CLASS; and so on. Of each group, thecomponent circles are INVARIABLY FIVE IN NUMBER: thus, in the animalkingdom, there are five sub-kingdoms, --the vertebrata, annulosa, {239a} radiata, acrita, {239b} mollusca. Take, again, one of thesesub-kingdoms, the vertebrata, and we find it composed of fiveclasses, --the mammalia, reptilia, pisces, amphibia, and aves, each ofthe other sub-kingdoms being similarly divisible. Take the mammalia, and it is in like manner found to be composed of five orders, --thecheirotheria, {239c} ferae, cetacea, glires, ungulata. Even in thisnumerical uniformity, which goes down to the lowest ramifications ofthe system, there would be something very remarkable, as arguing adefinite and preconceived arrangement; but this is only the leastcurious part of the Macleay theory. 

We shall best understand the wonderfully complex system of analogiesdeveloped by that theory, if we start from the part of the kingdom inwhich they were first traced, --namely, the class aves, or birds. This gives for its five orders, --incessores, (perching birds, )raptores, (birds of prey, ) natatores, (swimming birds, ) grallatores, (waders, ) rasores, (scrapers. ) In these orders our naturalistsdiscerned distinct organic characters, of different degrees ofperfectness, the first being the most perfect with regard to thegeneral character of the class, and therefore the best representativeof that class; whence it was called the TYPICAL order. The secondwas found to be inferior, or rather to have a less perfect balance ofqualities; hence it was designated the SUB-TYPICAL. In this arecomprehended the chief noxious and destructive animals of the circleto which it belongs. The other three groups were called aberrant, asexhibiting a much wider departure from the typical standard, althoughthe last of the three is observed to make a certain recovery, andjoin on to the typical group, so as to complete the circle. Thefirst of the aberrant groups (natatores) is remarkable for making thewater the theatre of its existence, and the birds composing it are ingeneral of comparatively large bulk. The second (grallatores) arelong-limbed and long-billed, that they may wade and pick up theirsubsistence in the shallows and marshes in which they chiefly live. The third (rasores) are distinguished by strong feet, for walking orrunning on the ground, and for scraping in it for their food; also bywings designed to scarcely raise them off the earth and, farther, bya general domesticity of character and usefulness to man. 

Now the most remarkable circumstance is, that these organiccharacters, habits, and moral properties, were found to be traceablemore or less distinctly in the corresponding portions of every othergroup, even of those belonging to distant subdivisions of the animalkingdom, as, for instance, the insects. The incessores (typicalorder of aves) being reduced to its constituent circles or tribes, itwas found that these strictly represented the five orders. In theconirostres are the perfections which belong to the incessores as anorder, with the conspicuous external feature of a comparatively smallnotch in their bills; in the dentirostres, the notch is strong andtoothlike, (hence the name of the tribe) assimilating them to theraptores; the fissirostres come into analogy with the natatores inthe slight development of their feet and their great powers offlight; the tenuirostres have the small mouths and long soft bills ofthe grallatores. Finally, the scansores resemble the rasores intheir superior intelligence and docility, and in their having stronglimbs and a bill entire at the tip. This parity of qualities becomesclearer when placed in a tabular form:-

Orders of Birds. Characters. Tribes of Incessores. 

Incessores --Most perfect of their circle; Conirostres. Notch of bill smallRaptores --Notch of bill like a tooth Dentirostres. Natatores --Slightly developed feet; Fissirostres. Strong flightGrallatores--Small mouths; long soft bills Tenuirostres. Rasores --Strong feet, short wings; Scansores. Docile and domestic

Some comprehensive terms are much wanted to describe these fivecharacters, so curiously repeated throughout the whole of the animal, and probably also the vegetable kingdom. Meanwhile, Mr. Swainsoncalls them typical, sub-typical, natatorial, suctorial, {242} andrasorial. Some of his illustrations of the principle are exceedinglyinteresting. He shews that the leading animal of a typical circleusually has a combination of properties concentrated in itself, without any of these preponderating remarkably over others. The sub-typical circles, he says, "do not comprise the largest individuals inbulk, but always those which are the most powerfully armed, eitherfor inflicting injury on their own class, for exciting terror, producing injury, or creating annoyance to man. Their dispositionsare often sanguinary, since the forms most conspicuous among themlive by rapine, and subsist on the blood of other animals. They are, in short, symbolically types of EVIL. " This symbolical character ismost conspicuous about the centre of the series of gradations:-

Kingdom . . . Annulosa. Sub-kingdom . . . Reptilia. Class (Mammalia) . . . Ferae. (Aves) . . . Raptores. 

In the annulosa it is not distinct, although we must also rememberthat insects do produce enormous ravages and annoyance in many partsof the earth. In the reptilia it is more distinct, since to thisclass belong the ophidia, (serpents, ) an order peculiarly noxious. It comes to a kind of climax in the ferae and raptores, which fulfilthe function of butchers among land animals. As we descend throughtribes, families, genera, species, it becomes fainter and fainter, but never altogether vanishes. In the dentirostres, for instance, wehave in a subdued form the hooked bill and predaceous character ofthe raptores; to this tribe belongs the family of the shrikes, sodeadly to all the lesser field birds. In the genus bos, we have, inthe sub-typical group, the bison, "wild, revengeful, and shewing aninnate detestation of man. " In equus, we have, in the samesituation, the zebra, which actually shews the stripes of the tiger, and is as remarkable for its wildness as its congeners, the horse andass, are for their docility and usefulness. To quote again from Mr. Swainson, "the singular threatening aspect which the caterpillars ofthe sphinx moth assume on being disturbed, is a remarkablemodification of the terrific or evil nature which is impressed in oneform or another, palpable or remote, upon all sub-typical groups; forthis division of the lepidopterous order is precisely of thisdenomination. In the pre-eminent type of this order of insects, thebutterflies, (papilionides, ) our associations little prepare us forexpecting any trace of the evil principle; but here, too, there is asub-typical division. These, " says our naturalist, "aredistinguished by their caterpillars being armed with formidablespines or prickles, which in general are possessed of some highlyacrimonious or poisonous quality, capable of injuring those who touchthem. It is only, " continues Mr. Swainson, "when extensiveresearches bring to light a uniformity of results, that we canventure to believe they are so universal as to deserve being rankedas primary laws. Thus, when a celebrated entomologist denounced asimpure the black and lurid beetles forming the saprophagouspetalocera of Mr. Macleay, a tribe living only upon putrid vegetablematter, and hiding themselves in their disgusting food, or in darkhollows of the earth, neither of these celebrated men suspected theabsolute fact, elicited from our analogies of this group, that thisvery tribe constituted the sub-typical group of one of the primarydivisions of coleopterous insects: nor had they any suspicion that, by the filthy habits and repulsive forms of these beetles, nature hadintended that they should be types or emblems of hundreds of othergroups, distinguished by peculiarities equally indicative of evil. On the other hand, the thalerophagous petalocera, forming the typicalgroup of the same division, present us with all the perfections andhabits belonging to their kind. These families of beetles live onlyupon fresh vegetables; they are diurnal, and sport in the glare ofday, pure in their food, elegant in their shapes, and beautiful intheir colours. " {246}

The third type, (first of the three aberrant, ) called by Mr. Swainson, the natatorial, or aquatic, are chiefly remarkable fortheir bulk, the disproportionate size of the head, and the absence, or slight development of the feet. They partake of the predaceousand destructive character of the adjoining sub-typical group, and themeans of their predacity are generally found in the mouth alone. Inthe primary division of the animal kingdom, we find the type in theradiata, not one of which lives out of water. In the vertebrata, itis in the fishes. In both of these, feet are totally wanting. Descending to the class mammalia, we have this type in the cetacea, which present a comparatively slight development of limbs. In theaves, as we have seen, the type is presented in the natatores, whosename has been adopted as an appropriate term for all thecorresponding groups. An enumeration of some other examples of thenatatorial type, as the cephalopoda (instanced in the cuttle-fish) inthe mollusca; the crustacea (crabs, &c. ) in the annulosa; the owls(which often duck for fish) in the raptores; the ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, &c. , among reptilia, will serve to bring the generalcharacter, and its pervasion of the whole animal world, forciblybefore the mind of the reader. 

The next type is that of meanest and most imperfect organization, thelower termination of all groups, as the typical is the upper. It iscalled by Mr. Swainson the suctorial, from a very generally prevalentpeculiarity, that of drawing sustenance by suction. The acrita, orpolypes, among the sub-kingdoms; the intestina, among the annulosa;the tortoises, among the reptilia; the armadillo and scaly ant-eater, pig, mouse, jerboa, and kangaroo, among quadrupeds; the waders andtenuirostres, among birds; the coleoptera, (bug, louse, flea, &c. )among insects; the gastrobranchus, among fishes; are examples whichwill illustrate the special characters of this type. These aresmallness, particularly in the head and mouth, feebleness, and wantof offensive protection, defect of organs of mastication, considerable powers of swift movement, and (often) a parasitic modeof living; while of negative qualities, there are, besides, indisposition to domestication, and an unsuitableness to serve ashuman food. 

The rasorial type comprehends most of the animals which becomedomesticated and useful to man, as, first, the fowls which give aname to the type, the ungulata, and more particularly the ruminantia, among quadrupeds, and the dog among the ferae. Gentleness, familiarity with man, and a peculiar approach to human intelligence, are the leading mental characteristics of animals of this type. Amongst external characters, we generally find power of limbs andfeet for locomotion on land, (to which the rasorial type isconfined, ) abundant tail and ornaments for the head, whether in theform of tufts, crests, horns, or bony excrescences. In the animalkingdom, the mollusca are the rasorial type, which, however, onlyshews itself there in their soft and sluggish character, and theirbeing very generally edible. In the ptilota, or winged insects, thehymenopterous are the rasorial type, and it is not thereforesurprising to find amongst them the ants and bees, "the most social, intelligent, and in the latter case, most useful to man, of all theannulose animals. "

As yet the speculations on representation are imperfect, inconsequence of the novelty of the doctrine, and the defective stateof our knowledge of animated nature. It has, however, been so fullyproved in the aves, and traced so clearly in other parts of theanimal kingdom, and as a general feature of that part of nature, thathardly a doubt can exist of its being universally applicable. Evenin the lowly forms of the acrita, (polypes, ) the suctorial type ofthe animal kingdom, representation has been discerned, and with someremarkable results as to the history of our world. The acrita werethe first forms of animal life upon earth, the starting point of thatgreat branch of organization. Now, this sub-kingdom consists, likethe rest, of five groups, (classes, ) and these are respectivelyrepresentations of the acrita itself, and the other four sub-kingdoms, which had not come into existence when the acrita wereformed. The polypi vaginati, in the crustaceous covering of theliving mass, and their more or less articulated structure, representthe annulosa. In the radiated forms of the rotifera, and the simplestructure of the polypi rudes, we are reminded of the radiata. Themollusca are typified in the soft, mucous, sluggish intestina. And, finally, in the fleshy living mass which surrounds the bony andhollow axis of the polypi natantes, we have a sketch of thevertebrata. The acrita thus appear as a prophecy of the higherevents of animal development. They shew that the nobler orders ofbeing, including man himself, were contemplated from the first, andcame into existence by virtue of a law, the operation of which hadcommenced ages before their forms were realized. 

The system of representation is therefore to be regarded as APOWERFUL ADDITIONAL PROOF OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF ORGANIC PROGRESS BYVIRTUE OF LAW. It establishes the unity of animated nature and thedefinite character of its entire constitution. It enables us to seehow, under the flowing robes of nature, where all looks arbitrary andaccidental, there is an artificiality of the most rigid kind. Thenatural, we now perceive, sinks into and merges in a HigherArtificial. To adopt a comparison more apt than dignified, we may besaid to be placed here as insects are in a garden of the old style. Our first unassisted view is limited, and we perceive only theirregularities of the minute surface, and single shrubs which appeararbitrarily scattered. But our view at length extending and becomingmore comprehensive, we begin to see parterres balancing each other, trees, statues, and arbours placed symmetrically, and that the wholeis an assemblage of parts mutually reflective. It can scarcely benecessary to point to the inference hence arising with regard to theorigination of nature in some Power, of which man's mind is a faintand humble representation. The insects of the garden, supposing themto be invested with reasoning power, and aware how artificial aretheir own works, might of course very reasonably conclude that, beingin its totality an artificial object, the garden was the work of somemaker or artificer. And so also must we conclude, when we attain aknowledge of the artificiality which is at the basis of nature, thatnature is wholly the production of a Being resembling, but infinitelygreater than ourselves. 

Organic beings are, then, bound together in development, and in asystem of both affinities and analogies. Now, it will be asked, doesthis agree with what we know of the geographical distribution oforganic beings, and of the history of organic progress as delineatedby geology? Let us first advert to the geographical question. 

Plants, as is well known, require various kinds of soil, forms ofgeographical surface, climate, and other conditions, for theirexistence. And it is everywhere found that, however isolated aparticular spot may be with regard to these conditions, --as amountain top in a torrid country, the marsh round a salt spring farinland, or an island placed far apart in the ocean, --appropriateplants have there taken up their abode. But the torrid zone dividesthe two temperate regions from each other by the space of more thanforty-six degrees, and the torrid and temperate zones together form amuch broader line of division between the two arctic regions. TheAtlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Persian Gulf, also divide thevarious portions of continent in the torrid and temperate zones fromeach other. Australia is also divided by a broad sea from thecontinent of Asia. Thus there are various portions of the earthseparated from each other in such a way as to preclude anything likea general communication of the seeds of their respective plantstowards each other. Hence arises an interesting question--Are theplants of the various isolated regions which enjoy a parity ofclimate and other conditions, identical or the reverse? The answeris--that in such regions the vegetation bears a general resemblance, but the SPECIES are nearly all different, and there is even, in aconsiderable measure, a diversity of families. 

The general facts have been thus stated: in the arctic and antarcticregions, and in those parts of lower latitudes, which, from theirelevation, possess the same cold climate, there is always a similaror analogous vegetation, but few species are common to the varioussituations. In like manner, the intertropical vegetation of Asia, Africa, and America, are specifically different, though generallysimilar. The southern region of America is equally diverse from thatof Africa, a country similar in clime, but separated by a vast extentof ocean. The vegetation of Australia, another region similarlyplaced in respect of clime, is even more peculiar. These facts arethe more remarkable when we discover that, in most instances, theplants of one region have thriven when transplanted to another ofparallel clime. This would shew that parity of conditions does notlead to a parity of productions so exact as to include identity ofspecies, or even genera. Besides the various isolated regions hereenumerated, there are some others indicated by naturalists asexhibiting a vegetation equally peculiar. Some of these are isolatedby mountains, or the interposition of sandy wastes. For example, thetemperate region of the elder continent is divided about the centreof Asia, and the east of that line is different from the west. Soalso is the same region divided in North America by the RockyMountains. Abyssinia and Nubia constitute another distinct botanicalregion. De Candolle enumerates in all twenty well-marked portions ofthe earth's surface which are peculiar with respect to vegetation; anumber which would be greatly increased if remote islands andisolated mountain ranges were to be included. 

When we come to the zoology, we find precisely similar results, excepting that man (with, perhaps, some of the less conspicuous formsof being) is universal, and that several tribes, as the bear and dog, appear to have passed by the land connexion from the arctic regionsof the eastern to those of the western hemisphere. "With theseexceptions, " says Dr. Prichard, "and without any others, as far aszoological researches have yet gone, it may be asserted that noindividual species are common to distant regions. In parallelclimates, analogous species replace each other; sometimes, but notfrequently, the same genus is found in two separate continents; butthe species which are natives of one region are not identical withcorresponding races indigenous in the opposite hemisphere. 

"A similar result arises when we compare the three greatintertropical regions, as well as the extreme spaces of the threegreat continents, which advance into the temperate climates of thesouthern hemisphere. 

"Thus, the tribes of simiae, (monkeys, ) of the dog and cat kinds, ofpachyderms, including elephants, tapirs, rhinoceroses, hogs, of bats, of saurian and ophidian reptiles, as well of birds and other terreneanimals, are all different in the three great continents. In thelower departments of the mammiferous family, we find that the bruta, or edendata, (sloths, armadillos, &c. , ) of Africa, are differentlyorganized from those of America, and these again from the tribesfound in the Malayan archipelago and Terra Australis. " {255}

It does not appear that the diversity between the similar regions ofAfrica, Asia, and America, is occasioned in all instances by anydisqualification of these countries to support precisely the samegenera or species. The ox, horse, goat, &c. , of the elder continenthave thriven and extended themselves in the new, and many of theindigenous tribes of America would no doubt flourish in correspondingclimates in Europe, Asia, and Africa. It has, however, been remarkedby naturalists unacquainted with the Macleay system, that the largerand more powerful animals of their respective orders belong to theelder continent, and that thus the animals of America, unlike thefeatures of inanimate nature, appear to be upon a small scale. Theswiftest and most agile animals, and a large proportion of those mostuseful to man, are also natives of the elder continent. On the otherhand, the bulk of the edentata, a group remarkable for defects andmeanness of organization, are American. The zoology of America maybe said, upon the whole, to recede from that of Asia, "and perhaps ina greater degree, " adds Dr. Prichard, "from that of Africa. " A muchgreater recession is, however, observed in both the botany andzoology of Australia. 

There "we do not find, in the great masses of vegetation, either themajesty of the virgin forests of America, or the variety and eleganceof those of Asia, or the delicacy and freshness of the woods of ourtemperate countries of Europe. The vegetation is generally gloomyand sad; it has the aspect of our evergreens or heaths; the plantsare for the most part woody; the leaves of nearly all the plants arelinear, lanceolated, small, coriaceous, and spinescent. The grasses, which elsewhere are generally soft and flexible, participate in thestiffness of the other vegetables. The greater part of the plants ofNew Holland belong to new genera; and those included in the generaalready known are of new species. The natural families which prevailare those of the heaths, the proteae, compositae, leguminosae, andmyrthoideae; the larger trees all belong to the last family. " {257}

The prevalent animals of Australia are not less peculiar. It is wellknown that none above the marsupialia, or pouched animals, are nativeto it. The most conspicuous are these marsupials, which exist ingreat varieties here, though unknown in the elder continent, and onlyfound in a few mean forms in America. Next to them are themonotremata, which are entirely peculiar to this portion of theearth. Now these are animals at the bottom of the mammiferous class, adjoining to that of birds, of whose character and organization themonotremata largely partake, the ornithorynchus presenting the billand feet of a duck, producing its young in eggs, and having, likebirds, a clavicle between the two shoulders. The birds of Australiavary in structure and plumage, but all have some singularity aboutthem--the swan, for instance, is black. The country abounds inreptiles, and the prevalent fishes are of the early kinds, having acartilaginous structure. 

Altogether, the plants and animals of this minor continent convey theimpression of an early system of things, such as might be displayedin other parts of the earth about the time of the oolite. Inconnexion with this circumstance, it is a fact of some importance, that the geognostic character of Australia, its vast arid plains, itslittle diversified surface and consequent paucity of streams, and thevery slight development of volcanic rock on its surface, seem toindicate a system of physical conditions, such as we may suppose tohave existed elsewhere in the oolitic era: perhaps we see the chalkformation preparing there in the vast coral beds frontiering thecoast. Australia thus appears as a portion of the earth which has, from some unknown causes, been belated in its physical and organicdevelopment. And certainly the greater part of its surface is notfitted to be an advantageous place of residence for beings above themarsupialia, and judging from analogy, it may yet be subjected to aseries of changes in the highest degree inconvenient to any humanbeings who may have settled upon it. 

