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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,
+by Robert Chambers
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
+
+
+Author: Robert Chambers
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 2, 2014  [eBook #7116]
+[This file was first posted on March 11, 2003]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF
+CREATION***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1844 John Churchill edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 VESTIGES
+                                    OF
+                           THE NATURAL HISTORY
+                                    OF
+                                CREATION.
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                 LONDON:
+
+                  JOHN CHURCHILL, PRINCES STREET, SOHO.
+
+                               M DCCC XLIV.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+The Bodies of Space—Their arrangements and formation                 1
+Constituent materials of the Earth and of the other Bodies          27
+of Space
+The Earth formed—Era of the Primary Rocks                           44
+Commencement of Organic Life—Sea Plants, Corals, etc.               54
+Era of the Old Red Sandstone—Fishes abundant.                       66
+Secondary Rocks.  Era of the Carboniferous Formation.—Land          76
+formed—Commencement of Land Plants
+Era of the New Red Sandstone—Terrestrial Zoology commences          94
+with Reptiles—First traces of Birds
+Era of the Oolite—Commencement of Mammalia                         105
+Era of the Cretaceous Formation                                    116
+Era of the Tertiary Formation—Mammalia abundant                    125
+Era of the Superficial Formations—Commencement of present          134
+Species
+General Considerations respecting the Origin of the                145
+Animated Tribes
+Particular Considerations respecting the Origin of the             165
+Animated Tribes
+Hypothesis of the Development of the Vegetable and Animal          191
+Kingdoms
+Macleay System of Animated Nature—This System considered in        236
+connexion with the Progress of Organic Creation, and as
+indicating the natural status of Man
+Early History of Mankind                                           277
+Mental Constitution of Animals                                     324
+Purpose and General Condition of the Animated Creation             361
+Note Conclusory                                                    387
+
+
+
+
+THE BODIES OF SPACE,
+THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION.
+
+
+IT is familiar knowledge that the earth which we inhabit is a globe of
+somewhat less than 8000 miles in diameter, being one of a series of
+eleven which revolve at different distances around the sun, and some of
+which have satellites in like manner revolving around them.  The sun,
+planets, and satellites, with the less intelligible orbs termed comets,
+are comprehensively called the solar system, and if we take as the
+uttermost bounds of this system the orbit of Uranus (though the comets
+actually have a wider range), we shall find that it occupies a portion of
+space not less than three thousand six hundred millions of miles in
+extent.  The mind fails to form an exact notion of a portion of space so
+immense; but some faint idea of it may be obtained from the fact, that,
+if the swiftest race-horse ever known had begun to traverse it, at full
+speed, at the time of the birth of Moses, he would only as yet have
+accomplished half his journey.
+
+It has long been concluded amongst astronomers, that the stars, though
+they only appear to our eyes as brilliant points, are all to be
+considered as suns, representing so many solar systems, each bearing a
+general resemblance to our own.  The stars have a brilliancy and apparent
+magnitude which we may safely presume to be in proportion to their actual
+size and the distance at which they are placed from us.  Attempts have
+been made to ascertain the distance of some of the stars by calculations
+founded on parallax, it being previously 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 than 19,200 millions of miles!  In the case of the most
+brilliant star, Sirius, even this minute parallax could not be found;
+from which of course it was to be inferred that the distance of that star
+is something beyond the vast distance which has been stated.  In some
+others, on which the experiment has been tried, no sensible parallax
+could be detected; from which the same inference was to be made in their
+case.  But a sensible parallax of about one second has been ascertained
+in the case of the double star, α α, of the constellation of the Centaur,
+{3} and one of the third of that amount for the double star, 61 Cygni;
+which gave reason to presume that the distance of the former might be
+about twenty thousand millions of miles, and the latter of much greater
+amount.  If we suppose that similar intervals exist between all the
+stars, we shall readily see that the space occupied by even the
+comparatively small number visible to the naked eye, must be vast beyond
+all powers of conception.
+
+The number visible to the eye is about three thousand; but when a
+telescope of small power is directed to the heavens, a great number more
+come into view, and the number is ever increased in proportion to the
+increased power of the instrument.  In one place, where they are more
+thickly sown than elsewhere, Sir William Herschel reckoned that fifty
+thousand passed over a field of view two degrees in breadth in a single
+hour.  It was first surmised by the ancient philosopher, Democritus, that
+the faintly white zone which spans the sky under the name of the Milky
+Way, might be only a dense collection of stars too remote to be
+distinguished.  This conjecture has been verified by the instruments of
+modern astronomers, and some speculations of a most remarkable kind have
+been formed in connexion with it.  By the joint labours of the two
+Herschels, the sky has been “gauged” in all directions by the telescope,
+so as to ascertain the conditions of different parts with respect to the
+frequency of the stars.  The result has been a conviction that, as the
+planets are parts of solar systems, so are solar systems parts of what
+may be called astral systems—that is, systems composed of a multitude of
+stars, bearing a certain relation to each other.  The astral system to
+which we belong, is conceived to be of an oblong, flattish form, with a
+space wholly or comparatively vacant in the centre, while the extremity
+in one direction parts into two.  The stars are most thickly sown in the
+outer parts of this vast ring, and these constitute the Milky Way.  Our
+sun is believed to be placed in the southern portion of the ring, near
+its inner edge, so that we are presented with many more stars, and see
+the Milky Way much more clearly, in that direction, than towards the
+north, in which line our eye has to traverse the vacant central space.
+Nor is this all.  Sir William Herschel, so early as 1783, detected a
+motion in our solar system with respect to the stars, and announced that
+it was tending towards the star λ, in the constellation Hercules.  This
+has been generally verified by recent and more exact calculations, {5}
+which fix on a point in Hercules, near the star 143 of the 17th hour,
+according to Piozzi’s catalogue, as that towards which our sun is
+proceeding.  It is, therefore, receding from the inner edge of the ring.
+Motions of this kind, through such vast regions of space, must be long in
+producing any change sensible to the inhabitants of our planet, and it is
+not easy to grasp their general character; but grounds have nevertheless
+been found for supposing that not only our sun, but the other suns of the
+system pursue a wavy course round the ring _from west to east_, crossing
+and recrossing the middle of the annular circle.  “Some stars will depart
+more, others less, from either side of the circumference of equilibrium,
+according to the places in which they are situated, and according to the
+direction and the velocity with which they are put in motion.  Our sun is
+probably one of those which depart furthest from it, and descend furthest
+into the empty space within the ring.” {6}  According to this view, a
+time may come when we shall be much more in the thick of the stars of our
+astral system than we are now, and have of course much more brilliant
+nocturnal skies; but it may be countless ages before the eyes which are
+to see this added resplendence shall exist.
+
+The evidence of the existence of other astral systems besides our own is
+much more decided than might be expected, when we consider that the
+nearest of them must needs be placed at a mighty interval beyond our own.
+The elder Herschel, directing his wonderful tube towards the _sides_ of
+our system, where stars are planted most rarely, and raising the powers
+of the instrument to the required pitch, was enabled with awe-struck mind
+to see suspended in the vast empyrean astral systems, or, as he called
+them, firmaments, resembling our own.  Like light cloudlets to a certain
+power of the telescope, they resolved themselves, under a greater power,
+into stars, though these generally seemed no larger than the finest
+particles of diamond dust.  The general forms of these systems are
+various; but one at least has been detected as bearing a striking
+resemblance to the supposed form of our own.  The distances are also
+various, as proved by the different degrees of telescopic power necessary
+to bring them into view.  The farthest observed by the astronomer were
+estimated by him as thirty-five thousand times more remote than Sirius,
+supposing its distance to be about twenty thousand millions of miles.  It
+would thus appear, that not only does gravitation keep our earth in its
+place in the solar system, and the solar system in its place in our
+astral system, but it also may be presumed to have the mightier duty of
+preserving a local arrangement between that astral system and an
+immensity of others, through which the imagination is left to wander on
+and on without limit or stay, save that which is given by its inability
+to grasp the unbounded.
+
+The two Herschels have in succession made some other most remarkable
+observations on the regions of space.  They have found within the limits
+of our astral system, and generally in its outer fields, a great number
+of objects which, from their foggy appearance, are called _nebulæ_; some
+of vast extent and irregular figure, as that in the sword of Orion, which
+is visible to the naked eye; others of shape more defined; others, again,
+in which small bright nuclei appear here and there over the surface.
+Between this last form and another class of objects, which appear as
+clusters of nuclei with nebulous matter around each nucleus, there is but
+a step in what appears a chain of related things.  Then, again, our
+astral space shews what are called nebulous stars,—namely, luminous
+spherical objects, bright in the centre and dull towards the extremities.
+These appear to be only an advanced condition of the class of objects
+above described.  Finally, nebulous stars exist in every stage of
+concentration, down to that state in which we see only a common star with
+a slight _bur_ around it.  It may be presumed that all these are but
+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 the whole
+were only variations of one being.  Are we to suppose that we have got a
+glimpse of the process through which a sun goes between its original
+condition, as a mass of diffused nebulous matter, and its full-formed
+state as a compact body?  We shall see how far such an idea is supported
+by other things known with regard to the occupants of space, and the laws
+of matter.
+
+A superficial view of the astronomy of the solar system gives us only the
+idea of a vast luminous body (the sun) in the centre, and a few smaller,
+though various sized bodies, revolving at different distances around it;
+some of these, again, having smaller planets (satellites) revolving
+around them.  There are, however, some general features of the solar
+system, which, when a profounder attention makes us acquainted with them,
+strike the mind very forcibly.
+
+It is, in the first place, remarkable, that the planets all move nearly
+_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 its axis, those
+of the planets around the sun, and the satellites around their primaries,
+{9} and the motions of all on their axes, are _in one direction_—namely,
+from west to east.  Had all these matters been left to accident, the
+chances against the uniformity which we find would have been, though
+calculable, inconceivably great.  Laplace states them at four millions of
+millions to one.  It is thus powerfully impressed on us, that the
+uniformity of the motions, as well as their general adjustment to one
+plane, must have been a consequence 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 and diminution of
+density, from the one nearest to the sun to that which is most distant.
+With respect to density alone, we find, taking water as a measure and
+counting it as one, that Saturn is 13/32, or less than half; Jupiter, 1
+1/24; Mars, 3 2/7; Earth, 4 1/2; Venus, 5 11/15; Mercury 9 9/10, or about
+the weight of lead.  Then the distances are curiously relative.  It has
+been found that if we place the following line of numbers,—
+
+                          0 3 6 12 24 48 96 192,
+
+and add 4 to each, we shall have a series denoting the respective
+distances of the planets from the sun.  It will stand thus—
+
+4           7           10          16          28      52          100         196
+Merc.       Venus.      Earth.      Mars.               Jupiter.    Saturn.     Uranus.
+
+It will be observed that the first row of figures goes on from the second
+on the left hand in a succession of duplications, or multiplications by
+2.  Surely there is here a most surprising proof of the unity which I am
+claiming for the solar system.  It was remarked when this curious
+relation was first detected, that there was a want of a planet
+corresponding to 28; the difficulty was afterwards considered as in a
+great measure overcome, by the discovery of four small planets revolving
+at nearly one mean distance from the sun, between Mars and Jupiter.  The
+distances bear an equally interesting mathematical relation to the times
+of the revolutions round the sun.  It has been found that, with respect
+to any two planets, the squares of the times of revolution are to each
+other in the same proportion as the cubes of their mean distances,—a most
+surprising result, for the discovery of which the world was indebted to
+the illustrious Kepler.  Sir John Herschel truly observes—“When we
+contemplate the constituents of the planetary system from the point of
+view which this relation affords us, it is no longer mere analogy which
+strikes us, no longer a general resemblance among them, as individuals
+independent of each other, and circulating about the sun, each according
+to its own peculiar nature, and connected with it by its own peculiar
+tie.  The resemblance is now perceived to be a true _family likeness_;
+they are bound up in one chain—interwoven in one web of mutual relation
+and harmonious agreement, subjected to one pervading influence which
+extends from the centre to the farthest limits of that great system, of
+which all of them, the Earth included, must henceforth be regarded as
+members.” {12}
+
+Connecting what has been observed of the series of nebulous stars with
+this wonderful relationship seen to exist among the constituents of our
+system, and further taking advantage of the light afforded by the
+ascertained laws of matter, modern astronomers have suggested the
+following hypothesis of the formation of that system.
+
+Of nebulous matter in its original state we know too little to enable us
+to suggest how nuclei should be established in it.  But, supposing that,
+from a peculiarity in its constitution, nuclei are formed, we know very
+well how, by virtue of the law of gravitation, the process of an
+aggregation of the neighbouring matter to those nuclei should proceed,
+until masses more or less solid should become detached from the rest.  It
+is a well-known law in physics that, when fluid matter collects towards
+or meets in a centre, it establishes a rotatory motion.  See minor
+results of this law in the whirlwind and the whirlpool—nay, on so humble
+a scale as the water sinking through the aperture of a funnel.  It thus
+becomes certain that when we arrive at the stage of a nebulous star, we
+have a rotation on an axis commenced.
+
+Now, mechanical philosophy informs us that, the instant a mass begins to
+rotate, there is generated a tendency to fling off its outer portions—in
+other words, the law of centrifugal force begins to operate.  There are,
+then, two forces acting in opposition to each other, the one attracting
+_to_, the other throwing _from_, the centre.  While these remain exactly
+counterpoised, the mass necessarily continues entire; but the least
+excess of the centrifugal over the attractive force would be attended
+with the effect of separating the mass and its outer parts.  These outer
+parts would, then, be left as a ring round the central body, which ring
+would continue to revolve with the velocity possessed by the central mass
+at the moment of separation, but not necessarily participating in any
+changes afterwards undergone by that body.  This is a process which might
+be repeated as soon as a new excess arose in the centrifugal over the
+attractive forces working in the parent mass.  It might, indeed, continue
+to be repeated, until the mass attained the ultimate limits of the
+condensation which its constitution imposed upon it.  From what cause
+might arise the periodical occurrence of an excess of the centrifugal
+force?  If we suppose the agglomeration of a nebulous mass to be a
+process attended by refrigeration or cooling, which many facts render
+likely, we can easily understand why the outer parts, hardening under
+this process, might, by virtue of the greater solidity thence acquired,
+begin to present some resistance to the attractive force.  As the
+solidification proceeded, this resistance would become greater, though
+there would still be a tendency to adhere.  Meanwhile, the condensation
+of the central mass would be going on, tending to produce a separation
+from what may now be termed the _solidifying crust_.  During the
+contention between the attractions of these two bodies, or parts of one
+body, there would probably be a ring of attenuation between the mass and
+its crust.  At length, when the central mass had reached a certain stage
+in its advance towards solidification, a separation would take place, and
+the crust would become a detached ring.  It is clear, of course, that
+some law presiding over the refrigeration of heated gaseous bodies would
+determine 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 is one
+observing and reducible to mathematical formulæ.
+
+If these rings consisted of matter nearly uniform throughout, they would
+probably continue each in its original form; but there are many chances
+against their being uniform in constitution.  The unavoidable effects of
+irregularity in their constitution would be to cause them to gather
+towards centres of superior solidity, by which the annular form would, of
+course, be destroyed.  The ring would, in short, break into several
+masses, the largest of which would be likely to attract the lesser into
+itself.  The whole mass would then necessarily settle into a spherical
+form by virtue of the law of gravitation; in short, would then become a
+planet revolving round the sun.  Its rotatory motion would, of course,
+continue, and satellites might then be thrown off in turn from its body
+in exactly the same way as the primary planets had been thrown off from
+the sun.  The rule, if I can be allowed so to call it, receives a
+striking support from what appear to be its exceptions.  While there are
+many chances against the matter of the rings being sufficiently equable
+to remain in the annular form till they were consolidated, it might
+nevertheless be otherwise in some instances; that is to say, the
+equableness might, in those instances, be sufficiently great.  Such was
+probably the case with the two rings around the body of Saturn, which
+remain a living picture of the arrangement, if not the condition, in
+which all the planetary masses at one time stood.  It may also be
+admitted that, when a ring broke up, it was possible that the fragments
+might spherify separately.  Such seems to be the actual history of the
+ring between Jupiter and Mars, in whose place we now find four planets
+much beneath the smallest of the rest in size, and moving nearly at the
+same distance from the sun, though in orbits so elliptical, and of such
+different planes, that they keep apart.
+
+It has been seen that there are mathematical proportions in the relative
+distances and revolutions of the planets of our system.  It has also been
+suggested that the periods in the condensation of the nebulous mass, at
+which rings were disengaged, must have depended on some particular crises
+in the condition of that mass, in connexion with the laws of centrifugal
+force and attraction.  M. Compte, of Paris, has made some approach to the
+verification of the hypothesis, by calculating what ought to have been
+the rotation of the solar mass at the successive times when its surface
+extended to the various planetary orbits.  He ascertained that _that
+rotation corresponded in every case with the actual sidereal revolution
+of the planets_, _and that the rotation of the primary planets in like
+manner corresponded with the orbitual periods of the secondaries_.  The
+process by which he arrived at this conclusion is not to be readily
+comprehended by the unlearned; but those who are otherwise, allow that it
+is a powerful support to the present hypothesis of the formation of the
+globes of space. {17}
+
+The nebular hypothesis, as it has been called, obtains a remarkable
+support in what would at first seem to militate against it—the existence
+in our firmament of several thousands of solar systems, in which there
+are more than one sun.  These are called double and triple stars.  Some
+double stars, upon which careful observations have been made, are found
+to have a regular revolutionary motion round each other in ellipses.
+This kind of solar system has also been observed in what appears to be
+its rudimental state, for there are examples of nebulous stars containing
+two and three nuclei in near association.  At a certain point in the
+confluence of the matter of these nebulous stars, they would all become
+involved in a common revolutionary motion, linked inextricably with each
+other, though it might be at sufficient distances to allow of each
+distinct centre having afterwards its attendant planets.  We have seen
+that the law which causes rotation in the single solar masses, is exactly
+the same which produces the familiar phenomenon of a small whirlpool or
+dimple in 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 near each 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 an illustration of the
+wonders of binary and ternary solar systems.
+
+The nebular hypothesis is, indeed, supported by so many ascertained
+features of the celestial scenery, and by so many calculations of exact
+science, that it is impossible for a candid mind to refrain from giving
+it a cordial reception, if not to repose full reliance upon it, even
+without seeking for it support of any other kind.  Some other support I
+trust yet to bring to it; but in the meantime, assuming its truth, let us
+see what idea it gives of the constitution of what we term the universe,
+of the development of its various parts, and of its original condition.
+
+Reverting to a former illustration—if we could suppose a number of
+persons of various ages presented to the inspection of an intelligent
+being newly introduced into the world, we cannot doubt that he would soon
+become convinced that men had once been boys, that boys had once been
+infants, and, finally, that all had been brought into the world in
+exactly the same circumstances.  Precisely thus, seeing in our astral
+system many thousands of worlds in all stages of formation, from the most
+rudimental to that immediately preceding the present condition of those
+we deem perfect, it is unavoidable to conclude that all the perfect have
+gone through the various stages which we see in the rudimental.  This
+leads us at once to the conclusion that the whole of our firmament was at
+one time a diffused mass of nebulous 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 connected mass, 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 the formation of
+bodies in space is _still and at present in progress_.  We live at a time
+when many have been formed, and many are still forming.  Our own solar
+system is to be regarded as completed, supposing its perfection to
+consist in the formation of a series of planets, for there are
+mathematical reasons for concluding that Mercury is the nearest planet to
+the sun, which can, according to the laws of the system, exist.  But
+there are other solar systems within our astral system, which are as yet
+in a less advanced state, and even some quantities of nebulous matter
+which have scarcely begun to advance towards the stellar form.  On the
+other hand, there are vast numbers of stars which have all the appearance
+of being fully formed systems, if we are to judge from the complete and
+definite appearance which they present to our vision through the
+telescope.  We have no means of judging of the seniority of systems; but
+it is reasonable to suppose that, among the many, some are older than
+ours.  There is, indeed, one piece of evidence for the probability of the
+comparative youth of our system, altogether apart from human traditions
+and the geognostic appearances of the surface of our planet.  This
+consists in a thin nebulous matter, which is diffused around the sun to
+nearly the orbit of Mercury, of a very oblately spheroidal shape.  This
+matter, which sometimes appears to our naked eyes, at sunset, in the form
+of a cone projecting upwards in the line of the sun’s path, and which
+bears the name of the Zodiacal Light, has been thought a residuum or last
+remnant of the concentrating matter of our system, and thus may be
+supposed to indicate the comparative recentness of the principal events
+of our cosmogony.  Supposing the surmise and inference to be correct, and
+they may be held as so far supported by more familiar evidence, we might
+with the more confidence speak of our system as not amongst the elder
+born of Heaven, but one whose various phenomena, physical and moral, as
+yet lay undeveloped, while myriads of others were fully fashioned and in
+complete arrangement.  Thus, in the sublime chronology to which we are
+directing our inquiries, we first find ourselves called upon to consider
+the globe which we inhabit as a child of the sun, elder than Venus and
+her younger brother Mercury, but posterior in date of birth to Mars,
+Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; next to regard our whole system as probably
+of recent formation in comparison with many of the stars of our
+firmament.  We must, however, be on our guard against supposing the earth
+as a recent globe in our ordinary conceptions of time.  From evidence
+afterwards to be adduced, it will be seen that it cannot 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 aged may be many of the stars of
+our firmament, or the stars of other firmaments than ours.
+
+Another and more important consideration arises from the hypothesis;
+namely, as to the means by which the grand process is conducted.  The
+nebulous matter collects around nuclei by virtue of the law of
+attraction.  The agglomeration brings into operation another physical
+law, by force of which the separate masses of matter are either made to
+rotate singly, or, in addition to that single motion, are set into a
+coupled revolution in ellipses.  Next centrifugal force comes into play,
+flinging off portions of the rotating masses, which become spheres by
+virtue of the same law of attraction, and are held in orbits of
+revolution round the central body by means of a composition between the
+centrifugal and gravitating forces.  All, we see, is done by certain laws
+of matter, so that it becomes a question of extreme interest, what are
+such laws?  All that can yet be said, in answer, is, that we see certain
+natural events proceeding in an invariable order under certain
+conditions, and thence infer the existence of some fundamental
+arrangement which, for the bringing about of these events, has a force
+and certainty of action similar to, but more precise and unerring than
+those arrangements which human society makes for its own benefit, and
+calls laws.  It is remarkable of physical laws, that we see them
+operating on every kind of scale as to magnitude, with the same
+regularity and perseverance.  The tear that falls from childhood’s cheek
+is globular, through the efficacy of that same law of mutual attraction
+of particles which made the sun and planets round.  The rapidity of
+Mercury is quicker than that of Saturn, for the same reason that, when we
+wheel a ball round by a string and make the string wind up round our
+fingers, the ball always flies quicker and quicker as the string is
+shortened.  Two eddies in a stream, as has been stated, fall into a
+mutual revolution at the distance of a couple of inches, through the same
+cause which makes a pair of suns link in mutual revolution at the
+distance of millions of miles.  There is, we might say, a sublime
+simplicity in this indifference of the grand regulations to the vastness
+or minuteness of the field of their operation.  Their being uniform, too,
+throughout space, as far as we can scan it, and their being so unfailing
+in their tendency to operate, so that only the proper conditions are
+presented, afford to our minds matter for the gravest consideration.  Nor
+should it escape our careful notice that the regulations on which all the
+laws of matter operate, are established on a rigidly accurate
+mathematical basis.  Proportions of numbers and geometrical figures rest
+at the bottom of the whole.  All these considerations, when the mind is
+thoroughly prepared for them, tend to 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.  We advance from law to the cause of law, and ask,
+What is that?  Whence have come all these beautiful regulations?  Here
+science leaves us, but only to conclude, from other grounds, that there
+is a First Cause to which all others are secondary and ministrative, a
+primitive almighty will, of which these laws are merely the mandates.
+That great Being, who shall say where is his dwelling-place, or what his
+history!  Man pauses breathless at the contemplation of a subject so much
+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 have
+originally formed one mass.  We have seen that the same physical laws
+preside over the whole.  Are we also to presume that the constitution of
+the whole was uniform?—that is to say, that the whole consisted of
+similar elements.  It seems difficult to avoid coming to this conclusion,
+at least under the qualification that, possibly, various bodies, under
+peculiar circumstances attending their formation, may contain elements
+which are wanting, and lack some which are present in others, or that
+some may entirely consist of elements in which others are entirely
+deficient.
+
+What are elements?  This is a term applied by the chemist to a certain
+limited number of substances, (fifty-four or fifty-five are ascertained,)
+which, in their combinations, form all the matters of every kind present
+in and about our globe.  They are called elements, or simple substances,
+because it has hitherto been found impossible to reduce them into others,
+wherefore they are presumed to be the primary bases of all matters.  It
+has, indeed, been surmised that these so-called elements are only
+modifications of a primordial form of matter, brought about under certain
+conditions; but if this should prove to be the case, it would little
+affect the view which we are taking of cosmical arrangements.  Analogy
+would lead us to conclude that the combinations of the primordial matter,
+forming our so-called elements, are as universal or as liable to take
+place everywhere as are the laws of gravitation and centrifugal force.
+We must therefore presume that the gases, the metals, the earths, and
+other simple substances, (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
+times more distant than Sirius, as within the bounds of our own solar
+system or our own globe.
+
+Matter, whether it consist of about fifty-five ingredients, or only one,
+is liable to infinite varieties of condition under different
+circumstances, or, to speak more philosophically, under different laws.
+As a familiar illustration, water, when subjected to a temperature under
+32° Fahrenheit, becomes ice; raise the temperature to 212°, and it
+becomes steam, occupying a vast deal more space than it formerly did.
+The gases, when subjected to pressure, become liquids; for example,
+carbonic acid gas, when subjected to a weight equal to a column of water
+1230 feet high, at a temperature of 32°, takes this form: the other gases
+require various amounts of pressure for this transformation, but all
+appear to be liable to it when the pressure proper in each case is
+administered.  Heat is a power greatly concerned in regulating the volume
+and other conditions of matter.  A chemist can reckon with considerable
+precision what additional amount of heat would be required to vaporise
+all the water of our globe; how much more to disengage the oxygen which
+is diffused in nearly a proportion of one-half throughout its solids;
+and, finally, how much more would be required to cause the whole to
+become vaporiform, which we may consider as equivalent to its being
+restored to its original nebulous state.  He can calculate with equal
+certainty what would be the effect of a considerable diminution of the
+earth’s temperature—what changes would take place in each of its
+component substances, and how much the whole would shrink in bulk.
+
+The earth and all its various substances have at present a certain volume
+in consequence of the temperature which actually exists.  When, then, we
+find that its matter and that of the associate planets was at one time
+diffused throughout the whole space, now circumscribed by the orbit of
+Uranus, we cannot doubt, after what we know of the power of heat, that
+the nebulous form of matter was attended by the condition of a very high
+temperature.  The nebulous matter of space, previously to the formation
+of stellar and planetary bodies, must have been a universal Fire Mist, an
+idea which we can scarcely comprehend, though the reasons for arriving at
+it seem irresistible.  The formation of systems out of this matter
+implies a change of some kind with regard to the condition of the heat.