The general conclusions regarding the geography of organic nature, may be thus stated. (1. ) There are numerous distinct foci of organicproduction throughout the earth. (2. ) These have everywhere advancedin accordance with the local conditions of climate &c. , as far as atleast the class and order are concerned, a diversity taking place inthe lower gradations. No physical or geographical reason appearingfor this diversity, we are led to infer that, (3, ) it is the resultof minute and inappreciable causes giving the law of organicdevelopment a particular direction in the lower subdivisions of thetwo kingdoms. (4. ) Development has not gone on to equal results inthe various continents, being most advanced in the eastern continent, next in the western, and least in Australia, this inequality beingperhaps the result of the comparative antiquity of the variousregions, geologically and geographically. 

It must at the same time be admitted that the line of organicdevelopment has nowhere required for its advance the whole of thefamilies comprehended in the two kingdoms, seeing that some of theseare confined to one continent, and some to another, without aconceivable possibility of one having been connected with the otherin the way of ancestry. The two great families of quadrumana, cebidae and simiadae, are a noted instance, the one being exclusivelyAmerican, while the other belongs entirely to the old world. Thereare many other cases in which the full circular group can only becompleted by taking subdivisions from various continents. This wouldseem to imply that, while the entire system is so remarkable for itsunity, it has nevertheless been produced in lines geographicallydetached, these lines perhaps consisting of particular typical groupsplaced in an independent succession, or of two or more of thesegroups. And for this idea there is, even in the present imperfectstate of our knowledge of animated nature, some countenance inascertained facts, the birds of Australia, for example, being chieflyof the suctorial type, while it may be presumed that the observationas to the predominance of the useful animals in the Old World, is notmuch different from saying that the rasorial type is there peculiarlyabundant. It does not appear that the idea of independent lines, consisting of particular types, or sets of types, is necessarilyinconsistent with the general hypothesis, as nothing yet ascertainedof the Macleay system forbids their having an independent set ofaffinities. On this subject, however, there is as yet muchobscurity, and it must be left to future inquirers to clear it up. 

We must now call to mind that the geographical distribution of plantsand animals was very different in the geological ages from what it isnow. Down to a time not long antecedent to man, the same vegetationoverspread every clime, and a similar uniformity marked the zoology. This is conceived by M. Brogniart, with great plausibility, to havebeen the result of a uniformity of climate, produced by the as yetunexhausted effect of the internal heat of the earth upon itssurface; whereas climate has since depended chiefly on externalsources of heat, as modified by the various meteorologicalinfluences. However the early uniform climate was produced, certainit is that, from about the close of the geological epoch, plants andanimals have been dispersed over the globe with a regard to theirparticular characters, and specimens of both are found so isolated inparticular situations, as utterly to exclude the idea that they camethither from any common centre. It may be asked, --Considering that, in the geological epoch, species are not limited to particularregions, and that since the close of that epoch, they are verypeculiarly limited, are we to presume the present organisms of theworld to have been created ab initio after that time? To this it maybe answered, --Not necessarily, as it so happens that animals begin tobe much varied, or to appear in a considerable variety of species, towards the close of the geological history. It may have been thatthe multitudes of locally peculiar species only came into being afterthe uniform climate had passed away. It may have only been when avaried climate arose, that the originally few species branched offinto the present extensive variety. 

A question of a very interesting kind will now probably arise in thereader's mind--WHAT PLACE OR STATUS IS ASSIGNED TO MAN IN THE NEWNATURAL SYSTEM. Before going into this inquiry, it is necessary toadvert to several particulars of the natural system not yet noticed. 

It is necessary, in particular, to ascertain the grades which existin the classification of animals. In the line of the aves, Mr. Swainson finds these to be nine, the species pica, for example, beingthus indicated:-

Kingdom Animalia. Sub-kingdom Vertebrata. Class Aves. Order Incessores. Tribe Conirostres. Family Corvidae. Sub-family Corvinae. Genus Corvus. Sub-genus, or species Pica. 

This brings us down to species, the subdivision where intermarriageor breeding is usually considered as natural to animals, and where aresemblance of offspring to parents is generally persevered in. Thedog, for instance, is a species, because all dogs can breed together, and the progeny partakes of the appearances of the parents. Thehuman race is held as a species, primarily for the same reasons. Species, however, is liable to another subdivision, which naturalistscall variety; and variety appears to be subject to exactly the samesystem of REPRESENTATION which have been traced in species and higherdenominations. In canis, for instance, the bull-dog and mastiffrepresent the ferocious sub-typical group; the waterdog isnatatorial; we see the speed and length of muzzle of the suctorialgroup in the greyhound; and the bushy tail and gentle and serviceablecharacter of the rasorial in the shepherd's dog and spaniel. Eventhe striped and spotted skin of the tiger and panther is reproducedin the more ferocious kind of dogs--an indication of a fundamentalconnexion between physical and mental qualities which we have alsoseen in the zebra, and which is likewise displayed in thepredominance of a yellow colour in the vultures and owls in commonwith the lion and his congeners. 

It is by no means clearly made out that this system of ninegradations over and above that of variety applies in all departmentsof nature. On the contrary, even Mr. Swainson gives series in whichseveral of them are omitted. It may be that, in some departments ofnature, variation from the class or order has gone down into fewershades than in others; or it may be, that many of the variations havenot survived till our era, or have not been as yet detected bynaturalists; in either of which cases there may be a necessity forshortening the series by the omission of one or two grades, as forinstance TRIBE or SUB-FAMILY. This, however, is much to beregretted, as it introduces an irregularity into the natural system, and consequently throws a difficulty and doubt in the way of ourinvestigating it. With these preliminary remarks, I shall proceed toinquire what is the natural status of man. 

That man's place is to be looked for in the class mammalia and sub-kingdom vertebrata admits of no doubt, from his possessing both thecharacters on which these divisions are founded. When we descend, however, below the CLASS, we find no settled views on the subjectamongst naturalists. Mr. Swainson, who alone has given a review ofthe animal kingdom on the Macleay system, unfortunately writes onthis subject in a manner which excites a suspicion as to hisjudgment. His arrangement of the first or typical order of themammalia is therefore to be received with great hesitation. It is asfollows:-

Typical Quadrumana Pre-eminently organized for grasping. Sub-typical Ferae . . . Claws retractile; carnivorous. Natatorial Cetacea. . Pre-eminently aquatic; feet very short. Suctorial Glires . . Muzzle lengthened and pointed. Rasorial Ungulata . Crests and other processes on the head. 

He then takes the quadrumana, and places it in the followingarrangement:-

Typical . . Simiadae . . . (Monkeys of Old World. )Sub-typical . Cebidae . . . (Monkeys of New World. )Natatorial . Unknown . Suctorial . . Vespertilionidae (Bats. )Rasorial . Lemuridae . . . (Lemurs. )

He considers the simiadae as a complete circle, and argues thencethat there is no room in the range of the animal kingdom for man. Man, he says, is not a constituent part of any circle, for, if hewere, there ought to be other animals on each hand having affinity tohim, whereas there are none, the resemblance of the orangs being oneof mere analogy. Mr. Swainson therefore considers our race asstanding apart, and forming a link between the unintelligent order ofbeings and the angels! And this in spite of the glaring fact that, in our teeth, hands, and other features grounded on by naturalists ascharacteristic, we do not differ more from the simiadae than the batsdo from the lemurs--in spite also of that resemblance of analogy tothe orangs which he himself admits, and which, at the least, must beheld to imply a certain relation. He also overlooks that, thoughthere may be no room for man in the circle of the simiadae, (this, indeed, is quite true, ) there may be in the order, where he actuallyleaves a place entirely blank, or only to be filled up, as hesuggests, by mermen! {266} Another argument in his arrangement is, that it leaves the grades of classification very much abridged, therebeing at the most seven instead of nine. But serious argument on atheory so preposterous may be considered as nearly thrown away. Ishall therefore at once proceed to suggest a new arrangement of thisportion of the animal kingdom, in which man is allowed the place towhich he is zoologically entitled. 

I propose that the typical order of the mammalia should be designatedcheirotheria, from the sole character which is universal amongstthem, their possessing hands, and with a regard to that pre-eminentqualification for grasping which has been ascribed to them--ananalogy to the perching habit of the typical order of birds, which isworthy of particular notice. The tribes of the cheirotheria Iarrange as follows:-

Typical Bimana. Sub-typical Simiadae. Natatorial Vespertilionidae. Suctorial Lemuridae. Rasorial Cebidae. 

Here man is put into the typical place, as the genuine head, not onlyof this order, but of the whole animal world. The double affinitywhich is requisite is obtained, for here he has the simiadae on onehand, and the cebidae on the other. The five tribes of the order arecompleted, the vespertilionidae being shifted (provisionally) intothe natatorial place, for which their appropriateness is so farevidenced by the aquatic habits of several of the tribe, and thelemuridae into the suctorial, to which their length of muzzle andremarkable saltatory power are highly suitable. At the same time, the simiadae are degraded from the typical place, to which they haveno sort of pretension, and placed where their mean and mischievouscharacter seem to require; the cebidae again being assigned thatsituation which their comparatively inoffensive dispositions, theirarboreal habits, and their extraordinary development of the tail, (which with them is like a fifth hand, ) render so proper. 

The zoological status thus assigned to the human race is preciselywhat might be expected. In order to understand its full value, it isnecessary to observe how the various type peculiarities operate infixing the character of the animals ranked in them. It is easy toconceive that they must be, in some instances, much mixed up witheach other, and consequently obscured. If an animal, for example, isthe suctorial member of a circle of species, forming the natatorialtype of genera, forming a family or sub-family which in its turn israsorial, its qualities must evidently be greatly mingled and ill todefine. But, on the other hand, if we take the rapacious or sub-typical group of birds, and look in it for the tribe which is againthe rapacious or sub-typical group of its order, we may expect tofind the qualities of that group exalted or intensified, andaccordingly made the more conspicuous. Such is really the case withthe vultures, in the rapacious birds, a family remarkable above allof their order for their carnivorous and foul habits. So, also, ifwe take the typical group of the birds, the incessores or perchers, and look in it for its typical group, the conirostres, and seek thereagain for the typical family of that group, the corvidae, we mayexpect to find a very marked superiority in organization andcharacter. Such is really the case. "The crow, " says Mr. Swainson, "unites in itself a greater number of properties than are to be foundindividually in any other genus of birds; as if in fact it had takenfrom all the other orders a portion of their peculiar qualities, forthe purpose of exhibiting in what manner they could be combined. From the rapacious birds this "type of types, " as the crow has beenjustly called, takes the power of soaring in the air, and of seizingupon living birds, like the hawks, while its habit of devouringputrid substances, and picking out the eyes of young animals, isborrowed from the vultures. From the scansorial or climbing order ittakes the faculty of picking the ground, and discovering its foodwhen hidden from the eye, while the parrot family gives it the tastefor vegetable food, and furnishes it with great cunning, sagacity, and powers of imitation, even to counterfeiting the human voice. Next come the order of waders, who impart their quota to theperfection of the crow by giving it great powers of flight, andperfect facility in walking, such being among the chief attributes ofthe suctorial order. Lastly, the aquatic birds contribute theirportion, by giving this terrestrial bird the power of feeding notonly on fish, which are their peculiar food, but actually ofoccasionally catching it. {270} In this wonderful manner do we findthe crow partially invested with the united properties of all otherbirds, while in its own order, that of the incessores or perchers, itstands the pre-eminent type. We cannot also fail to regard it as aremarkable proof of the superior organization and character of thecorvidae, that they are adapted for all climates, and accordinglyfound all over the world. 

Mr. Swainson's description of the zoological status of the crow, written without the least design of throwing any light upon that ofman, evidently does so in a remarkable degree. It prepares us toexpect in the place among the mammalia, corresponding to that of thecorvidae in the aves, a being or set of beings possessing aremarkable concentration of qualities from all the other groups oftheir order, but in general character as far above the corvidae as atypical group is above an aberrant one, the mammalia above the aves. Can any of the simiadae pretend to such a place, narrowly andimperfectly endowed as these creatures are--a mean reflectionapparently of something higher? Assuredly not, and in thisconsideration alone Mr. Swainson's arrangement must fall to theground. To fill worthily so lofty a station in the animated familiesman alone is competent. In him only is to be found thatconcentration of qualities from all the other groups of his orderwhich has been described as marking the corvidae. That graspingpower, which has been selected as the leading physical quality of hisorder, is nowhere so beautifully or so powerfully developed as in hishand. The intelligence and teachableness of the simiadae rise to aclimax in his pre-eminent mental nature. His sub-analogy to theferae is marked by his canine teeth, and the universality of hisrapacity, for where is the department of animated nature which hedoes not without scruple sacrifice to his convenience? Withsanguinary, he has also gentle and domesticable dispositions, thusreflecting the characters of the ungulata, (the rasorial type of theclass, ) to which we perhaps see a further analogy in the use which hemakes of the surface of the earth as a source of food. To theaquatic type his love of maritime adventure very readily assimilateshim; and how far the suctorial is represented in his nature it ishardly necessary to say. As the corvidae, too, are found in everypart of the earth--almost the only one of the inferior animals whichhas been acknowledged as universal--so do we find man. He thrives inall climates, and with regard to style of living, can adapt himselfto an infinitely greater diversity of circumstances than any otheranimated creature. 

Man, then, considered zoologically, and without regard to thedistinct character assigned to him by theology, simply takes hisplace as the type of all types of the animal kingdom, the true andunmistakable head of animated nature upon this earth. It willreadily occur that some more particular investigations into the ranksof types might throw additional light on man's status, and perhapshis nature; and such light we may hope to obtain when the philosophyof zoology shall have been studied as it deserves. Perhaps some suchdiagram as the one given on the next page will be found to be anapproximation to the expression of the merely natural or seculargrade of man in comparison with other animals. 

 / / | / / | / / | /| /| | / | / | | / | /| | | /| | / | | | / | | /| | | | /| | | / | | | | / | | | /| | | | | /| | | | / | | | | |+-1-2-3--4-+--a-b-c-d----+ {274}

Here the upright lines, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, may represent the comparativeheight and grade of organization of both the five sub-kingdoms, andthe five classes of each of these; 5 being the vertebrata in the onecase, and the mammalia in the other. The difference between theheight of the line 1 and the line 5 gives an idea of the differenceof being the head type of the aves, (corvidae, ) and the head type ofthe mammalia, (bimana;) a. B. C. D. 5, again, represent the fivegroups of the first order of the mammalia; a, being the organicstructure of the highest simia, and 5, that of man. A set of tangentlines of this kind may yet prove one of the most satisfactory meansof ascertaining the height and breadth of the psychology of ourspecies. 

It may be asked, --Is the existing human race the only speciesdesigned to occupy the grade to which it is here referred? Such aquestion evidently ought not to be answered rashly; and I shalltherefore confine myself to the admission that, judging by analogy, we might expect to see several varieties of the being, homo. Thereis no other family approaching to this in importance, which presentsbut one species. The corvidae, our parallel in aves, consist ofseveral distinct genera and sub-genera. It is startling to find suchan appearance of imperfection in the circle to which man belongs, andthe ideas which rise in consequence are not less startling. Is ourrace but the initial of the grand crowning type? Are there yet to bespecies superior to us in organization, purer in feeling, morepowerful in device and act, and who shall take a rule over us! Thereis in this nothing improbable on other grounds. The present race, rude and impulsive as it is, is perhaps the best adapted to thepresent state of things in the world; but the external world goesthrough slow and gradual changes, which may leave it in time a muchserener field of existence. There may then be occasion for a noblertype of humanity, which shall complete the zoological circle on thisplanet, and realize some of the dreams of the purest spirits of thepresent race. 

EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 

The human race is known to consist of numerous nations, displayingconsiderable differences of external form and colour, and speaking ingeneral different languages. This has been the case since thecommencement of written record. It is also ascertained that theexternal peculiarities of particular nations do not rapidly change. There is rather a tendency to a persistency of type in all lines ofdescent, insomuch that a subordinate admixture of various type isusually obliterated in a few generations. Numerous as the varietiesare, they have all been found classifiable under five leading ones:-1. The Caucasian or Indo-European, which extends from India intoEurope and Northern Africa; 2. The Mongolian, which occupiesNorthern and Eastern Asia; 3. The Malayan, which extends from theUltra-Gangetic Peninsula into the numerous islands of the South Seaand Pacific; 4. The Negro, chiefly confined to Africa; 5. Theaboriginal American. Each of these is distinguished by certaingeneral features of so marked a kind, as to give rise to asupposition that they have had distinct or independent origins. Ofthese peculiarities, colour is the most conspicuous: the Caucasiansare generally white, the Mongolians yellow, the Negroes black, andthe Americans red. The opposition of two of these in particular, white and black, is so striking, that of them, at least, it seemsalmost necessary to suppose separate origins. Of late years, however, the whole of this question has been subjected to a rigorousinvestigation, and it has been successfully shewn that the human racemight have had one origin, for anything that can be inferred fromexternal peculiarities. 

It appears from this inquiry, {278} that colour and otherphysiological characters are of a more superficial and accidentalnature than was at one time supposed. One fact is at the very firstextremely startling, that there are nations, such as the inhabitantsof Hindostan, known to be one in descent, which nevertheless containgroups of people of almost all shades of colour, and likewisediscrepant in other of those important features on which much stresshas been laid. Some other facts, which I may state in brief terms, are scarcely less remarkable. In Africa, there are Negro nations, --that is, nations of intensely black complexion, as the Jolofs, Mandingoes, and Kafirs, whose features and limbs are as elegant asthose of the best European nations. While we have no proof of Negroraces becoming white in the course of generations, the converse maybe held as established, for there are Arab and Jewish families ofancient settlement in Northern Africa, who have become as black asthe other inhabitants. There are also facts which seem to shew thepossibility of a natural transition by generation from the black tothe white complexion, and from the white to the black. True whites(apart from Albinoes) are not unfrequently born among the Negroes, and the tendency to this singularity is transmitted in families. There is, at least, one authentic instance of a set of perfectlyblack children being born to an Arab couple, in whose ancestry nosuch blood had intermingled. This occurred in the valley of theJordan, where it is remarkable that the Arab population in generalhave flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair, than any othertribes of the same nation. {280}

The style of living is ascertained to have a powerful effect inmodifying the human figure in the course of generations, and thiseven in its osseous structure. About two hundred years ago, a numberof people were driven by a barbarous policy from the counties ofAntrim and Down, in Ireland, towards the sea-coast, where they haveever since been settled, but in unusually miserable circumstances, even for Ireland; and the consequence is, that they exhibit peculiarfeatures of the most repulsive kind, projecting jaws with large openmouths, depressed noses, high cheek bones, and bow legs, togetherwith an extremely diminutive stature. These, with an abnormalslenderness of the limbs, are the outward marks of a low andbarbarous condition all over the world; it is particularly seen inthe Australian aborigines. On the other hand, the beauty of thehigher ranks in England is very remarkable, being, in the main, asclearly a result of good external conditions. "Coarse, unwholesome, and ill-prepared food, " says Buffon, "makes the human racedegenerate. All those people who live miserably are ugly and ill-made. Even in France, the country people are not so beautiful asthose who live in towns; and I have often remarked that in thosevillages where the people are richer and better fed than in others, the men are likewise more handsome, and have better countenances. "He might have added, that elegant and commodious dwellings, cleanlyhabits, comfortable clothing, and being exposed to the open air onlyas much as health requires, cooperate with food in increasing theelegance of a race of human beings. 

Subject only to these modifying agencies, there is, as has been said, a remarkable persistency in national features and forms, insomuchthat a single individual thrown into a family different from himselfis absorbed in it, and all trace of him lost after a few generations. But while there is such a persistency to ordinary observation, itwould also appear that nature has a power of producing new varieties, though this is only done rarely. Such novelties of type abound inthe vegetable world, are seen more rarely in the animal circle, andperhaps are least frequent of occurrence in our own race. There is anoted instance in the production, on a New England farm, of a varietyof sheep with unusually short legs, which was kept up by breeding, onaccount of the convenience in that country of having sheep which areunable to jump over low fences. The starting and main taming a BREEDof cattle, that is, a variety marked by some desirable peculiarity, are familiar to a large class of persons. It appears only necessary, when a variety has been thus produced, that a union should take placebetween individuals similarly characterized, in order to establishit. Early in the last century, a man named Lambert, was born inSuffolk, with semi-horny excrescences of about half an inch long, thickly growing all over his body. The peculiarity was transmittedto his children, and was last heard of in a third generation. Thepeculiarity of six fingers on the hand and six toes on the feet, appears in like manner in families which have no record or traditionof such a peculiarity having affected them at any former period, andit is then sometimes seen to descend through several generations. Itwas Mr. Lawrence's opinion, that a pair, in which both parties wereso distinguished, might be the progenitors of a new variety of therace who would be thus marked in all future time. It is not easy tosurmise the causes which operate in producing such varieties. Perhaps they are simply types in nature, POSSIBLE TO BE REALIZEDUNDER CERTAIN APPROPRIATE CONDITIONS, but which conditions are suchas altogether to elude notice. I might cite as examples of suchpossible types, the rise of whites amongst the Negroes, theoccurrence of the family of black children in the valley of theJordan, and the comparatively frequent birth of red-haired childrenamongst not only the Mongolian and Malayan families, but amongst theNegroes. We are ignorant of the laws of variety-production; but wesee it going on as a principle in nature, and it is obviouslyfavourable to the supposition that all the great families of men areof one stock. 

The tendency of the modern study of the languages of nations is tothe same point. The last fifty years have seen this study elevatedto the character of a science, and the light which it throws upon thehistory of mankind is of a most remarkable nature. 

Following a natural analogy, philologists have thrown the earth'slanguages into a kind of classification: a number bearing aconsiderable resemblance to each other, and in general geographicallynear, are styled a GROUP or SUB-FAMILY; several groups, again, areassociated as a FAMILY, with regard to more general features ofresemblance. Six families are spoken of. 

The Indo-European family nearly coincides in geographical limits withthose which have been assigned to that variety of mankind whichgenerally shews a fair complexion, called the Caucasian variety. Itmay be said to commence in India, and thence to stretch throughPersia into Europe, the whole of which it occupies, exceptingHungary, the Basque provinces of Spain, and Finland. Its sub-families are the Sanskrit, or ancient language of India, the Persian, the Slavonic, Celtic, Gothic, and Pelasgian. The Slavonic includesthe modern languages of Russia and Poland. Under the Gothic, are (1)the Scandinavian tongues, the Norske, Swedish, and Danish; and (2)the Teutonic, to which belong the modern German, the Dutch, and ourown Anglo-Saxon. I give the name of Pelasgian to the group scatteredalong the north shores of the Mediterranean, the Greek and Latin, including the modifications of the latter under the names of Italian, Spanish, &c. The Celtic was from two to three thousand years ago, the speech of a considerable tribe dwelling in Western Europe; butthese have since been driven before superior nations into a fewcorners, and are now only to be found in the highlands of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and certain parts of France. The Gaelic ofScotland, Erse of Ireland, and the Welsh, are the only livingbranches of this sub-family of languages. 

The resemblances amongst languages are of two kinds, --identity ofwords, and identity of grammatical forms; the latter being nowgenerally considered as the most important towards the argument. When we inquire into the first kind of affinity among the languagesof the Indo-European family, we are surprised at the great number ofcommon terms which exist amongst them, and these referring to suchprimary ideas, as to leave no doubt of their having all been derivedfrom a common source. Colonel Vans Kennedy presents nine hundredwords common to the Sanskrit and other languages of the same family. In the Sanskrit and Persian, we find several which require no sort oftranslation to an English reader, as pader, mader, sunu, dokhter, brader, mand, vidhava; likewise asthi, a bone, (Greek, ostoun;)denta, a tooth, (Latin, dens, dentis;) eyeumen, the eye; brouwa, theeye-brow, (German, braue;) nasa, the nose; karu, the hand, (Gr. Cheir;) genu, the knee, (Lat. Genu;) ped, the foot, (Lat. Pes, pedis;) hrti, the heart; jecur, the liver, (Lat. Jecur;) stara, astar; gela, cold, (Lat. Gelu, ice;) aghni, fire, (Lat. Ignis;) dhara, the earth, (Lat. Terra, Gaelic, tir;) arrivi, a river; nau, a ship, (Gr. Naus, Lat. Navis;) ghau, a cow; sarpam, a serpent. 

The inferences from these verbal coincidences were confirmed in astriking manner when Bopp and others investigated the grammaticalstructure of this family of languages. Dr. Wiseman pronounces thatthe great philologist just named, "by a minute and sagacious analysisof the Sanskrit verb, compared with the conjugational system of theother members of this family, left no doubt of their intimate andpositive affinity. " It was now discovered that the peculiarterminations or inflections by which persons are expressed throughoutthe verbs of nearly the whole of these languages, have theirfoundations in pronouns; the pronoun was simply placed at the end, and thus became an inflexion. "By an analysis of the Sanskritpronouns, the elements of those existing in all the other languageswere cleared of their anomalies; the verb substantive, which in Latinis composed of fragments referable to two distinct roots, here foundboth existing in regular form; the Greek conjugations, with all theircomplicated machinery of middle voice, augments, and reduplications, were here found and illustrated in a variety of ways, which a fewyears ago would have appeared chimerical. Even our own language maysometimes receive light from the study of distant members of ourfamily. Where, for instance, are we to seek for the root of ourcomparative BETTER? Certainly not in its positive, good, nor in theTeutonic dialects in which the same anomaly exists. But in thePersian we have precisely the same comparative, BEHTER, with exactlythe same signification, regularly formed from its positive beh, good. " {287}

The second great family is the Syro-Phoenician, comprising theHebrew, Syro-Chaldaic, Arabic, and Gheez or Abyssinian, beinglocalized principally in the countries to the west and south of theMediterranean. Beyond them, again, is the African family, which, asfar as research has gone, seems to be in like manner marked by commonfeatures, both verbal and grammatical. The fourth is the Polynesianfamily, extending from Madagascar on the west through all the IndianArchipelago, besides taking in the Malayan dialect from the continentof India, and comprehending Australia and the islands of the westernportion of the Pacific. This family, however, bears such an affinityto that next to be described, that Dr. Leyden and some others do notgive it a distinct place as a family of languages. 

The fifth family is the Chinese, embracing a large part of China, andmost of the regions of Central and Northern Asia. The leadingfeatures of the Chinese are, its consisting altogether ofmonosyllables, and being destitute of all grammatical forms, exceptcertain arrangements and accentuations, which vary the sense ofparticular words. It is also deficient in some of the consonantsmost conspicuous in other languages, b, d, r, v, and z; so that thispeople can scarcely pronounce our speech in such a way as to beintelligible: for example, the word Christus they call Kuliss-ut-oo-suh. The Chinese, strange to say, though they early attained to aremarkable degree of civilization, and have preceded the Europeans inmany of the most important inventions, have a language whichresembles that of children, or deaf and dumb people. The sentence ofshort, simple, unconnected words, in which an infant amongst usattempts to express some of its wants and its ideas--the equallybroken and difficult terms which the deaf and dumb express by signs, as the following passage of the Lord's Prayer: --"Our Father, heavenin, wish your name respect, wish your soul's kingdom providencearrive, wish your will do heaven earth equality, " &c. --these are likethe discourse of the refined people of the so-called CelestialEmpire. An attempt was made by the Abbe Sicard to teach the deaf anddumb grammatical signs; but they persisted in restricting themselvesto the simple signs of ideas, leaving the structure undetermined byany but the natural order of connexion. Such is exactly thecondition of the Chinese language. 

Crossing the Pacific, we come to the last great family in thelanguages of the aboriginal Americans, which have all of themfeatures in common, proving them to constitute a group by themselves, without any regard to the very different degrees of civilizationwhich these nations had attained at the time of the discovery. Thecommon resemblance is in the grammatical structure as well as inwords, and the grammatical structure of this family is of a verypeculiar and complicated kind. The general character in this respecthas caused the term Polysynthetic to be applied to the Americanlanguages. A long many-syllabled word is used by the rude Algonquinsand Delawares to express a whole sentence: for example, a woman ofthe latter nation, playing with a little dog or cat, would perhaps beheard saying, "kuligatschis, " meaning, "give me your pretty littlepaw;" the word, on examination, is found to be made up in thismanner: k, the second personal pronoun; uli, part of the word wulet, pretty; gat, part of the word wichgat, signifying a leg or paw;schis, conveying the idea of littleness. In the same tongue, a youthis called pilape, a word compounded from the first part of pilsit, innocent, and the latter part of lenape, a man. Thus, it will beobserved, a number of parts of words are taken and thrown together, by a process which has been happily termed agglutination, so as toform one word, conveying a complicated idea. There is also anelaborate system of inflection; in nouns, for instance, there is onekind of inflection to express the presence or absence of vitality, and another to express number. The genius of the language has beendescribed as accumulative: it "tends rather to add syllables orletters, making farther distinctions in objects already before themind, than to introduce new words. " {291} Yet it has also been shewnvery distinctly, that these languages are based in words of onesyllable, like those of the Chinese and Polynesian families; all theprimary ideas are thus expressed: the elaborate system of inflectionand agglutination is shewn to be simply a farther development of thelanguage-forming principle, as it may be called--or the Chinesesystem may be described as an arrestment of this principle at aparticular early point. It has been fully shewn, that between thestructure of the American and other families, sufficient affinitiesexist to make a common origin or early connexion extremely likely. The verbal affinities are also very considerable. Humboldt says, "Ineighty-three American languages examined by Messrs. Barton and Vater, one hundred and seventy words have been found, the roots of whichappear to be the same; and it is easy to perceive that this analogyis not accidental, since it does not rest merely upon imitativeharmony, or on that conformity of organs which produces almost aperfect identity in the first sounds articulated by children. Ofthese one hundred and seventy words which have this connexion, three-fifths resemble the Manchou, the Tongouse, the Mongal, and theSamoyed; and two-fifths, the Celtic and Tchoud, the Biscayan, theCoptic, and Congo languages. These words have been found bycomparing the whole of the American languages with the whole of thoseof the Old World; for hitherto we are acquainted with no Americanidiom which seems to have an exclusive correspondence with any of theAsiatic, African, or European tongues. " {293} Humboldt and othersconsidered these words as brought into America by recent immigrants;an idea resting on no proof, and which seems at once refuted by thecommon words being chiefly those which represent primary ideas;besides, we now know, what was not formerly perceived or admitted, that there are great affinities of structure also. I may here referto a curious mathematical calculation by Dr. Thomas Young, to theeffect, that if three words coincide in two different languages, itis ten to one they must be derived in both cases from some parentlanguage, or introduced in some other manner. "Six words would givemore, " he says, "than seventeen hundred to one, and eight near100, 000, so that in these cases the evidence would be little short ofabsolute certainty. " He instances the following words to shew aconnexion between the ancient Egyptian and the Biscayan:-

 BISCAYAN EGYPTIAN. New Beria Beri. A dog Ora Whor. Little Gutchi Kudchi. Bread Ognia Oik. A wolf Otgsa Ounsh. Seven Shashpi Shashf. 

Now, as there are, according to Humboldt, one hundred and seventywords in common between the languages of the new and old continents, and many of these are expressive of the most primitive ideas, thereis, by Dr. Young's calculation, overpowering proof of the originalconnexion of the American and other human families. 

This completes the slight outline which I have been able to give, ofthe evidence for the various races of men being descended from onestock. It cannot be considered as conclusive, and there are manyeminent persons who deem the opposite idea the more probable; but Imust say that, without the least regard to any other kind ofevidence, that which physiology and philology present seems to medecidedly favourable to the idea of a single origin. 

Assuming that the human race is ONE, we are next called upon toinquire in what part of the earth it may most probably be supposed tohave originated. One obvious mode of approximating to a solution ofthis question is to trace backward the lines in which the principaltribes appear to have migrated, and to see if these converge nearlyto a point. It is very remarkable that the lines do converge, andare concentrated about the region of Hindostan. The language, religion, modes of reckoning time, and some other peculiar ideas ofthe Americans, are now believed to refer their origin to North-Eastern Asia. Trace them farther back in the same direction, and wecome to the north of India. The history of the Celts and Teutonesrepresents them as coming from the east, the one after the other, successive waves of a tide of population flowing towards the north-west of Europe: this line being also traced back, rests finally atthe same place. So does the line of Iranian population, which haspeopled the east and south shores of the Mediterranean, Syria, Arabia, and Egypt. The Malay variety, again, rests its limit in onedirection on the borders of India. Standing on that point, it iseasy to see how the human family, originating there, might spread outin different directions, passing into varieties of aspect and oflanguage as they spread, the Malay variety proceeding towards theOceanic region, the Mongolians to the east and north, and sending offthe red men as a sub-variety, the European population going off tothe north-westward, and the Syrian, Arabian, and Egyptian, towardsthe countries which they are known to have so long occupied. TheNegro alone is here unaccounted for; and of that race it may fairlybe said, that it is the one most likely to have had an independentorigin, seeing that it is a type so peculiar in an inveterate blackcolour, and so mean in development. But it is not necessary topresume such an origin for it, as much good argument might beemployed to shew that it is only a deteriorated offshoot of thegeneral stock. Our view of the probable original seat of man agreeswith the ancient traditions of the race. There is one among theHindoos which places the cradle of the human family in Thibet;another makes Ceylon the residence of the first man. Our view isalso in harmony with the hypothesis detailed in the chapter beforethe last. According to that theory, we should expect man to haveoriginated where the highest species of the quadrumana are to befound. Now these are unquestionably found in the Indian Archipelago. 

After all, it may be regarded as still an open question, whethermankind is of one or many origins. The first human generation mayhave consisted of many pairs, though situated at one place, and thesemay have been considerably different from each other in externalcharacters. And we are equally bound to admit, though this does notas yet seem to have occurred to any other speculator, that there mayhave been different lines and sources of origination, geographicallyapart, but which all resulted uniformly in the production of a being, one in species, although variously marked. 

It has of late years been a favourite notion with many, that thehuman race was at first in a highly civilized state, and thatbarbarism was a second condition. This idea probably took its originin a wish to support certain interpretations of the Mosaic record, and it has never yet been propounded by any writer who seemed to havea due sense of the value of science in this class of investigations. The principal argument for it is, that we see many examples ofnations falling away from civilization into barbarism, while in someregions of the earth, the history of which we do not clearly know, there are remains of works of art far superior to any which thepresent unenlightened inhabitants could have produced. It is to bereadily admitted that such decadences are common; but do theynecessarily prove that there has been anything like a regular andconstant decline into the present state, from a state more generallyrefined? May not these be only instances of local failures andsuppressions of the principle of civilization, where it had begun totake root amongst a people generally barbarous? It is, at least, aslegitimate to draw this inference from the facts which are known. But it is also alleged that we know of no such thing as civilizationbeing ever self-originated. It is always seen to be imparted fromone people to another. Hence, of course, we must infer thatcivilization at the first could only have been of supernaturalorigin. This argument appears to be founded on false premises, forcivilization does sometimes rise in a manner clearly independentamongst a horde of people generally barbarous. A striking instanceis described in the laborious work of Mr. Catlin on the North-American tribes. Far placed among those which inhabit the vastregion of the north-west, and quite beyond the reach of any influencefrom the whites, he found a small tribe living in a fortifiedvillage, where they cultivated the arts of manufacture, realizedcomforts and luxuries, and had attained to a remarkable refinement ofmanners, insomuch as to be generally called the polite and friendlyMandans. They were also more than usually elegant in their persons, and of every variety of complexion between that of their compatriotsand a pure white. Up to the time of Mr. Catlin's visit, these peoplehad been able to defend themselves and their possessions against theroving bands which surrounded them on all sides; but, soon after, they were attacked by small-pox, which cut them all off except asmall party, whom their enemies rushed in upon and destroyed to aman. What is this but a repetition on a small scale of phenomenawith which ancient history familiarizes us--a nation rising in artsand elegances amidst barbarous neighbours, but at length overpoweredby the rude majority, leaving only a Tadmor or a Luxor as a monumentof itself to beautify the waste? What can we suppose the nationwhich built Palenque and Copan to have been but only a Mandan tribe, which chanced to have made its way farther along the path ofcivilization and the arts, before the barbarians broke in upon it?The flame essayed to rise in many parts of the earth; but there werealways considerable chances against it, and down it accordingly went, times without number; but there was always a vitality in it, nevertheless, and a tendency to progress, and at length it seems tohave attained a strength against which the powers of barbarism cannever more prevail. The state of our knowledge of uncivilizednations is very apt to make us fall into error on this subject. Theyare generally supposed to be all at one point in barbarism, which isfar from being the case, for in the midst of every great region ofuncivilized men, such as North America, there are nations partiallyrefined. The Jolofs, Mandingoes, and Kafirs, are African examples, where a natural and independent origin for the improvement whichexists is as unavoidably to be presumed as in the case of theMandans. 