+Had this 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 how the
+necessary change in this respect was brought about, but we can trace some
+of the steps and consequences of the process.  Uranus would be formed at
+the time when the heat of our system’s matter was at the greatest, Saturn
+at the next, and so on.  Now this tallies perfectly with the exceeding
+diffuseness of the matter of those elder planets, Saturn being not more
+dense or heavy than the substance cork.  It may be that a sufficiency of
+heat still remains in those planets to make up for their distance from
+the sun, and the consequent smallness of the heat which they derive from
+his rays.  And it may equally be, since Mercury is twice the density of
+the earth, that its matter exists under a degree of cold for which that
+planet’s large enjoyment of the sun’s rays is no more than a
+compensation.  Thus there may be upon the whole a nearly equal experience
+of heat amongst all these children of the sun.  Where, meanwhile, is the
+heat once diffused through the system over and above what remains in the
+planets?  May we not rationally presume it to have gone to constitute
+that luminous envelope of the sun, in which his warmth-giving power is
+now held to reside?  It could not be destroyed—it cannot be supposed to
+have gone off into space—it must have simply been reserved to constitute,
+at the last, a means of sustaining the many operations of which the
+planets were destined to be the theatre.
+
+The tendency of the whole of the preceding considerations is to bring the
+conviction that our globe is a specimen of all the similarly-placed
+bodies of space, as respects its constituent matter and the physical and
+chemical laws governing it, with only this qualification, that there are
+_possibly_ shades of variation with respect to the component materials,
+and _undoubtedly_ with respect to the conditions under which the laws
+operate, and consequently the effects which they produce.  Thus, there
+may be substances here which are not in some other bodies, and substances
+here solid may be elsewhere liquid or vaporiform.  We are the more
+entitled to draw such conclusions, seeing that there is nothing at all
+singular or special in the astronomical situation of the earth.  It takes
+its place third in a series of planets, which series is only one of
+numberless other systems forming one group.  It is strikingly—if I may
+use such an expression—a member of a democracy.  Hence, we cannot suppose
+that there is any peculiarity about it which does not probably attach to
+multitudes of other bodies—in fact, to all that are analogous to it in
+respect of cosmical arrangements.
+
+It therefore becomes a point of great interest—what are the materials of
+this specimen?  What is the constitutional character of this object,
+which may be said to be a sample, presented to our immediate observation,
+of those crowds of worlds which seem to us as the particles of the desert
+sand-cloud in number, and to whose profusion there are no conceivable
+local limits?
+
+The solids, liquids, and aeriform fluids of our globe are all, as has
+been stated, reducible into fifty-five substances hitherto called
+elementary.  Six are gases; oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen being the
+chief.  Forty-two are metals, of which eleven are remarkable as
+composing, 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 in our
+globe.  It constitutes a fifth part of our atmosphere, a third part of
+water, and a large proportion of every kind of rock in the crust of the
+earth.  Hydrogen, which forms two-thirds of water, and enters into some
+mineral substances, is perhaps next.  Nitrogen, of which the atmosphere
+is four-fifths composed, must be considered as an abundant substance.
+The metal silicium, which unites with oxygen in nearly equal parts to
+form silica, the basis of nearly a half of the rocks in the earth’s
+crust, is, of course, an important ingredient.  Aluminium, the metallic
+basis of alumin, a large material in many rocks, is another abundant
+elementary substance.  So, also, is carbon a small ingredient in the
+atmosphere, but the chief constituent of animal and vegetable substances,
+and of all fossils which ever were in the latter condition, amongst which
+coal takes a conspicuous place.  The familiarly-known metals, as iron,
+tin, lead, silver, gold, are elements of comparatively small magnitude in
+that exterior part of the earth’s body which we are able to investigate.
+
+It is remarkable of the simple substances that they are generally in some
+compound form.  Thus, oxygen and nitrogen, though in union they form the
+aerial envelope of the globe, are never found separate in nature.  Carbon
+is pure only in the diamond.  And the metallic bases of the earths,
+though the chemist can disengage them, may well be supposed unlikely to
+remain long uncombined, seeing that contact with moisture makes them
+burn.  Combination and re-combination are principles largely pervading
+nature.  There are few rocks, for example, that are not composed of at
+least two varieties of matter, each of which is again a compound of
+elementary substances.  What is still more wonderful with respect to this
+principle of combination, all the elementary substances observe certain
+mathematical proportions in their unions.  One volume of them unites with
+one, two, three, or more volumes of another, any extra quantity being
+sure to be left over, if such there should be.  It is hence supposed that
+matter is composed of infinitely minute particles or atoms, each of which
+belonging to any one substance, can only (through the operation of some
+as yet hidden law) associate with a certain number of the atoms of any
+other.  There are also strange predilections amongst substances for each
+other’s company.  One will remain combined in solution with another, till
+a third is added, when it will abandon the 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 us regarding
+the constituent materials of our globe.  How infinitely is the knowledge
+increased in interest, when we consider the probability of such being the
+materials of the whole of the bodies of space, and the laws under which
+these everywhere combine, subject only to local and accidental
+variations!
+
+In considering the cosmogenic arrangements of our globe, our attention is
+called in a special degree to the moon.
+
+In the nebular hypothesis, satellites are considered as masses thrown off
+from their primaries, exactly as the primaries had previously been from
+the sun.  The orbit of any satellite is also to be regarded as marking
+the bounds of the mass of the primary at the time when that satellite was
+thrown off; its speed likewise denotes the rapidity of the rotatory
+motion of the primary at that particular juncture.  For example, the
+outermost of the four satellites of Jupiter 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 large mass took rather more than sixteen days
+six hours and a half (the present revolutionary period of the outermost
+satellite) to rotate on its axis.  The innermost satellite must have been
+formed when the planet was reduced to a circumference of 309,075 miles,
+and rotated in about forty-two hours and a half.
+
+From similar inferences, we find that the mass of the earth, at a certain
+point of time after it was thrown off from the sun, was no less than
+482,000 miles in diameter, being sixty times what it has since shrunk to.
+At that time, the mass must have taken rather more than twenty-nine and a
+half days to rotate, (being the revolutionary period of the moon,)
+instead of as now, rather less than twenty-four hours.
+
+The time intervening between the formation of the moon and the earth’s
+diminution to its present size, was probably one of those vast sums in
+which astronomy deals so largely, but which the mind altogether 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 space being
+composed of similar matters, subject to certain variations.  It does not
+appear that our satellite is provided with that gaseous envelope which,
+on earth, performs so many important functions.  Neither is there any
+appearance of water upon the surface; yet that surface is, like that of
+our globe, marked by inequalities and the appearance of volcanic
+operations.  These inequalities and volcanic operations are upon a scale
+far greater than any which now exist upon the earth’s surface.  Although,
+from the greater force of gravitation upon its exterior, the mountains,
+other circumstances being equal, might have been expected to be much
+smaller than ours, they are, in many instances, equal in height to nearly
+the highest of our Andes.  They are generally of extreme steepness, and
+sharp of outline, a peculiarity which might be looked for in a planet
+deficient in water and atmosphere, seeing that these are the agents which
+wear down ruggedness on the surface of our earth.  The volcanic
+operations are on a stupendous scale.  They are the cause of the bright
+spots of the moon, while the want of them is what distinguishes the
+duller portions, usually but erroneously called _seas_.  In some parts,
+bright volcanic matter, besides covering one large patch, radiates out in
+long streams, which appear studded with subordinate _foci_ of the same
+kind of energy.  Other objects of a most remarkable character are ring
+mountains, mounts like those of the craters of earthly volcanoes,
+surrounded immediately by vast and profound circular pits, hollowed under
+the general surface, these again being surrounded by a circular wall of
+mountain, rising far above the central one, and in the inside of which
+are terraces about the same height as the inner eminence.  The well-known
+bright spot in the south-east quarter, called by astronomers _Tycho_, and
+which can be readily distinguished by the naked eye, is one of these
+ring-mountains.  There is one of 200 miles in diameter, with a pit 22,000
+feet deep; that is, twice the height of Ætna.  It is remarkable, that the
+maps given by Humboldt of a volcanic district in South America, and one
+illustrative of the formerly volcanic district of Auvergne, in France,
+present features strikingly like many parts of the moon’s surface, as
+seen through a good glass.
+
+These characteristics of the moon forbid the idea that it can be at
+present a theatre of life like the earth, and almost seem to declare that
+it never can become so.  But we must not rashly draw any such
+conclusions.  The moon may be only in an earlier stage of the progress
+through which the earth has already gone.  The elements which seem
+wanting may be only in combinations different in those which exist here,
+and may yet be developed as we here find them.  Seas may yet fill the
+profound hollows of the surface; an atmosphere may spread over the whole.
+Should these events take place, meteorological phenomena, and all the
+phenomena of organic life, will commence, and the moon, like the earth,
+will become a green and inhabited 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 is
+eminently the case with the nebulous hypothesis, for here the associated
+facts cannot be explained on any other supposition.  We have seen reason
+to conclude that the primary condition of matter was that of a diffused
+mass, in which the component molecules were probably kept apart through
+the efficacy of heat; that portions of this agglomerated into suns, which
+threw off planets; that these planets were at first very much diffused,
+but gradually contracted by cooling to their present dimensions.  Now, as
+to our own globe, there is a remarkable proof of its having been in a
+fluid state at the time when it was finally solidifying, in the fact of
+its being bulged at the equator, the very form which a soft revolving
+body takes, and must inevitably take, under the influence of centrifugal
+force.  This bulging makes the equatorial exceed the polar diameter as
+230 to 229, which has been demonstrated to be precisely the departure
+from a correct sphere which might be predicated from a knowledge of the
+amount of the mass and the rate of rotation.  There is an almost equally
+distinct memorial of the original high temperature of the materials, in
+the store of heat which still exists in the interior.  The immediate
+surface of the earth, be it observed, exhibits only the temperature which
+might be expected to be imparted to such materials, by the heat of the
+sun.  There is a point, very short way down, but varying in different
+climes, where all effect from the sun’s rays ceases.  Then, however,
+commences a temperature from an entirely different cause, one which
+evidently has its source in the interior of the earth, and which
+regularly increases as we descend to greater and greater depths, the rate
+of increment being about one degree Fahrenheit for every sixty feet; and
+of this high temperature there are other evidences, in the phenomena of
+volcanoes and thermal springs, as well as in what is ascertained with
+regard to the density of the entire mass of the earth.  This, it will be
+remembered, is four and a half times the weight of water; but the actual
+weight of the principal solid substances composing the outer crust is as
+two and a half times the weight of water; and this, we know, if the globe
+were solid and cold, should increase vastly towards the centre, water
+acquiring the density of quicksilver at 362 miles below the surface, and
+other things in proportion, and these densities becoming much greater at
+greater depths; so that the entire mass of a cool globe should be of a
+gravity infinitely exceeding four and a half times the weight of water.
+The only alternative supposition is, that the central materials are
+greatly expanded or diffused by some means; and by what means could they
+be so expanded but by heat?  Indeed, the existence of this central heat,
+a residuum of that which kept all matter in a vaporiform chaos at first,
+is amongst the most solid discoveries of modern science, {42} and the
+support which it gives to Herschel’s explanation of the formation of
+worlds is most important.  We shall hereafter see what appear to be
+traces of an operation of this heat upon the surface of the earth in very
+remote times; an effect, however, which has long passed entirely away.
+The central heat has, for ages, reached a fixed point, at which it will
+probably remain for ever, as the non-conducting quality of the cool crust
+absolutely prevents it from suffering any diminution.
+
+
+
+
+THE EARTH FORMED—ERA OF THE
+PRIMARY ROCKS.
+
+
+ALTHOUGH the earth has not been actually penetrated to a greater depth
+than three thousand feet, the nature of its substance can, in many
+instances, be inferred for the depth of many miles by other means of
+observation.  We see a mountain composed of a particular substance, with
+strata, or beds of other rock, lying against its sloped sides; we, of
+course, infer that the substance of the mountain dips away under the
+strata which we see lying against it.  Suppose that we walk away from the
+mountain across the turned up edges of the stratified rocks, and that for
+many miles we continue to pass over other stratified rocks, all disposed
+in the same way, till by and bye we come to a place where we begin to
+cross the opposite edges of the same beds; after which we pass over these
+rocks all in reverse order till we come to another extensive mountain
+composed of similar material to the first, and shelving away under the
+strata in the same way.  We should then infer that the stratified rocks
+occupied a basin formed by the rock of these two mountains, and by
+calculating the thickness right through these strata, could be able to
+say to what depth the rock of the mountain extended below.  By such
+means, the kind of rock existing many miles below the surface can often
+be inferred with considerable confidence.
+
+The interior of the globe has now been inspected in this way in many
+places, and a tolerably distinct notion of its general arrangements has
+consequently been arrived at.  It appears that the basis rock of the
+earth, as it may be called, is of hard texture, and crystalline in its
+constitution.  Of this rock, granite may be said to be the type, though
+it runs into many varieties.  Over this, except in the comparatively few
+places where it projects above the general level in mountains, other
+rocks are disposed in sheets or strata, with the appearance of having
+been deposited originally from water; but these last rocks have nowhere
+been allowed to rest in their original arrangement.  Uneasy movements
+from below have broken them up in great inclined masses, while in many
+cases there has been projected through the rents rocky matter more or
+less resembling the great inferior crystalline mass.  This rocky matter
+must have been in a state of fusion from heat at the time of its
+projection, for it is often found to have run into and filled up lateral
+chinks in these rents.  There are even instances where it has been rent
+again, and a newer 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 great
+inferior mass, composed of crystalline rock, and probably resting
+immediately on the fused and expanded matter of the interior: next,
+layers or strata of aqueous origin; next, irregular masses of melted
+inferior rock that have been sent up volcanically and confusedly at
+various times amongst the aqueous rocks, breaking up these into masses,
+and tossing them out of their original levels.  This is an outline of the
+arrangements of the crust of the earth, as far as we can observe it.  It
+is, at first sight, a most confused scene; but after some careful
+observation, we readily detect in it a regularity and order from which
+much instruction in the history of our globe is to be derived.
+
+The deposition of the aqueous rocks, and the projection of the volcanic,
+have unquestionably taken place since the settlement of the earth in its
+present form.  They are indeed of an order of events which we see going
+on, under the agency of more or less intelligible causes, even down to
+the present day.  We may therefore consider them generally as
+comparatively recent transactions.  Abstracting them from the
+investigations before us, we arrive at the idea of the earth in its first
+condition as a globe of its present size—namely, as a mass, externally at
+least, consisting of the crystalline kind of rock, with the waters of the
+present seas and the present atmosphere around it, though these were
+probably in considerably different conditions, both as to temperature and
+their constituent materials, from what they now are.  We are thus to
+presume that that crystalline texture of rock which we see exemplified in
+granite is the condition into which the great bulk of the solids of our
+earth were agglomerated directly from the nebulous or vaporiform state.
+It is a condition eminently of combination, for such rock is invariably
+composed of two or more of four substances—silica, mica, quartz, and
+hornblende—which associate in it in the form of grains or crystals, and
+which are themselves each composed of a group of the simple or elementary
+substances.
+
+Judging from the results and from still remaining conditions, we must
+suppose that the heat retained in the interior of the globe was more
+intense, or had greater freedom to act, in some places than in others.
+These became the scenes of volcanic operations, and in time marked their
+situations by the extrusion of traps and basalts from below—namely, rocks
+composed of the crystalline matter fused by intense 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 open air, which conditions are found to
+have made considerable difference in its texture and appearance.  The
+great stores of subterranean heat also served an important purpose in the
+formation of the aqueous rocks.  These rocks might, according to Sir John
+Herschel, become subject to heat in the following manner:—While the
+surface of a particular mass of rock forms the bed of the sea, the heat
+is kept at a 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 when
+new sediment settles at the bottom of that sea, the heat rises up to what
+was formerly the surface; and when a second quantity of sediment is laid
+down, it continues to rise through the first of the deposits, which then
+becomes subjected to those changes which heat is calculated to produce.
+This process is precisely the same as that of putting additional coats
+upon our own bodies; when, of course, the internal heat rises through
+each coat in succession, and the third (supposing there is a fourth above
+it) becomes as warm as perhaps the first 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 how
+stratification commenced.
+
+Geology tells us as plainly as possible, that the original crystalline
+mass was not a perfectly smooth ball, with air and water playing round
+it.  There were vast irregularities in the surface,—irregularities
+trifling, perhaps, compared with the whole bulk of the globe, but
+assuredly vast in comparison with any which now exist upon it.  These
+irregularities might be occasioned by inequalities in the cooling of the
+substance, or by accidental and local sluggishness of the materials, or
+by local effects of the concentrated internal heat.  From whatever cause
+they arose, there they were—enormous granitic mountains, interspersed
+with seas which sunk to a depth equally profound, and by which, perhaps,
+the mountains were wholly or partially covered.  Now, it is a fact of
+which the very first principles of geology assure us, that the solids of
+the globe cannot for a moment be exposed to water, or to the atmosphere,
+without becoming liable to change.  They instantly begin to wear down.
+This operation, we may be assured, proceeded with as much certainty in
+the earliest ages of our earth’s history, as it does now, but upon a much
+more magnificent scale.  There is the clearest evidence that the seas of
+those days were not in some instances less than a hundred miles in depth,
+however much more.  The sub-aqueous mountains must necessarily have been
+of at least equal magnitude.  The system of disintegration consequent
+upon such conditions would be enormous.  The matters worn off, being
+carried into the neighbouring depths, and there deposited, became the
+components of the earliest stratified rocks, the first series of which is
+the _Gneiss and Mica Slate System_, or series, examples of which are
+exposed to view in the Highlands of Scotland and in the West of England.
+The vast thickness of these beds, in some instances, is what attests the
+profoundness of the primeval oceans in which they were formed; the
+Pensylvanian grawacke, a member of the next highest series, is not less
+than a hundred miles in direct thickness.  We have also evidence that the
+earliest strata were formed in the presence of a stronger degree of heat
+than what operated in subsequent stages of the world, for the laminæ of
+the gneiss and of the mica and chlorite schists are contorted in a way
+which could only be the result of a very high temperature.  It appears as
+if the seas in which these deposits were formed, had been in the troubled
+state of a caldron of water nearly at boiling heat.  Such a condition
+would probably add not a little to the disintegrating power of the ocean.
+
+The earliest stratified rocks contain no matters which are not to be
+found in the primitive granite.  They are the same in material, but only
+changed into new forms and combinations; hence they have been called by
+Mr. Lyell, metamorphic rocks.  But how comes it that some of them are
+composed almost exclusively of one of the materials of granite; the mica
+schists, for example, of mica—the quartz rocks, of quartz, &c.?  For this
+there are both chemical and mechanical causes.  Suppose that a river has
+a certain quantity of material to carry down, it is evident that it will
+soonest drop the larger particles, and carry the lightest farthest on.
+To such a cause is it owing that some of the materials of the worn-down
+granite have settled in one place and some in another. {52}  Again, some
+of these materials must be presumed to have been in a state of chemical
+solution in the primeval seas.  It would be, of course, in conformity
+with chemical laws, that certain of these materials would be precipitated
+singly, or in modified combinations, to the bottom, so as to form rocks
+by themselves.
+
+The rocks hitherto spoken of contain none of those petrified remains of
+vegetables and animals which abound so much in subsequently formed rocks,
+and tell so wondrous a tale of the past history of our globe.  They
+simply contain, as has been said, mineral materials derived from the
+primitive mass, and which appear to have been formed into strata in seas
+of vast depth.  The absence from these rocks of all traces of vegetable
+and animal life, joined to a consideration of the excessive temperature
+which seems to have prevailed in their epoch, has led to the inference
+that no plants or animals of any kind then existed.  A few geologists
+have indeed endeavoured to shew that the absence of organic remains is no
+proof of the globe having been then unfruitful or uninhabited, as the
+heat to which these rocks have been subjected at the time of their
+solidification, might have obliterated any remains of either plants or
+animals which were included in them.  But this is only an hypothesis of
+negation; and it certainly seems very unlikely that a degree of heat
+sufficient to obliterate the remains of plants or animals when dead,
+would ever allow of their coming into or continuing in existence.
+
+
+
+
+COMMENCEMENT OF ORGANIC LIFE—
+SEA PLANTS, CORALS, ETC.
+
+
+WE can scarcely be said to have passed out of these rocks, when we begin
+to find new conditions in the earth.  It is here to be observed that the
+subsequent rocks are formed, in a great measure, of matters derived from
+the substance of those which went before, but contain also beds of
+limestone, which is to no small extent composed of an ingredient which
+has not hitherto appeared.  Limestone is a carbonate of lime, a secondary
+compound, of which one of the ingredients, carbonic acid gas, presents
+the element _carbon_, a perfect novelty in our progress.  Whence this
+substance?  The question is the more interesting, from our knowing that
+carbon is the main ingredient in organic things.  There is reason to
+believe that its primeval condition was that of a gas, confined in the
+interior of the earth, and diffused in the atmosphere.  The atmosphere
+still contains about a two-thousandth part of carbonic acid gas, forming
+the grand store from which the substance of each year’s crop of herbage
+and grain is derived, passing from herbage and grain into animal
+substance, and from animals again rendered back to the atmosphere in
+their expired breath, so that its amount is never impaired.  Knowing
+this, when we hear of carbon beginning to appear in the ascending series
+of rocks, we are unavoidably led to consider it as marking a time of some
+importance 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 adopted
+directly in its gaseous form into rocks; for, if so, why should it not
+have been taken into earlier ones also?  But we know that plants take it
+in, and transform it into substance; and we also know that there are
+classes of animals (marine polypes) which are capable of appropriating
+it, in connexion with lime, (carbonate of lime,) from the waters of the
+ocean, provided it be there in solution; and this substance do these
+animals deposit in masses (coral reefs) equal in extent to many strata.
+It has even been suggested, on strong grounds of probability, that a
+class of limestone beds are simply these reefs subjected to subsequent
+heat and pressure.
+
+The appearance, then, of limestone beds in the early part of the
+stratified series, may be presumed to be connected with the fact of the
+commencement of organic life upon our planet, and, indeed, a consequent
+and a symptom of it.
+
+It may not be out of place here to remark, that carbon is presumed to
+exist largely in the interior of the earth, from the fact of such
+considerable quantities of it issuing at this day, in the form of
+carbonic acid gas, from fissures and springs.  The primeval and
+subsequent history of this element is worthy of much attention, and we
+shall have to revert to it as a matter greatly concerning our subject.
+Delabeche estimates the quantity of carbonic acid gas locked 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 per cent., must also be enormous.
+If all this were disengaged in a gaseous form, the constitution of the
+atmosphere would undergo a change, of which the first effect would be the
+extinction of life in all land animals.  But a large proportion of it
+must have at one time been in the atmosphere.  The atmosphere would then,
+of course, be incapable of supporting life in land animals.  It is
+important, however, to observe that such an atmosphere would not be
+inconsistent with a luxuriant land vegetation; for experiment has proved
+that plants will flourish in air containing _one-twelfth_ of this gas, or
+166 times more than the present charge of our atmosphere.  The results
+which we observe are perfectly consistent with, and may be said to
+presuppose an atmosphere highly charged with this gas, from about the
+close of the primary non-fossiliferous rocks to the termination of the
+carboniferous series, for there we see vast deposits (coal) containing
+carbon as a large ingredient, while at the same time the leaves of the
+_Stone Book_ present no record of the contemporaneous existence of land
+animals.
+
+The hypothesis of the connexion of the first limestone beds with the
+commencement of organic life upon our planet is supported by the fact,
+that in these beds we find the first remains of the bodies of animated
+creatures.  My hypothesis may indeed be unsound; but, whether or not, it
+is clear, taking organic remains as upon the whole a faithful chronicle,
+that the deposition of these limestone beds was coeval 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 awe that
+the uninstructed inquirer would wait for an answer to this question.  But
+nature is simpler than man’s wit would make her, and behold, the
+interrogation only brings before us the unpretending forms of various
+zoophytes and polypes, together with a few single and double-valved
+shell-fish (mollusks), all of them creatures of the sea.  It is rather
+surprising to find these before any vegetable forms, considering that
+vegetables appear to us as forming the necessary first link in the chain
+of nutrition; but it is probable that there were sea plants, and also
+some simpler forms of animal life, before this period, although of too
+slight a substance to leave any fossil trace of their existence.
+
+The exact point in the ascending stratified series at which the first
+traces of organic life are to be found is not clearly determined.  Dr.
+M’Culloch states that he found fossil orthocerata (a kind of shell-fish)
+so early as the gneiss tract of Loch Eribol, in Sutherland; but Messrs.
+Sedgwick and Murchison, on a subsequent search, could not verify the
+discovery.  It has also been stated, that the gneiss and mica tract of
+Bohemia contains some seams of grawacke, in which are organic remains;
+but British geologists have not as yet attached much importance to this
+statement.  We have to look a little higher in the series for indubitable
+traces of organic life.
+
+Above the gneiss and mica slate system, or group of strata, is the _Clay
+Slate and Grawacke Slate System_; that is to say, it is higher in the
+_order of supraposition_, though very often it rests immediately on the
+primitive granite.  The sub-groups of this system are in the following
+succession upwards:—1, hornblende slate; 2, chiastolite slate; 3, clay
+slate; 4, Snowdon rocks, (grawacke and conglomerates;) 5, Bala limestone;
+6, Plynlymmon rocks, (grawacke and grawacke slates, with beds of
+conglomerates.)  This system is largely developed in the west and north
+of England, and it has been well examined, partly because some of the
+slate beds are extensively quarried for domestic purposes.  If we
+overlook the dubious statements respecting Sutherland and Bohemia, we
+have in this “system” the first appearances of life upon our planet.  The
+animal remains are chiefly confined to the slate beds, those named from
+Bala, in Wales, being the most prolific.  _Zoophyta_, _polyparia_,
+_crinoidea_, _conchifera_, and _crustacea_, {60} are the orders of the
+animal kingdom thus found in the earliest of earth’s sepulchres.  The
+_orders_ are distinguished without difficulty, from the general
+characters of the creatures whose remains are found; but it is only in
+this general character that they bear a general resemblance to any
+creatures now existing.  When we come to consider specific characters, we
+see that a difference exists—that, in short, the species and even genera
+are no longer represented upon earth.  More than this, it will be found
+that the earliest species comparatively soon gave place to others, and
+that they are not represented even in the next higher group of rocks.
+One important remark has been made, that a comparatively small variety of
+species is found in the older rocks, although of some particular ones the
+remains are very abundant; as, for instance, of a species of asaphus,
+which is found between the laminæ of some of the slate rocks of Wales,
+and the corresponding rocks of Normandy and Germany in enormous
+quantities.