The most conclusive argument against the original civilization ofmankind is to be found in the fact that we do not now seecivilization existing anywhere except in certain conditionsaltogether different from any we can suppose' to have existed at thecommencement of our race. To have civilization, it is necessary thata people should be numerous and closely placed; that they should befixed in their habitations, and safe from violent external andinternal disturbance; that a considerable number of them should beexempt from the necessity of drudging for immediate subsistence. Feeling themselves at ease about the first necessities of theirnature, including self-preservation, and daily subjected to thatintellectual excitement which society produces, men begin to manifestwhat is called civilization; but never in rude and shelterlesscircumstances, or when widely scattered. Even men who have beencivilized, when transferred to a wide wilderness, where each has towork hard and isolatedly for the first requisites of life, soon shewa retrogression to barbarism: witness the plains of Australia, aswell as the backwoods of Canada and the prairies of Texas. Fixity ofresidence and thickening of population are perhaps the primerequisites for civilization, and hence it will be found that allcivilizations as yet known have taken place in regions physicallylimited. That of Egypt arose in a narrow valley hemmed in by desertson both sides. That of Greece took its rise in a small peninsulabounded on the only land side by mountains. Etruria and Rome werenaturally limited regions. Civilizations have taken place at boththe eastern and western extremities of the elder continent--China andJapan, on the one hand; Germany, Holland, Britain, France, on theother--while the great unmarked tract between contains nationsdecidedly less advanced. Why is this, but because the sea, in bothcases, has imposed limits to further migration, and caused thepopulation to settle and condense--the conditions most necessary forsocial improvement. {302} Even the simple case of the Mandansaffords an illustration of this principle, for Mr. Catlin expressly, though without the least regard to theory, attributes theirimprovement to the fact of their being a small tribe, obliged, byfear of their more numerous enemies, to SETTLE IN A PERMANENTVILLAGE, so fortified as to ensure their preservation. "By thismeans, " says he, "they have advanced farther in the arts ofmanufacture, and have supplied their lodges more abundantly with thecomforts and even luxuries of life than any Indian nation I know of. The consequence of this, " he adds, "is that the tribe have taken manysteps ahead of other tribes in MANNERS AND REFINEMENTS. " Theseconditions can only be regarded as natural laws affectingcivilization, and it might not be difficult, taking them intoaccount, to predict of any newly settled country its social destiny. An island like Van Dieman's land might fairly be expected to go onmore rapidly to good manners and sound institutions than a wideregion like Australia. The United States might be expected to makeno great way in civilization till they be fully peopled to thePacific; and it might not be unreasonable to expect that, when thateven has occurred, the greatest civilizations of that vast territorywill be found in the peninsula of California and the narrow stripe ofcountry beyond the Rocky Mountains. This, however, is a digression. To return: it is also necessary for a civilization that at least aportion of the community should be placed above mean and engrossingtoils. Man's mind becomes subdued, like the dyer's hand, to that itworks in. In rude and difficult circumstances we unavoidably becomerude, because then only the inferior and harsher faculties of ournature are called into existence. When, on the contrary, there isleisure and abundance, the self-seeking and self-preserving instinctsare allowed to rest, the gentler and more generous sentiments areevoked, and man becomes that courteous and chivalric being which heis found to be amongst the upper classes of almost all civilizedcountries. These, then, may be said to be the chief natural lawsconcerned in the moral phenomenon of civilization. If I am right inso considering them, it will of course be readily admitted that theearliest families of the human race, although they might be simpleand innocent, could not have been in anything like a civilized state, seeing that the conditions necessary for that state could not havethen existed. Let us only for a moment consider some of the thingsrequisite for their being civilized, --namely, a set of elegant homesready furnished for their reception, fields ready cultivated to yieldthem food without labour, stores of luxurious appliances of allkinds, a complete social enginery for the securing of life andproperty, --and we shall turn from the whole conceit as one worthyonly of the philosophers of Utopia. 

Yet, as has been remarked, the earliest families might be simple andinnocent, while at the same time unskilled and ignorant, and obligedto live merely upon such substances as they could readily procure. The traditions of all nations refer to such a state as that in whichmankind were at first: perhaps it is not so much a tradition as anidea which the human mind naturally inclines to form respecting thefathers of the race; but nothing that we see of mankind absolutelyforbids our entertaining this idea, while there are someconsiderations rather favourable to it. A few families, in a stateof nature, living near each other, in a country supplying the meansof livelihood abundantly, are generally simple and innocent; theirinstinctive and perceptive faculties are also apt to be very active, although the higher intellect may be dormant. If we thereforepresume India to have been the cradle of our race, they might atfirst exemplify a sort of golden age; but it could not be of longcontinuance. The very first movements from the primal seat would beattended with degradation, nor could there be any tendency to truecivilization till groups had settled and thickened in particularseats physically limited. 

The probability may now be assumed that the human race sprung fromone stock, which was at first in a state of simplicity, if notbarbarism. As yet we have not seen very distinctly how the variousbranches of the family, as they parted off, and took up separateground, became marked by external features so peculiar. Why are theAfricans black, and generally marked by coarse features and ungainlyforms? Why are the Mongolians generally yellow, the Americans red, the Caucasians white? Why the flat features of the Chinese, thesmall stature of the Laps, the soft round forms of the English, thelank features of their descendants, the Americans? All of thesephenomena appear, in a word, to be explicable on the ground ofDEVELOPMENT. We have already seen that various leading animal formsrepresent stages in the embryotic progress of the highest--the humanbeing. Our brain goes through the various stages of a fish's, areptile's, and a mammifer's brain, and finally becomes human. Thereis more than this, for, after completing the animal transformations, it passes through the characters in which it appears, in the Negro, Malay, American, and Mongolian nations, and finally is Caucasian. The face partakes of these alterations. "One of the earliest pointsin which ossification commences is the lower jaw. This bone isconsequently sooner completed than the other bones of the head, andacquires a predominance, which, as is well known, it never loses inthe Negro. During the soft pliant state of the bones of the skull, the oblong form which they naturally assume, approaches nearly thepermanent shape of the Americans. At birth, the flattened face, andbroad smooth forehead of the infant, the position of the eyes rathertowards the side of the head, and the widened space between, represent the Mongolian form; while it is only as the child advancesto maturity, that the oval face, the arched forehead, and the markedfeatures of the true Caucasian, become perfectly developed. " {307a}THE LEADING CHARACTERS, IN SHORT, OF THE VARIOUS RACES OF MANKIND, ARE SIMPLY REPRESENTATIONS OF PARTICULAR STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OFTHE HIGHEST OR CAUCASIAN TYPE. The Negro exhibits permanently theimperfect brain, projecting lower jaw, and slender bent limbs, of aCaucasian child, some considerable time before the period of itsbirth. The aboriginal American represents the same child nearerbirth. The Mongolian is an arrested infant newly born. And soforth. All this is as respects form; {307b} but whence colour? Thismight be supposed to have depended on climatal agencies only; but ithas been shewn by overpowering evidence to be independent of these. In further considering the matter, we are met by the very remarkablefact that colour is deepest in the least perfectly developed type, next in the Malay, next in the American, next in the Mongolian, thevery order in which the degrees of development are ranged. MAY NOTCOLOUR, THEN, DEPEND UPON DEVELOPMENT ALSO? We do not, indeed, seethat a Caucasian foetus at the stage which the African represents isanything like black; neither is a Caucasian child yellow, like theMongolian. There may, nevertheless, be a character of skin at acertain stage of development which is predisposed to a particularcolour when it is presented as the envelope of a mature being. Development being arrested at so immature a stage in the case of theNegro, the skin may take on the colour as an unavoidable consequenceof its imperfect organization. It is favourable to this view, thatNegro infants are not deeply black at first, but only acquire thefull colour tint after exposure for some time to the atmosphere. Another consideration in its favour is that there is a likelihood ofpeculiarities of form and colour, since they are so coincident, depending on one set of phenomena. If it be admitted as true, therecan be no difficulty in accounting for all the varieties of mankind. They are simply the result of so many advances and retrogressions inthe developing power of the human mothers, these advances andretrogressions being, as we have formerly seen, the immediate effectof external conditions in nutrition, hardship, &c. , {309} and also, perhaps, to some extent, of the suitableness and unsuitableness ofmarriages, for it is found that parents too nearly related tend toproduce offspring of the Mongolian type, --that is, persons who inmaturity still are a kind of children. According to this view, thegreater part of the human race must be considered as having lapsed ordeclined from the original type. In the Caucasian or Indo-Europeanfamily alone has the primitive organization been improved upon. TheMongolian, Malay, American, and Negro, comprehending perhaps five-sixths of mankind, are degenerate. Strange that the great planshould admit of failures and aberrations of such portentousmagnitude! But pause and reflect; take time into consideration: thepast history of mankind may be, to what is to come, but as a day. Look at the progress even now making over the barbaric parts of theearth by the best examples of the Caucasian type, promising not onlyto fill up the waste places, but to supersede the imperfect nationsalready existing. Who can tell what progress may be made, even in asingle century, towards reversing the proportions of the perfect andimperfect types? and who can tell but that the time during which themean types have lasted, long as it appears, may yet be thrownentirely into the shade by the time during which the best types willremain predominant?

We have seen that the traces of a common origin in all languagesafford a ground of presumption for the unity of the human race. Theyestablish a still stronger probability that mankind had not yet begunto disperse before they were possessed of a means of communicatingtheir ideas by conventional sounds--in short, speech. This is a giftso peculiar to man, and in itself so remarkable, that there is agreat inclination to surmise a miraculous origin for it, althoughthere is no proper ground, or even support, for such an idea inScripture, while it is clearly opposed to everything else that weknow with regard to the providential arrangements for the creation ofour race. Here, as in many other cases, a little observation ofnature might have saved much vain discussion. The real character oflanguage itself has not been thoroughly understood. Language, in itsmost comprehensive sense, is the communication of ideas by whatevermeans. Ideas can be communicated by looks, gestures, and signs ofvarious other kinds, as well as by speech. The inferior animalspossess some of those means of communicating ideas, and they havelikewise a silent and unobservable mode of their own, the nature ofwhich is a complete mystery to us, though we are assured of itsreality by its effects. Now, as the inferior animals were all inbeing before man, there was language upon earth long ere the historyof our race commenced. The only additional fact in the history oflanguage, which was produced by our creation, was the rise of a newmode of expression--namely, that by SOUND-SIGNS produced by the vocalorgans. In other words, speech was the only novelty in this respectattending the creation of the human race. No doubt it was anaddition of great importance, for, in comparison with it, the othernatural modes of communicating ideas sink into insignificance. Still, the main and fundamental phenomenon, language, as thecommunication of ideas, was no new gift of the Creator to man; and inspeech itself, when we judge of it as a natural fact, we see only aresult of some of those superior endowments of which so many othershave fallen to our lot through the medium of an improved or advancedorganization. 

The first and most obvious natural endowment concerned in speech isthat peculiar organization of the larynx, trachea, and mouth, whichenables us to produce the various sounds required in the case. Manstarted at first with this organization ready for use, a constitutionof the atmosphere adapted for the sounds which that organization wascalculated to produce, and, lastly, but not leastly, as willafterwards be more particularly shewn, a mental power within, prompting to, and giving directions for, the expression of ideas. Such an arrangement of mutually adapted things was as likely toproduce sounds as an Eolian harp placed in a draught is to producetones. It was unavoidable that human beings so organized, and insuch a relation to external nature, should utter sounds, and alsocome to attach to these conventional meanings, thus forming theelements of spoken language. The great difficulty which has beenfelt was to account for man going in this respect beyond the inferioranimals. There could have been no such difficulty if speculators inthis class of subjects had looked into physiology for an account ofthe superior vocal organization of man, and had they possessed a truescience of mind to shew man possessing a faculty for the expressionof ideas which is only rudimental in the lower animals. Anotherdifficulty has been in the consideration that, if men were at firstutterly untutored and barbarous, they could scarcely be in acondition to form or employ language--an instrument which it requiresthe fullest powers of thought to analyse and speculate upon. Butthis difficulty also vanishes upon reflection--for, in the firstplace, we are not bound to suppose the fathers of our race earlyattaining to great proficiency in language, and, in the second, language itself seems to be amongst the things least difficult to beacquired, if we can form any judgment from what we see in children, most of whom have, by three years of age, while their information andjudgment are still as nothing, mastered and familiarized themselveswith a quantity of words, infinitely exceeding in proportion whatthey acquire in the course of any subsequent similar portion of time. 

Discussions as to which parts of speech were first formed, and theprocesses by which grammatical structure and inflections took theirrise, appear in a great measure needless, after the matter has beenplaced in this light. The mental powers could readily connectparticular arbitrary sounds with particular ideas, whether thoseideas were nouns, verbs, or interjections. As the words of alllanguages can be traced back into roots which are monosyllables, wemay presume these sounds to have all been monosyllabic accordingly. The clustering of two or more together to express a compound idea, and the formation of inflections by additional syllables expressiveof pronouns and such prepositions as of, by, and to, are processeswhich would or might occur as matters of course, being simple resultsof a mental power called into action, and partly directed, byexternal necessities. This power, however, as we find it in verydifferent degrees of endowment in individuals, so would it be indifferent degrees of endowment in nations, or branches of the humanfamily. Hence we find the formation of words and the process oftheir composition and grammatical arrangement, in very differentstages of development in different races. The Chinese have alanguage composed of a limited number of monosyllables, which theymultiply in use by mere variations of accent, and which they havenever yet attained the power of clustering or inflecting; thelanguage of this immense nation--the third part of the human race--may be said to be in the condition of infancy. The aboriginalAmericans, so inferior in civilization, have, on the other hand, alanguage of the most elaborately composite kind, perhaps evenexceeding, in this respect, the languages of the most refinedEuropean nations. These are but a few out of many facts tending toshew that language is in a great measure independent of civilization, as far as its advance and development are concerned. Do they notalso help to prove that cultivated intellect is not necessary for theorigination of language?

Facts daily presented to our observation afford equally simplereasons for the almost infinite diversification of language. It isinvariably found that, wherever society is at once dense and refined, language tends to be uniform throughout the whole population, and toundergo few changes in the course of time. Wherever, on thecontrary, we have a scattered and barbarous people, we have greatdiversities, and comparatively rapid alterations of language. Insomuch that, while English, French, and German are each spoken withlittle variation by many millions, there are islands in the Indianarchipelago, probably not inhabited by one million, but in whichthere are hundreds of languages, as diverse as are English, French, and German. It is easy to see how this should be. There arepeculiarities in the vocal organization of every person, tending toproduce peculiarities of pronunciation; for example, it has beenstated that each child in a family of six gave the monosyllable, fly, in a different manner, (eye, fy, ly, &c. ) until, when the organs weremore advanced, correct example induced the proper pronunciation ofthis and similar words. Such departures from orthoepy are only to bechecked by the power of such example; but this is a power not alwayspresent, or not always of sufficient strength. The able and self-devoted Robert Moffat, in his work on South Africa, states, withoutthe least regard to hypothesis, that amongst the people of the townsof that great region, "the purity and harmony of language is kept upby their pitchos or public meetings, by their festivals andceremonies, as well as by their songs and their constant intercourse. With the isolated villages of the desert it is far otherwise. Theyhave no such meetings; they are compelled to traverse the wilds, often to a great distance from their native village. On suchoccasions, fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a burden, oftenset out for weeks at a time, and leave their children to the care oftwo or three infirm old people. The infant progeny, some of whom arebeginning to lisp, while others can just master a whole sentence, andthose still farther advanced, romping and playing together, thechildren of nature, through the live-long day, BECOME HABITUATED TO ALANGUAGE OF THEIR OWN. The more voluble condescend to the lessprecocious, and thus, from this infant Babel, proceeds a dialectcomposed of a host of mongrel words and phrases, joined togetherwithout rule, and IN THE COURSE OF A GENERATION THE ENTIRE CHARACTEROF THE LANGUAGE IS CHANGED. " {317} I have been told, that in likemanner the children of the Manchester factory workers, left for agreat part of the day, in large assemblages, under the care ofperhaps a single elderly person, and spending the time in amusements, are found to make a great deal of new language. I have seen childrenin other circumstances amuse themselves by concocting and throwinginto the family circulation entirely new words; and I believe I amrunning little risk of contradiction when I say that there isscarcely a family, even amongst the middle classes of this country, who have not some peculiarities of pronunciation and syntax, whichhave originated amongst themselves, it is hardly possible to say how. All these things being considered, it is easy to understand howmankind have come at length to possess between three and fourthousand languages, all different at least as much as French, German, and English, though, as has been shewn, the traces of a common originare observable in them all. 

What has been said on the question whether mankind were originallybarbarous or civilized, will have prepared the reader forunderstanding how the arts and sciences, and the rudiments ofcivilization itself, took their rise amongst men. The only source offallacious views on this subject is the so frequent observation ofarts, sciences, and social modes, forms, and ideas, being notindigenous where we see them now flourishing, but known to have beenderived elsewhere: thus Rome borrowed from Greece, Greece fromEgypt, and Egypt itself, lost in the mists of historic antiquity, isnow supposed to have obtained the light of knowledge from some stillearlier scene of intellectual culture. This has caused to many agreat difficulty in supposing a natural or spontaneous origin forcivilization and the attendant arts. But, in the first place, several stages of derivation are no conclusive argument against therehaving been an originality at some earlier stage. In the second, such observers have not looked far enough, for, if they had, theycould have seen various instances of civilizations which it isimpossible, with any plausibility, to trace back to a common originwith others; such are those of China and America. They would alsohave seen civilization springing up, as it were, like oases amongstthe arid plains of barbarism, as in the case of the Mandans. A stillmore attentive study of the subject would have shewn, amongst livingmen, the very psychological procedure on which the origination ofcivilization and the arts and sciences depended. 

These things, like language, are simply the effects of thespontaneous working of certain mental faculties, each in relation tothe things of the external world on which it was intended by creativeProvidence to be exercised. The monkeys themselves, withoutinstruction from any quarter, learn to use sticks in fighting, andsome build houses--an act which cannot in their case be considered asone of instinct, but of intelligence. Such being the case, there isno necessary difficulty in supposing how man, with his superiormental organization, (a brain five times heavier, ) was able, in hisprimitive state, without instruction, to turn many things in natureto his use, and commence, in short, the circle of the domestic arts. He appears, in the most unfavourable circumstances, to be able toprovide himself with some sort of dwelling, to make weapons, and topractise some simple kind of cookery. But, granting, it will besaid, that he can go thus far, how does he ever proceed fartherunprompted, seeing that many nations remain fixed for ever at thispoint, and seem unable to take one step in advance? It is perfectlytrue that there is such a fixation in many nations; but, on the otherhand, all nations are not alike in mental organization, and anotherpoint has been established, that only when some favourablecircumstances have settled a people in one place, do arts and socialarrangements get leave to flourish. If we were to limit our view tohumbly endowed nations, or the common class of minds in those calledcivilized, we should see absolutely no conceivable power for theorigination of new ideas and devices. But let us look at theinventive class of minds which stand out amongst their fellows--themen who, with little prompting or none, conceive new ideas inscience, arts, morals--and we can be at no loss to understand how andwhence have arisen the elements of that civilization which historytraces from country to country throughout the course of centuries. See a Pascal, reproducing the Alexandrian's problems at fifteen; aFerguson, making clocks from the suggestions of his own brain, whiletending cattle on a Morayshire heath; a boy Lawrence, in an inn onthe Bath road, producing, without a master, drawings which theeducated could not but admire; or look at Solon and Confucius, devising sage laws, and breathing the accents of all but divinewisdom, for their barbarous fellow-countrymen, three thousand yearsago--and the whole mystery is solved at once. Amongst thearrangements of Providence is one for the production of original, inventive, and aspiring minds, which, when circumstances are notdecidedly unfavourable, strike out new ideas for the benefit of theirfellow-creatures, or put upon them a lasting impress of their ownsuperior sentiments. Nations, improved by these means, become inturn foci for the diffusion of light over the adjacent regions ofbarbarism--their very passions helping to this end, for nothing canbe more clear than that ambitious aggression has led to thecivilization of many countries. Such is the process which seems toform the destined means for bringing mankind from the darkness ofbarbarism to the day of knowledge and mechanical and socialimprovement. Even the noble art of letters is but, as Dr. AdamFergusson has remarked, "a natural produce of the human mind, whichwill rise spontaneously, wherever men are happily placed;" originalalike amongst the ancient Egyptians and the dimly monumentedToltecans of Yucatan. "Banish, " says Dr. Gall, "music, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, all the arts and sciences, and letyour Homers, Raphaels, Michael Angelos, Glucks, and Canovas, beforgotten, yet let men of genius of every description spring up, andpoetry, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, and all the artsand sciences will again shine out in all their glory. Twice withinthe records of history has the human race traversed the great circleof its entire destiny, and twice has the rudeness of barbarism beenfollowed by a higher degree of refinement. It is a great mistake tosuppose one people to have proceeded from another on account of theirconformity of manners, customs, and arts. The swallow of Parisbuilds its nest like the swallow of Vienna, but does it thence followthat the former sprung from the latter? With the same causes we havethe same effects; with the same organization we have themanifestation of the same powers. "

MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 

It has been one of the most agreeable tasks of modern science totrace the wonderfully exact adaptations of the organization ofanimals to the physical circumstances amidst which they are destinedto live. From the mandibles of insects to the hand of man, all isseen to be in the most harmonious relation to the things of theoutward world, thus clearly proving that DESIGN presided in thecreation of the whole--design again implying a designer, another wordfor a CREATOR. 