+
+Ascending to the next group of rocks, we find the traces of life become
+more abundant, the number of species extended, and important additions
+made in certain vestiges of fuci, or sea-plants, and of fishes.  This
+group of rocks has been called by English geologists, the _Silurian
+System_, because largely developed at the surface of a district of
+western England, formerly occupied by a people whom the Roman historians
+call Silures.  It is a series of sandstones, limestones, and beds of
+shale (hardened mud), which are classed in the following sub-groups,
+beginning with the undermost:—1, Llandillo rocks, (darkish calcareous
+flagstones;) 2 and 3, two groups called 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
+most prevalent in the Wenlock limestone; conchifera, a vast number of
+genera, but all of the order brachiopoda, (including terebratula,
+pentamerus, spirifer, orthis, leptæna;) mollusca, of several orders and
+many genera, (including turritella, orthoceras, nautilus, bellerophon;)
+crustacea, all of them trilobites, (including trinucleus, asaphus,
+calamene.)  A little above the Llandillo rocks, there have been
+discovered certain convoluted forms, which are now established as
+annelids, or sea-worms, a tribe of creatures still existing, (nereidina
+and serpulina,) and which may often be found beneath 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, on account of their character and
+status in the animal kingdom.  They are red-blooded and hermaphrodite,
+and form a link of connexion between the annulosa (white-blooded worms)
+and a humble class of the vertebrata. {62}  The Wenlock limestone is most
+remarkable amongst all the rocks of the Silurian system, for organic
+remains.  Many slabs of it are wholly composed of corals, shells, and
+trilobites, held together by shale.  It contains many genera of crinoidea
+and polypiaria, and it is thought that some beds of it are wholly the
+production of the latter creatures, or are, in other words, coral reefs
+transformed by heat and pressure into rocks.  Remains of fishes, of a
+very minute size, have been detected by Mr. Philips in the Aymestry
+limestone, being apparently the first examples of vertebrated animals
+which breathed upon our planet.  In the upper Ludlow rocks, remains of
+six genera of fish have been for a longer period known; they belong to
+the order of cartilaginous fishes, an order of mean organization and
+ferocious habits, of which the shark and sturgeon are living specimens.
+“Some were furnished with long palates, and squat, firmly-based teeth,
+well adapted for crushing the strong-cased zoophytes and shells of the
+period, fragments of which occur in the fœcal remains; some with teeth
+that, like the fossil sharks of the later formations, resemble lines of
+miniature pyramids, larger and smaller alternating; some with teeth
+sharp, thin, and so deeply serrated, that every individual tooth
+resembles a row of poniards set up against the walls of an armory; and
+these last, says Agassiz, furnished with weapons so murderous, must have
+been the pirates of the period.  Some had their fins guarded with long
+spines, hooked like the beak of an eagle; some with spines of straighter
+and more slender form, and ribbed and furrowed longitudinally like
+columns; some were shielded by an armour of bony points, and some thickly
+covered with glistening scales.” {64}
+
+The traces of fuci in this system are all but sufficient to allow of a
+distinction of genera.  In some parts of North America, extensive though
+thin beds of them have been found.  A distinguished French geologist, M.
+Brogniart, has shewn that all existing marine plants are classifiable
+with regard to the zones of climate; some being fitted for the torrid
+zone, some for the temperate, some for the frigid.  And he establishes
+that the fuci of these early rocks speak of a torrid climate, although
+they may be found in what are now temperate regions; he also states that
+those of the higher rocks betoken, as we ascend, a gradually diminishing
+temperature.
+
+We thus early begin to find proofs of the general uniformity of organic
+life over the surface of the earth, at the time when each particular
+system of rocks was formed.  Species identical with the remains in the
+Wenlock limestone occur in the corresponding class of rocks in the Eifel,
+and partially in the Harz, Norway, Russia, and Brittany.  The situations
+of the remains in Russia are fifteen hundred miles from the Wenlock beds;
+but at the distance of between six and seven thousand from those,—namely,
+in the vale of Mississippi, the same species are discovered.  Uniformity
+in animal life over large geographical areas argues uniformity in the
+conditions 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, and
+shell-fish, from the Mediterranean.  It is the opinion of M. Brogniart,
+that the uniformity which existed in the primeval times can only be
+attributed to the temperature arising from the internal heat, which had
+yet, as he supposes, been sufficiently great to overpower the ordinary
+meteorological influences, and spread a tropical 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 of the
+_Old Red Sandstone System_.  This term has been recently applied to a
+series of strata, of enormous thickness in the whole mass, largely
+developed in Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, and South Wales;
+also in the counties of Fife, Forfar, Moray, Cromarty, and Caithness; and
+in Russia and North America, if not in many other parts of the world.
+The particular strata forming the system are somewhat different in
+different countries; but there is a general character to the extent of
+these being a mixture of flagstones, marly rocks, and sandstones, usually
+of a laminous structure, with conglomerates.  There is also a schist
+shewing the presence of bitumen; a remarkable new ingredient, since it is
+a vegetable production.  In the conglomerates, of great extent and
+thickness, which form, in at least one district, the basis or leading
+feature of the system, inclosing water-worn fragments of quartz and other
+rocks, we have evidence of the seas of that period having been subjected
+to a violent and long-continued agitation, probably from volcanic causes.
+The upper members of the series bear the appearance of having been
+deposited in comparatively tranquil seas.  The English specimens of this
+system shew a remarkable freedom from those disturbances which result in
+the interjection of trap; and they are thus defective in mineral ores.
+In some parts of England the old red sandstone system has been stated as
+10,000 feet in thickness.
+
+In this era, the forms of life which existed in the Silurian are
+continued: we have the same orders of marine creatures, zoophyta,
+polypiaria, conchifera, crustacea; but to these are added numerous
+fishes, some of which are of most extraordinary and surprising forms.
+Several of the strata are crowded with remains of fish, shewing that the
+seas in which those beds were deposited had swarmed with that class of
+inhabitants.  The investigation of this system is recent; but already
+{68} M. Agassiz has ascertained about twenty genera, and thrice the
+number of species.  And it is remarkable that the Silurian fishes are
+here only represented in genera; the whole of the _species_ of that era
+had already passed away.  Even throughout the sub-groups of the system
+itself, the species are changed; and these are phenomena observed
+throughout all the subsequent systems or geological eras; apparently
+arguing that, during the deposition of all the rocks, a gradual change of
+physical conditions was constantly going on.  A varying temperature, or
+even a varying depth of sea, would at present be attended with similar
+changes in marine life; and by analogy we are entitled to assume that
+such variations in the ancient seas might be amongst the causes of that
+constant change of genera and species in the inhabitants of those seas to
+which the organic contents of the rocks bear witness.
+
+Some of the fossils of this system,—the cephalaspis, coccosteus,
+pterichthys, holoptychius—are, in form and structure, entirely different
+from any fishes now existing, only the sturgeon family having any trace
+of affinity to them in any respect.  They seem to form a sort of
+connecting link between the crustacea and true fishes.
+
+The _cephalaspis_ may be considered as making the smallest advance from
+the crustacean character; it very much resembles in form the asaphus of
+lower formations, having a longish tail-like body inserted within the
+cusp of a large crescent-shaped head, somewhat like a saddler’s
+cutting-knife.  The body is covered with strong plates of bone,
+enamelled, and the head was protected on the upper side with one large
+plate, as with a buckler—hence the name, implying _buckler-head_.  A
+range of small fins conveys the idea of its having been as weak in motion
+as it is strong in structure.  The _coccosteus_ may be said to mark the
+next advance to fish creation.  The outline of its body is of the form of
+a short thick coffin, rounded, covered with strong bony plates, and
+terminating in a long tail, which seems to have been the sole organ of
+motion.  It is very remarkable, that, while the tail establishes this
+creature among the vertebrata and the fishes, its mouth has been opened
+vertically, like those of the crustaceans, but which is contrary to the
+mode of vertebrata generally.  This seems a pretty strong mark of the
+link character of the coccosteus between these two great departments of
+the animal kingdom.  The _pterichthys_ has also strong bony plates over
+its body, arranged much like those of a tortoise, and has a long tail;
+but its most remarkable feature, and that which has suggested its name,
+is a pair of long and narrow wing-like appendages attached to the
+shoulders, which the creature is supposed to have erected for its defence
+when attacked by an enemy.
+
+The _holoptychius_ is of a flat oval form, furnished with fins, and
+ending in a long tail; the whole body covered with strong plates which
+overlap each other, and the head forming only a slight rounded projection
+from the general figure.  The specimens in the lower beds are not above
+the size of a flounder; but in the higher strata, to judge by the size of
+the scales or plates which have been found, the creature attained a
+comparatively monstrous size.
+
+The other fishes of the system,—the osteolepis, glyptolepis, dipterus,
+&c., are, in general outline, much like fishes still existing, but their
+organization has, nevertheless, some striking peculiarities.  They have
+been entirely covered with bony scales or plates, enamelled externally;
+their spines are tipped with bone, and, as one striking and unvarying
+feature, the tail is only finned on the lower side.  The internal
+skeleton, of which no traces have been preserved, is presumed to have
+been cartilaginous.  They therefore unite the character of cartilaginous
+fishes with a character peculiar to 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 curious facts
+are mentioned.  It appears that in the imperfect condition of the
+vertebral column, and the inferior situation of the mouth in the
+pterichthys, coccosteus, &c., there is an analogy to the form of the
+dorsal cord and position of the mouth in the embryo of perfect fishes.
+The one-sided form of the tail in the osteolepis &c. finds a similar
+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 at a parity of
+law affecting the progress of general creation, and the progress of an
+individual fœtus of one of the more perfect animals.
+
+It is equally ascertained of the types of being prevalent in the old red,
+as of those of the preceding system, that they are uniform in the
+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 traces are
+observable in the Silurians, continue to appear.  It would seem as if
+less change took place in the vegetation than in the animals of those
+early seas; and for this, as Mr. Miller has remarked, it is easy to
+imagine reasons.  For example, an infusion of lime into the sea would
+destroy animal life, but be favourable to vegetation.
+
+As yet there were no land animals or plants, and for this the presumable
+reason is, that no dry land as yet existed.  We are not left to make this
+inference solely from the absence of land animals and plants; in the
+arrangement of the primary (stratified) rocks, we have further evidence
+of it.  That these rocks were formed in a generally horizontal position,
+we are as well assured as that they were formed at the bottom of seas.
+But they are always found greatly inclined in position, tilted up against
+the slopes of the granitic masses which are beneath them in geological
+order, though often shooting up to a higher point in the atmosphere.  No
+doubt can be entertained that these granitic masses, forming our
+principal mountain ranges, have been protruded from below, or, at least,
+thrust much further up, _since_ the deposition of the primary rocks.  The
+protrusion was what tilted up the primary rocks; and the inference is, of
+course, unavoidable, that these mountains have risen chiefly, at least,
+since the primary rocks were laid down.  It is remarkable that, while the
+primary rocks thus incline towards granitic nuclei or axes, the strata
+higher in the series rest against these again, generally at a less
+inclination, or none at all, shewing that these strata were laid down
+after the swelling mountain eminences had, by their protrusion, tilted up
+the primary strata.  And thus it may be said an era of local upthrowing
+of the primitive and (perhaps) central matter of our planet, is
+established as happening about the close of the primary strata, and
+beginning of the next ensuing system.  It may be called the _Era of the
+Oldest Mountains_, or, more boldly, of the formation of the detached
+portions of dry land over the hitherto watery surface of the globe—an
+important part of the designs of Providence, for which the time was now
+apparently come.  It may be remarked, that volcanic disturbances and
+protrusions of trap took place throughout the whole period of the
+deposition of the primary rocks; but they were upon a comparatively
+limited scale, and probably all took place under water.  It was only now
+that the central granitic masses of the great mountain ranges were thrown
+up, carrying up with them broken edges of the primary strata; a process
+which seems to have had this difference from the other, that it was the
+effect of a more tremendous force exerted at a lower depth in the earth,
+and generally acting in lines pervading a considerable portion of the
+earth’s surface.  We shall by-and-by see that the protrusion of some of
+the mountain ranges was not completed, or did not stop, at that period.
+There is no part of geological science more clear than that which refers
+to the ages of mountains.  It is as certain that the Grampian mountains
+of Scotland are older than the Alps and Apennines, as it is that
+civilization had visited Italy, and had enabled her to subdue the world,
+while Scotland was the residence of “roving barbarians.”  The Pyrenees,
+Carpathians, and other ranges of continental Europe, are all younger than
+the Grampians, or even the insignificant Mendip Hills of southern
+England.  Stratification tells this 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 time when the Grampians sent streams and detritus to
+straits where now the valleys of the Forth and Clyde meet, the greater
+part of Europe was a wide ocean.
+
+The last three systems—called, in England, the Cumbrian, Silurian, and
+Devonian, and collectively the palæozoic rocks, from their containing the
+remains of the earliest inhabitants of the globe—are of vast thickness;
+in England, not much less than 30,000 feet, or nearly six miles.  In
+other parts of the world, as we have seen, the earliest of these systems
+alone is of much greater depth—arguing an enormous 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 was fresh water,
+for rain, instead of immediately returning to the sea, as formerly, was
+now gathered in channels of the earth, and became springs, rivers, and
+lakes.  There was now a theatre for the existence of land plants and
+animals, and it remains to be inquired if these accordingly were
+produced.
+
+The Secondary Rocks, in which our further researches are to be
+prosecuted, consist of a great and varied series, resting, generally
+unconformably, against flanks of the upturned primary rocks, sometimes
+themselves considerably inclined, at others, forming extensive basin-like
+beds, nearly horizontal; in many places, much broken up and shifted by
+disturbances from below.  They have all been formed out of the materials
+of the older rocks, by virtue of the wearing power of air and water,
+which is still every day carrying down vast quantities of the elevated
+matter of the globe into the sea.  But the separate strata are each much
+more distinct in the matter of its composition than might be expected.
+Some are siliceous or arenaceous (sandstones), composed mainly of fine
+grains from the quartz rocks—the most abundant of the primary strata.
+Others are argillaceous—clays, shales, &c., chiefly derived, probably,
+from the slate beds of the primary series.  Others are calcareous,
+derived from the early limestone.  As a general feature, they are softer
+and less crystalline than the primary rocks, as if they had endured less
+of both heat and pressure than the senior formation.  There are beds
+(_coal_) formed solely of vegetable matter, and some others in which the
+main ingredient is particles of iron, (_the iron black band_.)  The
+secondary rocks are quite as communicative with regard to their portion
+of the earth’s history as the primitive were.
+
+The first, or lowest, group of the secondary rocks is called the
+_Carboniferous Formation_, from the remarkable feature of its numerous
+interspersed beds of coal.  It commences with the beds of the _mountain
+limestone_, which, in some situations, as in Derbyshire and Ireland, are
+of great thickness, being alternated with chert (a siliceous sandstone),
+sandstones, shales, and beds of coal, generally of the harder and less
+bituminous kind (_anthracite_), the whole being covered in some places by
+the millstone grit, a siliceous conglomerate composed of the detritus of
+the primary rocks.  The mountain limestone, attaining in England to a
+depth of eight hundred yards, greatly exceeds in volume any of the
+primary limestone beds, and shews an enormous addition of power to the
+causes formerly suggested as having produced this substance.  In fact,
+remains of corals, crinoidea, and shells, are so abundant in it, as to
+compose three-fourths of the mass in some parts.  Above the mountain
+limestone commence the more conspicuous _coal beds_, alternating with
+sandstones, shales, beds of limestone, and ironstone.  Coal is altogether
+composed of the matter of a terrestrial vegetation, transmuted by
+pressure.  Some fresh-water shells have been found in it, but few of
+marine origin, and no remains of those zoophytes and crinoidea so
+abundant in the mountain limestone and other rocks.  Coal beds exist in
+Europe, Asia, and America, and have hitherto been esteemed as the most
+valuable of mineral productions, from the important services which the
+substance renders in manufactures and in domestic economy.  It is to be
+remarked, that there are some local variations in the arrangement of coal
+beds.  In France, they rest immediately on the granite and other primary
+rocks, the intermediate strata not having been found at those places.  In
+America, the kind called anthracite occurs among the slate beds, and this
+species also abounds more in the mountain limestone than with us.  These
+last circumstances only shew that different parts of the earth’s surface
+did not all witness the same events of a certain fixed series exactly at
+the same time.  There had been an exhibition of dry land about the site
+of America, a little earlier than in Europe.
+
+Some features of the condition of the earth during the deposition of the
+carboniferous group, are made out with a clearness which must satisfy
+most minds.  First we are told of a time when carbonate of lime was
+formed in vast abundance at the bottoms of profound seas, accompanied by
+an unusually large population of corals and encrinites; while in some
+parts of the earth there were patches of dry land, covered with a
+luxuriant vegetation.  Next we have a comparatively brief period of
+volcanic disturbance, (when the conglomerate was formed.)  Then the
+causes favourable to the so abundant production of limestone, and the
+large population of marine acrita, decline, and we find the masses of dry
+land increase in number and extent, and begin to bear an amount of forest
+vegetation, far exceeding that of the most sheltered tropical spots of
+the present surface.  The climate, even in the latitude of Baffin’s Bay,
+was torrid, and perhaps the atmosphere contained a larger charge of
+carbonic acid gas (the material of vegetation) than it now does.  The
+forests or thickets of the period, included no species of plants now
+known upon earth.  They mainly consisted of gigantic shrubs, which are
+either not represented by any existing types, or are akin to kinds which
+are now only found in small and lowly forms.  That these forests grew
+upon a Polynesia, or multitude of small islands, is considered probable,
+from similar vegetation being now found in such situations within the
+tropics.  With regard to the circumstances under which the masses of
+vegetable matter were transformed into successive coal strata, geologists
+are divided.  From examples seen at the present day, at the mouths of
+such rivers as the Mississippi, which traverse extensive sylvan regions,
+and from other circumstances to be adverted to, it is held likely by some
+that the vegetable matter, the rubbish of decayed forests, was carried by
+rivers into estuaries, and there accumulated in vast natural rafts, until
+it sunk to the bottom, where an overlayer of sand or mud would prepare it
+for becoming a stratum of coal.  Others conceive that the vegetation
+first went into the condition of a peat moss, that a sink in the level
+then exposed it to be overrun by the sea, and covered with a layer of
+sand or mud; that a subsequent uprise made the mud dry land, and fitted
+it to bear a new forest, which afterwards, like its predecessor, became a
+bed of peat; that, in short, by repetitions of this process, the
+alternate layers of coal, sandstone, and shale, constituting the
+carboniferous group, were formed.  It is favourable to this last view
+that marine fossils are scarcely found in the body of the coal itself,
+though abundant in the shale layers above and below it; also that in
+several places erect stems of trees are found with their roots still
+fixed in the shale beds, and crossing the sandstone beds at almost right
+angles, shewing that these, at least, had not been drifted from their
+original situations.  On the other hand, it is not easy to admit such
+repeated risings and sinkings of surface as would be required, on this
+hypothesis, to form a series of coal strata.  Perhaps we may most safely
+rest at present with the supposition that coal has been formed under both
+classes of circumstances, though in the latter only as an exception to
+the former.
+
+Upwards of three hundred species of plants have been ascertained to exist
+in the coal formation; but it is not necessary to suppose that the whole
+contained in that system are now, or ever will be distinguished.
+Experiments shew that some great classes of plants become decomposed in
+water in a much less space of time than others, and it is remarkable that
+those which decompose soonest, are of the classes found most rare, or not
+at all, in the coal strata.  It is consequently to be inferred that there
+may have been grasses and mosses at this era, and many species of trees,
+the remains of which had lost all trace of organic form before their
+substance sunk into the mass of which coal was formed.  In speaking,
+therefore, of the vegetation of this period, we must bear in mind that it
+may have comprehended forms of which we have no memorial.
+
+Supposing, nevertheless, that, in the main, the ascertained vegetation of
+the coal system is that which grew at the time of its formation, it is
+interesting to find that the terrestrial botany of our globe begins with
+classes of comparatively simple forms and structure.  In the ranks of the
+vegetable kingdom, the lowest place is taken by plants of cellular
+tissue, and which have no flowers, (_cryptogamia_,) as lichens, mosses,
+fungi, ferns, sea-weeds.  Above these stand plants of vascular tissue,
+and bearing flowers, in which again there are two great subdivisions;
+first, plants having one seed-lobe, (_monocotyledons_,) and in which the
+new matter is added within, (_endogenous_,) of which the cane and palm
+are examples; second, plants having two seed-lobes, (_dicotyledons_,) and
+in which the new matter is added on the outside under the bark,
+(_exogenous_,) of which the pine, elm, oak, and most of the British
+forest-trees are examples; these subdivisions also ranking in the order
+in which they are here stated.  Now it is clear that a predominance of
+these forms in succession marked the successive epochs developed by
+fossil geology; the simple abounding first, and the complex afterwards.
+
+Two-thirds of the plants of the carboniferous era are of the cellular or
+cryptogamic kind, a proportion which would probably be much increased if
+we knew the whole Flora of that era.  The ascertained dicotyledons, or
+higher-class plants, are comparatively few in this formation; but it will
+be found that they constantly increased as the globe grew older.
+
+The master-form or type of the era was the _fern_, or breckan, of which
+about one hundred and thirty species have already been ascertained as
+entering into the composition of coal. {84a}  The fern is a plant which
+thrives best in warm, shaded, and moist situations.  In tropical
+countries, where these conditions abound, there are many more species
+than in temperate climes, and some of these are arborescent, or of a
+tree-like size and luxuriance. {84b}  The ferns of the coal strata have
+been of this magnitude, and that without regard to the parts of the earth
+where they are found.  In the coal of Baffin’s Bay, of Newcastle, and of
+the torrid zone alike, are the fossil ferns arborescent, shewing clearly
+that, in that era, the present tropical temperature, or one even higher,
+existed in very high latitudes.
+
+In the swamps and ditches of England there grows a plant called the
+horse-tail (_equisetum_), having a succulent, erect, jointed stem, with
+slender leaves, and a scaly catkin at the top.  A second large section of
+the plants of the carboniferous era were of this kind (_equisetaceæ_),
+but, like the fern, reaching the magnitudes of trees.  While existing
+equiseta rarely exceed three feet in height, and the stems are generally
+under half an inch in diameter, their kindred, entombed in the coal beds,
+seem to have been generally fourteen or fifteen feet high, with stems
+from six inches to a foot in thickness.  Arborescent plants of this
+family, like the arborescent ferns, now grow only in tropical countries,
+and their being found in the coal beds in all latitudes is consequently
+held as an additional proof, that at this era a warm climate was extended
+much farther to the north than at present.  It is to be remarked that
+plants of this kind (forming two genera, the most abundant of which is
+the _calamites_) are only represented on the present surface by plants of
+the same _family_: the _species_ which flourished at this era gradually
+lessen in number as we advance upwards in the series of rocks, and
+disappear before we arrive at the tertiary formation.
+
+The club-moss family (_lycopodiaceæ_) are other plants of the present
+surface, usually seen in a lowly and creeping form in temperate
+latitudes, but presenting species which rise to a greater magnitude
+within the tropics.  Many specimens of this family are found in the coal
+beds; it is thought they have contributed more to the substance of the
+coal than any other family.  But, like the ferns and equisetaceæ, they
+rise to a prodigious magnitude.  The lepidodendra (so the fossil genus is
+called) have probably been from sixty-five to eighty feet in height,
+having at their base a diameter of about three feet, while their leaves
+measured twenty inches in length.  In the forests of the coal era, the
+lepidodendra would enjoy the rank of firs in our forests, affording shade
+to the only less stately ferns and calamites.  The internal structure of
+the stem, and the character of the seed-vessels, shew them to have been a
+link between single-lobed and double-lobed plants, a fact worthy of note,
+as it favours the idea that, in vegetable, as well as animal creation, a
+progress has been observed, in conformity with advancing conditions.  It
+is also curious to find a missing link of so much importance in a genus
+of plants which has long ceased to have a living place upon earth.
+
+The other leading plants of the coal era are without representatives on
+the present surface, and their characters are in general less clearly
+ascertained.  Amongst the most remarkable are—the _sigillaria_, of which
+large stems are very abundant, shewing that the interior has been soft,
+and the exterior fluted with separate leaves inserted in vertical rows
+along the flutings—and the _stigmaria_, plants apparently calculated to
+flourish in marshes or pools, having a short, thick, fleshy stem, with a
+dome-shaped top, from which sprung branches of from twenty to thirty feet
+long.  Amongst monocotyledons were some palms, (_flabellaria_ and
+_næggerathia_,) besides a few not distinctly assignable to any class.
+
+The dicotyledons of the coal are comparatively few, though on the present
+surface they are the most numerous sub-class.  Besides some of doubtful
+affinity, (_annularia_, _asterophyllites_, &c.,) there were a few of the
+pine family, which seem to have been the highest class of trees of this
+era, and are only as yet found in isolated cases, and in sandstone beds.
+The first discovered lay in the Craigleith quarry, near Edinburgh, and
+consisted of a stem about two feet thick, and forty-seven feet in length.
+Others have since been found, both in the same situation, and at
+Newcastle.  Leaves and fruit being wanting, an ingenious mode of
+detecting the nature of these trees was hit upon by Mr. Witham of
+Lartington.  Taking thin polished cross slices of the stem, and
+subjecting them to the microscope, he detected the structure of the wood
+to be that of a cone-bearing tree, by the presence of certain
+“reticulations” which distinguish that family, in addition to the usual
+radiating and concentric lines.  That particular tree was concluded to be
+an araucaria, a species now found in Norfolk Island, in the South Sea,
+and in a few other remote situations.  The coniferæ of this era form the
+dawn of dicotyledenous trees, of which they may be said to be the
+simplest type, and to which, it has already been noticed, the
+lepidodendra are a link from the monocotyledons.  The concentric rings of
+the Craigleith and other coniferæ of this era have been mentioned.  It is
+interesting to find in these a record of the changing seasons of those
+early ages, when as yet there were no human beings to observe time or
+tide.  They are clearly traced; but it is observed that they are more
+slightly marked than is the case with their family at the present day, as
+if the changes of temperature had been within a narrower range.
+
+Such was the vegetation of the carbonigenous era, composed of forms at
+the bottom of the botanical scale, flowerless, fruitless, but luxuriant
+and abundant beyond what the most favoured spots on earth can now shew.
+The rigidity of the leaves of its plants, and the absence of fleshy
+fruits and farinaceous seeds, unfitted it to afford nutriment to animals;
+and, monotonous in its forms, and destitute of brilliant colouring, its
+sward probably unenlivened by any of the smaller flowering herbs, its
+shades uncheered by the hum of insects, or the music of birds, it must
+have been but a sombre scene to a human visitant.  But neither man nor
+any other animals were then in existence 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 up mineral masses which were in long subsequent ages to
+prove of the greatest service to the human race, even to the extent of
+favouring the progress of its civilization.
+
+The animal remains of this era are not numerous, in comparison with those
+which go before, or those which come after.  The mountain limestone,
+indeed, deposited at the commencement of it, abounds unusually in
+polypiaria and crinoidea; but when we ascend to the coal-beds themselves,
+the case is altered, and these marine remains altogether disappear.  We
+have then only a limited variety of conchifers and shell mollusks, with
+fragments of a few species of fishes, and these are rarely or never found
+in the coal seams, but in the shales alternating with them.  Some of the
+fishes are of a sauroid character, that is, partake of the nature of the
+lizard, a genus of the reptilia, a land class of animals, so that we may
+be said here to have the first approach to a kind of animals calculated
+to breathe the atmosphere.  Such is the Megalichthys Hibbertii, found by
+Dr. Hibbert Ware, in a limestone bed of fresh-water origin, underneath
+the coal at Burdiehouse, near Edinburgh.  Others of the same kind have
+been found in the coal measures in Yorkshire, and in the low coal shales
+at Manchester.  This is no more than might be expected, as collections of
+fresh water now existed, and it is presumable that they would be peopled.
+The chief other fishes of the coal era are named palæothrissum,
+palæoniscus, diperdus.
+
+Coal strata are nearly confined to the group termed the carboniferous
+formation.  Thin beds are not unknown afterwards, but they occur only as
+a rare exception.  It is therefore thought that the most important of the
+conditions which allowed of so abundant a terrestrial vegetation, 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 the superabundance of carbonic
+acid gas supposed to have existed during this era was expended before its
+close.  There can be little doubt that the infusion of a large dose of
+this gas into the atmosphere at the present day would be attended by
+precisely the same circumstances as in the time of the carboniferous
+formation.  Land animal life would not have a place on earth; vegetation
+would be enormous; and coal strata would be formed from the vast
+accumulations of woody matter, which would gather in every sea, near the
+mouths of great rivers.  On the exhaustion of the superabundance of
+carbonic acid gas, the coal formation would cease, and the earth might
+again become a suitable theatre of being for land animals.
+
+The termination of the carboniferous formation is marked by symptoms of
+volcanic violence, which some geologists have considered to denote the
+close of one system of things and the beginning of another.  Coal beds
+generally lie in basins, as if following the curve of the bottom of seas.
+But there is no such basin which is not broken up into pieces, some of
+which have been tossed up on edge, others allowed to sink, causing the
+ends of strata to be in some instances many yards, and in a few several
+hundred feet, removed from the corresponding ends of neighbouring
+fragments.  These are held to be results of volcanic movements below, the
+operation of which is further seen in numerous upbursts and intrusions of
+volcanic rock (trap).  That these disturbances took place about the close
+of the formation, and not later, is shewn in the fact of the next higher
+group of strata being comparatively undisturbed.  Other symptoms of this
+time of violence are seen in the beds of conglomerate which occur amongst
+the first strata above the coal.  These, as usual, consist of fragments
+of the elder rocks, more or less worn from being tumbled about in
+agitated water, and laid down in a mud paste, afterwards hardened.
+Volcanic disturbances break up the rocks; the pieces are worn in seas;
+and a deposit of conglomerate is the consequence.  Of porphyry, there are
+some such pieces in the conglomerate of Devonshire, three or four tons in
+weight.  It is to be admitted for strict truth that, in some parts of
+Europe, the carboniferous formation is followed by superior deposits,
+without the appearance of such disturbances between their respective
+periods; but apparently this case belongs to the class of exceptions
+already noticed. {93}  That disturbance was general, is supported by the
+further and important fact of the destruction of many forms of organic
+being previously flourishing, particularly of the vegetable kingdom.
+
+
+
+
+ERA OF THE NEW RED SANDSTONE.
+TERRESTRIAL ZOOLOGY COMMENCES
+WITH REPTILES.
+FIRST TRACES OF BIRDS.
+
+
+THE next volume of the rock series refers to an era distinguished by an
+event of no less importance than the commencement of land animals.  The
+_New Red Sandstone System_ is subdivided into groups, some of which are
+wanting in some places; they are pretty fully developed in the north of
+England, in the following ascending order:—1.  Lower red sandstone; 2.
+Magnesian limestone; 3.  Red and white sandstones and conglomerate; 4.
+Variegated marls.  Between the third and fourth there is, in Germany,
+another group, called the Muschelkalk, a word expressing a limestone full
+of shells.
+
+The first group, containing the conglomerates already adverted to, seems
+to have been produced during the time of disturbance which occurred so
+generally after the carbonigenous era.  This new era is distinguished by
+a paucity of organic remains, as might partly be expected from the
+appearances of disturbance, and the red tint of the rocks, 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 is
+developed less generally than some others, but occurs conspicuously in
+England and Germany.  Its place, above the red sandstone, shews the
+recurrence of circumstances favourable to animal life, and we accordingly
+find in it not only zoophytes, conchifera, and a few tribes of fish, but
+some faint traces of land plants, and a new and startling appearance—a
+reptile of saurian (lizard) character, analogous to the now existing
+family called monitors.  Remains of this creature are found in
+cupriferous (copper-bearing) slate connected with the mountain limestone,
+at Mansfield and Glucksbrunn, in Germany, which may be taken as evidence
+that dry land existed in that age near those places.  The magnesia
+limestone is also remarkable as the last rock in which appears the
+leptæna, or producta, a conchifer of numerous species which makes a
+conspicuous appearance in all previous seas.  It is likewise to be
+observed, that the fishes of this age, to the genera of which the names
+palæoniscus, catopterus, platysomus, &c., have been applied, vanish, and
+henceforth appear no more.
+
+The third group, chiefly sandstones, variously coloured according to the
+amount and nature of the metallic oxide infused into them, shews a
+recurrence of agitation, and a consequent diminution of the amount of
+animal life.  In the upper part, however, of this group, there are
+abundant symptoms of a revival of proper conditions for such life.  There
+are marl beds, the origin of which substance in decomposed shells is
+obvious; and in Germany, though not in England, here occurs the
+muschelkalk, containing numerous organic remains, (generally different
+from those of the magnesian limestone,) and noted for the specimens of
+land animals, which it is the first to present in any considerable
+abundance to our notice.
+
+These animals are of the vertebrate sub-kingdom, but of its lowest class
+next after fishes,—namely, reptiles,—a portion of the terrestrial tribes
+whose imperfect respiratory system perhaps fitted them for enduring an
+atmosphere not yet quite suitable for birds or mammifers. {97}  The
+specimens found in the muschelkalk are allied to the crocodile and lizard
+tribes of the present day, but in the latter instance are upon a scale of
+magnitude as much superior to present forms as the lepidodendron of the
+coal era was superior to the dwarf club-mosses of our time.  These
+saurians also combine some peculiarities of structure of a most
+extraordinary character.
+
+The animal to which the name _ichthyosaurus_ has been given, was as long
+as a young whale, and it was fitted for living in the water, though
+breathing the atmosphere.  It had the vertebral column and general bodily
+form of a fish, but to that were added the head and breast-bone of a
+lizard, and the paddles of the whale tribes.  The beak, moreover, was
+that of a porpoise, and the teeth were those of a crocodile.  It must
+have been a most destructive creature to the fish of those early seas.
+
+The _plesiosaurus_ was of similar bulk, with a turtle-like body and
+paddles, shewing that the sea was its element, but with a long
+serpent-like neck, terminating in a saurian head, calculated to reach
+prey at a considerable distance.  These two animals, of which many
+varieties have been discovered, constituting distinct species, are
+supposed to have lived in the shallow borders of the seas of this and
+subsequent formations, devouring immense quantities of the finny tribes.
+It was at first thought that no creatures approaching them in character
+now inhabit the earth; but latterly Mr. Darwin has discovered, in the
+reptile-peopled Galapagos Islands, in the South Sea, a marine saurian
+from three to four feet long.
+
+The _megalosaurus_ was an enormous lizard—a land creature, also
+carnivorous.  The _pterodactyle_ was another lizard, but furnished with
+wings to pursue its prey in the air, and varying in size between a
+cormorant and a snipe.  Crocodiles abounded, and some of these were
+herbivorous.  Such was the iguanodon, a creature of the character of the
+iguana of the Ganges, but reaching a hundred feet in length, or twenty
+times that of its modern representative.
+
+There were also numerous _tortoises_, some of them reaching a great size;
+and Professor Owen has found in Warwickshire some remains of an animal of
+the batrachian order, {99} to which, from the peculiar form of the teeth,
+he has given the name of labyrinthidon.  Thus, three of Cuvier’s four
+orders of reptilia (_sauria_, _chelonia_, and _batrachia_) are
+represented in this formation, the serpent order (_ophidia_) being alone
+wanting.
+
+The variegated marl beds which constitute the uppermost group of the
+formation, present two additional genera of huge saurians,—the
+phytosaurus and mastodonsaurus.
+
+It is in the upper beds of the red sandstone that beds of salt first
+occur.  These are sometimes of such thickness, that the mine from which
+the material has been excavated looks like a lofty church.  We see in the
+present world no circumstances calculated to produce the formation of a
+bed of rock salt; yet it is not difficult to understand how such strata
+were formed in an age marked by ultra-tropical heat and frequent volcanic
+disturbances.  An estuary, cut off by an upthrow of trap, or a change of
+level, and left to dry up under the heat of the sun, would quickly become
+the bed of a dense layer of rock salt.  A second shift of level, or some
+other volcanic disturbance, connecting it again with the sea, would
+expose this stratum to being covered over with a layer of sand or mud,
+destined in 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 abundantly in
+the preceding formation, here present themselves, but in diminished size
+and quantity.
+
+This seems to be the proper place to advert to certain memorials of a
+peculiar and unexpected character respecting these early ages in the
+sandstones.  So low as the bottom of the carboniferous system, slabs are
+found marked over a great extent of surface with that peculiar
+corrugation or wrinkling which the receding tide leaves upon a sandy
+beach when the sea is but slightly agitated; and not only are these
+ripple-marks, as they are called, found on the surfaces, but casts of
+them are found on the under sides of slabs lying above.  The phenomena
+suggests the time when the sand ultimately formed into these stone slabs,
+was part of the beach of a sea of the carbonigenous era; when, left wavy
+by one tide, it was covered over with a thin layer of fresh sand by the
+next, and so on, precisely as such circumstances might be expected to
+take place at the present day.  Sandstone surfaces, ripple-marked, are
+found throughout the subsequent formations: in those of the new red, at
+more than one place in England, they further bear impressions of
+rain-drops which have fallen upon them—the rain, of course, of the
+inconceivably remote age in which the sandstones were formed.  In the
+Greensill sandstone, near Shrewsbury, it has even been possible to tell
+from what direction the shower came which impressed the sandy surface,
+the rims of the marks being somewhat raised on one side, exactly as might
+be expected from a slanting shower falling at this day upon one of our
+beaches.  These facts have the same sort of interest as the season rings
+of the Craigleith conifers, as speaking of a parity between some of the
+familiar processes of nature in those early ages and our own.
+
+In the new red sandstone, impressions still more important in the
+inferences to which they tend, have been observed,—namely, the footmarks
+of various animals.  In a quarry of this formation, at Corncockle Muir,
+in Dumfriesshire, where the slabs incline at an angle of thirty-eight
+degrees, the vestiges of an animal supposed to have been a tortoise are
+distinctly traced up and down the slope, as if the creature had had
+occasion to pass backwards and forwards in that direction only, possibly
+in its daily visits to the sea.  Some slabs similarly impressed, in the
+Stourton quarries in Cheshire, are further marked with a shower of rain
+which we know must have fallen _afterwards_, for its little hollows are
+impressed in the footmarks also, though more slightly than on the rest of
+the surface, the comparative hardness of a trodden place having
+apparently prevented so deep an impression being made.  At Hessberg, in
+Saxony, the vestiges of four distinct animals have been traced, one of
+them a web-footed animal of small size, considered as a congener of the
+crocodile; another, whose footsteps having a resemblance to an impression
+of a swelled human hand, has caused it to be named the _cheirotherium_.
+The footsteps of the cheirotherium have been found also in the Stourton
+quarries above mentioned.  Professor Owen, who stands at the head of
+comparative anatomy in the present day, has expressed his belief that
+this last animal was the same batrachian of which he has found fragments
+in the new red sandstone of Warwickshire.  At Runcorn, near Manchester,
+and elsewhere, have been discovered the tracks of an animal which Mr.
+Owen calls the rynchosaurus, uniting with the body of a reptile the beak
+and feet of a bird, and which clearly had been a _link_ between these two
+classes.
+
+If geologists shall ultimately give their approbation to the inferences
+made from a recent discovery in America, we shall have the addition of
+perfect birds, though probably of a low type, to the animal forms of this
+era.  It is stated to be in quarries of this rock, in the valley of
+Connecticut, that footprints have been found, apparently produced by
+birds of the order grallæ, or waders.  “The footsteps appear in regular
+succession on the continuous track of an animal, in the act of walking or
+running, with the right and left foot always in their relative places.
+The distance of the intervals between each footstep on the same track is
+occasionally varied, but to no greater amount than may be explained by
+the bird having altered its pace.  Many tracks of different individuals
+and different species are often found crossing each other, and crowded,
+like impressions of feet upon the shores of a muddy stream, where ducks
+and geese resort.” {103}  Some of these prints indicate small animals,
+but others denote birds of what would now be an unusually large size.
+One animal, having a foot fifteen inches in length, (one-half more than
+that of the ostrich,) and a stride of from four to six feet, has been
+appropriately entitled, _ornithichnites giganteus_.
+
+
+
+
+ERA OF THE OOLITE.
+COMMENCEMENT OF MAMMALIA.
+
+
+THE chronicles of this period consist of a series of beds, mostly
+calcareous, taking their general name (_Oolite System_) from a
+conspicuous member of them—the oolite—a limestone composed of an
+aggregation of small round grains or spherules, and so called from its
+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 of chemical
+origin, each spherule being an aggregation of particles round a central
+nucleus.  The oolite system is largely developed in England, France,
+Westphalia, and Northern Italy; it appears in Northern India and Africa,
+and patches of it exist in Scotland, and in the vale of the Mississippi.
+It may of course be yet discovered in many other parts of the world.
+
+The series, as shewn in the neighbourhood of Bath, is (beginning with the
+lowest) as follows:—1.  Lias, a set of strata variously composed of
+limestone, clay, marl, and shale, clay being predominant; 2.  Lower
+oolitic formation, including, besides the great oolite bed of central
+England, fullers’ earth beds, forest marble, and cornbrash; 3.  Middle
+oolitic formation, composed of two sub-groups, the Oxford clay and coral
+rag, the latter being a mere layer of the works of the coral polype; 4.
+Upper oolitic formation, including what are called Kimmeridge clay and
+Portland oolite.  In Yorkshire there is an additional group above the
+lias, and in Sutherlandshire there is another group above that again.  In
+the wealds (moorlands) of Kent and Sussex, there is, in like manner,
+above the fourth of the Bath series, another additional group, to which
+the name of the _Wealden_ has been given, from its situation, and which,
+composed of sandstones and clays, is subdivided into Purbeck beds,
+Hastings sand, and Weald clay.
+
+There are no particular appearances of disturbance between the close of
+the new red sandstone and the beginning of the oolite system, as far as
+has been observed in England.  Yet there is a great change in the
+materials of the rocks of the two formations, shewing that while the
+bottoms of the seas of the one period had been chiefly arenaceous, those
+of the other were chiefly clayey and limy.  And there is an equal
+difference between the two periods in respect of both botany and zoology.
+While the new red sandstone shews comparatively scanty traces of organic
+creation, those in the oolite are extremely abundant, particularly in the
+department of animals, and more particularly still of sea mollusca,
+which, it has been observed, are always the more conspicuous in
+proportion to the predominance of calcareous rocks.  It is also
+remarkable that the animals of the oolitic system are entirely different
+in species from those of the preceding age, and that these species cease
+before the next.  In this system we likewise find that uniformity over
+great space which has been remarked of the Faunas of earlier formations.
+“In the equivalent deposits in the Himalaya Mountains, at Fernando Po, in
+the region north of the Cape of Good Hope, and in the Run of Cutch, and
+other parts of Hindostan, fossils have been discovered, which, as far as
+English naturalists who have seen them can determine, are
+undistinguishable from certain oolite and lias fossils of Europe.” {108a}
+
+The dry land of this age presented cycadeæ, “a beautiful class of plants
+between the palms and conifers, having a tall, straight trunk,
+terminating in a magnificent crown of foliage.” {108b}  There were tree
+ferns, but in smaller proportion than in former ages; also equisetaceæ,
+lilia, and conifers.  The vegetation was generally analogous to that of
+the Cape of Good Hope and Australia, which seems to argue a climate (we
+must remember, a universal climate) between the tropical and temperate.
+It was, however, sufficiently luxuriant in some instances to produce thin
+seams of coal, for such are found in the oolite formation of both
+Yorkshire and Sutherland.  The sea, as for ages before, contained algæ,
+of which, however, only a few species have been preserved to our day.
+The lower classes of the inhabitants of the ocean were unprecedentedly
+abundant.  The polypiaria were in such abundance as to form whole strata
+of themselves.  The crinoidea and echinites were also extremely numerous.
+Shell mollusks, in hundreds of new species, occupied the bottoms 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 in the oolite, and
+terminates in the next formation.  It is an elongated, conical shell,
+terminating in a point, and having, at the larger end, a cavity for the
+residence of the animal, with a series of air-chambers below.  The
+animal, placed in the upper cavity, could raise or depress itself in the
+water at pleasure by a pneumatic operation upon the entral air tube
+pervading its shell.  Its tentacula, sent abroad over the summit of the
+shell, searched the sea for prey.  The creature had an ink-bag, with
+which it could muddle the water around it, to protect itself from more
+powerful animals, and, strange to say, this has been found so well
+preserved that an artist has used it in one instance as a paint,
+wherewith to delineate the belemnite itself.
+
+The crustacea discovered in this formation are less numerous.  There are
+many fishes, some of which (_acrodus_, _psammodus_, &c.,) are presumed
+from remains of their palatal bones, to have been of the gigantic
+cartilaginous class, now represented by such as the cestraceon.  It has
+been considered by Professor Owen as worthy of notice, that, the
+cestraceon being an inhabitant of the Australian seas, we have, in both
+the botany and ichthyology of this period, an analogy to that continent.
+The pycnodontes, (thick-toothed,) and lepidoides, (having thick scales,)
+are other families described by M. Agassiz as extensively prevalent.  In
+the shallow waters of the oolitic formation, the ichthyosaurus,
+plesiosaurus, and other huge saurian carnivora of the preceding age,
+plied, in increased numbers, their destructive vocation. {110}  To them
+were added new genera, the cetiosaurus, mososaurus, and some others, all
+of similar character and habits.
+
+Land reptiles abounded, including species of the pterodactyle of the
+preceding age—tortoises, trionyces, crocodilians—and the pliosaurus, a
+creature which appears to have formed a link between the plesiosaurus and
+the crocodile.  We know of at least six species of the flying saurian,
+the pterodactyle, in this formation.
+
+Now, for the first time, we find remains of insects, an order of animals
+not well calculated for fossil preservation, and which are therefore
+amongst the rarest of the animal tribes found in rocks, though they are
+the most numerous of all living families.  A single libellula
+(dragon-fly) was found in the Stonesfield slate, a member of the lower
+oolitic group quarried near Oxford; and this was for several years the
+only specimen known to exist so early; but now many species have been
+found in a corresponding rock at Solenhofen, in Germany.  It is
+remarkable that the remains of insects are found most plentifully near
+the remains of pterodactyles, to which undoubtedly they served as prey.
+
+The first glimpse of the highest class of the vertebrate
+sub-kingdom—_mammalia_—is obtained from the Stonesfield slate, where
+there has been found the jaw-bone of a quadruped evidently insectivorous,
+and inferred, from peculiarities in the structure of that small fragment,
+to have belonged to the marsupial family, (pouched animals).  It may be
+observed, although no specimens of so high a class of animals as mammalia
+are found earlier, such may nevertheless have existed: the defect may be
+in our not having found them; but, other things considered, the
+probability is that heretofore there were no mammifers.  It is an
+interesting circumstance that the first mammifers found should have
+belonged to the marsupialia, when the place of that order in the scale of
+creation is considered.  In the imperfect structure of their brain,
+deficient in the organs connecting the two hemispheres—and in the mode of
+gestation, which is only in small part uterine—this family is clearly a
+link between the oviparous vertebrata (birds, reptiles, and fishes) and
+the higher mammifers.  This is further established by their possessing a
+faint development of two canals passing from near the anus to the
+external surface of the viscera, which are fully possessed in reptiles
+and fishes, for the purpose of supplying aerated water to the blood
+circulating in particular vessels, but which are unneeded by mammifers.
+Such rudiments of organs in certain species which do not require them in
+any degree, are common in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms, but are
+always most conspicuous in families approaching in character to those
+classes to which the full organs are proper.  This subject will be more
+particularly adverted to in the sequel.
+
+The highest part of the oolitic formation presents some phenomena of an
+unusual and interesting character, which demand special notice.
+Immediately above the upper oolitic group in Buckinghamshire, in the
+vicinity of Weymouth, and other situations, there is a thin stratum,
+usually called by workmen the _dirt-bed_, which appears, from
+incontestable evidence, to have been a soil, formed, like soils of the
+present day, in the course of time, upon a surface which had previously
+been the bottom of the sea.  The dirt-bed contains exuviæ of tropical
+trees, accumulated through time, as the forest shed its honours on the
+spot where it grew, and became itself decayed.  Near Weymouth there is a
+piece of this stratum, in which stumps of trees remain rooted, mostly
+erect or slightly inclined, and from one to three 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, from their
+full development in the Weald of Sussex; and these as incontestably argue
+that the dry land forming the dirt-bed had next afterwards become the
+area of brackish estuaries, or lakes partially connected with the sea;
+for the Wealden strata contain exuviæ of fresh-water tribes, besides
+those of the great saurians and chelonia.  The area of this estuary
+comprehends the whole south-east province of England.  A geologist thus
+confidently narrates the subsequent events: “Much calcareous matter was
+first deposited [in this estuary], and in it were entombed myriads of
+shells, apparently analogous to those of the vivipara.  Then came a thick
+envelope of sand, sometimes interstratified with mud; and, finally, muddy
+matter prevailed.  The solid surface beneath the waters would appear to
+have suffered a long continued and gradual depression, which was as
+gradually filled, or nearly so, with transported matter; in the end,
+however, after a depression of several hundred feet, the sea again
+entered upon the area, not suddenly or violently—for the Wealden rocks
+pass gradually into the superincumbent cretaceous series—but so quietly,
+that the mud containing the remains of terrestrial and fresh-water
+creatures was tranquilly covered up by sands replete with marine exuviæ.”
+{114}  A subsequent depression of the same area, to the depth of at least
+three hundred fathoms, is believed to have taken place, to admit of the
+deposition of the cretaceous beds lying above.
+
+From the scattered way in which remains of the larger terrestrial animals
+occur in the Wealden, and the intermixture of pebbles of the special
+appearance of those worn in rivers, it is also inferred that the estuary
+which once covered the south-east part of England was the mouth of a
+river of that far-descending class of which the Mississippi and Amazon
+are examples.  What part of the earth’s surface presented the dry land
+through which that and other similar rivers flowed, no one can tell for
+certain.  It has been surmised, that the particular one here spoken of
+may have flowed from a point not nearer than the site of the present
+Newfoundland.  Professor Philips has suggested, from the analogy of the
+mineral composition, that anciently elevated coal strata may have
+composed the dry land from which the sandy matters of these strata were
+washed.  Such a deposit as the Wealden almost necessarily implies a
+local, not a general condition; yet it has been thought that similar
+strata and remains exist in the Pays de Bray, near Beauvais.  This leads
+to the supposition that there may have been, in that age, a series of
+river-receiving estuaries along the border of some such great ocean as
+the Atlantic, 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 which chalk
+beds make a conspicuous appearance, and which is therefore called the
+cretaceous system or formation.  In England, a long stripe, extending
+from Yorkshire to Kent, presents the cretaceous beds 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 extends into northern France, and thence
+north-westward into Germany, whence it is traced into Scandinavia and
+Russia.  The same system exists in North America, and probably in other
+parts of the earth not yet geologically investigated.  Being a marine
+deposit, it establishes that seas existed at the time of its formation on
+the tracts occupied by it, while some of its organic remains prove that,
+in the neighbourhood of those seas, there were tracts of dry land.
+
+The cretaceous formation in England presents beds chiefly sandy in the
+lowest part, chiefly clayey in the middle, and chiefly of chalk in the
+upper part, the chalk beds being never absent, which some of the lower
+are in several places.  In the vale of the Mississippi, again, the true
+chalk is wholly, or all but wholly absent.  In the south of England, the
+lower beds are, (reckoning from the lowest upwards), 1.  _Shankland_ or
+_greensand_, “a triple alternation of sands and 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 generally white, but in some districts red, and in others
+yellow.  The whole are, in England, about 1200 feet thick, shewing the
+considerable depths of the ocean in which the deposits were made.
+
+Chalk is a carbonate of lime, and the manner of its production in such
+vast quantities was long a subject of speculation among geologists.  Some
+light seemed to be thrown upon the subject a few years ago, when it was
+observed, that the detritus of coral reefs in the present tropical seas
+gave a powder, undistinguishable, when dried, from ordinary chalk.  It
+then appeared likely that the chalk beds were the detritus of the corals
+which were in the oceans of that era.  Mr. Darwin, who made some curious
+inquiries on this point, further suggested, that the matter might have
+intermediately passed through the bodies of worms and fish, such as feed
+on the corals of the present day, and in whose stomachs he has found
+impure chalk.  This, however, cannot be a full explanation of the
+production of chalk, if we admit some more recent discoveries of
+Professor Ehrenberg.  That master of microscopic investigation announces,
+that chalk is composed partly of “inorganic particles of irregular
+elliptical structure and granular slaty disposition,” and partly of
+shells of inconceivable minuteness, “varying from the one-twelfth to the
+two hundred and eighty-eighth part of a line”—a cubic inch of the
+substance containing above ten millions of them!  The chalk of the north
+of Europe contains, he says, a larger proportion of the inorganic matter;
+that of the south, a larger proportion of the organic matter, being in
+some instances almost entirely composed of it.  He has been able to
+classify many of these creatures, some of them being allied to the
+nautili, nummuli, cyprides, &c.  The shells of some are calcareous, of
+others siliceous.  M. Ehrenberg has likewise detected microscopic
+sea-plants in the chalk.
+
+The distinctive feature of the uppermost chalk beds in England, is the
+presence of flint nodules.  These are generally disposed in layers
+parallel to each other.  It was readily presumed by geologists that these
+masses were formed by a chemical aggregation of particles of silica,
+originally held in solution in the mass of the chalk.  But whence the
+silica in a substance so different from it?  Ehrenberg suggests that it
+is composed of the siliceous coverings of a portion of the microscopic
+creatures, whose shells he has in other instances detected in their
+original condition.  It is remarkable that the chalk _with_ flint abounds
+in the north of Europe; that _without_ flints in the south; while in the
+northern chalk siliceous animalcules are wanting, and in the southern
+present in great quantities.  The conclusion seems but natural, that in
+the one case the siliceous exuviæ have been left in their original form;
+in the other dissolved chemically, and aggregated on the common principle
+of chemical affinity into nodules of flint, probably concentrating, in
+every instance, upon a piece of decaying organic matter, as has been the
+case with the nodules of ironstone in the earlier rocks, and the
+spherules of the oolite.