It would be tiresome to present in this place even a selection of theproofs which have been adduced on this point. The Natural Theologyof Paley, and the Bridgewater Treatises, place the subject in soclear a light, that the general postulate may be taken for granted. The physical constitution of animals is, then, to be regarded as inthe nicest congruity and adaptation to the external world. 

Less clear ideas have hitherto been entertained on the mentalconstitution of animals. The very nature of this constitution is notas yet generally known or held as ascertained. There is, indeed, anotion of old standing, that the mind is in some way connected withthe brain; but the metaphysicians insist that it is, in reality, known only by its acts or effects, and they accordingly present thesubject in a form which is unlike any other kind of science, for itdoes not so much as pretend to have nature for its basis. There is ageneral disinclination to regard mind in connexion with organization, from a fear that this must needs interfere with the cherishedreligious doctrine of the spirit of man, and lower him to the levelof the brutes. A distinction is therefore drawn between our mentalmanifestations and those of the lower animals, the latter beingcomprehended under the term instinct, while ours are collectivelydescribed as mind, mind being again a received synonyme with soul, the immortal part of man. There is here a strange system ofconfusion and error, which it is most imprudent to regard asessential to religion, since candid investigations of nature tend toshew its untenableness. There is, in reality, nothing to prevent ourregarding man as specially endowed with an immortal spirit, at thesame time that his ordinary mental manifestations are looked upon assimple phenomena resulting from organization, those of the loweranimals being phenomena absolutely the same in character, thoughdeveloped within much narrower limits. {326}

What has chiefly tended to take mind, in the eyes of learned andunlearned, out of the range of nature, is its apparently irregularand wayward character. How different the manifestations in differentbeings! how unstable in all!--at one time so calm, at another so wildand impulsive! It seemed impossible that anything so subtle andaberrant could be part of a system, the main features of which areregularity and precision. But the irregularity of mental phenomenais only in appearance. When we give up the individual, and take themass, we find as much uniformity of result as in any other class ofnatural phenomena. The irregularity is exactly of the same kind asthat of the weather. No man can say what may be the weather of to-morrow; but the quantity of rain which falls in any particular placein any five years, is precisely the same as the quantity which fallsin any other five years at the same place. Thus, while it isabsolutely impossible to predict of any one Frenchman that duringnext year he will commit a crime, it is quite certain that about onein every six hundred and fifty of the French people will do so, because in past years the proportion has generally been about thatamount, the tendencies to crime in relation to the temptations beingeverywhere invariable over a sufficiently wide range of time. Soalso, the number of persons taken in charge by the police in Londonfor being drunk and disorderly on the streets, is, week by week, anearly uniform quantity, shewing that the inclination to drink toexcess is always in the mass about the same, regard being had to theexisting temptations or stimulations to this vice. Even mistakes andoversights are of regular recurrence, for it is found in the post-offices of large cities, that the number of letters put in withoutaddresses is year by year the same. Statistics has made out anequally distinct regularity in a wide range, with regard to manyother things concerning the mind, and the doctrine founded upon ithas lately produced a scheme which may well strike the ignorant withsurprise. It was proposed to establish in London a society forensuring the integrity of clerks, secretaries, collectors, and allsuch functionaries as are usually obliged to find security for moneypassing through their hands in the course of business. A gentlemanof the highest character as an actuary spoke of the plan in thefollowing terms:- "If a thousand bankers' clerks were to clubtogether to indemnify their securities, by the payment of one pound ayear each, and if each had given security for 500l. , it is obviousthat two in each year might become defaulters to that amount, four tohalf the amount, and so on, without rendering the guarantee fundinsolvent. If it be tolerably well ascertained that the instances ofdishonesty (yearly) among such persons amount to one in five hundred, this club would continue to exist, subject to being in debt in a badyear, to an amount which it would be able to discharge in good ones. The only question necessary to be asked previous to the formation ofsuch a club would be, --may it not be feared that the motive to resistdishonesty would be lessened by the existence of the club, or thatready-made rogues, by belonging to it, might find the means ofobtaining situations which they would otherwise have been kept out ofby the impossibility of obtaining security among those who know them?Suppose this be sufficiently answered by saying, that none but thosewho could bring satisfactory testimony to their previous goodcharacter should be allowed to join the club; that persons who maynow hope that a deficiency on their parts will be made up and hushedup by the relative or friend who is security, will know very wellthat the club will have no motive to decline a prosecution, or tokeep the secret, and so on. It then only remains to ask, whether thesum demanded for the guarantee is sufficient?" {331} Thephilosophical principle on which the scheme proceeds, seems to besimply this, that, amongst a given (large) number of persons of goodcharacter, there will be, within a year or other considerable spaceof time, a determinate number of instances in which moral principleand the terror of the consequences of guilt will be overcome bytemptations of a determinate kind and amount, and thus occasion acertain periodical amount of loss which the association must make up. 

This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully establishes theirbeing under the presidency of law. Man is now seen to be an enigmaonly as an individual; in the mass he is a mathematical problem. Itis hardly necessary to say, much less to argue, that mental action, being proved to be under law, passes at once into the category ofnatural things. Its old metaphysical character vanishes in a moment, and the distinction usually taken between physical and moral isannulled, as only an error in terms. This view agrees with what allobservation teaches, that mental phenomena flow directly from thebrain. They are seen to be dependent on naturally constituted andnaturally conditioned organs, and thus obedient, like all otherorganic phenomena, to law. And how wondrous must the constitution ofthis apparatus be, which gives us consciousness of thought and ofaffection, which makes us familiar with the numberless things ofearth, and enables us to rise in conception and communion to thecouncils of God himself! It is matter which forms the medium orinstrument--a little mass which, decomposed, is but so much commondust; yet in its living constitution, designed, formed, and sustainedby Almighty Wisdom, how admirable its character! how reflective ofthe unutterable depths of that Power by which it was so formed, andis so sustained!

In the mundane economy, mental action takes its place as a means ofproviding for the independent existence and the various relations ofanimals, each species being furnished according to its specialnecessities and the demands of its various relations. The nervoussystem--the more comprehensive term for its organic apparatus--isvariously developed in different classes and species, and also indifferent individuals, the volume or mass bearing a general relationto the amount of power. In the mollusca and crustacea we see simplya ganglionic cord pervading the extent of the body, and sending outlateral filaments. In the vertebrata, we find a brain with a spinalcord, and branching lines of nervous tissue. {333} But here, as inthe general structure of animals, the great principle of unity isobserved. The brain of the vertebrata is merely an expansion of oneof the ganglions of the nervous cord of the mollusca and crustacea. Or the corresponding ganglion of the mollusca and crustacea may beregarded as the rudiment of a brain; the superior organ thusappearing as only a farther development of the inferior. There aremany facts which tend to prove that the action of this apparatus isof an electric nature, a modification of that surprising agent, whichtakes magnetism, heat, and light, as other subordinate forms, and ofwhose general scope in this great system of things we are onlybeginning to have a right conception. It has been found that simpleelectricity, artificially produced, and sent along the nerves of adead body, excites muscular action. The brain of a newly-killedanimal being taken out, and replaced by a substance which produceselectric action, the operation of digestion, which had beeninterrupted by the death of the animal, was resumed, shewing theabsolute identity of the brain with a galvanic battery. Nor is thisa very startling idea, when we reflect that electricity is almost asmetaphysical as ever mind was supposed to be. It is a thingperfectly intangible, weightless. Metal may be magnetized, or heatedto seven hundred of Fahrenheit, without becoming the hundredth partof a grain heavier. And yet electricity is a real thing, an actualexistence in nature, as witness the effects of heat and light invegetation--the power of the galvanic current to re-assemble theparticles of copper from a solution, and make them again into a solidplate--the rending force of the thunderbolt as it strikes the oak;see also how both heat and light observe the angle of incidence inreflection, as exactly as does the grossest stone thrown obliquelyagainst a wall. So mental action may be imponderable, intangible, and yet a real existence, and ruled by the Eternal through his laws. {335}

Common observation shews a great general superiority of the humanmind over that of the inferior animals. Man's mind is almostinfinite in device; it ranges over all the world; it forms the mostwonderful combinations; it seeks back into the past, and stretchesforward into the future; while the animals generally appear to have anarrow range of thought and action. But so also has an infant but alimited range, and yet it is mind which works there, as well as inthe most accomplished adults. The difference between mind in thelower animals and in man is a difference in degree only; it is not aspecific difference. All who have studied animals by actualobservation, and even those who have given a candid attention to thesubject in books, must attain more or less clear convictions of thistruth, notwithstanding all the obscurity which prejudice may haveengendered. We see animals capable of affection, jealousy, envy; wesee them quarrel, and conduct quarrels, in the very manner pursued bythe more impulsive of our own race. We see them liable to flattery, inflated with pride, and dejected by shame. We see them as tender totheir young as human parents are, and as faithful to a trust as themost conscientious of human servants. The horse is startled bymarvellous objects, as a man is. The dog and many others shewtenacious memory. The dog also proves himself possessed ofimagination, by the act of dreaming. Horses, finding themselves inwant of a shoe, have of their own accord gone to a farrier's shopwhere they were shod before. Cats, closed up in rooms, willendeavour to obtain their liberation by pulling a latch or ringing abell. It has several times been observed that in a field of cattle, when one or two were mischievous, and persisted long in annoying ortyrannizing over the rest, the herd, to all appearance, consulted, and then, making a united effort, drove the troublers off the ground. The members of a rookery have also been observed to take turns insupplying the needs of a family reduced to orphanhood. All of theseare acts of reason, in no respect different from similar acts of men. Moreover, although there is no heritage of accumulated knowledgeamongst the lower animals, as there is amongst us, they are in somedegree susceptible of those modifications of natural character, andcapable of those accomplishments, which we call education. Thetaming and domestication of animals, and the changes thus producedupon their nature in the course of generations, are results identicalwith civilization amongst ourselves; and the quiet, servile steer isprobably as unlike the original wild cattle of this country, as theEnglish gentleman of the present day is unlike the rude baron of theage of King John. Between a young, unbroken horse, and a trainedone, there is, again, all the difference which exists between a wildyouth reared at his own discretion in the country, and the sameperson when he has been toned down by long exposure to the influencesof refined society. On the accomplishments acquired by animals itwere superfluous to enter at any length; but I may advert to the dogsof M. Leonard, as remarkable examples of what the animal intellectmay be trained to. When four pieces of card are laid down beforethem, each having a number pronounced ONCE in connexion with it, theywill, after a re-arrangement of the pieces, select any one named byits number. They also play at dominoes, and with so much skill as totriumph over biped opponents, whining if the adversary place a wrongpiece, or if they themselves be deficient in a right one. Ofextensive combinations of thought we have no reason to believe thatany animal is capable--and yet most of us must feel the force ofWalter Scott's remark, that there was scarcely anything which hewould not believe of a dog. There is a curious result of educationin certain animals, namely, that habits to which they have beentrained in some instances become hereditary. For example, theaccomplishment of pointing at game, although a pure result ofeducation, appears in the young pups brought up apart from theirparents and kind. The peculiar leap of the Irish horse, acquired inthe course of traversing a boggy country, is continued in the progenybrought up in England. This hereditariness of specific habitssuggests a relation to that form of psychological demonstrationusually called instinct; but instinct is only another term for mind, or is mind in a peculiar stage of development; and though the factwere otherwise, it could not affect the postulate, thatdemonstrations such as have been enumerated are mainly intellectualdemonstrations, not to be distinguished as such from those of humanbeings. 

More than this, the lower animals manifested mental phenomena longbefore man existed. While as yet there was no brain capable ofworking out a mathematical problem, the economy of the six-sidedfigure was exemplified by the instinct of the bee. Ere humanmusician had whistled or piped, the owl hooted in B flat, the cuckoohad her song of a falling third, and the chirp of the cricket was inB. The dog and the elephant prefigured the sagacity of the humanmind. The love of a human mother for her babe was anticipated bynearly every humbler mammal, the carnaria not excepted. The peacockstrutted, the turkey blustered, and the cock fought for victory, justas human beings afterwards did, and still do. Our faculty ofimitation, on which so much of our amusement depends, was exercisedby the mocking-bird; and the whole tribe of monkeys must have walkedabout the pre-human world, playing off those tricks in which we seethe comicality and mischief-making of our character so curiouslyexaggerated. 

The unity and simplicity which characterize nature give greatantecedent probability to what observation seems about to establish, that, as the brain of the vertebrata generally is just an advancedcondition of a particular ganglion in the mollusca and crustacea, soare the brains of the higher and more intelligent mammalia onlyfarther developments of the brains of the inferior orders of the sameclass. Or, to the same purpose, it may be said, that each specieshas certain superior developments, according to its needs, whileothers are in a rudimental or repressed state. This will moreclearly appear after some inquiry has been made into the variouspowers comprehended under the term mind. 

One of the first and simplest functions of mind is to giveconsciousness--consciousness of our identity and of our existence. This, apparently, is independent of the SENSES, which are simplymedia, and, as Locke has shewn, the only media, through which ideasrespecting the external world reach the brain. The access of suchideas to the brain is the act to which the metaphysicians have giventhe name of perception. Gall, however, has shewn, by induction froma vast number of actual cases, that there is a part of the braindevoted to perception, and that even this is subdivided into portionswhich are respectively dedicated to the reception of different setsof ideas, as those of form, size, colour, weight, objects in theirtotality, events in their progress or occurrence, time, musicalsounds, &c. The system of mind invented by this philosopher--theonly one founded upon nature, or which even pretends to or admits ofthat necessary basis--shews a portion of the brain acting as afaculty of comic ideas, another of imitation, another of wonder, onefor discriminating or observing differences, and another in whichresides the power of tracing effects to causes. There are also partsof the brain for the sentimental part of our nature, or theaffections, at the head of which stand the moral feelings ofbenevolence, conscientiousness, and veneration. Through these, manstands in relation to himself, his fellow-men, the external world, and his God; and through these comes most of the happiness of man'slife, as well as that which he derives from the contemplation of theworld to come, and the cultivation of his relation to it, (purereligion. ) The other sentiments may be briefly enumerated, theirnames being sufficient in general to denote their functions--firmness, hope, cautiousness, self-esteem, love of approbation, secretiveness, marvellousness, constructiveness, imitation, combativeness, destructiveness, concentrativeness, adhesiveness, loveof the opposite sex, love of offspring, alimentiveness, and love oflife. Through these faculties, man is connected with the externalworld, and supplied with active impulses to maintain his place in itas an individual and as a species. There is also a faculty, (language) for expressing, by whatever means, (signs, gestures, looks, conventional terms in speech, ) the ideas which arise in themind. There is a particular state of each of these faculties, whenthe ideas of objects once formed by it are revived or reproduced, aprocess which seems to be intimately allied with some of thephenomena of the new science of photography, when images impressed byreflection of the sun's rays upon sensitive paper are, after atemporary obliteration, resuscitated on the sheet being exposed tothe fumes of mercury. Such are the phenomena of memory, thathandmaid of intellect, without which there could be no accumulationof mental capital, but an universal and continual infancy. Conception and imagination appear to be only intensities, so tospeak, of the state of brain in which memory is produced. On theirpromptness and power depend most of the exertions which distinguishthe man of arts and letters, and even in no small measure thecultivator of science. 

The faculties above described--the actual elements of the mentalconstitution--are seen in mature man in an indefinite potentialityand range of action. It is different with the lower animals. Theyare there comparatively definite in their power and restricted intheir application. The reader is familiar with what are calledinstincts in some of the humbler species, that is, an uniform andunprompted tendency towards certain particular acts, as the buildingof cells by the bee, the storing of provisions by that insect andseveral others, and the construction of nests for a coming progeny bybirds. This quality is nothing more than a mode of operationpeculiar to the faculties in a humble state of endowment, or earlystage of development. The cell formation of the bee, the house-building of ants and beavers, the web-spinning of spiders, are butprimitive exercises of constructiveness, the faculty which, indefinite with us, leads to the arts of the weaver, upholsterer, architect, and mechanist, and makes us often work delightedly whereour labours are in vain, or nearly so. The storing of provisions bythe ants is an exercise of acquisitiveness, --the faculty which withus makes rich men and misers. A vast number of curious devices, bywhich insects provide for the protection and subsistence of theiryoung, whom they are perhaps never to see, are most probably apeculiar restricted effort of philoprogenitiveness. The commonsource of this class of acts, and of common mental operations, isshewn very convincingly by the melting of the one set into the other. Thus, for example, the bee and bird will make modifications in theordinary form of their cells and nests when necessity compels them. Thus, the alimentiveness of such animals as the dog, usually definitewith regard to quantity and quality, can be pampered or educated upto a kind of epicurism, that is, an indefiniteness of object andaction. The same faculty acts limitedly in ourselves at first, dictating the special act of sucking; afterwards it acquiresindefiniteness. Such is the real nature of the distinction betweenwhat are called instincts and reason, upon which so many volumes havebeen written without profit to the world. All faculties areinstinctive, that is, dependent on internal and inherent impulses. This term is therefore not specially applicable to either of therecognised modes of the operation of the faculties. We only, in theone case, see the faculty in an immature and slightly developedstate; in the other, in its most advanced condition. In the one caseit is DEFINITE, in the other INDEFINITE, in its range of action. These terms would perhaps be the most suitable for expressing thedistinction. 