+
+What is more remarkable, M. Ehrenberg has ascertained that at least
+fifty-seven species of the microscopic animals of the chalk, being
+infusoria and calcareous-shelled polythalamia, are still found living in
+various parts of the earth.  These species are the most abundant in the
+rock.  Singly they are the most unimportant of all animals, but in the
+mass, forming as they do such enormous strata over a large part of the
+earth’s surface, they have an importance greatly exceeding that of the
+largest and noblest of the beasts of the field.  Moreover, these species
+have a peculiar interest, as the only specific types of that early age
+which are reproduced in the present day.  Species of sea mollusks, of
+reptiles, and of mammifers, have been changed again and again, since the
+cretaceous era; and it is not till a long subsequent age that we find the
+first traces of any other of even the humblest species which now exist;
+but here have these humble infusoria and polythalamia kept their place on
+earth through all its revolutions since that time,—are we to say, safe in
+their very humility, which might adapt them to a greater variety of
+circumstances than most other animals, or are we required to look for
+some other explanation of the phenomenon?
+
+All the ordinary and more observable orders of the inhabitants of the
+sea, except the cetacea, have been found in the cretaceous
+formation—zoophytes, radiaria, mollusks, crustacea, (in great variety of
+species,) and fishes in smaller variety.  In Europe, remains of the
+marine saurians have been found; they may be presumed to have become
+extinct in that part of the globe before this time, their place and
+destructive office being perhaps supplied by cartilaginous fishes, of
+which the teeth are found in great quantities.  In America, however,
+remains of the plesiosaurus have been discovered in this part of the
+stratified series.  The reptiles, too, so numerous in the two preceding
+periods, appear to have now much diminished in numbers.  One, entitled
+the mosæsaurus, seems to have held an intermediate place between the
+monitor and iguana, and to have been about twenty-five feet long, with a
+tail calculated to assist it powerfully in swimming.  Crocodiles and
+turtles existed, and amongst the fishes were some of a saurian character.
+
+Fuci abounded in the seas of this era.  Confervæ are found enclosed in
+flints.  Of terrestrial vegetation, as of terrestrial animals, the
+specimens in the European area are comparatively rare, rendering it
+probable that there was no dry land near.  The remains are chiefly of
+ferns, conifers, and cycadeæ, but in the two former cases we have only
+cones and leaves.  There have been discovered many pieces of wood,
+containing holes drilled by the teredo, and thus shewing that they had
+been long drifted about in the ocean before being entombed at the bottom.
+
+The series in America corresponding to this, entitled the ferruginous
+sand formation, presents fossils generally identical with those of
+Europe, not excepting the fragments of drilled wood; shewing that, in
+this, as in earlier ages, there was a parity of conditions for animal
+life over a vast tract of the earth’s surface.  To European reptiles, the
+American formation adds a gigantic one, styled the saurodon, from the
+lizard-like character of its teeth.
+
+We have seen that footsteps of birds are considered to have been
+discovered in America, in the new red sandstone.  Some similar isolated
+phenomena occur in the subsequent formations.  Mr. Mantell discovered
+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, which the marine beds above
+and below did not possess.  In the slate of Glarus, in Switzerland,
+corresponding to the English galt, in the chalk formation, the remains of
+a bird have been found.  From a chalk bed near Maidstone, have likewise
+been extracted some remains of a bird, supposed to have been of the
+long-winged swimmer family, and equal in size to the albatross.  These,
+it must be owned, are less strong traces of the birds than we possess of
+the reptiles and other tribes; but it must be remembered, that the
+evidence of fossils, as to the absence of any class of animals from a
+certain period of the earth’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 from unfavourable circumstances that their remains have not
+been preserved for our inspection.  The single circumstance of their
+being little liable 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
+to uncertainty on this point.  We see, from what remains have been found
+in the whole series, a clear progress throughout, from humble to superior
+types of being.  Hence we derive a light as to what animals may have
+existed at particular times, which is in some measure independent of the
+specialties of fossilology.  The birds are below the mammalia in the
+animal scale; and therefore they may be supposed to 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 considerable space;
+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 been applied.  London and
+Paris alike rest on basins of this formation, and another such basin
+extends from near Winchester, under Southampton, 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 it extends along the east coast of North
+America, from Massachusetts to Florida.  It is also found in Sicily and
+Italy, insensibly blended with formations still in progress.  Though
+comparatively a local formation, it is not of the less importance as a
+record of the condition of the earth during a certain period.  As in
+other formations, it is marked, in the most distant localities, by
+identity of organic remains.
+
+The hollows filled by the tertiary formation must be considered as the
+beds of estuaries left at the conclusion of the cretaceous period.  We
+have seen that an estuary, either by the drifting up of its mouth, or a
+change of level in that quarter, may be supposed to have become an inland
+sheet of water, and that, by another change, of the reverse kind, it may
+be supposed to have become an estuary again.  Such changes the Paris
+basin appears to have undergone oftener than once, for, first, we have
+there a fresh-water formation of clay and limestone beds; then, a
+marine-limestone formation; next, a second fresh water formation, in
+which the material of the celebrated _plaster of Paris_ (gypsum) is
+included; then, a second marine formation of sandy and limy beds; and
+finally, a third series of fresh-water strata.  Such alternations occur
+in other examples of the tertiary formation likewise.
+
+The tertiary beds present all but an entirely new set of animals, and as
+we ascend in the series, we find more and more of these identical with
+species still existing upon earth, as if we had now reached the dawn of
+the present state of the zoology of our planet.  By the study of the
+shells alone, Mr. Lyell has been enabled to divide the whole term into
+four sub-periods, to which he has given names with reference to the
+proportions which they respectively present of surviving species—first,
+the eocene, (from ’ηως, the dawn; χαινος, recent;) second, the miocene,
+(μειων, less;) third, older pliocene, (πλειων, more;) fourth, newer
+pliocene.
+
+
+
+EOCENE SUB-PERIOD.
+
+
+The eocene period presents, in three continental groups, 1238 species of
+shells, of which forty-two, or 3.5 per cent, yet flourish.  Some of these
+are remarkable enough; but they all sink into insignificance beside the
+mammalian remains which the lower eocene deposits of the Paris basin
+present to us, shewing that the land had now become the theatre of an
+extensive creation of the highest class of animals.  Cuvier ascertained
+about fifty species of these, all of them long since extinct.  A
+considerable number are _pachydermata_, {127} of a character
+approximating to the South American tapir: the names, palæotherium,
+anthracotherium, anoplotherium, lophiodon, &c., have been applied to them
+with a consideration of more or less conspicuous peculiarities; but a
+description of the first may give some general idea of the whole.  It was
+about the size of a horse, but more squat and clumsy, and with a heavier
+head, and a lower jaw shorter than the upper; the feet, also, instead of
+hooves, presented three large toes, rounded, and unprovided with claws.
+These animals were all herbivorous.  Amongst an immense number of others
+are found many new reptiles, some of them adapted for fresh water;
+species of birds allied to the sea-lark, curlew, quail, buzzard, owl, and
+pelican; species allied to the dormouse and squirrel; also the opossum
+and racoon; and species allied to the genette, fox, and wolf.
+
+
+
+MIOCENE SUB-PERIOD.
+
+
+In the miocene sub-period, the shells give eighteen per cent. of existing
+species, shewing a considerable advance from the preceding era, with
+respect to the inhabitants of the sea.  The advance in the land animals
+is less marked, but yet considerable.  The predominating forms are still
+pachydermatous, and the tapir type continues to be conspicuous.  One
+animal of this kind, called the _dinotherium_, is supposed to have been
+not less than eighteen feet long; it had a mole-like form of the
+shoulder-blade, conferring the power of digging for food, and a couple of
+tusks turning down from the lower jaw, by which it could have attached
+itself, like the walrus, to a shore or bank, while its body floated in
+the water.  Dr. Buckland considers this and some similar miocene animals,
+as adapted for a semi-aquatic life, in a region where lakes abounded.
+Besides the tapirs, we have in this era animals allied to the glutton,
+the bear, the dog, the horse, the hog, and lastly, several felinæ,
+(creatures of which the lion 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 previously
+appeared.
+
+
+
+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 existing species.  The
+pachydermata of the preceding era now disappear, and are 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.  The great mastodon, whose remains are
+found in abundance in America, was a species of elephant, judged, from
+peculiarities of its teeth, to have lived on aquatic plants, and reaching
+the height of twelve feet.  The mammoth was another elephant, but
+supposed to have survived till comparatively recent times, as a specimen,
+in all respects entire, was found in 1801, preserved in ice, in Siberia.
+We are more surprised by finding such gigantic proportions in an animal
+called the megatherium, which ranks in an order now assuming much humbler
+forms—the edentata—to which the sloth, ant-eater, and armadillo belong.
+The megatherium had a skeleton of enormous solidity, with an armour-clad
+body, and five toes, terminating in huge claws, wherewith to grasp the
+branches, from which, like its existing congener, the sloth, it derived
+its food.  The megalonyx was a similar animal, only somewhat less than
+the preceding.  Finally, the pliocene gives us for the first time, oxen,
+deer, camels, and other specimens of the _ruminantia_.
+
+Such is an outline of the fauna of the tertiary era, as ascertained by
+the illustrious naturalists who first devoted their attention to it.  It
+will be observed that it brings us up to the felinæ, or carnivora, a
+considerably elevated point in the animal scale, but still leaving a
+blank for the quadrumana (monkeys) and for man, who collectively form, as
+will be afterwards seen, the first group in that scale.  It sometimes
+happens, however, as we have seen, that a few rare traces of a particular
+class of animals are in time found in formations originally thought to be
+destitute of them, displaying as it were a dawn of that department of
+creation.  Such seems to be the case with at least the quadrumana.  A
+jaw-bone and tooth of an animal of this order, and belonging to the genus
+macacus, were found in the London clay, (eocene,) at Kyson, near
+Woodbridge, in 1839.  Another jaw-bone, containing several teeth,
+supposed to have belonged to a species of monkey about three feet high,
+was discovered about the same time in a stratum of marl surmounted by
+compact limestone, in the department of Gers, at the foot of the
+Pyrenees.  Associated with this last were remains of not less than thirty
+mammiferous quadrupeds, including three species of rhinoceros, a large
+anoplotherium, three species of deer, two antelopes, a true dog, a large
+cat, an animal like a weasel, a small hare, and a huge species of the
+edentata.  Both of these places are considerably to the north of any
+region now inhabited by the monkey tribes.  Fossil remains of quadrumana
+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 of semnopithecus, and
+the second, a still larger animal belonging to the American group of
+monkeys, but a new genus, and denominated by its discoverer, Dr. Lund,
+protopithecus.  The latter would be four feet in height.
+
+One remarkable circumstance connected with the tertiary formation remains
+to be noticed,—namely, the prevalence of volcanic action at that era.  In
+Auvergne, in Catalonia, near Venice, and in the vicinity of Rome and
+Naples, lavas exactly resembling the produce of existing volcanoes, are
+associated and intermixed with the lacustrine as well as marine
+tertiaries.  The superficies of tertiaries in England is disturbed by two
+great swells, forming what are called anticlinal axes, one of which
+divides the London from the Hampshire basin, while the other passes
+through the Isle of Wight, both throwing the strata down at violent
+inclination towards the north, as if the subterranean disturbing force
+had _waved_ forward in that direction.  The Pyrenees, too, and Alps, have
+both undergone elevation since the deposition of the tertiaries; and in
+Sicily there are mountains which have risen three thousand feet since the
+deposition of some of the most recent of these rocks.  The general effect
+of these operations was of course to extend the land surface, and to
+increase the variety of its features, thus improving the natural
+drainage, and generally adapting the earth for the reception of 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 to a time
+which seems not long antecedent to the appearance of man.  There are,
+nevertheless, monuments of still another era or space of time 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 a layer of
+stiff clay, mostly of a blue colour, mingled with fragments of rock of
+all sizes, travel-worn, and otherwise, and to which geologists give the
+name of diluvium, as being apparently the produce of 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 of the present dry land was under
+the ocean, a supposition which we shall see supported by other evidence.
+The included masses of rock have been carefully inspected in many places,
+and traced to particular parent beds at considerable distances.
+Connected with these phenomena are certain rock surfaces on the slopes of
+hills and elsewhere, which exhibit groovings and scratchings, such as we
+might suppose would be produced by a quantity of loose blocks hurried
+along over them by a flood.  Another associated phenomenon is that called
+_crag and tail_, which exists in many places,—namely, a rocky mountain,
+or lesser elevation, presenting on one side the naked rock in a more or
+less abrupt form, and on the other a gentle slope; the sites of Windsor,
+Edinburgh, and Stirling, with their respective castles, are specimens of
+crag and tail.  Finally, we may advert to certain long ridges of clay and
+gravel which arrest the attention of travellers on the surface of Sweden
+and Finland, and which are also found in the United States, where,
+indeed, the whole of these phenomena have been observed over a large
+surface, as well as in Europe.  It is very remarkable that the direction
+from which the diluvial blocks have generally come, the lines of the
+grooved rock surfaces, the direction of the crag and tail eminences, and
+that of the clay and gravel ridges—phenomena, be it observed, extending
+over the northern parts of both Europe and America—are _all from the
+north and north-west towards the south-east_.  We thus acquire the idea
+of a powerful current moving in a direction from north-west to
+south-east, carrying, besides mud, masses of rock which furrowed the
+solid surfaces as they passed along, abrading the north-west faces of
+many hills, but leaving the slopes in the opposite direction uninjured,
+and in some instances forming long ridges of detritus along the surface.
+These are curious considerations, and it has become a question of much
+interest, by what means, and under what circumstances, was such a current
+produced.  One hypothetical answer has some plausibility about it.  From
+an investigation of the nature of glaciers, and some observations which
+seem to indicate that these have at one time extended to lower levels,
+and existed in regions (the Scottish Highlands an example) where there is
+now no perennial snow, it has been surmised that there was a time,
+subsequent to the tertiary era, when the circumpolar ice extended far
+into the temperate zone, and formed a lofty, as well as extensive
+accumulation.  A change to a higher temperature, producing a sudden thaw
+of this mass, might set free such a quantity of water as would form a
+large flood, and the southward flow of this deluge, joined to the
+direction which it would obtain from the rotatory motion of the globe,
+would of course produce that compound or south-easterly direction which
+the phenomena require.  All of these speculations are as yet far too
+deficient in facts to be of much value; and I must freely own that, for
+one, I attach little importance to them.  All that we can legitimately
+infer from the diluvium is, that the northern parts of Europe and America
+were then under the sea, and that a strong current set over them.
+
+Connected with the diluvium is the history of _ossiferous caverns_, of
+which specimens singly exist at Kirkdale in Yorkshire, Gailenreuth in
+Franconia, and other places.  They occur in the calcareous strata, as the
+great caverns generally do, but have in all instances been naturally
+closed up till the recent period of their discovery.  The floors are
+covered with what appears to be a bed of the diluvial clay, over which
+rests a crust of stalagmite, the result of the droppings from the roof
+since the time when the clay-bed was laid down.  In the instances above
+specified, and several others, there have been found, under the clay bed,
+assemblages of the bones of animals, of many various kinds.  At Kirkdale,
+for example, the remains 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 the
+gentler of these animals being found in a broken state, it is supposed
+that the cave was a haunt of hyenas and other predaceous animals, by
+which the smaller ones were here consumed.  This must have been at a time
+antecedent to the submersion which produced the diluvium, since the bones
+are covered by a bed of that formation.  It is impossible not to see here
+a very natural series of incidents.  First, the cave is frequented by
+wild beasts, who make it a kind of charnel-house.  Then, submerged in the
+current which has been spoken of, it receives a clay flooring from the
+waters containing that matter in suspension.  Finally, raised from the
+water, but with no mouth to the open air, it remains unintruded on for a
+long series of ages, during which the clay flooring receives a new
+calcareous covering, from the droppings of the roof.  Dr. Buckland, who
+examined and described the Kirkdale cave, was at first of opinion that it
+presented a physical evidence of the Noachian deluge; but he afterwards
+saw reason to consider its phenomena as of a time far apart from that
+event, which rests on evidence of an entirely different kind.
+
+Our attention is next drawn to the erratic blocks or boulders, which in
+many parts of the earth are thickly strewn over the surface, particularly
+in the north of Europe.  Some of these blocks are many tons in weight,
+yet are clearly ascertained to have belonged originally to situations at
+a great distance.  Fragments, for example, of the granite of Shap Fell
+are found in every direction around to the distance of fifty miles, one
+piece being placed high upon Criffel Mountain, on the opposite side of
+the Solway estuary; so also 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 have travelled from Norway.  The only rational conjecture
+which can be formed as to the transport of such masses from so great a
+distance, is one which presumes them to have been carried and dropped by
+icebergs, while the space between their original and final sites was
+under ocean.  Icebergs do even now carry off such masses from the polar
+coasts, which, falling when the retaining ice melts, must take up
+situations at the bottom of the sea analogous to those in which we find
+the erratic blocks of the present day.
+
+As the diluvium and erratic blocks clearly suppose one last long
+submersion of the surface, (_last_, geologically speaking,) there is
+another set of appearances which as manifestly shew the steps by which
+the land was made afterwards to reappear.  These consist of _terraces_,
+which have been detected near, and at some distance inland from, the
+coast lines of Scandinavia, Britain, America, and other regions; being
+evidently ancient beaches, or platforms, on which the margin of the sea
+at one time rested.  They have been observed at different heights above
+the present sea-level, from twenty to above twelve hundred feet; and in
+many places they are seen rising above each other in succession, to the
+number of three, four, and even more.  The smooth flatness of these
+terraces, with generally a slight inclination towards the sea, the sandy
+composition of many of them, and, in some instances, the preservation of
+marine shells in the ground, identify them perfectly with existing
+sea-beaches, notwithstanding the cuts and scoopings which have every here
+and there been effected in them by water-courses.  The irresistible
+inference from the phenomena is, that the highest was first the coast
+line; 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 of contact
+with the land, the third highest beach, and so on down to the platform
+nearest to the present sea-beach.  Phenomena of this kind become
+comparatively familiar to us, when we hear of evidence that the last
+sixty feet of the elevation of Sweden, and the last eighty-five of that
+of Chili, have taken place since man first dwelt in those countries; nay,
+that the elevation of the former country goes on 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 one night, under the influence of a
+powerful earthquake, so lately as 1822.  Subterranean forces, of the kind
+then exemplified in Chili, supply a ready explanation of the whole
+phenomena, though some other operating causes have been suggested.  In an
+inquiry on this point, it becomes of consequence to learn some
+particulars respecting the levels.  Taking a particular beach, it is
+generally observed that the level continues the same along a considerable
+number of miles, and nothing like breaks or hitches has as yet been
+detected in any case.  A second and a third beach are also observed to be
+exactly parallel to the first.  These facts would seem to indicate quiet
+elevating movements, uniform over a large tract.  It must, however, be
+remarked that the raised beaches at one part of a coast rarely coincide
+with those at another part forty or fifty miles off.  We might suppose
+this to indicate a limit in that extent of the uniformity of the
+elevating cause, but it would be rash to conclude positively that such is
+the case.  In the present sea, as is well known, there are different
+levels at different places, owing to the operation of peculiar local
+causes, as currents, evaporation, and the influx of large rivers into
+narrow-mouthed estuaries.  The differences of level in the ancient
+beaches might be occasioned by some such causes.  But, whatever doubt may
+rest on this minor point, enough has been ascertained to settle the main
+one, that we have in these platforms indubitable monuments of the last
+rise of the land from the sea, and the concluding great event of the
+geological history.
+
+The idea of such a wide-spread and possibly universal submersion
+unavoidably suggests some considerations as to the effect which it might
+have upon terrestrial animal life.  It seems likely that this would be,
+on such an occasion, extensively, if not universally destroyed.  Nor does
+the idea of its universal destruction seem the less plausible, when we
+remark, that none of the species of land animals heretofore discovered
+can be detected at a subsequent period.  The whole seem to have been now
+changed.  Some geologists appear much inclined to think that there was at
+this time a new development of terrestrial animal life upon the globe,
+and M. Agassiz, whose opinion on such a subject must always be worthy of
+attention, speaks all but decidedly for such a conclusion.  It must,
+however, be owned, that proofs for it are still scanty, beyond the bare
+fact of a submersion which appears to have had a very wide range.  I must
+therefore be content to leave this point, as far as geological evidence
+is concerned, for future affirmation.
+
+There are some other superficial deposits, of less consequence on the
+present occasion than the diluvium—namely, lacustrine deposits, or
+filled-up lakes; alluvium, or the deposits of rivers beside their
+margins; deltas, the deposits made by great ones at their efflux into the
+sea; peat mosses; and the vegetable soil.  The animal remains found in
+these generally testify to a zoology on the verge of that which still
+exists, or melting into it, there being included many species which still
+exist.  In a lacustrine deposit at Market-Weighton, in the Vale of York,
+there have been found bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, bison, wolf,
+horse, felis, deer, birds, all or nearly all extinct species; associated
+with thirteen species of land and fresh water shells, “exactly identical
+with types now living in the vicinity.”  In similar deposits in North
+America, are remains of the mammoth, mastodon, buffalo, and other animals
+of extinct and living types.  In short, these superficial deposits shew
+precisely such remains as might be expected from a time at which the
+present system of things (to use a vague but not unexpressive phrase)
+obtained, but yet so far remote in chronology as to allow of the dropping
+of many species, through familiar causes, in the interval.  Still,
+however, there is no authentic or satisfactory instance of human remains
+being found, except in deposits obviously of very modern date; a
+tolerably strong proof that the creation of our own species is a
+comparatively recent event, and one posterior (generally speaking) to all
+the great natural transactions chronicled by geology.
+
+
+
+
+GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
+RESPECTING
+THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES.
+
+
+THUS concludes the wondrous chapter of the earth’s history which is told
+by geology.  It takes up our globe at the period when its original
+incandescent state had nearly ceased; conducts it through what we have
+every reason to believe were vast, or at least very considerable, spaces
+of time, in the course of which many superficial changes took place, and
+vegetable and animal life was gradually developed; and drops it just at
+the point when man was apparently about to enter on the scene.  The
+compilation of such a history, from materials of so extraordinary a
+character, and the powerful nature of the evidence which these materials
+afford, are calculated to excite our admiration, and the result must be
+allowed to exalt the dignity of science, as a product of man’s industry
+and his reason.
+
+If there is any thing more than another impressed on our minds by the
+course of the geological history, it is, that the same laws and
+conditions of nature now apparent to us have existed throughout the whole
+time, though the operation of some of these laws may now be less
+conspicuous than in the early ages, from some of the conditions having
+come to a settlement and a close.  That seas have flowed and ebbed, and
+winds disturbed their surfaces, in the time of the secondary rocks, we
+have proof on the yet preserved surfaces of the sands which constituted
+margins of the seas in those days.  Even the fall of wind-slanted rain is
+evidenced on the same tablets.  The washing down of detached matter from
+elevated grounds, which we see rivers constantly engaged in at the
+present time, and which is daily shallowing the seas adjacent to their
+mouths, only appears to have proceeded on a greater scale in earlier
+epochs.  The volcanic subterranean force, which we see belching forth
+lavas on the sides of mountains, and throwing up new elevations by land
+and sea, was only more powerfully operative in distant ages.  To turn to
+organic nature, vegetation seems to have proceeded then exactly as now.
+The very alternations of the seasons has been read in unmistakable
+characters in sections of the trees of those days, precisely as it might
+be read in a section of a tree cut down yesterday.  The system of prey
+amongst animals flourished throughout the whole of the pre-human period;
+and the adaptation of all plants and animals to their respective spheres
+of existence was as perfect in those early ages as it is still.
+
+But, as has been observed, the operation of the laws may be modified by
+conditions.  At one early age, if there was any dry land at all, it was
+perhaps enveloped in an atmosphere unfit for the existence of terrestrial
+animals, and which had to go though some changes before that condition
+was altered.  In the carbonigenous era, dry land seems to have consisted
+only of clusters of islands, and the temperature was much above what now
+obtains at the same places.  Volcanic forces, and perhaps also the
+disintegrating power, seem to have been on the decrease since the first,
+or we have at least long enjoyed an exemption from such paroxysms of the
+former, as appear to have prevailed at the close of the coal formation in
+England and throughout the tertiary era.  The surface has also undergone
+a gradual progress by which it has become always more and more
+variegated, and thereby fitted for the residence of a higher class of
+animals.
+
+In pursuing the progress of the development of both plants and animals
+upon the globe, we have seen an advance in both cases, along the line
+leading to the higher forms of organization.  Amongst plants, we have
+first sea-weeds, afterwards land plants; and amongst these 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 the vertebrata; and, moreover, the earliest
+fishes partake of the character of the next lowest sub-kingdom, the
+articulata.  Afterwards come land animals, of which the first are
+reptiles, universally allowed to be the type next in advance from fishes,
+and to be connected with these by the links of an insensible gradation.
+From reptiles we advance to birds, and thence to mammalia, which are
+commenced by marsupialia, acknowledgedly low forms in their class.  That
+there is thus a progress of some kind, the most superficial glance at the
+geological history is sufficient to convince us.  Indeed the doctrine of
+the gradation of animal forms has received a remarkable support from the
+discoveries of this science, as several types formerly wanting to a
+completion of the series have been found in a fossil state. {149}
+
+It is scarcely less evident, from the geological record, that the
+progress of organic life has observed some correspondence with the
+progress of physical conditions on the surface.  We do not know for
+certain that the sea, at the time when it supported radiated, molluscous,
+and articulated families, was incapable of supporting fishes; but causes
+for such a limitation are far from inconceivable.  The huge saurians
+appear to have been precisely adapted to the low muddy coasts and sea
+margins of the time when they flourished.  Marsupials appear at the time
+when the surface was generally in that flat, imperfectly variegated state
+in which we find Australia, the region where they now live in the
+greatest abundance, and one which has no higher native mammalian type.
+Finally, it was not till the land and sea had come into their present
+relations, and the former, in its principal continents, had acquired the
+irregularity of surface necessary for man, that man appeared.  We have
+likewise seen reason for supposing that land animals could not have lived
+before the carbonigenous era, owing to the great charge of carbonic acid
+gas presumed to have been contained in the atmosphere down to that time.
+The surplus of this having gone, as M. Brogniart suggests, to form the
+vegetation, whose ruins became coal, and the air being thus brought to
+its present state, land animals immediately appeared.  So also,
+sea-plants were at first the only specimens of vegetation, because there
+appears to have been no place where other plants could be produced or
+supported.  Land vegetation followed, at first simple, afterwards
+complex, probably in conformity with an advance of the conditions
+required by the higher class of plants.  In short, we see everywhere
+throughout the geological history, strong traces of a parallel advance of
+the physical conditions and the organic forms.
+
+In examining the fossils of the lower marine creation, with a reference
+to the kind of rock in connexion, with which they are found, it is
+observed that some strata are attended by a much greater abundance of
+both species and individuals than others.  They abound most in calcareous
+rocks, which is precisely what might be expected, since lime is necessary
+for the formation of the shells of the mollusks and articulata, and the
+hard substance of the crinoidea and corals; next in the carboniferous
+series; next in the tertiary; next in the new red sandstone; next in
+slates; and lastly, least of all, in the primary rocks. {151}  This may
+have been the case without regard to the origination of new species, but
+more probably it was otherwise; or why, for instance, should the
+polypiferous zoophyta be found almost exclusively in the limestones?
+There are, indeed, abundant appearances as if, throughout all the changes
+of the surface, the various kinds of organic life invariably _pressed
+in_, immediately on the specially suitable conditions arising, so that no
+place which could support any form of organic being might be left for any
+length of time unoccupied.  Nor is it less remarkable how various species
+are withdrawn from the earth, when the proper conditions for their
+particular existence are changed.  The trilobite, of which fifty species
+existed during the earlier formations, was extirpated before the
+secondary had commenced, and appeared no more.  The ammonite does not
+appear above the chalk.  The species, and even genera of all the early
+radiata and mollusks were exchanged for others long ago.  Not one species
+of any creature which flourished before the tertiary (Ehrenberg’s
+infusoria excepted) now exists; and of the mammalia which arose during
+that series, many forms are altogether gone, while of others we have now
+only kindred species.  Thus to find not only frequent additions to the
+previously existing forms, but frequent withdrawals of forms which had
+apparently become inappropriate—a constant shifting as well as advance—is
+a fact calculated very forcibly to arrest attention.
+
+A candid consideration of all these circumstances can scarcely fail to
+introduce into our minds a somewhat different idea of organic creation
+from what has hitherto been generally entertained.  That God created
+animated beings, as well as the terraqueous theatre of their being, is a
+fact so powerfully evidenced, and so universally received, that I at once
+take it for granted.  But in the particulars of this so highly supported
+idea, we surely here see cause for some re-consideration.  It may now be
+inquired,—In what way was the creation of animated beings effected?  The
+ordinary notion may, I think, be not unjustly described as this,—that the
+Almighty author produced the progenitors of all existing species by some
+sort of personal or immediate exertion.  But how does this notion comport
+with what we have seen of the gradual advance of species, from the
+humblest to the highest?  How can we suppose an immediate exertion of
+this creative power at one time to produce zoophytes, another time to add
+a few marine mollusks, another to bring in one or two conchifers, again
+to produce crustaceous fishes, again perfect fishes, and so on to the
+end?  This would surely be to take a very mean view of the Creative
+Power—to, in short, anthropomorphize it, or reduce it to some such
+character as that borne by the ordinary proceedings of mankind.  And yet
+this would be unavoidable; for that the organic creation was thus
+progressive through a long space of time, rests on evidence which nothing
+can overturn or gainsay.  Some other idea must then be come to with
+regard to _the mode_ in which the Divine Author proceeded in the organic
+creation.  Let us seek in the history of the earth’s formation for a new
+suggestion on this point.  We have seen powerful evidence, that the
+construction of this globe and its associates, and inferentially that of
+all the other globes of space, was the result, not of any immediate or
+personal exertion on the part of the Deity, but of natural laws which are
+expressions of his will.  What is to hinder our supposing that the
+organic creation is also a result of natural laws, which are in like
+manner an expression of his will?  More than this, the fact of the
+cosmical arrangements being an effect of natural laws is a powerful
+argument for the organic arrangements being so likewise, for how can we
+suppose that the august Being who brought all these countless worlds into
+form by the simple establishment of a natural principle flowing from his
+mind, was to interfere personally and specially on every occasion when a
+new shell-fish or reptile was to be ushered into existence on _one_ of
+these worlds?  Surely this idea is too ridiculous to be for a moment
+entertained.
+
+It will be objected that the ordinary conceptions of Christian nations on
+this subject are directly derived from Scripture, or, at least, are in
+conformity with it.  If they were clearly and unequivocally supported by
+Scripture, it may readily be allowed that there would be a strong
+objection to the reception of any opposite hypothesis.  But the fact is,
+however startling the present announcement of it may be, that the first
+chapter of the Mosaic record is not only not in harmony with the ordinary
+ideas of mankind respecting cosmical and organic creation, but is opposed
+to them, and only in accordance with the views here taken.  When we
+carefully peruse it with awakened minds, we find that all the procedure
+is represented primarily and pre-eminently as flowing _from commands and
+expressions of will_, _not from direct acts_.  Let there be light—let
+there be a firmament—let the dry land appear—let the earth bring forth
+grass, the herb, the tree—let the waters bring forth the moving creature
+that hath life—let the earth bring forth the living creature after his
+kind—these are the terms in which the principal acts are described.  The
+additional expressions,—God made the firmament—God made the beast of the
+earth, &c., occur subordinately, and only in a few instances; they do not
+necessarily convey a different idea of the mode of creation, and indeed
+only appear as alternative phrases, in the usual duplicative manner of
+Eastern narrative.  Keeping this in view, the words used in a subsequent
+place, “God _formed_ man in his own image,” cannot well be understood as
+implying any more than what was implied before,—namely, that man was
+produced in consequence of an expression of the Divine will to that
+effect.  Thus, the scriptural objection quickly vanishes, and the
+prevalent ideas about the organic creation appear only as a mistaken
+inference from the text, formed at a time when man’s ignorance prevented
+him from drawing therefrom a just conclusion.  At the same time, I freely
+own that I do not think it right to adduce the Mosaic record, either in
+objection to, or support of any natural hypothesis, and this for many
+reasons, but particularly for this, that there is not the least
+appearance of an intention in that book to give philosophically exact
+views of nature.
+
+To a reasonable mind the Divine attributes must appear, not diminished or
+reduced in any way, by supposing a creation by law, but infinitely
+exalted.  It is the narrowest of all views of the Deity, and
+characteristic of a humble class of intellects, to suppose him acting
+constantly in particular ways for particular occasions.  It, for one
+thing, greatly detracts from his foresight, the most undeniable of all
+the attributes of Omnipotence.  It lowers him towards the level of our
+own humble intellects.  Much more worthy of him it surely is, to suppose
+that all things have been commissioned by him from the first, though
+neither is he absent from a particle of the current of natural affairs in
+one sense, seeing that the whole system is continually supported by his
+providence.  Even in human affairs, if I may be allowed to adopt a
+familiar illustration, there is a constant progress from specific action
+for particular occasions, to arrangements which, once established, shall
+continue to answer for a great multitude of occasions.  Such plans the
+enlightened readily form for themselves, and conceive as being adopted by
+all who have to attend to a multitude of affairs, while the ignorant
+suppose every act of the greatest public functionary to be the result of
+some special consideration and care on his part alone.  Are we to suppose
+the Deity adopting plans which harmonize only with the modes of procedure
+of the less enlightened of our race?  Those who would object to the
+hypothesis of a creation by the intervention of law, do not perhaps
+consider how powerful an argument in favour of the existence of God is
+lost by rejecting this doctrine.  When all is seen to be the result of
+law, the idea of an Almighty Author becomes irresistible, for the
+creation of a law for an endless series of phenomena—an act of
+intelligence above all else that we can conceive—could have no other
+imaginable source, and tells, moreover, as powerfully for a sustaining as
+for an originating power.  On this point a remark of Dr. Buckland seems
+applicable: “If the properties adopted by the elements at the moment of
+their creation adapted them beforehand to the infinity of complicated
+useful purposes which they have already answered, and may have still
+farther to answer, under many dispensations of the material world, such
+an aboriginal constitution, so far from superseding an intelligent agent,
+would only exalt our conceptions of the consummate skill and power that
+could comprehend such an infinity of future uses under future systems, in
+the original groundwork of his creation.”
+
+A late writer, in a work embracing a vast amount of miscellaneous
+knowledge, but written in a dogmatic style, argues at great length for
+the doctrine of more immediate exertions on the part of the Deity in the
+works of his creation.  One of the most striking of his illustrations is
+as follows:—“The coral polypi, united by a common animal bond, construct
+a defined form in stone; many kinds construct many forms.  An allotted
+instinct may permit each polypus to construct its own cell, but there is
+no superintending one to direct the pattern, nor can the workers unite by
+consultation for such an end.  There is no recipient for an instinct by
+which the pattern might be constructed.  It is God alone, therefore, who
+is the architect; and for this end, consequently, he must dispose of
+every new polypus required to continue the pattern, in a new and peculiar
+position, which the animal could not have discovered by itself.  Yet
+more, millions of these blind workers unite their works to form an
+island, which is also wrought out according to a constant general
+pattern, and of a very peculiar nature, though the separate coral works
+are numerously diverse.  Still less, then, here is an instinct possible.
+The Great Architect himself must execute what he planned, in each case
+equally.  He uses these little and senseless animals as hands; but they
+are hands which himself must direct.  He must direct each one everywhere,
+and therefore he is ever acting.” {159}  This is a most notable example
+of a dangerous kind of reasoning.  It is now believed that corals have a
+general life and sensation throughout the whole mass, residing in the
+nervous tissue which envelops them; consequently, there is nothing more
+wonderful in their determinate general forms than in those of other
+animals.
+
+It may here be remarked that there is in our doctrine that harmony in all
+the associated phenomena which generally marks great truths.  First, it
+agrees, as we have seen, with the idea of planet-creation by natural law.
+Secondly, upon this supposition, all that geology tells us of the
+succession of species appears natural and intelligible.  Organic life
+_presses in_, as has been remarked, wherever there was room and
+encouragement for it, the forms being always such as suited the
+circumstances, and in a certain relation to them, as, for example, where
+the limestone-forming seas produced an abundance of corals, crinoidea,
+and shell-fish.  Admitting for a moment a re-origination of species after
+a cataclysm, as has been surmised by some geologists, though the
+hypothesis is always becoming less and less tenable, it harmonizes with
+nothing so well as the idea of a creation by law.  The more solitary
+commencements of species, which would have been the most inconceivably
+paltry exercise for an immediately creative power, are sufficiently
+worthy of one operating by laws.
+
+It is also to be observed, that the thing to be accounted for is not
+merely the origination of organic being upon this little planet, third of
+a series which is but one of hundreds of thousands of series, the whole
+of which again form but one portion of an apparently infinite
+globe-peopled space, where all seems analogous.  We have to suppose, that
+every one of these numberless globes is either a theatre of organic
+being, or in the way of becoming so.  This is a conclusion which every
+addition to our knowledge makes only the more irresistible.  Is it
+conceivable, as a fitting mode of exercise for creative intelligence,
+that it should be constantly moving from one sphere to another, to form
+and plant the various species 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 the notion which we must form, if we adhere to the doctrine of special
+exercise.  Let us see, on the other hand, how the doctrine of a creation
+by law agrees with this expanded view of the organic world.
+
+Unprepared as most men may be for such an announcement, there can be no
+doubt that we are able, in this limited sphere, to form some satisfactory
+conclusions as to the plants and animals of those other spheres which
+move at such immense distances from us.  Suppose that the first persons
+of an early nation who made a ship and ventured to sea in it, observed,
+as they sailed along, a set of objects which they had never before
+seen—namely, a fleet of other ships—would they not have been justified in
+supposing that those ships were occupied, like their own, by human beings
+possessing hands to row and steer, eyes to watch the signs of the
+weather, intelligence to guide them from one place to another—in short,
+beings in all respects like themselves, or only shewing such differences
+as they knew to be producible by difference of climate and habits of
+life.  Precisely in this manner we can speculate on the inhabitants of
+remote spheres.  We see that matter has originally been diffused in one
+mass, of which the spheres are portions.  Consequently, inorganic matter
+must be presumed to be everywhere the same, although probably with
+differences in the proportions of ingredients in different globes, and
+also some difference of conditions.  Out of a certain number of the
+elements of inorganic matter are composed organic bodies, both vegetable
+and animal; such must be the rule in Jupiter and in Sirius, as it is
+here.  We, therefore, are all but certain that herbaceous and ligneous
+fibre, that flesh and blood, are the constituents of the organic beings
+of all those spheres which are as yet seats of life.  Gravitation we see
+to be an all-pervading principle: therefore there must be a relation
+between the spheres and their respective organic occupants, by virtue of
+which they are fixed, as far as necessary, on the surface.  Such a
+relation, of course, involves details as to the density and elasticity of
+structure, as well as size, of the organic tenants, in proportion to the
+gravity of the respective planets—peculiarities, however, which may quite
+well consist with the idea of a universality of general types, to which
+we are about to come.  Electricity we also see to be universal; if,
+therefore, it be a principle concerned in life and in mental action, as
+science strongly suggests, life and mental action must everywhere be of
+one general character.  We come to comparatively a matter of detail, when
+we advert to heat and light; yet it is important to consider that these
+are universal agents, and that, as they bear marked relations to organic
+life and structure on earth, they may be presumed to do so in other
+spheres also.  The considerations as to light are particularly
+interesting, for, on our globe, the structure of one important organ,
+almost universally distributed in the animal kingdom, is in direct and
+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 the eyes of
+tellurian animals, with only such differences as may be necessary to
+accord with minor peculiarities of condition and of situation.  It is but
+a small stretch of the argument to suppose that, one conspicuous organ of
+a large portion of our animal kingdom being thus universal, a parity in
+all the other organs—species for species, class for class, kingdom for
+kingdom—is highly likely, and that thus the inhabitants of all the other
+globes of space bear not only a general, but a particular resemblance to
+those of our own.
+
+Assuming that organic beings are thus spread over all space, the idea of
+their having all come into existence by the operation of laws everywhere
+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 of means.  Thus, as one set of
+laws produced all orbs and their motions and geognostic arrangements, so
+one set of laws overspread them all with life.  The whole productive or
+creative arrangements are therefore in perfect unity.
+
+
+
+
+PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS
+RESPECTING
+THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES.
+
+
+THE general likelihood of an organic creation by law having been shewn,
+we are next to inquire if science has any facts tending to bring the
+assumption more nearly home to nature.  Such facts there certainly are;
+but it cannot be surprising that they are comparatively few and
+scattered, when we consider that the inquiry is into one of nature’s
+profoundest mysteries, and one which has hitherto engaged no direct
+attention in almost any quarter.
+
+Crystallization is confessedly a phenomenon of inorganic matter; yet the
+simplest rustic observer is struck by the resemblance which the examples
+of it left upon a window by frost bear to vegetable forms.  In some
+crystallizations the mimicry is beautiful and complete; for example, in
+the well-known one called the _Arbor Dianæ_.  An amalgam of four parts of
+silver and two of mercury being dissolved in nitric acid, and water equal
+to thirty weights of the metals being added, a small 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 detect the influence of
+electricity in such operations, as noted below. {166}  Vegetable figures
+are also presented in some of the most ordinary appearances of the
+electric fluid.  In the marks caused by positive electricity, or which it
+leaves in its passage, we see the ramifications of a tree, as well as of
+its individual leaves; those of the negative, recal the bulbous or the
+spreading root, according as they are clumped or divergent.  These
+phenomena seem to say that the electric energies have had something to do
+in determining the forms of plants.  That they are intimately connected
+with vegetable life is indubitable, for germination will not proceed in
+water charged with negative electricity, while water charged positively
+greatly favours it; and a garden sensibly increases in luxuriance, when a
+number of conducting rods are made to terminate in branches over its
+beds.  With regard to the resemblance of the ramifications of the
+branches and leaves of plants to the traces of the positive electricity,
+and that of the roots to the negative, it is a circumstance calling for
+especial remark, that the atmosphere, particularly its lower strata, is
+generally charged positively, while the earth is always charged
+negatively.  The correspondence here is curious.  A plant thus appears as
+a thing formed on the basis of a natural electrical operation—the _brush_
+realized.  We can thus suppose the various forms of plants as,
+immediately, the result of a law in electricity variously affecting them
+according to their organic character, or respective germinal
+constituents.  In the poplar, the brush is unusually vertical, and little
+divergent; the reverse in the beech: in the palm, a pencil has proceeded
+straight up for a certain distance, radiates there, and turns outwards
+and downwards; and so on.  We can here see at least traces of secondary
+means by which the Almighty Deviser might establish all the vegetable
+forms with which the earth is overspread.
+
+Vegetable and animal bodies are mainly composed of the same four simple
+substances or elements—carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen.  The first
+combinations of these in animals are into what are called proximate
+principles, as albumen, fibrin, urea, alantoin, &c., out of which the
+structure of the animal body is composed.  Now the chemist, by the
+association of two parts oxygen, four hydrogen, two carbon, and two
+nitrogen, can _make urea_.  Alantoin has also been produced artificially.
+Two of the proximate principles being realizable by human care, the
+possibility of realizing or forming all is established.  Thus the chemist
+may be said to have it in his power to realize the first step in
+organization. {169a}  Indeed, it is fully acknowledged by Dr. Daubeny,
+that in the combinations forming the proximate principles there is no
+chemical peculiarity.  “It is now certain,” he says, “that the same
+simple laws of composition pervade the whole creation; and that, if the
+organic chemist only takes the requisite precautions to avoid resolving
+into their ultimate elements the proximate principles upon which he
+operates, the results of his analysis will shew that they are combined
+precisely according to the same plan as the elements of mineral bodies
+are known to be.” {169b}  A particular fact is here worthy of attention.
+“The conversion of fecula into sugar, as one of the ordinary processes of
+vegetable economy, is effected by the production of a secretion termed
+_diastose_, which occasions both the rupture of the starch vesicles, and
+the change of their contained gum into sugar.  This diastose may be
+separately obtained by the chemist, and it acts as effectually in his
+laboratory as in the vegetable organization.  He can also imitate its
+effects by other chemical agents.” {170}  The writer quoted below adds,
+“No reasonable ground has yet been adduced for supposing that, if we had
+the power of bringing together the elements of any organic compound, in
+their requisite states and proportions, the result would be any other
+than that which is found in the living body.”
+
+It is much to know the elements out of which organic bodies are composed.
+It is something more to know their first combinations, and that these are
+simply chemical.  How these combinations are associated in the structure
+of living bodies is the next inquiry, but it is one to which as yet no
+satisfactory answer can be given.  The investigation of the minutiæ of
+organic structure by the microscope is of such recent origin, that its
+results cannot be expected to be very clear.  Some facts, however, are
+worthy of attention with regard to the present inquiry.  It is
+ascertained that the basis of all vegetable and animal substances
+consists of nucleated cells; that is, cells having granules within them.
+Nutriment is converted into these before being assimilated by the system.
+The tissues are formed from them.  The ovum destined to become a new
+creature, is originally only a cell with a contained granule.  We see it
+acting this reproductive part in the simplest manner in the cryptogamic
+plants.  “The parent cell, arrived at maturity by the exercise of its
+organic functions, bursts, and liberates its contained granules.  These,
+at once thrown upon their own resources, and entirely dependent for their
+nutrition on the surrounding elements, develop themselves into new cells,
+which repeat the life of their original.  Amongst the higher tribes of
+the cryptogamia, the reproductive cell does not burst, but the first
+cells of the new structure are developed within it, and these gradually
+extend, by a similar process of multiplication, into that primary
+leaf-like expansion which is the first formed structure in all plants.”
+{171}  _Here the little cell becomes directly a plant_, _the full formed
+living being_.  It is also worthy of remark that, in the sponges, (an
+animal form,) a gemmule detached from the body of the parent, and
+trusting for sustentation only to the fluid into which it has been cast,
+becomes, without further process, the new creature.  Further, it has been
+recently discovered by means of the microscope, that there is, as far as
+can be judged, a perfect resemblance between the ovum of the mammal
+tribes, during that early stage when it is passing through the oviduct,
+and the young of the infusory animalcules.  One of the most remarkable of
+these, the _volvox globator_, has exactly the form of the germ which,
+after passing through a long fœtal progress, becomes a complete mammifer,
+an animal of the highest class.  It has even been found that both are
+alike provided with those _cilia_, which, producing a revolving motion,
+or its appearance, is partly the cause of the name given to this
+animalcule.  These resemblances are the more entitled to notice, that
+they were made by various observers, distant from each other at the time.
+{172}  It has likewise been noted that the globules of the blood are
+reproduced by the expansion of contained granules; they are, in short,
+_distinct organisms multiplied by the same fissiparous generation_.  So
+that all animated nature may be said to be based on this mode of origin;
+_the fundamental form of organic being is a globule_, _having a new
+globule forming within itself_, by which it is in time discharged, and
+which is again followed by another and another, in endless succession.
+It is of course obvious that, if these globules could be produced by any
+process from inorganic elements, we should be entitled to say that the
+fact of a transit from the inorganic into the organic had been witnessed
+in that instance; the possibility of the commencement of animated
+creation by the ordinary laws of nature might be considered as
+established.  Now it was given out some years ago by a French
+physiologist, that _globules could be produced in albumen by
+electricity_.  If, therefore, these globules be identical with the cells
+which are now held to be reproductive, it might be said that the
+production of albumen by artificial means is the only step in the process
+wanting.  This has not 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, and two compounds perfectly co-ordinate, urea and alantoin,
+have actually been produced.
+
+In such an investigation as the present, it is not unworthy of notice
+that the production of shell is a natural operation which can be
+precisely imitated artificially.  Such an incrustation takes place on
+both the outside and inside of the wheel in a bleaching establishment, in
+which cotton cloth is rinsed free of the lime employed in its
+purification.  From the _dressing_ employed by the weaver, the cloth
+obtains the animal matter, _gelatin_; this and the lime form the
+constituents of the incrustation, exactly as in natural shell.  In the
+wheel employed at Catrine, in Ayrshire, where the phenomenon was first
+observed by the eye of science, it had required ten years to produce a
+coating the tenth of an inch in thickness.  This incrustation has all the
+characters of shell, displaying a highly polished surface, beautifully
+iridescent, and, when broken, a foliated texture.  The examination of it
+has even thrown some light on the character and mode of formation of
+natural shell.  “The plates into 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 laminæ are
+separated by a thin iridescent film, varying from the three to the fifty
+millionth part of an inch in thickness, and producing all the various
+colours of thin plates which correspond to intermediate thicknesses:
+between some of the laminæ no such film exists, probably in consequence
+of the interval of time between their formation being too short; and
+between others the film has been formed of unequal thickness.  There can
+be no doubt that these iridescent films are formed when the dash-wheel is
+at rest during the night, and that when no film exists between two
+laminæ, an interval too short for its formation, (arising, perhaps, from
+the stopping of the work during the day,) has elapsed during the drying
+or induration of one lamina and the deposition of another.” {175}  From
+this it has been deduced, by a patient investigation, that those colours
+of mother-of-pearl, which are incommunicable to wax, arise from
+iridescent films deposited between the laminæ of its structure, and it is
+hence inferred that _the animal_, like the wheel, _rests periodically
+from its labours in forming the natural substance_.
+
+These, it will be owned, are curious and not irrelevant facts; but it
+will be asked what actual experience says respecting the origination of
+life.  Are there, it will be said, any authentic instances of either
+plants or animals, of however humble and simple a kind, having come into
+existence otherwise than in the ordinary way of generation, since the
+time of which geology forms the record?  It may be answered, that the
+negative of this question could not be by any means formidable to the
+doctrine of law-creation, seeing that the conditions necessary for the
+operation of the supposed life-creating laws may not have existed within
+record to any great extent.  On the other hand, as we see the physical
+laws of early times still acting with more or less force, it might not be
+unreasonable to expect that we should still see some remnants, or partial
+and occasional workings of the life-creating energy amidst a system of
+things generally stable and at rest.  Are there, then, any such remnants
+to be traced in 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, as what now takes place upon a confined scale and in a
+comparatively casual manner may have formerly taken place on a great
+scale, and as the proper and eternity-destined means of supplying a
+vacant globe with suitable tenants.  It will at the same time be observed
+that, the earth being now supplied with both kinds of tenants in great
+abundance, we only could expect to find the life-originating power at
+work in some very special and extraordinary circumstances, and probably
+only in the inferior and obscurer departments of the vegetable and animal
+kingdoms.
+
+Perhaps, if the question were asked of ten men of approved reputation in
+science, nine out of the number would answer in the negative.  This is
+because, in a great number of instances where the superficial observers
+of former times assumed a non-generative origin for life, (as in the
+celebrated case in Virgil’s fourth Georgic,) either the direct contrary
+has been ascertained, or exhaustive experiments have left no alternative
+from the conclusion that ordinary generation did take place, albeit in a
+manner which escapes observation.  Finding that an erroneous assumption
+has been formed in many cases, modern inquirers have not hesitated to
+assume that there can be no case in which generation is not concerned; an
+assumption not only unwarranted by, but directly opposed to, the
+principles of philosophical investigation.  Yet this is truly the point
+at which the question now rests in the scientific world.
+
+I have no wish here to enter largely into a subject so wide and so full
+of difficulties; but I may remark, that the explanations usually
+suggested where life takes its rise without apparent generative means,
+always appear to me to partake much of the fallacy of the _petitio
+principii_.  When, for instance, lime is laid down upon a piece of waste
+moss ground, and a crop of white clover for which no seeds were sown is
+the consequence, the explanation that the seeds have been dormant there
+for an unknown time, and were stimulated into germination when the lime
+produced the appropriate circumstances, appears extremely unsatisfactory,
+especially when we know that (as in an authentic case under my notice)
+the spot is many miles from where clover is cultivated, and that there is
+nothing for six feet below but pure peat moss, clover seeds being,
+moreover, known to be too heavy to be transported, as many other seeds
+are, by the winds.  Mushrooms, we know, can be propagated by their seed;
+but another mode of raising them, well known to the gardener, is to mix
+cow and horse dung together, and thus form a bed in which they are
+expected to grow without any seed being planted.  It is assumed that the
+seeds are carried by the atmosphere, unperceived by us, and, finding here
+an appropriate field for germination, germinate accordingly; but this is
+only assumption, and though designed to be on the side of a severe
+philosophy, in reality makes a pretty large demand on credulity.  There
+are several persons eminent in science who profess at least to find great
+difficulties in accepting the doctrine of invariable generation.  One of
+these, in the work noted below, {179a} has stated several considerations
+arising from analogical reasoning, which appear to him to throw the
+balance of evidence in favour of the aboriginal production of infusoria,
+{179b} the vegetation called mould, and the like.  One seems to be of
+great force; namely, that the animalcules, which are supposed (altogether
+hypothetically) to be produced by ova, are afterwards found increasing
+their numbers, not by that mode at all, but by division of their bodies.
+If it be the nature of these creatures to propagate in this splitting or
+fissiparous manner, how could they be communicated to a vegetable
+infusion?  Another fact of very high importance is presented in the
+following terms:—“The nature of the animalcule, or vegetable production,
+bears a constant relation to the state of the infusion, so that, in
+similar circumstances, the same are always produced without this being
+influenced by the atmosphere.  There seems to be a certain _progressive
+advance in the productive powers of the infusion_, for at the first the
+animalcules are only of the smaller kinds, or monades, and afterwards
+_they become gradually larger and more complicated in their structure_;
+_after a time_, _the production ceases_, _although the materials are by
+no means exhausted_.  When the quantity of water is very small, and the
+organic matter abundant, the production is usually of a vegetable nature;
+when there is much water, animalcules are more frequently produced.”  It
+has been shewn by the opponents of this theory, that when a vegetable
+infusion is debarred from the contact of the atmosphere, by being closely
+sealed up or covered with a layer of oil, no animalcules are produced;
+but it has been said, on the other hand, that the exclusion of the air
+may prevent some simple condition necessary for the aboriginal
+development of life—and nothing is more likely.  Perhaps the prevailing
+doctrine is in nothing placed in greater difficulties than it is with
+regard to the entozoa, or creatures which live within the bodies of
+others.  These creatures do, and apparently can, live nowhere else than
+in the interior of other living bodies, where they generally take up
+their abode in the viscera, but also sometimes in the chambers of the
+eye, the interior of the brain, the serous sacs, and other places having
+no communication from without.  Some are viviparous, others oviparous.