In the humblest forms of being we can trace scarcely anything besidesa definite action in a few of the faculties. Generally speaking, aswe ascend in the scale, we see more and more of the faculties inexercise, and these tending more to the indefinite mode ofmanifestation. And for this there is the obvious reason inprovidence, that the lowest animals have all of them a very limitedsphere of existence, born only to perform a few functions, and enjoya brief term of life, and then give way to another generation, sothat they do not need much mental guidance. At higher points in thescale, the sphere of existence is considerably extended, and themental operations are less definite accordingly. The horse, dog, anda few other rasorial types, noted for their serviceableness to ourrace, have the indefinite powers in no small endowment. Man, again, shews very little of the definite mode of operation, and that littlechiefly in childhood, or in barbarism or idiocy. Destined for a widefield of action, and to be applicable to infinitely variedcontingencies, he has all the faculties developed to a high pitch ofindefiniteness, that he may be ready to act well in all imaginablecases. His commission, it may be said, gives large discretionarypowers, while that of the inferior animals is limited to a fewprecise directions. But when the human brain is congenitallyimperfect or diseased, or when it is in the state of infancy, we seein it an approach towards the character of the brains of some of theinferior animals. Dr. G. J. Davey states that he has frequentlywitnessed, among his patients at the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, indications of a particular abnormal cerebration which forciblyreminded him of the specific healthy characteristics of animals lowerin the scale of organization; {346} and every one must have observedhow often the actions of children, especially in their moments ofplay, and where their selfish feelings are concerned, bear aresemblance to those of certain familiar animals. {347} Behold, then, the wonderful unity of the whole system. The grades of mind, like the forms of being, are mere stages of development. In thehumbler forms, but a few of the mental faculties are traceable, justas we see in them but a few of the lineaments of universal structure. In man the system has arrived at its highest condition. The fewgleams of reason, then, which we see in the lower animals, areprecisely analogous to such a development of the fore-arm as we findin the paddle of the whale. Causality, comparison, and other of thenobler faculties, are in them RUDIMENTAL. 

Bound up as we thus are by an identity in the character of our mentalorganization with the lower animals, we are yet, it will be observed, strikingly distinguished from them by this great advance indevelopment. We have faculties in full force and activity which theanimals either possess not at all, or in so low and obscure a form asto be equivalent to non-existence. Now these parts of mind are thosewhich connect us with the things that are not of this world. We haveveneration, prompting us to the worship of the Deity, which theanimals lack. We have hope, to carry us on in thought beyond thebounds of time. We have reason, to enable us to inquire into thecharacter of the Great Father, and the relation of us, his humblecreatures, towards him. We have conscientiousness and benevolence, by which we can in a faint and humble measure imitate, in ourconduct, that which he exemplifies in the whole of his wondrousdoings. Beyond this, mental science does not carry us in support ofreligion: the rest depends on evidence of a different kind. But itis surely much that we thus discover in nature a provision for thingsso important. The existence of faculties having a regard to suchthings is a good evidence that such things exist. The face of God isreflected in the organization of man, as a little pool reflects theglorious sun. 

The affective or sentimental faculties are all of them liable tooperate whenever appropriate objects or stimuli are presented, andthis they do as irresistibly and unerringly as the tree sucks upmoisture which it requires, with only this exception, that onefaculty often interferes with the action of another, and operatesinstead by force of superior inherent strength or temporary activity. For example, alimentiveness may be in powerful operation with regardto its appropriate object, producing a keen appetite, and yet it maynot act, in consequence of the more powerful operation ofcautiousness, warning against evil consequences likely to ensue fromthe desired indulgence. This liability to flit from under thecontrol of one feeling to the control of another, constitutes what isrecognised as free will in man, being nothing more than a vicissitudein the supremacy of the faculties over each other. 

It is a common mistake to suppose that the individuals of our ownspecies are all of them formed with similar faculties--similar inpower and tendency--and that education and the influence ofcircumstances produce all the differences which we observe. There isnot, in the old systems of mental philosophy, any doctrine moreopposite to the truth than this. It is refuted at once by the greatdifferences of intellectual tendency and moral disposition to beobserved amongst a group of young children who have been all broughtup in circumstances perfectly identical--even in twins, who havenever been but in one place, under the charge of one nurse, attendedto alike in all respects. The mental characters of individuals areinherently various, as the forms of their persons and the features oftheir faces are; and education and circumstances, though theirinfluence is not to be despised, are incapable of entirely alteringthese characters, where they are strongly developed. That theoriginal characters of mind are dependent on the volume of particularparts of the brain and the general quality of that viscus, is provedby induction from an extensive range of observations, the force ofwhich must have been long since universally acknowledged but for theunpreparedness of mankind to admit a functional connexion betweenmind and body. The different mental characters of individuals may bepresumed from analogy to depend on the same law of development whichwe have seen determining forms of being and the mental characters ofparticular species. This we may conceive as carrying forward theintellectual powers and moral dispositions of some to a high pitch, repressing those of others at a moderate amount, and thus producingall the varieties which we see in our fellow-creatures. Thus aCuvier and a Newton are but expansions of a clown, and the personemphatically called the wicked man, is one whose highest moralfeelings are rudimental. Such differences are not confined to ourspecies; they are only less strongly marked in many of the inferioranimals. There are clever dogs and wicked horses, as well as clevermen and wicked men, and education sharpens the talents, and in somedegree regulates the dispositions of animals, as it does our own. Here I may advert to a very interesting analogy between the mentalcharacters of the types in the quinary system of zoology and thecharacters of individual men. We have seen that the pre-eminent typeis usually endowed with an harmonious assemblage of the mentalqualities belonging to the whole group, while the sub-typicalinclines to ferocity, the rasorial to gentleness, and so on. Now, amongst individuals, some appear to be almost exclusively of the sub-typical, and others of the rasorial characters, while to a limitednumber is given the finely assorted assemblage of qualities whichplaces them on a parallel with the typical. To this may beattributed the universality which marks all the very highest brains, such as those of Shakespeare and Scott, men of whom it has beenremarked that they must have possessed within themselves not only thepoet, but the warrior, the statesman, and the philosopher; and who, moreover, appear to have had the mild and manly, the moral and theforcible parts of our nature, in the most perfect balance. 

There is, nevertheless, a general adaptation of the mentalconstitution of man to the circumstances in which he lives, as thereis between all the parts of nature to each other. The goods of thephysical world are only to be realized by ingenuity and industriousexertion; behold, accordingly, an intellect full of device, and afabric of the faculties which would go to pieces or destroy itself ifit were not kept in constant occupation. Nature presents to us muchthat is sublime and beautiful: behold faculties which delight incontemplating these properties of hers, and in rising upon them, asupon wings, to the presence of the Eternal. It is also a world ofdifficulties and perils, and see how a large portion of our speciesare endowed with vigorous powers which take a pleasure in meeting andovercoming difficulty and danger. Even that principle on which ourfaculties are constituted--a wide range of freedom in which to actfor all various occasions--necessitates a resentful faculty, by whichindividuals may protect themselves from the undue and capriciousexercise of each other's faculties, and thus preserve theirindividual rights. So also there is cautiousness, to give us atendency to provide against the evils by which we may be assailed;and secretiveness, to enable us to conceal whatever, being divulged, would be offensive to others or injurious to ourselves, --a functionwhich obviously has a certain legitimate range of action, howeverliable to be abused. The constitution of the mind generally pointsto a state of intimate relation of individuals towards society, towards the external world, and towards things above this world. Noindividual being is integral or independent; he is only part of anextensive piece of social mechanism. The inferior mind, full of rudeenergy and unregulated impulse, does not more require a superiornature to act as its master and its mentor, than does the superiornature require to be surrounded by such rough elements on which toexercise its high endowments as a ruling and tutelary power. Thisrelation of each to each produces a vast portion of the activebusiness of life. It is easy to see that, if we were all alike inour moral tendencies, and all placed on a medium of perfectmoderation in this respect, the world would be a scene of everlastingdulness and apathy. It requires the variety of individualconstitution to give moral life to the scene. 

The indefiniteness of the potentiality of the human faculties, andthe complexity which thus attends their relations, lead unavoidablyto occasional error. If we consider for a moment that there are notless than thirty such faculties, that they are each given indifferent proportions to different persons, that each is at the sametime endowed with a wide discretion as to the force and frequency ofits action, and that our neighbours, the world, and our connexionswith something beyond it, are all exercising an ever-varyinginfluence over us, we cannot be surprised at the irregularitiesattending human conduct. It is simply the penalty paid for thesuperior endowment. It is here that the imperfection of our natureresides. Causality and conscientiousness are, it is true, guidesover all; but even these are only faculties of the same indeterminateconstitution as the rest, and partake accordingly of the sameinequality of action. Man is therefore a piece of mechanism, whichnever can act so as to satisfy his own ideas of what he might be--forhe can imagine a state of moral perfection, (as he can imagine aglobe formed of diamonds, pearls, and rubies, ) though hisconstitution forbids him to realize it. There ever will, in the bestdisposed and most disciplined minds, be occasional discrepanciesbetween the amount of temptation and the power summoned forregulation or resistance, or between the stimulus and the mobility ofthe faculty; and hence those errors, and shortcomings, and excesses, without end, with which the good are constantly finding cause tocharge themselves. There is at the same time even here a possibilityof improvement. In infancy, the impulses are all of them irregular;a child is cruel, cunning, and false, under the slightest temptation, but in time learns to control these inclinations, and to behabitually humane, frank, and truthful. So is human society, in itsearliest stages, sanguinary, aggressive, and deceitful, but in timebecomes just, faithful, and benevolent. To such improvements thereis a natural tendency which will operate in all fair circumstances, though it is not to be expected that irregular and undue impulseswill ever be altogether banished from the system. 

It may still be a puzzle to many, how beings should be born into theworld whose organization is such that they unavoidably, even in acivilized country, become malefactors. Does God, it may be asked, make criminals? Does he fashion certain beings with a predestinationto evil? He does not do so; and yet the criminal type of brain, asit is called, comes into existence in accordance with laws which theDeity has established. It is not, however, as the result of thefirst or general intention of those laws, but as an exception fromtheir ordinary and proper action. The production of those evillydisposed beings is in this manner. The moral character of theprogeny depends in a general way, (as does the physical characteralso, ) upon conditions of the parents, --both general conditions, andconditions at the particular time of the commencement of theexistence of the new being, and likewise external conditionsaffecting the foetus through the mother. Now the amount of theseconditions is indefinite. The faculties of the parents, as far asthese are concerned, may have oscillated for the time towards theextreme of tensibility in one direction. The influences upon thefoetus may have also been of an extreme and unusual kind. Let ussuppose that the conditions upon the whole have been favourable forthe development, not of the higher, but of the lower sentiments, andof the propensities of the new being, the result will necessarily bea mean type of brain. Here, it will be observed, God no more decreedan immoral being, than he decreed an immoral paroxysm of thesentiments. Our perplexity is in considering the ill-disposed beingby himself. He is only a part of a series of phenomena, traceable toa principle good in the main, but which admits of evil as anexception. We have seen that it is for wise ends that God leaves ourmoral faculties to an indefinite range of action; the general goodresults of this arrangement are obvious; but exceptions of evil areinseparable from such a system, and this is one of them. To come toparticular illustration--when a people are oppressed, or kept in astate of slavery, they invariably contract habits of lying, for thepurpose of deceiving and outwitting their superiors, falsehood beinga refuge of the weak under difficulties. What is a habit in parentsbecomes an inherent quality in children. We are not, therefore, tobe surprised when a traveller tells us that black children in theWest Indies appear to lie by instinct, and never answer a whiteperson truly even in the simplest matter. Here we have secretivenessroused in a people to a state of constant and exalted exercise; anover tendency of the nervous energy in that direction is theconsequence, and a new organic condition is established. This tellsupon the progeny, which comes into the world with secretivenessexcessive in volume and activity. All other evil characteristics maybe readily conceived as being implanted in a new generation in thesame way. And sometimes not one, but several generations, may beconcerned in bringing up the result to a pitch which produces crime. It is, however, to be observed, that the general tendency of thingsis to a limitation, not the extension of such abnormally constitutedbeings. The criminal brain finds itself in a social scene where allis against it. It may struggle on for a time, but the medium andsuperior natures are never long at a loss in getting the better ofit. The disposal of such beings will always depend much on the moralstate of a community, the degree in which just views prevail withregard to human nature, and the feelings which accident may havecaused to predominate at a particular time. Where the mass waslittle enlightened or refined, and terrors for life or property werehighly excited, malefactors have ever been treated severely. Butwhen order is generally triumphant, and reason allowed sway, menbegin to see the true case of criminals--namely, that while one largedepartment are victims of erroneous social conditions, another arebrought to error by tendencies which they are only unfortunate inhaving inherited from nature. Criminal jurisprudence then addressesitself less to the direct punishment than to the reformation andcare-taking of those liable to its attention. And such a treatmentof criminals, it may be farther remarked, so that it stop short ofaffording any encouragement to crime, (a point which experience willdetermine, ) is evidently no more than justice, seeing howaccidentally all forms of the moral constitution are distributed, andhow thoroughly mutual obligation shines throughout the whole frame ofsociety--the strong to help the weak, the good to redeem and restrainthe bad. 

The sum of all we have seen of the psychical constitution of man is, that its Almighty Author has destined it, like everything else, to bedeveloped from inherent qualities, and to have a mode of actiondepending solely on its own organization. Thus the whole is completeon one principle. The masses of space are formed by law; law makesthem in due time theatres of existence for plants and animals;sensation, disposition, intellect, are all in like manner developedand sustained in action by law. It is most interesting to observeinto how small a field the whole of the mysteries of nature thusultimately resolve themselves. The inorganic has one finalcomprehensive law, GRAVITATION. The organic, the other greatdepartment of mundane things, rests in like manner on one law, andthat is, --DEVELOPMENT. Nor may even these be after all twain, butonly branches of one still more comprehensive law, the expression ofthat unity which man's wit can scarcely separate from Deity itself. 

PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF THE ANIMATED CREATION. 

We have now to inquire how this view of the constitution and originof nature bears upon the condition of man upon the earth, and hisrelation to supra-mundane things. 

That enjoyment is the proper attendant of animal existence is pressedupon us by all that we see and all we experience. Everywhere weperceive in the lower creatures, in their ordinary condition, symptoms of enjoyment. Their whole being is a system of needs, thesupplying of which is gratification, and of faculties, the exerciseof which is pleasurable. When we consult our own sensations, we findthat, even in a sense of a healthy performance of all the functionsof the animal economy, God has furnished us with an innocent and veryhigh enjoyment. The mere quiet consciousness of a healthy play ofthe mental functions--a mind at ease with itself and all around it--is in like manner extremely agreeable. This negative class ofenjoyments, it may be remarked, is likely to be even more extensivelyexperienced by the lower animals than by man, at least in theproportion of their absolute endowments, as their mental and bodilyfunctions are much less liable to derangement than ours. To find theworld constituted on this principle is only what in reason we wouldexpect. We cannot conceive that so vast a system could have beencreated for a contrary purpose. No averagely constituted human beingwould, in his own limited sphere of action, think of producing asimilar system upon an opposite principle. But to form so vast arange of being, and to make being everywhere a source ofgratification, is conformable to our ideas of a Creator in whom weare constantly discovering traits of a nature, of which our own isbut a faint and far-cast shadow at the best. 

It appears at first difficult to reconcile with this idea the manymiseries which we see all sentient beings, ourselves included, occasionally enduring. How, the sage has asked in every age, shoulda Being so transcendently kind, have allowed of so large an admixtureof evil in the condition of his creatures? Do we not at length findan answer to a certain extent satisfactory, in the view which has nowbeen given of the constitution of nature? We there see the Deityoperating in the most august of his works by fixed laws, anarrangement which, it is clear, only admits of the main and primaryresults being good, but disregards exceptions. Now the mechanicallaws are so definite in their purposes, that no exceptions ever takeplace in that department; if there is a certain quantity of nebulousmatter to be agglomerated and divided and set in motion as aplanetary system, it will be so with hair's-breadth accuracy, andcannot be otherwise. But the laws presiding over meteorology, life, and mind, are necessarily less definite, as they have to produce agreat variety of mutually related results. Left to act independentlyof each other, each according to its separate commission, and eachwith a wide range of potentiality to be modified by associatedconditions, they can only have effects generally beneficial: oftenthere must be an interference of one law with another, often a lawwill chance to operate in excess, or upon a wrong object, and thusevil will be produced. Thus, winds are generally useful in manyways, and the sea is useful as a means of communication between onecountry and another; but the natural laws which produce winds are ofindefinite range of action, and sometimes are unusually concentratedin space or in time, so as to produce storms and hurricanes, by whichmuch damage is done; the sea may be by these causes violentlyagitated, so that many barks and many lives perish. Here, it isevident, the evil is only exceptive. Suppose, again, that a boy, inthe course of the lively sports proper to his age, suffers a fallwhich injures his spine, and renders him a cripple for life. Twothings have been concerned in the case: first, the love of violentexercise, and second, the law of gravitation. Both of these thingsare good in the main. In the rash enterprises and rough sports inwhich boys engage, they prepare their bodies and minds for the hardtasks of life. By gravitation, all moveable things, our own bodiesincluded, are kept stable on the surface of the earth. But when itchances that the playful boy loses his hold (we shall say) of thebranch of a tree, and has no solid support immediately below, the lawof gravitation unrelentingly pulls him to the ground, and thus he ishurt. Now it was not a primary object of gravitation to injure boys;but gravitation could not but operate in the circumstances, itsnature being to be universal and invariable. The evil is, therefore, only a casual exception from something in the main good. 

The same explanation applies to even the most conspicuous of theevils which afflict society. War, it may be said, and said truly, isa tremendous example of evil, in the misery, hardship, waste of humanlife, and mis-spending of human energies, which it occasions. Butwhat is it that produces war? Certain tendencies of human nature, askeen assertion of a supposed right, resentment of supposed injury, acquisitiveness, desire of admiration, combativeness, or mere love ofexcitement. All of these are tendencies which are every day, in alegitimate extent of action, producing great and indispensablebenefits to us. Man would be a tame, indolent, unserviceable beingwithout them, and his fate would be starvation. War, then, huge evilthough it be, is, after all, but the exceptive case, a casualmisdirection of properties and powers essentially good. God hasgiven us the tendencies for a benevolent purpose. He has only notlaid down any absolute obstruction to our misuse of them. That werean arrangement of a kind which he has nowhere made. But he hasestablished many laws in our nature which tend to lessen thefrequency and destructiveness of these abuses. Our reason comes tosee that war is purely an evil, even to the conqueror. Benevolenceinterposes to make its ravages less mischievous to human comfort, andless destructive to human life. Men begin to find that their moreactive powers can be exercised with equal gratification on legitimateobjects; for example, in overcoming the natural difficulties of theirpath through life, or in a generous spirit of emulation in a line ofduty beneficial to themselves and their fellow-creatures. Thus, warat length shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass, though therecertainly is no reason to suppose that it will be at any earlyperiod, if ever, altogether dispensed with, while man's constitutionremains as it is. In considering an evil of this kind, we must notlimit our view to our own or any past time. Placed upon the earthwith faculties prepared to act, but inexperienced, and with the moreactive propensities necessarily in great force to suit the conditionof the globe, man was apt to misuse his powers much in this way atfirst, compared with what he is likely to do when he advances into acondition of civilization. In the scheme of providence, thousands ofyears of frequent warfare, all the so-called glories which fillhistory, may be only an exception to the general rule. 

The sex passion in like manner leads to great evils; but the evilsare only an exception from the vast mass of good connected with thisaffection. Providence has seen it necessary to make very ampleprovision for the preservation and utmost possible extension of allspecies. The aim seems to be to diffuse existence as widely aspossible, to fill up every vacant piece of space with some sentientbeing to be a vehicle of enjoyment. Hence this passion is conferredin great force. But the relation between the number of beings, andthe means of supporting them, is only on the footing of general law. There may be occasional discrepancies between the laws operating forthe multiplication of individuals, and the laws operating to supplythem with the means of subsistence, and evils will be endured inconsequence, even in our own highly favoured species. But againstall these evils, and against those numberless vexations which havearisen in all ages from the attachment of the sexes, place the vastamount of happiness which is derived from this source--the basis ofthe whole circle of the domestic affections, the sweetening principleof life, the prompter of all our most generous feelings, and even ofour most virtuous resolves--and every ill that can be traced to it isbut as dust in the balance. And here, also, we must be on our guardagainst judging from what we see in the world at a particular era. As reason and the higher sentiments of man's nature increase inforce, this passion is put under better regulation, so as to lessenmany of the evils connected with it. The civilized man is more ableto give it due control; his attachments are less the result ofimpulse; he studies more the weal of his partner and offspring. There are even some of the resentful feelings connected in earlysociety with love, such as hatred of successful rivalry, andjealousy, which almost disappear in an advanced stage ofcivilization. The evils springing, in our own species at least, fromthis passion, may therefore be an exception mainly peculiar to aparticular term of the world's progress, and which may be expected todecrease greatly in amount. 

With respect, again, to disease, so prolific a cause of suffering toman, the human constitution is merely a complicated but regularprocess in electro-chemistry, which goes on well, and is a source ofcontinual gratification, so long as nothing occurs to interfere withit injuriously, but which is liable every moment to be deranged byvarious external agencies, when it becomes a source of pain, and, ifthe injury be severe, ceases to be capable of retaining life. It maybe readily admitted that the evils experienced in this way are verygreat; but, after all, such experiences are no more than occasional, and not necessarily frequent--exceptions from a general rule of whichthe direct action is to confer happiness. The human constitutionmight have been made of a more hardy character; but we always seehardiness and insensibility go together, and it may be of coursepresumed that we only could have purchased this immunity fromsuffering at the expense of a large portion of that delicacy in whichlie some of our most agreeable sensations. Or man's faculties mighthave been restricted to definiteness of action, as is greatly thecase with those of the lower animals, and thus we should have beenequally safe from the aberrations which lead to disease; but in thatevent we should have been incapable of acting to so many differentpurposes as we are, and of the many high enjoyments which the variedaction of our faculties places in our power: we should not, inshort, have been human beings, but merely on a level with theinferior animals. Thus, it appears, that the very fineness of man'sconstitution, that which places him in such a high relation to themundane economy, and makes him the vehicle of so many exquisitelydelightful sensations--it is this which makes him liable to thesufferings of disease. It might be said, on the other hand, that thenoxiousness of the agencies producing disease might have beendiminished or extinguished; but the probability is, that this couldnot have been done without such a derangement of the whole economy ofnature as would have been attended with more serious evils. Forexample--a large class of diseases are the result of effluvia fromdecaying organic matter. This kind of matter is known to beextremely useful, when mixed with earth, in favouring the process ofvegetation. Supposing the noxiousness to the human constitution doneaway with, might we not also lose that important quality which tendsso largely to increase the food raised from the ground? Perhaps (ashas been suggested) the noxiousness is even a matter of specialdesign, to induce us to put away decaying organic substances into theearth, where they are calculated to be so useful. Now man has reasonto enable him to see that such substances are beneficial under onearrangement, and noxious in the other. He is, as it were, commandedto take the right method in dealing with it. In point of fact, mendo not always take this method, but allow accumulations of noxiousmatter to gather close about their dwellings, where they generatefevers and agues. But their doing so may be regarded as only atemporary exception from the operation of mental laws, the generaltendency of which is to make men adopt the proper measures. Andthese measures will probably be in time universally adopted, so thatone extensive class of diseases will be altogether or nearlyabolished. 

Another large class of diseases spring from mismanagement of ourpersonal economy. Eating to excess, eating and drinking what isnoxious, disregard to that cleanliness which is necessary for theright action of the functions of the skin, want of fresh air for thesupply of the lungs, undue, excessive, and irregular indulgence ofthe mental affections, are all of them recognised modes of creatingthat derangement of the system in which disease consists. Here alsoit may be said that a limitation of the mental faculties to definitemanifestations (vulgo, instincts) might have enabled us to avoid manyof these errors; but here again we are met by the consideration that, if we had been so endowed, we should have been only as the loweranimals are, wanting that transcendently higher character ofsensation and power, by which our enjoyments are made so muchgreater. In making the desire of food, for example, with us anindefinite mental manifestation, instead of the definite one, whichit is amongst the lower animals, the Creator has given us a means ofderiving far greater gratifications from food (consistently withhealth) than the lower animals appear to be capable of. He has alsogiven us reason to act as a guiding and controlling power over thisand other propensities, so that they may be prevented from becomingcauses of malady. We can see that excess is injurious, and are thusprompted to moderation. We can see that all the things which we feelinclined to take are not healthful, and are thus exhorted to avoidwhat are pernicious. We can also see that a cleanly skin and aconstant supply of pure air are necessary to the proper performanceof some of the most important of the organic functions, and thus arestimulated to frequent ablution, and to a right ventilation of ourparlours and sleeping apartments. And so on with the other causes ofdisease. Reason may not operate very powerfully to these purposes inan early state of society, and prodigious evils may therefore havebeen endured from disease in past ages; but these are not necessarilyto be endured always. As civilization advances, reason acquires agreater ascendancy; the causes of the evils are seen and avoided; anddisease shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass. The experienceof our own country places this in a striking light. In the middleages, when large towns had no police regulations, society was everynow and then scourged by pestilence. The third of the people ofEurope are said to have been carried off by one epidemic. Even inLondon the annual mortality has greatly sunk within a century. Theimprovement in human life, which has taken place since theconstruction of the Northampton tables by Dr. Price, is equallyremarkable. Modern tables still shew a prodigious mortality amongthe young in all civilized countries--evidently a result of someprevalent error in the usual modes of rearing them. But to remedythis evil there is the sagacity of the human mind, and the sense toadopt any reformed plans which may be shewn to be necessary. By achange in the management of an orphan institution in London, duringthe last fifty years, an immense reduction in the mortality tookplace. We may of course hope to see measures devised and adopted forproducing a similar improvement of infant life throughout the worldat large. 

In this part of our subject, the most difficult point certainly liesin those occurrences of disease where the afflicted individual hasbeen in no degree concerned in bringing the visitation upon himself. Daily experience shews us infectious disease arising in a place wherethe natural laws in respect of cleanliness are neglected, and thenspreading into regions where there is no blame of this kind. We thensee the innocent suffering equally with those who may be called theguilty. Nay, the benevolent physician who comes to succour themiserable beings whose error may have caused the mischief, issometimes seen to fall a victim to it, while many of his patientsrecover. We are also only too familiar with the transmission ofdiseases from erring parents to innocent children, who, accordinglysuffer, and perhaps die prematurely, as it were for the sins ofothers. After all, however painful such cases may be incontemplation, they cannot be regarded in any other light than asexceptions from arrangements, the general working of which isbeneficial. 

With regard to the innocence of the suffering parties, there is oneimportant consideration which is pressed upon us from many quarters, namely--that moral conditions have not the least concern in theworking of these simply physical laws. These laws proceed with anentire independence of all such conditions, and desirably so, forotherwise there could be no certain dependence placed upon them. Thus it may happen that two persons ascending a piece of scaffolding, the one a virtuous, the other a vicious man, the former, being theless cautious of the two, ventures upon an insecure place, falls, andis killed, while the other, choosing a better footing, remainsuninjured. It is not in what we can conceive of the nature ofthings, that there should be a special exemption from the ordinarylaws of matter, to save this virtuous man. So it might be that, oftwo physicians, attending fever cases, in a mean part of a largecity, the one, an excellent citizen, may stand in such a positionwith respect to the beds of the patients as to catch the infection, of which he dies in a few days, while the other, a bad husband andfather, and who, unlike the other, only attends such cases withselfish ends, takes care to be as much as possible out of the streamof infection, and accordingly escapes. In both of these cases man'ssense of good and evil--his faculty of conscientiousness--wouldincline him to destine the vicious man to destruction and save thevirtuous. But the Great Ruler of Nature does not act on suchprinciples. He has established laws for the operation of inanimatematter, which are quite unswerving, so that when we know them, wehave only to act in a certain way with respect to them, in order toobtain all the benefits and avoid all the evils connected with them. He has likewise established moral laws in our nature, which areequally unswerving, (allowing for their wider range of action, ) andfrom obedience to which unfailing good is to be derived. But the twosets of laws are independent of each other. Obedience to each givesonly its own proper advantage, not the advantage proper to the other. Hence it is that virtue forms no protection against the evilsconnected with the physical laws, while, on the other hand, a manskilled in and attentive to these, but unrighteous and disregardfulof his neighbour, is in like manner not protected by his attention tophysical circumstances from the proper consequences of neglect orbreach of the moral laws. 

Thus it is that the innocence of the party suffering for the faultsof a parent, or of any other person or set of persons, is evidently aconsideration quite apart from that suffering. 

It is clear, moreover, from the whole scope of the natural laws, thatthe individual, as far as the present sphere of being is concerned, is to the Author of Nature a consideration of inferior moment. Everywhere we see the arrangements for the species perfect; theindividual is left, as it were, to take his chance amidst the meleeof the various laws affecting him. If he be found inferiorlyendowed, or ill befalls him, there was at least no partiality againsthim. The system has the fairness of a lottery, in which every onehas the like chance of drawing the prize. 

Yet it is also to be observed that few evils are altogether unmixed. God, contemplating apparently the unbending action of his great laws, has established others which appear to be designed to have acompensating, a repairing, and a consoling effect. Suppose, forinstance, that, from a defect in the power of development in amother, her offspring is ushered into the world destitute of some ofthe most useful members, or blind, or deaf, or of imperfectintellect, there is ever to be found in the parents and otherrelatives, and in the surrounding public, a sympathy with thesufferer, which tends to make up for the deficiency, so that he is inthe long run not much a loser. Indeed, the benevolence implanted inour nature seems to be an arrangement having for one of its principalobjects to cause us, by sympathy and active aid, to remedy the evilsunavoidably suffered by our fellow-creatures in the course of theoperation of the other natural laws. And even in the suffererhimself, it is often found that a defect in one point is made up forby an extra power in another. The blind come to have a sense oftouch much more acute than those who see. Persons born without handshave been known to acquire a power of using their feet for a numberof the principal offices usually served by that member. I needhardly say how remarkably fatuity is compensated by the more thanusual regard paid to the children born with it by their parents, andthe zeal which others usually feel to protect and succour suchpersons. In short, we never see evil of any kind take place wherethere is not some remedy or compensating principle ready to interferefor its alleviation. And there can be no doubt that in this mannersuffering of all kinds is very much relieved. 

We may, then, regard the globes of space as theatres designed for theresidence of animated sentient beings, placed there with this astheir first and most obvious purpose--namely, to be sensible ofenjoyments from the exercise of their faculties in relation toexternal things. The faculties of the various species are verydifferent, but the happiness of each depends on the harmony there maybe between its particular faculties and its particular circumstances. For instance, place the small-brained sheep or ox in a good pasture, and it fully enjoys this harmony of relation; but man, having manymore faculties, cannot be thus contented. Besides having asufficiency of food and bodily comfort, he must have entertainmentfor his intellect, whatever be its grade, objects for the domesticand social affections, objects for the sentiments. He is also aprogressive being, and what pleases him to-day may not please him to-morrow; but, in each case he demands a sphere of appropriateconditions in order to be happy. By virtue of his superiororganization, his enjoyments are much higher and more varied thanthose of any of the lower animals; but the very complexity ofcircumstances affecting him renders it at the same time unavoidable, that his nature should be often inharmoniously placed anddisagreeably affected, and that he should therefore be unhappy. Still unhappiness amongst mankind is the exception from the rule oftheir condition, and an exception which is capable of almost infinitediminution, by virtue of the improving reason of man, and theexperience which he acquires in working out the problems of society. 

To secure the immediate means of happiness it would seem to benecessary for men first to study with all care the constitution ofnature, and, secondly, to accommodate themselves to thatconstitution, so as to obtain all the realizable advantages fromacting conformably to it, and to avoid all likely evils fromdisregarding it. It will be of no use to sit down and expect thatthings are to operate of their own accord, or through the directionof a partial deity, for our benefit; equally so were it to exposeourselves to palpable dangers, under the notion that we shall, forsome reason, have a dispensation or exemption from them: we mustendeavour so to place ourselves, and so to act, that the arrangementswhich Providence has made impartially for all may be in our favour, and not against us; such are the only means by which we can obtaingood and avoid evil here below. And, in doing this, it is especiallynecessary that care be taken to avoid interfering with the likeefforts of other men, beyond what may have been agreed upon by themass as necessary for the general good. Such interferences, tendingin any way to injure the body, property, or peace of a neighbour, orto the injury of society in general, tend very much to reflect evilupon ourselves, through the re-action which they produce in thefeelings of our neighbour and of society, and also the offence whichthey give to our own conscientiousness and benevolence. On the otherhand, when we endeavour to promote the efforts of our fellow-creatures to attain happiness, we produce a re-action of the contrarykind, the tendency of which is towards our own benefit. The onecourse of action tends to the injury, the other to the benefit ofourselves and others. By the one course the general design of theCreator towards his creatures is thwarted; by the other it isfavoured. And thus we can readily see the most substantial groundsfor regarding all moral emotions and doings as divine in theirnature, and as a means of rising to and communing with God. Obedience is not selfishness, which it would otherwise be--it isworship. The merest barbarians have a glimmering sense of thisphilosophy, and it continually shines out more and more clearly inthe public mind, as a nation advances in intelligence. Nor areindividuals alone concerned here. The same rule applies as betweenone great body or class of men and another, and also between nations. Thus if one set of men keep others in the condition of slaves--thisbeing a gross injustice to the subjected party, the mentalmanifestations of that party to the masters will be such as to marthe comfort of their lives; the minds of the masters themselves willbe degraded by the association with beings so degraded; and thus, with some immediate or apparent benefit from keeping slaves, therewill be in a far greater degree an experience of evil. So also, ifone portion of a nation, engaged in a particular department ofindustry, grasp at some advantages injurious to the other sections ofthe people, the first effect will be an injury to those otherportions of the nation, and the second a re-active injury to theinjurers, making their guilt their punishment. And so when onenation commits an aggression upon the property or rights of another, or even pursues towards it a sordid or ungracious policy, the effectsare sure to be redoubled evil from the offended party. All of thesethings are under laws which make the effects, on a large range, absolutely certain; and an individual, a party, a people, can no moreact unjustly with safety, than I could with safety place my leg inthe track of a coming wain, or attempt to fast thirty days. We havebeen constituted on the principle of only being able to realizehappiness for ourselves when our fellow-creatures are also happy; wemust therefore both do to others only as we would have others to doto us, and endeavour to promote their happiness as well as our own, in order to find ourselves truly comfortable in this field ofexistence. These are words which God speaks to us as truly throughhis works, as if we heard them uttered in his own voice from heaven. 

It will occur to every one, that the system here unfolded does notimply the most perfect conceivable love or regard on the part of theDeity towards his creatures. Constituted as we are, feeling how vainour efforts often are to attain happiness or avoid calamity, andknowing that much evil does unavoidably befall us from no fault ofours, we are apt to feel that this is a dreary view of the Divineeconomy; and before we have looked farther, we might be tempted tosay, Far rather let us cling to the idea, so long received, that theDeity acts continually for special occasions, and gives suchdirections to the fate of each individual as he thinks meet; so that, when sorrow comes to us, we shall have at least the consolation ofbelieving that it is imposed by a Father who loves us, and who seeksby these means to accomplish our ultimate good. Now, in the firstplace, if this be an untrue notion of the Deity and his ways, it canbe of no real benefit to us; and, in the second, it is proper toinquire if there be necessarily in the doctrine of natural law anypeculiarity calculated materially to affect our hitherto supposedrelation to the Deity. It may be that while we are committed to takeour chance in a natural system of undeviating operation, and are leftwith apparent ruthlessness to endure the consequences of everycollision into which we knowingly or unknowingly come with each lawof the system, there is a system of Mercy and Grace behind the screenof nature, which is to make up for all casualties endured here, andthe very largeness of which is what makes these casualties a matterof indifference to God. For the existence of such a system, theactual constitution of nature is itself an argument. The reasoningmay proceed thus: The system of nature assures us that benevolenceis a leading principle in the divine mind. But that system is at thesame time deficient in a means of making this benevolence ofinvariable operation. To reconcile this to the recognised characterof the Deity, it is necessary to suppose that the present system isbut a part of a whole, a stage in a Great Progress, and that theRedress is in reserve. Another argument here occurs--the economy ofnature, beautifully arranged and vast in its extent as it is, doesnot satisfy even man's idea of what might be; he feels that, if thismultiplicity of theatres for the exemplification of such phenomena aswe see on earth were to go on for ever unchanged, it would not beworthy of the Being capable of creating it. An endless monotony ofhuman generations, with their humble thinkings and doings, seems anobject beneath that august Being. But the mundane economy might bevery well as a portion of some greater phenomenon, the rest of whichwas yet to be evolved. It therefore appears that our system, thoughit may at first appear at issue with other doctrines in esteemamongst mankind, tends to come into harmony with them, and even togive them support. I would say, in conclusion, that, even where thetwo above arguments may fail of effect, there may yet be a faithderived from this view of nature sufficient to sustain us under allsense of the imperfect happiness, the calamities, the woes, and painsof this sphere of being. For let us but fully and truly considerwhat a system is here laid open to view, and we cannot well doubtthat we are in the hands of One who is both able and willing to do usthe most entire justice. And in this faith we may well rest at ease, even though life should have been to us but a protracted disease, orthough every hope we had built on the secular materials within ourreach were felt to be melting from our grasp. Thinking of all thecontingencies of this world as to be in time melted into or lost inthe greater system, to which the present is only subsidiary, let uswait the end with patience, and be of good cheer. 

NOTE CONCLUSORY. 

Thus ends a book, composed in solitude, and almost without thecognizance of a single human being, for the sole purpose (or asnearly so as may be) of improving the knowledge of mankind, andthrough that medium their happiness. For reasons which need not bespecified, the author's name is retained in its original obscurity, and, in all probability, will never be generally known. I do notexpect that any word of praise which the work may elicit shall everbe responded to by me; or that any word of censure shall ever beparried or deprecated. It goes forth to take its chance of instantoblivion, or of a long and active course of usefulness in the world. Neither contingency can be of any importance to me, beyond the regretor the satisfaction which may be imparted by my sense of a lost or arealized benefit to my fellow-creatures. The book, as far as I amaware, is the first attempt to connect the natural sciences into ahistory of creation. The idea is a bold one, and there are manycircumstances of time and place to render its boldness more thanusually conspicuous. But I believe my doctrines to be in the maintrue; I believe all truth to be valuable, and its dissemination ablessing. At the same time, I hold myself duly sensible of thecommon liability to error, but am certain that no error in this linehas the least chance of being allowed to injure the public mind. Therefore I publish. My views, if correct, will most assuredlystand, and may sooner or later prove beneficial; if otherwise, theywill as surely pass out of notice without doing any harm. 