+Of the latter it cannot reasonably be supposed that the ova ever pass
+through the medium of the air, or through the blood-vessels, for they are
+too heavy for the one transit, and too large for the other.  Of the
+former, it cannot be conceived how they pass into young animals—certainly
+not by communication from the parent, for it has often been found that
+entozoa do not appear in certain generations, and some of peculiar and
+noted character have only appeared at rare intervals, and in very
+extraordinary circumstances.  A candid view of the less popular doctrine,
+as to the origin of this humble form of life, is taken by a distinguished
+living naturalist.  “To explain the beginning of these worms within the
+human body, on the common doctrine that all created beings proceed from
+their likes, or a primordial egg, is so difficult, that the moderns have
+been driven to speculate, as our fathers did, on their spontaneous birth;
+but they have received the hypothesis with some modification.  Thus it is
+not from putrefaction or fermentation that the entozoa are born, for both
+of these processes are rather fatal to their existence, but from the
+aggregation and fit apposition of matter which is already organized, or
+has been thrown from organized surfaces.  Their origin in this manner is
+not more wonderful or more inexplicable than that of many of the inferior
+animals from sections of themselves. * * Particles of matter fitted by
+digestion, and their transmission through a living body, for immediate
+assimilation with it, or flakes of lymph detached from surfaces already
+organized, seem neither to exceed nor fall below that simplicity of
+structure which favours this wonderful development; and the supposition
+that, like morsels of a planaria, they may also, when retained in contact
+with living parts, and in other favourable circumstances, continue to
+live and be gradually changed into creatures of analogous conformation,
+is surely not so absurd as to be brought into comparison with the
+Metamorphoses of Ovid. * * We think the hypothesis is also supported in
+some degree by the fact, that the origin of the entozoa is favoured by
+all causes which tend to disturb the equality between the secerning and
+absorbent systems.” {182}  Here particles of organized matter are
+suggested as the germinal origin of distinct and fully organized animals,
+many of which have a highly developed reproductive system.  How near such
+particles must be to the inorganic form of matter may be judged from what
+has been said within the last few pages.  If, then, this view of the
+production of entozoa be received, it must be held as in no small degree
+favourable to the general doctrine of an organic creation by law.
+
+There is another series of facts, akin to the above, and which deserve
+not less attention.  The pig, in its domestic state, is subject to the
+attacks of a hydatid, from which the wild animal is free; hence the
+disease called measles in pork.  The domestication of the pig is of
+course an event subsequent to the origin of man; indeed, comparatively
+speaking, a recent event.  Whence, then, the first progenitor of this
+hydatid?  So also there is a tinea which attacks dressed wool, but never
+touches it in its unwashed state.  A particular insect disdains all food
+but chocolate, and the larva of the _oinopota cellaris_ lives nowhere but
+in wine and beer, all of these being articles manufactured by man.  There
+is likewise a creature called the _pimelodes cyclopum_, which is only
+found in subterranean cavities connected with certain specimens of the
+volcanic formation in South America, dating from a time posterior to the
+arrangements of the earth for our species.  Whence the first pymelodes
+cyclopum?  Will it, to a geologist, appear irrational to suppose that,
+just as the pterodactyle was added in the era of the new red sandstone,
+when the earth had become suited for such a creature, so may these
+creatures have been added when media suitable for their existence arose,
+and that such phenomena may take place any day, the only cause for their
+taking place seldom being the rarity of the rise of new physical
+conditions on a globe which seems to have already undergone the principal
+part of its destined mutations?
+
+Between such isolated facts and the greater changes which attended
+various geological eras, it is not easy to see any difference, besides
+simply that of the scale on which the respective phenomena took place, as
+the throwing off of one copy from an engraved plate is exactly 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 circumstances under which they take
+place, are indifferent matters.  The Eternal One has arranged for
+everything beforehand, and trusted all to the operation of the laws of
+his appointment, himself being ever present in all things.  We can even
+conceive that man, in his many doings upon the surface of the earth, may
+occasionally, without his being aware of it, or otherwise, act as an
+instrument in preparing the association of conditions under which the
+creative laws work; and perhaps some instances of his having acted as
+such an instrument have actually occurred in our own time.
+
+I allude, of course, to the experiments conducted a few years ago by Mr.
+Crosse, which seemed to result in the production of a heretofore unknown
+species of insect in considerable numbers.  Various causes have prevented
+these experiments and their results from receiving candid treatment, but
+they may perhaps be yet found to have opened up a new and most
+interesting chapter of nature’s mysteries.  Mr. Crosse was pursuing some
+experiments in crystallization, causing a powerful voltaic battery to
+operate upon a saturated solution of silicate of potash, when the insects
+unexpectedly made their appearance.  He afterwards tried nitrate of
+copper, which is a deadly poison, and from that fluid also did live
+insects emerge.  Discouraged by the reception of his experiments, Mr.
+Crosse soon discontinued them; but they were some years after pursued by
+Mr. Weekes, of Sandwich, with precisely the same results.  This
+gentleman, besides trying the first of the above substances, employed
+ferro-cyanet of potash, on account of its containing a larger proportion
+of carbon, the principal element of organic bodies; and from this
+substance the insects were produced _in increased numbers_.  A few weeks
+sufficed for this experiment, with the powerful battery of Mr. Crosse;
+but the first attempts of Mr. Weekes required about eleven months, a
+ground of presumption in itself that the electricity was chiefly
+concerned in the 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 a milky
+appearance; round the negative wire of the battery, dipped into the
+fluid, there gathered a quantity of _gelatinous matter_, a part of the
+process of considerable importance, considering that gelatin is one of
+the _proximate principles_, or first compounds, of which animal bodies
+are formed.  From this matter Mr. Weekes observed one of the insects in
+the very act of emerging, immediately after which, it ascended to the
+surface of the fluid, and sought concealment in an obscure corner of the
+apparatus.  The insects produced by both experimentalists seem to have
+been the same, a species of acarus, minute and semi-transparent, and
+furnished with long bristles, which can only be seen by the aid of the
+microscope.  It is worthy of remark, that some of these insects, soon
+after their existence had commenced, were found to be likely to extend
+their species.  They were sometimes observed to go back to the fluid to
+feed, and occasionally they devoured each other. {187}
+
+The reception of novelties in science must ever be regulated very much by
+the amount of kindred or relative phenomena which the public mind already
+possesses and acknowledges, to which the new can be assimilated.  A
+novelty, however true, if there be no received truths with which it can
+be shewn in harmonious relation, has little chance of a favourable
+hearing.  In fact, as has been often observed, there is a measure of
+incredulity from our ignorance as well as from our knowledge, and if the
+most distinguished philosopher three hundred years ago had ventured to
+develop any striking new fact which only could harmonize with the as yet
+unknown Copernican solar system, we cannot doubt that it would have been
+universally scoffed at in the scientific world, such as it then was, or
+at the best interpreted in a thousand wrong ways in conformity with ideas
+already familiar.  The experiments above described, finding a public mind
+which had never discovered a fact or conceived an idea at all analogous,
+were of course ungraciously received.  It was held to be impious, even to
+surmise that animals could have been formed through any instrumentality
+of an apparatus devised by human skill.  The more likely account of the
+phenomena was said to be, that the insects were only developed from ova,
+resting either in the fluid, or in the wooden frame on which the
+experiments took place.  On these objections the following remarks may be
+made.  The supposition of impiety arises from an entire misconception of
+what is implied by an aboriginal creation of insects.  The
+experimentalist could never be considered as the author of the existence
+of these creatures, except by the most unreasoning ignorance.  The utmost
+that can be claimed for, or imputed to him is that he arranged the
+natural conditions under which the true creative energy—that of the
+Divine Author of all things—was pleased to work in that instance.  On the
+hypothesis here brought forward, the _acarus Crossii_ was a type of being
+ordained from the beginning, and destined to be realized under certain
+physical conditions.  When a human hand brought these conditions into the
+proper arrangement, it did an act akin to hundreds of familiar ones which
+we execute every day, and which are followed by natural results; but it
+did nothing more.  The production of the insect, if it did take place as
+assumed, was as clearly an act of the Almighty himself, as if he had
+fashioned it with hands.  For the presumption that an act of aboriginal
+creation did take place, there is this to be said, that, in Mr. Weekes’s
+experiment, every care that ingenuity could devise was taken to exclude
+the possibility of a development of the insects from ova.  The wood of
+the frame was baked in a powerful heat; a bell-shaped glass covered the
+apparatus, and from this the atmosphere was excluded by the constantly
+rising fumes from the liquid, for the emission of which there was an
+aperture so arranged at the top of the glass, that only these fumes could
+pass.  The water was distilled, and the substance of the silicate had
+been subjected to white heat.  Thus every source of fallacy seemed to be
+shut up.  In such circumstances, a candid mind, which sees nothing either
+impious or unphilosophical in the idea of a new creation, will be
+disposed to think that there is less difficulty in believing in such a
+creation having actually taken place, than in believing that, in two
+instances, separated in place and time, exactly the same insects should
+have chanced to arise from concealed ova, and these a species heretofore
+unknown.
+
+
+
+
+HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT
+OF THE
+VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS.
+
+
+IT has been already intimated, as a general fact, that there is an
+obvious gradation amongst the families of both the vegetable and animal
+kingdoms, from the simple lichen and animalcule respectively up to the
+highest order of dicotyledonous trees and the mammalia.  Confining our
+attention, in the meantime, to the animal kingdom—it does not appear that
+this gradation passes along one line, on which every form of animal life
+can be, as it were, strung; there may be branching or double lines at
+some places; or the whole may be in a circle composed of minor circles,
+as has been recently suggested.  But still it is incontestable that there
+are general appearances of a scale beginning with the simple and
+advancing to the complicated.  The animal kingdom was divided by Cuvier
+into four sub-kingdoms, or divisions, and these exhibit an unequivocal
+gradation in the order in which they are here enumerated:—Radiata,
+(polypes, &c.;) mollusca, (pulpy animals;) articulata, (jointed animals;)
+vertebrata, (animals with internal skeleton.)  The gradation can, in like
+manner, be clearly traced in the _classes_ into which the sub-kingdoms
+are subdivided, as, for instance, when we take those of the vertebrata in
+this order—reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals.
+
+While the external forms of all these various animals are so different,
+it is very remarkable that the whole are, after all, variations of a
+fundamental plan, which can be traced as a basis throughout the whole,
+the variations being merely modifications of that plan to suit the
+particular conditions in which each particular animal has been designed
+to live.  Starting from the primeval germ, which, as we have seen, is the
+representative of a particular order of full-grown animals, we find all
+others to be merely advances from that type, with the extension of
+endowments and modification of forms which are required in each
+particular case; each form, also, retaining a strong affinity to that
+which precedes it, and tending to impress its own features on that which
+succeeds.  This unity of structure, as it is called, becomes the more
+remarkable, when we observe that the organs, while preserving a
+resemblance, are often put to different uses.  For example: the ribs
+become, in the serpent, organs of locomotion, and the snout is extended,
+in the elephant, into a prehensile instrument.
+
+It is equally remarkable that analogous purposes are served in different
+animals by organs essentially different.  Thus, the mammalia breathe by
+lungs; the fishes, by gills.  These are not modifications of one organ,
+but distinct organs.  In mammifers, the gills exist and act at an early
+stage of the fœtal state, but afterwards go back and appear no more;
+while the lungs are developed.  In fishes, again, the gills only are
+fully developed; while the lung structure either makes no advance at all,
+or only appears in the rudimentary form of an air-bladder.  So, also, the
+baleen of the whale and the teeth of the land mammalia are different
+organs.  The whale, in embryo, shews the rudiments of teeth; but these,
+not being wanted, are not developed, and the baleen is brought forward
+instead.  The land animals, we may also be sure, have the rudiments of
+baleen in their organization.  In many instances, a particular structure
+is found advanced to a certain point in a particular set of animals, (for
+instance, feet in the serpent tribe,) although it is not there required
+in any degree; but the peculiarity, being carried a little farther
+forward, is perhaps useful in the next set of animals in the scale.  Such
+are called rudimentary organs.  With this class of phenomena are to be
+ranked the useless mammæ of the male human being, and the unrequired
+process of bone in the male opossum, which is needed in the female for
+supporting her pouch.  Such curious features are most conspicuous in
+animals which form links between various classes.
+
+As formerly stated, the marsupials, standing at the bottom of the
+mammalia, shew their affinity to the oviparous vertebrata, by the
+rudiments of two canals passing from near the anus to the external
+surfaces of the viscera, which are fully developed in fishes, being
+required by them for the respiration of aerated waters, but which are not
+needed by the atmosphere-breathing marsupials.  We have also the peculiar
+form of the sternum and rib-bones of the lizards _represented_ in the
+mammalia in certain white cartilaginous lines traceable among their
+abdominal muscles.  The struphionidæ (birds of the ostrich type) form a
+link between birds and mammalia, and in them we find the wings
+imperfectly or not at all developed, a diaphragm and urinary sac, (organs
+wanting in other birds,) and feathers approaching the nature of hair.
+Again, the ornithorynchus belongs to a class at the bottom of the
+mammalia, and approximating to birds, and in it behold the bill and
+web-feet of that order!
+
+For further illustration, it is obvious that, various as may be the
+lengths of the upper part of the vertebral column in the mammalia, it
+always consists of the same parts.  The giraffe has in its tall neck the
+same number of bones with the pig, which scarcely appears to have a neck
+at all. {195}  Man, again, has no tail; but the notion of a
+much-ridiculed philosopher of the last century is not altogether, as it
+happens, without foundation, for the bones of a caudal extremity exist in
+an undeveloped state in the _os coccygis_ of the human subject.  The
+limbs of all the vertebrate animals are, in like manner, on one plan,
+however various they may appear.  In the hind-leg of a horse, for
+example, the angle called the hock is the same part which in us forms the
+heel; and the horse, and all other quadrupeds, with almost the solitary
+exception of the bear, walk, in reality, upon what answers to the toes of
+a human being.  In this and many other quadrupeds the fore part of the
+extremities is shrunk up in a hoof, as the tail of the human being is
+shrunk up in the bony mass at the bottom of the back.  The bat, on the
+other hand, has these parts largely developed.  The membrane, commonly
+called its wing, is framed chiefly upon bones answering precisely to
+those of the human hand; its extinct congener, the pterodactyle, had the
+same membrane extended upon the fore-finger only, which in that animal
+was prolonged to an extraordinary extent.  In the paddles of the whale
+and other animals of its order, we see the same bones as in the more
+highly developed extremities of the land mammifers; and even the serpent
+tribes, which present no external appearance of such extremities, possess
+them in reality, but in an undeveloped or rudimental state.
+
+The same law of development presides over the vegetable kingdom.  Amongst
+phanerogamous plants, a certain number of organs appear to be always
+present, either in a developed or rudimentary state; and those which are
+rudimentary can be developed by cultivation.  The flowers which bear
+stamens on one stalk and pistils on another, can be caused to produce
+both, or to become perfect flowers, by having a sufficiency of
+nourishment supplied to them.  So also, where a special function is
+required for particular circumstances, nature has provided for it, not by
+a new organ, but by a modification of a common one, which she has
+effected in development.  Thus, for instance, some plants destined to
+live in arid situations, require to have a store of water which they may
+slowly absorb.  The need is arranged for by a cup-like expansion round
+the stalk, in which water remains after a shower.  Now the _pitcher_, as
+this is called, is not a new organ, but simply a metamorphose of a leaf.
+
+These facts clearly shew how all the various organic forms of our world
+are bound up in one—how a fundamental unity pervades and embraces them
+all, collecting them, from the humblest lichen up to the highest
+mammifer, in one system, the whole creation of which must have depended
+upon one law or decree of the Almighty, though it did not all come forth
+at one time.  After what we have seen, the idea of a separate exertion
+for each must appear totally inadmissible.  The single fact of abortive
+or rudimentary organs condemns it; for these, on such a supposition,
+could be regarded in no other light than as blemishes or blunders—the
+thing of all others most irreconcilable with that idea of Almighty
+Perfection which a general view of nature so irresistibly conveys.  On
+the other hand, when the organic creation is admitted to have been
+effected by a general law, we see nothing in these abortive parts but
+harmless peculiarities of development, and interesting evidences of the
+manner in which the Divine Author has been pleased to work.
+
+We have yet to advert to the most interesting class of facts connected
+with the laws of organic development.  It is only in recent times that
+physiologists have observed that each animal passes, in the course of its
+germinal history, through a series of changes resembling the _permanent
+forms_ of the various orders of animals inferior to it in the scale.
+Thus, for instance, an insect, standing at the head of the articulated
+animals, is, in the larva state, a true annelid, or worm, the annelida
+being the lowest in the same class.  The embryo of a crab resembles the
+perfect animal of the inferior order myriapoda, and passes through all
+the forms of transition which characterize the intermediate tribes of
+crustacea.  The frog, for some time after its birth, is a fish with
+external gills, and other organs fitting it for an aquatic life, all of
+which are changed as it advances to maturity, and becomes a land animal.
+The mammifer only passes through still more stages, according to its
+higher place in the scale.  Nor is man himself exempt from this law.  His
+first form is that which is permanent in the animalcule.  His
+organization gradually passes through conditions generally resembling a
+fish, a reptile, a bird, and the lower mammalia, before it attains its
+specific maturity.  At one of the last stages of his fœtal career, he
+exhibits an intermaxillary bone, which is characteristic of the perfect
+ape; this is suppressed, and he may then be said to take leave of the
+simial type, and become a true human creature.  Even, as we shall see,
+the varieties of his race are represented in the progressive development
+of an individual of the highest, before we see the adult Caucasian, the
+highest point yet attained in the animal scale.
+
+To come to particular points of the organization.  The brain of man,
+which exceeds that of all other animals in complexity of organization and
+fulness of development, is, at one early period, only “a simple fold of
+nervous matter, with difficulty distinguishable into three parts, while a
+little tail-like prolongation towards the hinder parts, and which had
+been the first to appear, is the only representation of a spinal marrow.
+Now, in this state it perfectly resembles the brain of an adult fish,
+thus assuming _in transitu_ the form that in the fish is permanent.  In a
+short time, however, the structure is become more complex, the parts more
+distinct, the spinal marrow better marked; it is now the brain of a
+reptile.  The change continues; by a singular motion, certain parts
+(_corpora quadragemina_) which had hitherto appeared on the upper
+surface, now pass towards the lower; the former is their permanent
+situation in fishes and reptiles, the latter in birds and mammalia.  This
+is another advance in the scale, but more remains yet to be done.  The
+complication of the organ increases; cavities termed _ventricles_ are
+formed, which do not exist in fishes, reptiles, or birds; curiously
+organized parts, such as the corpora striata, are added; it is now the
+brain of the mammalia.  Its last and final change alone seems wanting,
+that which shall render it the brain of MAN.” {201}  And this change in
+time takes place.
+
+So also with the heart.  This organ, in the mammalia, consists of four
+cavities, but in the reptiles of only three, and in fishes of two only,
+while in the articulated animals it is merely a prolonged tube.  Now in
+the mammal fœtus, at a certain early stage, the organ has the form of a
+prolonged tube; and a human being may be said to have then the heart of
+an insect.  Subsequently it is shortened and widened, and becomes divided
+by a contraction into two parts, a ventricle and an auricle; it is now
+the heart of a fish.  A subdivision of the auricle afterwards makes a
+triple-chambered form, as in the heart of the reptile tribes; lastly, the
+ventricle being also subdivided, it becomes a full mammal heart.
+
+Another illustration here presents itself with the force of the most
+powerful and interesting analogy.  Some of the earliest fishes of our
+globe, those of the Old Red Sandstone, present, as we have seen, certain
+peculiarities, as the one-sided tail and an inferior position of the
+mouth.  No fishes of the present day, in a mature state, are so
+characterized; but some, at a certain stage of their existence, have such
+peculiarities.  It occurred to a geologist to inquire if the fish which
+existed before the Old Red Sandstone had any peculiarities assimilating
+them to the fœtal condition of existing fish, and particularly if they
+were small.  The first which occur before the time of the Old Red
+Sandstone, are those described by Mr. Murchison, as belonging to the
+Upper Ludlow Rocks; _they are all rather small_.  Still older are those
+detected by Mr. Philips, in the Aymestry Limestone, being the most
+ancient of the class which have as yet been discovered; _these are so
+extremely minute as only to be distinguishable by the microscope_.  Here
+we apparently have very clear demonstrations of a parity, or rather
+identity, of laws presiding over the development of the animated tribes
+on the face of the earth, and that of the individual in embryo.
+
+The tendency of all these illustrations is to make us look to
+_development_ as the principle which has been immediately concerned in
+the peopling of this globe, a process extending over a vast space of
+time, but which is nevertheless connected in character with the briefer
+process by which an individual being is evoked from a simple germ.  What
+mystery is there here—and how shall I proceed to enunciate the conception
+which I have ventured to form of what may prove to be its proper
+solution!  It is an idea by no means calculated to impress by its
+greatness, or to puzzle by its profoundness.  It is an idea more marked
+by simplicity than perhaps any other of those which have explained the
+great secrets of nature.  But in this lies, perhaps, one of its strongest
+claims to the faith of mankind.
+
+The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to
+the highest and most recent, are, then, to be regarded as a series of
+_advances of the principle of development_, which have depended upon
+external physical circumstances, to which the resulting animals are
+appropriate.  I contemplate the whole phenomena as having been in the
+first place arranged in the counsels of Divine Wisdom, to take place, not
+only upon this sphere, but upon all the others in space, under necessary
+modifications, and as being carried on, from first to last, here and
+elsewhere, under immediate favour of the creative will or energy. {204}
+The nucleated vesicle, the fundamental form of all organization, we must
+regard as the meeting-point between the inorganic and the organic—the end
+of the mineral and beginning of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, which
+thence start in different directions, but in perfect parallelism and
+analogy.  We have already seen that this nucleated vesicle is itself a
+type of mature and independent being in the infusory animalcules, as well
+as the starting point of the fœtal progress of every higher individual in
+creation, both animal and vegetable.  We have seen that it is a form of
+being which electric agency will produce—though not perhaps usher into
+full life—in albumen, one of those compound elements of animal bodies, of
+which another (urea) has been made by artificial means.  Remembering
+these things, we are drawn on to the supposition, that the first step in
+the creation of life upon this planet was _a chemico-electric operation_,
+_by which simple germinal vesicles were produced_.  This is so much, but
+what were the next steps?  Let a common vegetable infusion help us to an
+answer.  There, as we have seen, simple forms are produced at first, but
+afterwards they become more complicated, until at length the
+life-producing powers of the infusion are exhausted.  Are we to presume
+that, in this case, the simple engender the complicated?  Undoubtedly,
+this would not be more wonderful as a natural process than one which we
+never think of wondering at, because familiar to us—namely, that in the
+gestation of 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
+all the subsequent stages—fish, reptile, &c.—the one may, with scarcely a
+metaphor, be said to be the progenitor of the other.  I suggest, then, as
+an hypothesis already countenanced by much that is ascertained, and
+likely to be further sanctioned by much that remains to be known, that
+the first step was _an advance under favour of peculiar conditions_,
+_from the simplest forms of being_, _to the next more complicated_, _and
+this through the medium of the ordinary process of generation_.
+
+Unquestionably, what we ordinarily see of nature is calculated to impress
+a conviction that each species invariably produces its like.  But I would
+here call attention to a remarkable illustration of natural law which has
+been brought forward by Mr. Babbage, in his _Ninth Bridgewater Treatise_.
+The reader is requested to suppose himself seated before the calculating
+machine, and observing it.  It is moved by a weight, and there is a wheel
+which revolves through a small angle round its axis, at short intervals,
+presenting to his eye successively, a series of numbers engraved on its
+divided circumference.
+
+Let the figures thus seen be the series, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c., of natural
+numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate antecedent by unity.
+
+“Now, reader,” says Mr. Babbage, “let me ask you how long you will have
+counted before you are firmly convinced that the engine has been so
+adjusted, that it will continue, while its motion is maintained, to
+produce the same series of natural numbers?  Some minds are so
+constituted, that, after passing the first hundred terms, they will be
+satisfied that they are acquainted with the law.  After seeing five
+hundred terms few will doubt, and after the fifty thousandth term the
+propensity to believe that the succeeding term will be fifty thousand and
+one, will be almost irresistible.  That term _will_ be fifty thousand and
+one; and the same regular succession will continue; the five millionth
+and the fifty millionth term will still appear in their expected order,
+and one unbroken chain of natural numbers will pass before your eyes,
+from _one_ up to _one hundred million_.
+
+“True to the vast induction which has been made, the next succeeding term
+will be one hundred million and one; but the next number presented by the
+rim of the wheel, instead of being one hundred million and two, is one
+hundred million _ten thousand_ and two.  The whole series from the
+commencement being thus,—
+
+                                      1
+                                      2
+                                      3
+                                      4
+                                      5
+                                      .
+                                    . .
+                                  . . .
+                             99,999,999
+                            100,000,000
+regularly as far as         100,000,001
+                            100,010,002  the law changes.
+                            100,030,003
+                            100,060,004
+                            100,100,005
+                            100,150,006
+                            100,210,007
+                            100,280,008
+                                  . . .
+                                  . . .
+                                  . . .
+
+“The law which seemed at first to govern this series failed at the
+hundred million and second term.  This term is larger than we expected by
+10,000.  The next term is larger than was anticipated by 30,000, and the
+excess of each term above what we had expected forms the following
+table:—
+
+     10,000
+     30,000
+     60,000
+    100,000
+    150,000
+      . . .
+      . . .
+
+being, in fact, the series of _triangular numbers_, {208} each multiplied
+by 10,000.
+
+“If we now continue to observe the numbers presented by the wheel, we
+shall find, that for a hundred, or even for a thousand terms, they
+continue to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers; but
+after watching them for 2761 terms, we find that this law fails in the
+case of the 2762d term.
+
+“If we continue to observe, we shall discover another law then coming
+into action, which also is dependent, but in a different manner, on
+triangular numbers.  This will continue through about 1430 terms, when a
+new law is again introduced which extends over about 950 terms, and this,
+too, like all its predecessors, fails, and gives place to other laws,
+which appear at different intervals.
+
+“Now it must be observed that _the law that each number presented by the
+engine is greater by unity than the preceding number_, which law the
+observer had deduced from an induction of a hundred million instances,
+_was not the true law that regulated its action_, and that the occurrence
+of the number 100,010,002 at the 100,000,002nd term was _as necessary a
+consequence of the original adjustment_, _and might have been as fully
+foreknown at the commencement_, _as was the regular succession of any one
+of the intermediate numbers to its immediate antecedent_.  The same
+remark applies to the next apparent deviation from 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 periods themselves at which the more distant laws will be
+introduced.”