My sincere desire in the composition of the book was to give the trueview of the history of nature, with as little disturbance as possibleto existing beliefs, whether philosophical or religious. I have madelittle reference to any doctrines of the latter kind which may bethought inconsistent with mine, because to do so would have been toenter upon questions for the settlement of which our knowledge is notyet ripe. Let the reconciliation of whatever is true in my viewswith whatever is true in other systems come about in the fulness ofcalm and careful inquiry. I cannot but here remind the reader ofwhat Dr. Wiseman has shewn so strikingly in his lectures, howdifferent new philosophic doctrines are apt to appear after we havebecome somewhat familiar with them. Geology at first seemsinconsistent with the authority of the Mosaic record. A storm ofunreasoning indignation rises against its teachers. In time, itstruths, being found quite irresistible, are admitted, and mankindcontinue to regard the Scriptures with the same respect as before. So also with several other sciences. Now the only objection that canbe made on such ground to this book, is, that it brings forward somenew hypotheses, at first sight, like geology, not in perfect harmonywith that record, and arranges all the rest into a system whichpartakes of the same character. But may not the sacred text, on aliberal interpretation, or with the benefit of new light reflectedfrom nature, or derived from learning, be shewn to be as much inharmony with the novelties of this volume as it has been with geologyand natural philosophy? What is there in the laws of organiccreation more startling to the candid theologian than in theCopernican system or the natural formation of strata? And if thewhole series of facts is true, why should we shrink from inferenceslegitimately flowing from it? Is it not a wiser course, sincereconciliation has come in so many instances, still to hope for it, still to go on with our new truths, trusting that they also will intime be found harmonious with all others? Thus we avoid the damagewhich the very appearance of an opposition to natural truth iscalculated to inflict on any system presumed to require such support. Thus we give, as is meet, a respectful reception to what is revealedthrough the medium of nature, at the same time that we fully reserveour reverence for all we have been accustomed to hold sacred, not onetittle of which it may ultimately be found necessary to alter. 

Footnotes:

{3} By Mr. Henderson, Professor of Astronomy in the EdinburghUniversity, and Lieutenant Meadows. 

{5} Made by M. Argelander, late director of the Observatory at Abo. 

{6} Professor Mossotti, on the Constitution of the Sidereal System, of which the Sun forms a part. --London, Edinburgh, and DublinPhilosophical Magazine, February, 1843. 

{9} The orbitual revolutions of the satellites of Uranus have not asyet been clearly scanned. It has been thought that their path isretrograde compared with the rest. Perhaps this may be owing to abouleversement of the primary, for the inclination of its equator tothe ecliptic is admitted to be unusually high; but the subject isaltogether so obscure, that nothing can be founded on it. 

{12} Astronomy, Lardner's Cyclopaedia. 

{17} M. Compte combined Huygens's theorems for the measure ofcentrifugal force with the law of gravitation, and thus formed asimple fundamental equation between the duration of the rotation ofwhat he calls the producing star, and the distance of the starproduced. The constants of this equation were the radius of thecentral star, and the intensity of gravity at its surface, which is adirect consequence of its mass. It leads directly to the third lawof Kepler, which thus becomes susceptible of being conceived a prioriin a cosmogonical point of view. M. Compte first applied it to themoon, and found, to his great delight, that the periodic time of thatsatellite agrees within an hour or two with the duration which therevolution of the earth ought to have had at the time when the lunardistance formed the limit of the earth's atmosphere. He found thecoincidence less exact, but still very striking in every other case. In those of the planets he obtained for the duration of thecorresponding solar rotations a value always a little less than theiractual periodic times. "It is remarkable, " says he, "that thisdifference, though increasing as the planet is more distant, preserves very nearly the same relation to the corresponding periodictime, of which it commonly forms the forty-fifth part, "--shewing, wemay suppose, that only some small elements of the question had beenoverlooked by the calculator. The defect changes to an excess in thedifferent systems of the satellites, where it is proportionallygreater than in the planets, and unequal in the different systems. "From the whole of these comparisons, " says he, "I deduced thefollowing general result: --Supposing the mathematical limit of thesolar atmosphere successively extended to the regions where thedifferent planets are now found, the duration of the sun's rotationwas, at each of these epochs, sensibly equal to that of the actualsidereal revolution of the corresponding planet; and the same is truefor each planetary atmosphere in relation to the differentsatellites. "--Cours de Philosophie Positif. 

{42} The researches on this subject were conducted chiefly by thelate Baron Fourier, perpetual secretary to the Academy of Sciences ofParis. See his Theorie Analytique de la Chaleur. 1822. 

{52} Delabeche's Geological Researches. 

{60} In the Cumbrian limestone occur "calamoporae, lithodendra, cyathophylla, and orbicula. "--Philips. The asaphus and trinucleus(crustacea) have been found respectively in the slate rocks of Wales, and the limestone beds of the grawacke group in Bohemia. Thatfragments of crinoidea, though of no determinate species, occur inthis system, we have the authority of Mr. Murchison. --SilurianSystem, p. 710. 

{62} Such as amphioxus and myxene. 

{64} Miller's "New Walks in an Old Field. "

{68} June, 1842. 

{84a} The principal families are named sphenopteris, neuropteris, and pecopteris. 

{84b} A specimen from Bengal, in the staircase of the BritishMuseum, is forty-five feet high. 

{93} "Some of the most considerable dislocations of the border ofthe coal fields of Coalbrookdale and Dudley happened after thedeposition of a part of the new red sandstone; but it is certain thatthose of Somersetshire and Gloucestershire were completed before thedate of that rock. "--Philips. 

{97} The immediate effects of the slow respiration of the reptiliaare, a low temperature in their bodies, and a slow consumption offood. Requiring little oxygen, they could have existed in anatmosphere containing a less proportion of that gas to carbonic acidgas than what now obtains. 

{99} The order to which frogs and toads belong. 

{103} Dr. Buckland, quoting an article by Professor Hitchcock, inthe American Journal of Science and Arts, 1836. 

{108a} Murchison's Silurian System, p. 583. 

{108b} Buckland. 

{110} In some instances, these fossils are found with the contentsof the stomach faithfully preserved, and even with pieces of theexternal skin. The pellets ejected by them (coprolites) are found invast numbers, each generally enclosed in a nodule of ironstone, andsometimes shewing remains of the fishes which had formed their food. 

{114} De la Beche's Geological Researches, p. 344. 

{127} Thick-skinned animals. This term has been given by Cuvier toan order in which the hog, elephant, horse, and rhinoceros areincluded. 

{149} Intervals in the series were numerous in the department of thepachydermata; many of these gaps are now filled up from the extinctgenera found in the tertiary formation. 

{151} See paper by Professor Edward Forbes, read to the BritishAssociation, 1839. 

{159} Macculloch on the Attributes of the Deity, iii. 569. 

{166} "A glass tube is to be bent into a syphon, and placed with thecurve downwards, and in the bend is to be placed a small portion ofmercury, not sufficient to close the connexion between the two legs;a solution of nitrate of silver is then to be introduced until itrises in both limbs of the tube. The precipitation of the mercury, in the form of an Arbor Dianae, will then take place, slowly, onlywhen the syphon is placed in a plane perpendicular to the magneticmeridian; but if it be placed in a plane coinciding with the magneticmeridian, the action is rapid, and the crystallization particularlybeautiful, taking place principally in that branch of the syphontowards the north. If the syphon be placed in a plane perpendicularto the magnetic meridian, and a strong magnet brought near it, theprecipitation will commence in a short time, and be most copious inthe branch of the syphon nearest to the south pole of the magnet. "

{169a} Fatty matter has also been formed in the laboratory. Theprocess consisted in passing a mixture of carbonic acid, purehydrogen, and carburetted hydrogen, in the proportion of one measureof the first, twenty of the second, and ten of the third, through ared-hot tube. 

{169b} Supplement to the Atomic Theory. 

{170} Carpenter on Life; Todd's Cyclopaedia of Physiology. 

{171} Carpenter's Report on the results obtained by the Microscopein the Study of Anatomy and Physiology, 1843. 

{172} See Dr. Martin Barry on Fissiparous Generation; Jameson'sJournal, Oct. 1843. Appearances precisely similar have been detectedin the germs of the crustacea. 

{175} Mr. Leonard Horner and Sir David Brewster, on a substanceresembling shell. --Philosophical Transactions, 1836. 

{179a} Dr. Allen Thomson, in the article Generation, in Todd'sCyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology. 

{179b} The term aboriginal is here suggested, as more correct thanspontaneous, the one hitherto generally used. 

{182} Article "Zoophytes, " Encyclopaedia Britannica, 7th edition. 

{187} See a pamphlet circulated by Mr. Weekes, in 1842. 

{195} Daubenton established the rule, that all the viviparousquadrupeds have seven vertebrae in the neck. 

{201} Lord's Popular Physiology. It is to Tiedemann that we chieflyowe these curious observations; but ground was first broken in thisbranch of physiological science by Dr. John Hunter. 

{204} When I formed this idea, I was not aware of one which seemsfaintly to foreshadow it--namely, Socrates's doctrine, afterwardsdilated on by Plato, that "previous to the existence of the world, and beyond its present limits, there existed certain archetypes, theembodiment (if we may use such a word) of general ideas; and thatthese archetypes were models, in imitation of which all particularbeings were created. "

{208} The numbers 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, &c. Are formed by addingthe successive terms of the series of natural numbers thus:

1=11+2=31+2+3=6l+2+3+4=10, &c. They are called triangular numbers, because a numberof points corresponding to any term can always be placed in the formof a triangle; for instance -

. 1. . . 3. . . . . . 6. . . . . . . . . . 10

{215} Kirby and Spence. 

{221} See an article by Dr. Weissenborn, in the New Series of"Magazine of Natural History, " vol. I. P. 574. 

{224} "It is a fact of the highest interest and moment that as thebrain of every tribe of animals appears to pass, during itsdevelopment, in succession through the types of all those below it, so the brain of man passes through the types of those of every tribein the creation. It represents, accordingly, before the second monthof utero-gestation, that of an avertebrated animal; at the secondmonth, that of an osseous fish; at the third, that of a turtle; atthe fourth, that of a bird; at the fifth, that of one of therodentia; at the sixth, that of one of the ruminantia; at theseventh, that of one of the digitigrada; at the eighth, that of oneof the quadrumana; till at length, at the ninth, it compasses thebrain of Man! It is hardly necessary to say, that all this is onlyan approximation to the truth; since neither is the brain of allosseous fishes, of all turtles, of all birds, nor of all the speciesof any one of the above order of mammals, by any means precisely thesame, nor does the brain of the human foetus at any time preciselyresemble, perhaps, that of any individual whatever among the loweranimals. Nevertheless, it may be said to represent, at each of theabove-mentioned periods, the aggregate, as it were, of the brains ofeach of the tribes stated; consisting as it does, about the secondmonth, chiefly of the mesial parts of the cerebellum, the corporaquadrigemina, thalami optici, rudiments of the hemispheres of thecerebrum and corpora striata; and receiving in succession, at thethird, the rudiments of the lobes of the cerebrum; at the fourth, those of the fornix, corpus callosum, and septum lucidum; at thefifth, the tubor annulare, and so forth; the posterior lobes of thecerebrum increasing from before to behind, so as to cover the thalamioptici about the fourth month, the corpora quadrigemina about thesixth, and the cerebellum about the seventh. This, then, is anotherexample of an increase in the complexity of an organ succeeding itscentralization; as if Nature, having first piled up her materials inone spot, delighted afterwards to employ her abundance, not so muchin enlarging old parts as in forming new ones upon the oldfoundations, and thus adding to the complexity of a fabric, therudimental structure of which is in all animals equally simple. "--Fletcher's Rudiments of Physiology. 

{226} [Gutenberg note: the table in the book is very wide. Sinceit won't fit within the normal Gutenberg margins, and cannot bereproduced typographically, the rows of the table have been brokenout as follows. ]

{229} Some poor people having taken up their abode in the cellsunder the fortifications of Lisle, the proportion of defectiveinfants produced by them became so great, that it was deemednecessary to issue an order commanding these cells to be shut up. 

{232} These affinities and analogies are explained in the nextchapter. 

{239a} Corresponding to the articulata of Cuvier. 

{239b} A new sub-kingdom, made out of part of the radiata of Cuvier. 

{239c} This is a newly applied term, the reasons for which will beexplained in the sequel. 

{242} This is preferred to grallatorial, as more comprehensivelydescriptive. There is the same need for a substitute for rasorial, which is only applicable to birds. 

{246} Distribution and Classification of Animals, p. 248. 

{255} Researches, 4th edition, i. 95. 

{257} Prichard. 

{266} Mr. Swainson's arguments about the entireness of the circlesimiadae are only too rigid, for fossil geology has since added newgenera to this group and the cebidae, and there may be still fartheradditions. 

{270} See Wilson's American Ornithology; article, Fishing Crow. 

{274} [Gutenberg note: in the diagram the triangles extending fromthe 1, 2, 3, 4 and the a, b, c, d meet at the same point--the line from the1, 2, 3, 4 being at around 45 degrees and the line from the a, b, c, dbeing at around 60 degrees. It isn't possible to reproduce thisusing normal characters. Despite what the text says there is no linelabelled 5 in the diagram. --DP]

{278} See Dr. Prichard's Researches into the Physical History ofMan. 

{280} Buckingham's Travels among the Arabs. This fact is the morevaluable to the argument, as having been set down with no regard toany kind of hypothesis. 

{287} Wiseman's Lectures on the Connexion between Science andRevealed Religion, i. 44. The Celtic has been established as amember or group of the Indo-European family, by the work of Dr. Prichard, on the Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations. "First, " saysDr. Wiseman, "he has examined the lexical resemblances, and shewnthat the primary and most simple words are the same in both, as wellas the numerals and elementary verbal roots. Then follows a minuteanalysis of the verb, directed to shew its analogies with otherlanguages, and they are such as manifest no casual coincidence, butan internal structure radically the same. The verb substantive, which is minutely analysed, presents more striking analogies to thePersian verb than perhaps any other language of the family. ButCeltic is not thus become a mere member of this confederacy, but hasbrought to it most important aid; for, from it alone can besatisfactorily explained some of the conjugational endings in theother languages. For instance, the third person plural of the Latin, Persian, Greek, and Sanscrit ends in nt, nd, [Greek], [Greek], nti, or nt. Now, supposing, with most grammarians, that the inflexionsarose from the pronouns of the respective persons, it is only inCeltic that we find a pronoun that can explain this termination; forthere, too, the same person ends in nt, and thus corresponds exactly, as do the others, with its pronoun, hwynt, or ynt. "

{291} Schoolcraft. 

{293} Views of the Cordilleras. 

{302} The problem of Chinese civilization, such as it is--sopuzzling when we consider that they are only, as will be presentlyseen, the child race of mankind--is solved when we look togeographical position producing fixity of residence and density ofpopulation. 

{307a} Lord's Popular Physiology, explaining observations by M. Serres. 

{307b} Conformably to this view, the beard, that peculiar attributeof maturity, is scanty in the Mongolian, and scarcely exists in theAmericans and Negroes. 

{309} Of this we have perhaps an illustration in the peculiaritieswhich distinguish the Arabs residing in the valley of the Jordan. They have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair than othertribes of their nation; and we have seen one instance of a thoroughlyNegro family being born to an ordinary couple. It may be presumedthat the conditions of the life of these people tend to arrestdevelopment. We thus see how an offshoot of the human familymigrating at an early period into Africa, might in time, fromsubjection to similar influences, become Negroes. 

{317} Missionary Scenes and Labours in South Africa. 

{326} "Is not God the first cause of matter as well as of mind? Donot the first attributes of matter lie as inscrutable in the bosom ofGod--of its first author--as those of mind? Has not even matterconfessedly received from God the power of experiencing, inconsequence of impressions from the earlier modifications of matter, certain consciousnesses called sensations of the same? Is not, therefore, the wonder of matter also receiving the consciousnesses ofother matter called ideas of the mind a wonder more flowing out ofand in analogy with all former wonders, than would be, on thecontrary, the wonder of this faculty of the mind not flowing out ofany faculties of matter? Is it not a wonder which, so far fromdestroying our hopes of immortality, can establish that doctrine on atrain of inferences and inductions more firmly established and moreconnected with each other than the former belief can be, as soon aswe have proved that matter is not perishable, but is only liable tosuccessive combinations and decombinations. 

"Can we look farther back one way into the first origin of matterthan we can look forward the other way into the last developments ofmind? Can we say that God has not in matter itself laid the seeds ofevery faculty of mind, rather than that he has made the firstprinciple of mind entirely distinct from that of matter? Cannot thefirst cause of all we see and know have FRAUGHT MATTER ITSELF, FROMITS VERY BEGINNING, WITH ALL THE ATTRIBUTES NECESSARY TO DEVELOP INTOMIND, as well as he can have from the first made the attributes ofmind wholly different from those of matter, only in order afterwards, by an imperceptible and incomprehensible link, to join the twotogether?

" * * [The decombination of the matter on which mind rests] is this areason why mind must be annihilated? Is the temporary reverting ofthe mind, and of the sense out of which that mind developes, to theiroriginal component elements, a reason for thinking that they cannotagain at another later period, and in another higher globe, be againrecombined, and with more splendour than before? * * The NewTestament does not after death here promise us a soul hereafterunconnected with matter, and which has no connexion with our presentmind--a soul independent of time and space. That is a fanciful idea, not founded on its expressions, when taken in their just and realmeaning. On the contrary, it promises us a mind like the present, founded on time and space; since it is, like the present, to hold acertain situation in time, and a certain locality in space. But itpromises a mind situated in portions of time and of space differentfrom the present; a mind composed of elements of matter moreextended, more perfect, and more glorious: a mind which, formed ofmaterials supplied by different globes, is consequently able to seefarther into the past, and to think farther into the future, than anymind here existing: a mind which, freed from the partial and unevencombination incidental to it on this globe, will be exempt from thechanges for evil to which, on the present globe, mind as well asmatter is liable, and will only thenceforth experience the changesfor the better which matter, more justly poised, will alone continueto experience: a mind which, no longer fearing the death, the totaldecomposition, to which it is subject on this globe, will thenceforthcontinue last and immortal. "--HOPE, on the Origin and Prospects ofMan, 1831. 

{331} Dublin Review, Aug. 1840. The Guarantee Society has sincebeen established, and is likely to become a useful and prosperousinstitution. 

{333} The ray, which is considered the lowest in the scale offishes, or next to the crustaceans, gives the first faintrepresentation of a brain in certain scanty and medullary masses, which appear as merely composed of enlarged origins of the nerves. 

{335} If mental action is electric, the proverbial quickness ofthought--that is, the quickness of the transmission of sensation andwill--may be presumed to have been brought to an exact measurement. The speed of light has long been known to be about 192, 000 miles persecond, and the experiments of Wheatstone have shewn that theelectric agent travels (if I may so speak) at the same rate, thusshewing a likelihood that one law rules the movements of all the"imponderable bodies. " Mental action may accordingly be presumed tohave a rapidity equal to one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles inthe second--a rate evidently far beyond what is necessary to make thedesign and execution of any of our ordinary muscular movementsapparently identical in point of time, which they are. 

{346} Phrenological Journal, xv. 338. 

{347} A pampered lap-dog, living where there is another of its ownspecies, will hide any nice morsel which it cannot eat, under a rug, or in some other by-place, designing to enjoy it afterwards. I haveseen children do the same thing.