+
+It is not difficult to apply the philosophy of this passage to the
+question under consideration.  It must be borne in mind that the
+gestation 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 a matter
+probably involving enormous spaces of time.  Suppose that an ephemeron,
+hovering over a pool for its one April day of life, were capable of
+observing the fry of the frog in the water below.  In its aged afternoon,
+having seen no change upon them for such a long time, it would be little
+qualified to conceive that the external branchiæ of these creatures were
+to decay, and be replaced by internal lungs, that feet were to be
+developed, the tail erased, and the animal then to become a denizen of
+the land.  Precisely such may be our difficulty in conceiving that any of
+the species which people our earth is capable of advancing by generation
+to a higher type of being.  During the whole time which we call the
+historical era, the limits of species have been, to ordinary observation,
+rigidly adhered to.  But the historical era is, we know, only a small
+portion of the entire age of our globe.  We do not know what may have
+happened during the ages which preceded its commencement, as we do not
+know what may happen in ages yet in the distant future.  All, therefore,
+that we can properly infer from the apparently invariable production of
+like by like is, that such is the ordinary procedure of nature in the
+time immediately passing before our eyes.  Mr. Babbage’s illustration
+powerfully suggests that this ordinary procedure may be subordinate to a
+higher law which only _permits_ it for a time, and in proper season
+interrupts and changes it.  We shall soon see some philosophical evidence
+for this very conclusion.
+
+It has been seen that, in the reproduction of the higher animals, the new
+being passes through stages in which it is successively fish-like and
+reptile-like.  But the resemblance is not to the adult fish or the adult
+reptile, but to the fish and reptile at a certain point in their fœtal
+progress; this holds true with regard to the vascular, nervous, and other
+systems alike.  It may be illustrated by a simple diagram.  The fœtus of
+all the four classes may be supposed to advance in an identical condition
+to the point A.  [Picture: Diagram]  The fish there diverges and passes
+along a line apart, and peculiar to A itself, to its mature state at F.
+The reptile, bird, and mammal, go on together to C, where the reptile
+diverges in like manner, and advances by itself to R.  The bird diverges
+at D, and goes on to B.  The mammal then goes forward in a straight line
+to the highest point of organization at M.  This diagram shews only the
+main ramifications; but the reader must suppose minor ones, representing
+the subordinate differences of orders, tribes, families, genera, &c., if
+he wishes to extend his views to the whole varieties of being in the
+animal kingdom.  Limiting ourselves at present to the outline afforded by
+this diagram, it is apparent that the only thing required for an advance
+from one type to another in the generative process is that, for example,
+the fish embryo should not diverge at A, but go on to C before it
+diverges, in which case the progeny will be, not a fish, but a reptile.
+To protract the _straightforward part of the gestation over a small
+space_—and from species to species the space would be small indeed—is all
+that is necessary.
+
+This might be done by the force of certain external conditions operating
+upon the parturient system.  The nature of these conditions we can only
+conjecture, for their operation, which in the geological eras was so
+powerful, has in its main strength been long interrupted, and is now
+perhaps only allowed to work in some of the lowest departments of the
+organic world, or under extraordinary casualties in some of the higher,
+and to these points the attention of science has as yet been little
+directed.  But though this knowledge were never to be clearly attained,
+it need not much affect the present argument, provided it be
+satisfactorily shewn that there must be some such influence within the
+range of natural things.
+
+To this conclusion it must be greatly conducive that the law of organic
+development is still daily seen at work to certain effects, only somewhat
+short of a transition from species to species.  Sex we have seen to be a
+matter of development.  There is an instance, in a humble department of
+the animal world, of arrangements being made by the animals themselves
+for adjusting this law to the production of a particular sex.  Amongst
+bees, as amongst several other insect tribes, there is in each community
+but one true female, the queen bee, the workers being false females or
+neuters; that is to say, sex is carried on in them to a point where it is
+attended by sterility.  The preparatory states of the queen bee occupy
+sixteen days; those of the neuters, twenty; and those of males,
+twenty-four.  Now it is a fact, settled by innumerable observations and
+experiments, that the bees can so modify a worker in the larva state,
+that, when it emerges from the pupa, it is found to be a queen or true
+female.  For this purpose they enlarge its cell, make a pyramidal hollow
+to allow of its assuming a vertical instead of a horizontal position,
+keep it warmer than other larvæ are kept, and feed it with a peculiar
+kind of food.  From these simple circumstances, leading to a shortening
+of the embryotic condition, results a creature different in form, and
+also in dispositions, from what would have otherwise been produced.  Some
+of the organs possessed by the worker are here altogether wanting.  We
+have a creature “destined to enjoy love, to burn with jealousy and anger,
+to be incited to vengeance, and to pass her time without labour,” instead
+of one “zealous for the good of the community, a defender of the public
+rights, enjoying an immunity from the stimulus of sexual appetite and the
+pains of parturition; laborious, industrious, patient, ingenious,
+skilful; incessantly engaged in the nurture of the young, in collecting
+honey and pollen, in elaborating wax, in constructing cells and the
+like!—paying the most respectful and assiduous attention to objects
+which, had its ovaries been developed, it would have hated and pursued
+with the most vindictive fury till it had destroyed them!” {215}  All
+these changes may be produced by a mere modification of the embryotic
+progress, which it is within the power of the adult animals to effect.
+But it is important to observe that this modification is different from
+working a direct change upon the embryo.  It is not the different food
+which effects a metamorphosis.  All that is done is merely to accelerate
+the period of the insect’s perfection.  By the arrangements made and the
+food given, the embryo becomes sooner fit for being ushered forth in its
+imago or perfect state.  Development may be said to be thus arrested at a
+particular stage—that early one at which the female sex is complete.  In
+the other circumstances, it is allowed to go on four days longer, and a
+stage is then reached between the two sexes, which in this species is
+designed to be the perfect condition of a large portion of the community.
+Four days more make it a perfect male.  It is at the same time to be
+observed that there is, from the period of oviposition, a destined
+distinction between the sexes of the young bees.  The queen lays the
+whole of the eggs which are designed to become workers, before she begins
+to lay those which become males.  But probably the condition of her
+reproductive system governs the matter of sex, for it is remarked that
+when her impregnation is delayed beyond the twenty-eighth day of her
+entire existence, she lays only eggs which become males.
+
+We have here, it will be admitted, a most remarkable illustration of the
+principle of development, although in an operation limited to the
+production of sex only.  Let it not be said that the phenomena concerned
+in the generation of bees may be very different from those concerned in
+the reproduction of the higher animals.  There is a unity throughout
+nature which makes the one case an instructive reflection of the other.
+
+We shall now see an instance of development operating within the
+production of what approaches to the character of variety of species.  It
+is fully established that a human family, tribe, or nation, is liable, in
+the course of generations, to be either advanced from a mean form to a
+higher one, or degraded from a higher to a lower, by the influence of the
+physical conditions in which it lives.  The coarse features, and other
+structural peculiarities of the negro race only continue while these
+people live amidst the circumstances usually associated with barbarism.
+In a more temperate clime, and higher social state, the face and figure
+become greatly refined.  The few African nations which possess any
+civilization also exhibit forms approaching the European; and when the
+same people in the United States of America have enjoyed a within-door
+life for several generations, they assimilate to the whites amongst whom
+they live.  On the other hand, there are authentic instances of a people
+originally well-formed and good-looking, being brought, by imperfect diet
+and a variety of physical hardships, to a meaner form.  It is remarkable
+that prominence of the jaws, a recession and diminution of the cranium,
+and an elongation and attenuation of the limbs, are peculiarities always
+produced by these miserable conditions, for they indicate an unequivocal
+retrogression towards the type of the lower animals.  Thus we see nature
+alike willing to go back and to go forward.  Both effects are simply the
+result of the operation of the law of development in the generative
+system.  Give good conditions, it advances; bad ones, it recedes.  Now,
+perhaps, it is only because there is no longer a possibility, in the
+higher types of being, of giving sufficiently favourable conditions to
+carry on species to species, that we see the operation of the law so far
+limited.
+
+Let us trace this law also in the production of certain classes of
+monstrosities.  A human fœtus is often left with one of the most
+important parts of its frame imperfectly developed: the heart, for
+instance, goes no farther than the three-chambered form, so that it is
+the heart of a reptile.  There are even instances of this organ being
+left in the two-chambered or fish form.  Such defects are the result of
+nothing more than a failure of the power of development in the system of
+the mother, occasioned by weak health or misery.  Here we have apparently
+a realization of the converse of those conditions which carry on species
+to species, so far, at least, as one organ is concerned.  Seeing a
+complete specific retrogression in this one point, how easy it is to
+imagine an access of favourable conditions sufficient to reverse the
+phenomenon, and make a fish mother develop a reptile heart, or a reptile
+mother develop a mammal one.  It is no great boldness to surmise that a
+super-adequacy in the measure of this under-adequacy (and the one thing
+seems as natural an occurrence as the other) would suffice in a goose to
+give its progeny the body of a rat, and produce the ornithorynchus, or
+might give the progeny of an ornithorynchus the mouth and feet of a true
+rodent, and thus complete at two stages the passage from the aves to the
+mammalia.
+
+Perhaps even the transition from species to species does still take place
+in some of the obscurer fields of creation, or under extraordinary
+casualties, though science professes to have no such facts on record.  It
+is here to be remarked, that such facts might often happen, and yet no
+record be taken of them, for so strong is the prepossession for the
+doctrine of invariable like-production, that such circumstances, on
+occurring, would be almost sure to be explained away on some other
+supposition, or, if presented, would be disbelieved and neglected.
+Science, therefore, has no such facts, for the very same reason that some
+small sects are said to have no discreditable 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 without any reference to this hypothesis, and which it seems
+extremely difficult to explain satisfactorily upon any other.  One of
+these has already been mentioned—a progression in the forms of the
+animalcules in a vegetable infusion from the simpler to the more
+complicated, a sort of microcosm, representing the whole history of the
+progress of animal creation as displayed by geology.  Another is given in
+the history of the Acarus Crossii, which may be only the ultimate stage
+of a series of similar transformations effected by electric agency in the
+solution subjected to it.  There is, however, one direct case of a
+translation of species, which has been presented with a respectable
+amount of authority. {221}  It appears that, whenever oats sown at the
+usual time are kept cropped down during summer and autumn, and allowed to
+remain over the winter, a thin crop of rye is the harvest presented at
+the close of the ensuing summer.  This experiment has been tried
+repeatedly, with but one result; invariably the _secale cereale_ is the
+crop reaped where the _avena sativa_, a recognised different species, was
+sown.  Now it will not satisfy a strict inquirer to be told that the
+seeds of the rye were latent in the ground and only superseded the dead
+product of the oats; for if any such fact were in the case, why should
+the usurping grain be always rye?  Perhaps those curious facts which have
+been stated with regard to 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
+which takes place under certain favouring conditions, now apparently of
+comparatively rare occurrence.  The case of the oats is the more
+valuable, as bearing upon the suggestion as to a protraction of the
+gestation at a particular part of its course.  Here, the generative
+process is, by the simple mode of cropping down, kept up for a whole year
+beyond its usual term.  The type is thus allowed to advance, and what was
+oats becomes rye.
+
+The idea, then, which I form of the progress of organic life upon the
+globe—and the hypothesis is applicable to all similar theatres of vital
+being—is, _that the simplest and most primitive type_, _under a law to
+which that of like-production is subordinate_, _gave birth to the type
+next above it_, _that this again produced the next higher_, _and so on to
+the very highest_, the stages of advance being in all cases very
+small—namely, from one species only to another; so that the phenomenon
+has always been of a simple and modest character.  Whether the whole of
+any species was at once translated forward, or only a few parents were
+employed to give birth to the new type, must remain undetermined; but,
+supposing that the former was the case, we must presume that the moves
+along the line or lines were simultaneous, so that the place vacated by
+one species was immediately taken by the next in succession, and so on
+back to the first, for the supply of which the formation of a new
+germinal vesicle out of inorganic matter was alone necessary.  Thus, the
+production of new forms, as shewn in the pages of the geological record,
+has never been anything more than a new stage of progress in gestation,
+an event as simply natural, and attended as little by any circumstances
+of a wonderful or startling kind, as the silent advance of an ordinary
+mother from one week to another of her pregnancy.  Yet, be it remembered,
+the whole phenomena are, in another point of view, wonders of the highest
+kind, for in each of them we have to trace the effect of an Almighty Will
+which had arranged the whole in such harmony with external physical
+circumstances, that both were developed in parallel steps—and probably
+this development upon our planet is but a sample of what has taken place,
+through the same cause, in all the other countless theatres of being
+which are suspended in space.
+
+This may be the proper place at which to introduce the preceding
+illustrations in a form calculated to bring them more forcibly before the
+mind of the reader.  The following table was suggested to me, in
+consequence 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, and also in
+the fœtal progress of one of the principal human organs. {224}  This
+scale, it may be remarked, was not made up with a view to support such an
+hypothesis as the present, nor with any apparent regard to the history of
+fossils, but merely to express the appearance of advancement in the
+orders of the Cuvierian system, assuming, as the criterion of that
+advancement, “an increase in the number and extent of the manifestations
+of life, or of the relations which an organized being bears to the
+external world.”  Excepting in the relative situation of the annelida and
+a few of the mammal orders, the parity is perfect; nor may even these
+small discrepancies appear when the order of fossils shall have been
+further investigated, 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 nearness with our
+present knowledge of the succession of animal forms upon earth, and also
+that both of these series should harmonize so well with the view given by
+modern physiologists of the embryotic progress of one of the organs of
+the highest order of animals.
+
+             [Picture: Complex table of animal kingdom] {226}
+
+The reader has seen physical conditions several times referred to, as to
+be presumed to have in some way governed the progress of the development
+of the zoological circle.  This language may seem vague, and, it may be
+asked,—can any particular physical condition be adduced as likely to have
+affected development?  To this it may be answered, that air and light are
+probably amongst the principal agencies of this kind which operated in
+educing the various forms of being.  Light is found to be essential to
+the development of the individual embryo.  When tadpoles were placed in a
+perforated box, and that box sunk in the Seine, light being the only
+condition thus abstracted, they grew to a great size in their original
+form, but did not pass through the usual metamorphose which brings them
+to their mature state as frogs.  The proteus, an animal of the frog kind,
+inhabiting the subterraneous waters of Carniola, and which never acquires
+perfect lungs so as to become a land animal, is presumed to be an example
+of arrested development, from the same cause.  When, in connexion with
+these facts, we learn that human mothers living in dark and close cells
+under ground,—that is to say, with an inadequate provision of air and
+light,—are found to produce an unusual proportion of defective children,
+{229} we can appreciate the important effects of both these physical
+conditions in ordinary reproduction.  Now there is nothing to forbid the
+supposition that the earth has been at different stages of its career
+under different conditions, as to both air and light.  On the contrary,
+we have seen reason for supposing that the proportion of carbonic acid
+gas (the element fatal to animal life) was larger at the time of the
+carboniferous formation than it afterwards became.  We have also seen
+that astronomers regard the zodiacal light as a residuum of matter
+enveloping the sun, and which was probably at one time denser than it is
+now.  Here we have the indications of causes for a progress in the
+purification of the atmosphere and in the diffusion of light during the
+earlier ages of the earth’s history, with which the progress of organic
+life may have been conformable.  An accession to the proportion of
+oxygen, and the effulgence of the central luminary, may have been the
+immediate prompting cause of all those advances from species to species
+which we have seen, upon other grounds, to be necessarily supposed as
+having taken place.  And causes of the like nature may well be supposed
+to operate on other spheres of being, as well as on this.  I do not
+indeed present these ideas as furnishing the true explanation of the
+progress of organic creation; they are merely thrown out as hints towards
+the formation of a just hypothesis, the completion of which is only to be
+looked for when some considerable advances shall have been made in the
+amount and character of our stock of knowledge.
+
+Early in this century, M. Lamarck, a naturalist of the highest character,
+suggested an hypothesis of organic progress which deservedly incurred
+much ridicule, although it contained a glimmer of the truth.  He
+surmised, and endeavoured, with a great deal of ingenuity, to prove, that
+one being advanced in the course of generations to another, in
+consequence merely of its experience of wants calling for the exercise of
+its faculties in a particular direction, by which exercise new
+developments of organs took place, ending in variations sufficient to
+constitute a new species.  Thus he thought that a bird would be driven by
+necessity to seek its food in the water, and that, in its efforts to
+swim, the outstretching of its claws would lead to the expansion of the
+intermediate membranes, and it would thus become web-footed.  Now it is
+possible that wants and the exercise of faculties have entered in some
+manner into the production of the phenomena which we have been
+considering; but certainly not in the way suggested by Lamarck, whose
+whole notion is obviously so inadequate to account for the rise of the
+organic kingdoms, that we only can place it with pity among the follies
+of the wise.  Had the laws of organic development been known in his time,
+his theory might have been of a more imposing kind.  It is upon these
+that the present hypothesis is mainly founded.  I take existing natural
+means, and shew them to have been capable of producing all the existing
+organisms, with the simple and easily conceivable aid of a higher
+generative law, which we perhaps still see operating upon a limited
+scale.  I also go beyond the French philosopher to a very important
+point, the original Divine conception of all the forms of being which
+these natural laws were only instruments in working out and realizing.
+The actuality of such a conception I hold to be strikingly demonstrated
+by the discoveries of Macleay, Vigors, and Swainson, with respect to the
+affinities and analogies of animal (and by implication vegetable)
+organisms. {232}  Such a regularity in the _structure_, as we may call
+it, of the _classification of animals_, as is shewn in their systems, is
+totally irreconcilable with the idea of form going on to form merely as
+needs and wishes in the animals themselves dictated.  Had such been the
+case, all would have been irregular, as things arbitrary necessarily are.
+But, lo, the whole plan of being is as symmetrical as the plan of a
+house, or the laying out of an old-fashioned garden!  This must needs
+have been devised and arranged for beforehand.  And what a preconception
+or forethought have we here!  Let us only for a moment consider how
+various are the external physical conditions in which animals
+live—climate, soil, temperature, land, water, air—the peculiarities of
+food, and the various ways in which it is to be sought; the peculiar
+circumstances in which the business of reproduction and the care-taking
+of the young are to be attended to—all these required to be taken into
+account, and thousands of animals were to be formed suitable in
+organization and mental character for the concerns they were to have with
+these various conditions and circumstances—here a tooth fitted for
+crushing nuts; there a claw fitted to serve as a hook for suspension;
+here to repress teeth and develop a bony net-work instead; there to
+arrange for a bronchial apparatus, to last only for a 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 rigidly regular: let us, I say, only
+consider these things, and we shall see that the decreeing of laws to
+bring the whole about was an act involving such a degree of wisdom and
+device as we only can attribute, adoringly, to the one Eternal and
+Unchangeable.  It may be asked, how does this reflection comport with
+that timid philosophy which would have us to draw back from the
+investigation of God’s works, lest the knowledge of them should make us
+undervalue his greatness and forget his paternal character?  Does it not
+rather appear that our ideas of the Deity can only be worthy of him in
+the ratio in which we advance in a knowledge of his works and ways; and
+that the acquisition of this knowledge is consequently an available means
+of our growing in a genuine reverence for him!
+
+But the idea that any of the lower animals have been concerned in any way
+with the origin of man—is not this degrading?  Degrading is a term,
+expressive of a notion of the human mind, and the human mind is liable to
+prejudices which prevent its notions from being invariably correct.  Were
+we acquainted for the first time with the circumstances attending the
+production of an individual of our race, we might equally think them
+degrading, and be eager to deny them, and exclude them from the admitted
+truths of nature.  Knowing this fact familiarly and beyond contradiction,
+a healthy and natural mind finds no difficulty in regarding it
+complacently.  Creative Providence has been pleased to order that it
+should be so, and it must therefore be submitted to.  Now the idea as to
+the progress of organic creation, if we become satisfied of its truth,
+ought to be received precisely in this spirit.  It has pleased Providence
+to arrange that one species should give birth to another, until the
+second highest gave birth to man, who is the very highest: be it so, it
+is our part to admire and to submit.  The very faintest notion of there
+being anything ridiculous or degrading in the theory—how absurd does it
+appear, when we remember that every individual amongst us actually passes
+through the characters of the insect, the fish, and reptile, (to speak
+nothing of others,) before he is permitted to breathe the breath of life!
+But such notions are mere emanations of false pride and ignorant
+prejudice.  He who conceives them little reflects that they, in reality,
+involve the principle of a contempt for the works and ways of God.  For
+it may be asked, if He, as appears, has chosen to employ inferior
+organisms as a generative medium for the production of higher ones, even
+including ourselves, what right have we, his humble creatures, to find
+fault?  There is, also, in this prejudice, an element of unkindliness
+towards the lower animals, which is utterly out of place.  These
+creatures are all of them part products of the Almighty Conception, as
+well as ourselves.  All of them display wondrous evidences of his wisdom
+and benevolence.  All of them have had assigned to them by their Great
+Father a part in the drama of the organic world, as well as ourselves.
+Why should they be held in such contempt?  Let us regard them in a proper
+spirit, as parts of the grand plan, instead of contemplating them in the
+light of frivolous prejudices, and we shall be altogether at a loss to
+see how there should be any degradation in the idea of our race having
+been genealogically connected with them.
+
+
+
+
+MACLEAY SYSTEM OF ANIMATED NATURE.
+THIS SYSTEM CONSIDERED IN CONNEXION WITH THE
+PROGRESS OF ORGANIC CREATION, AND AS INDICATING
+THE NATURAL STATUS OF MAN.
+
+
+IT is now high time to advert to the system formed by the animated
+tribes, both with a view to the possible illustration of the preceding
+argument, and for the light which it throws upon that general system of
+nature which it is the more comprehensive object of this book to
+ascertain.
+
+The vegetable and animal kingdoms are arranged upon a scale, starting
+from simply organized forms, and going on to the more complex, each of
+these forms being but slightly different from those next to it on both
+sides.  The lowest and most slightly developed forms in the two kingdoms
+are so closely connected, that it is impossible to say where vegetable
+ends and animal begins.  United at what may be called their bases, they
+start away in different directions, but not altogether to lose sight of
+each other.  On the contrary, they maintain a strict analogy throughout
+the whole of their subsequent courses, sub-kingdom for sub-kingdom, class
+for class; shewing a beautiful, though as yet obscure relation between
+the two grand forms of being, and consequently a unity in the laws which
+brought them both into existence.  So complete does this analogy appear,
+even in the present imperfect state of science, that I fully expect in a
+few years to see the animal and vegetable kingdoms duly ranked up against
+each other in a system of parallels, which will admit of our assigning to
+each species in the former the particular shrub or tree corresponding to
+it in the latter, all marked by unmistakable analogies of the most
+interesting kind.
+
+It is as yet but a few years since a system of subordinate analogies not
+less remarkable began to be speculated upon as within the range of the
+animal kingdom.  Probably it also exists in the vegetable kingdom; but to
+this point no direct attention has been given; so we are left to infer
+that such is the case from theoretical considerations only.  We are
+indebted for what we know of these beautiful analogies to three
+naturalists—Macleay, Vigors, and Swainson, whose labours tempt us to
+dismiss in a great measure the artificial classifications hitherto used,
+and make an entirely new conspectus of the animal kingdom, not to speak
+of the corresponding reform which will be required in our systems of
+botany also.
+
+The Macleay system, as it may be called in honour of its principal
+author, announces that, whether we take the whole animal kingdom, or any
+definite division of it, we shall find that we are examining a group of
+beings which is capable of being arranged along a series of close
+affinities, _in a circular form_,—that is to say, starting from any one
+portion of the group, when it is properly arranged, we can proceed from
+one to another by minute gradations, till at length, having run through
+the whole, we return to the point whence we set out.  All natural groups
+of animals are, therefore, in the language of Mr. Macleay, _circular_;
+and the possibility of throwing any supposed group into a circular
+arrangement is held as a decisive test of its being a real or natural
+one.  It is of course to be understood that each circle is composed of a
+set of inferior circles: for example, a set of _tribe_ circles composes
+an _order_; a set of _order_ circles, again, forms a _class_; and so on.
+Of each group, the component circles are _invariably five in number_:
+thus, in the animal kingdom, there are five sub-kingdoms,—the vertebrata,
+annulosa, {239a} radiata, acrita, {239b} mollusca.  Take, again, one of
+these sub-kingdoms, the vertebrata, and we find it composed of five
+classes,—the mammalia, reptilia, pisces, amphibia, and aves, each of the
+other sub-kingdoms being similarly divisible.  Take the mammalia, and it
+is in like manner found to be composed of five orders,—the cheirotheria,
+{239c} feræ, cetacea, glires, ungulata.  Even in this numerical
+uniformity, which goes down to the lowest ramifications of the system,
+there would be something very remarkable, as arguing a definite and
+preconceived arrangement; but this is only the least curious part of the
+Macleay theory.
+
+We shall best understand the wonderfully complex system of analogies
+developed by that theory, if we start from the part of the kingdom in
+which 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 naturalists discerned
+distinct organic characters, of different degrees of perfectness, the
+first being the most perfect with regard to the general character of the
+class, and therefore the best representative of that class; whence it was
+called the _typical_ order.  The second was found to be inferior, or
+rather to have a less perfect balance of qualities; hence it was
+designated the _sub-typical_.  In this are comprehended the chief noxious
+and destructive animals of the circle to which it belongs.  The other
+three groups were called aberrant, as exhibiting a much wider departure
+from the typical standard, although the last of the three is observed to
+make a certain recovery, and join on to the typical group, so as to
+complete the circle.  The first of the aberrant groups (natatores) is
+remarkable for making the water the theatre of its existence, and the
+birds composing it are in general of comparatively large bulk.  The
+second (grallatores) are long-limbed and long-billed, that they may wade
+and pick up their subsistence in the shallows and marshes in which they
+chiefly live.  The third (rasores) are distinguished by strong feet, for
+walking or running on the ground, and for scraping in it for their food;
+also by wings designed to scarcely raise them off the earth and, farther,
+by a general domesticity of character and usefulness to man.
+
+Now the most remarkable circumstance is, that these organic characters,
+habits, and moral properties, were found to be traceable more or less
+distinctly in the corresponding portions of every other group, even of
+those belonging to distant subdivisions of the animal kingdom, as, for
+instance, the insects.  The incessores (typical order of aves) being
+reduced to its constituent circles or tribes, it was found that these
+strictly represented the five orders.  In the _conirostres_ are the
+perfections which belong to the incessores as an order, with the
+conspicuous external feature of a comparatively small notch in their
+bills; in the _dentirostres_, the notch is strong and toothlike, (hence
+the name of the tribe) assimilating them to the raptores; the
+_fissirostres_ come into analogy with the natatores in the slight
+development of their feet and their great powers of flight; the
+_tenuirostres_ have the small mouths and long soft bills of the
+grallatores.  Finally, the _scansores_ resemble the rasores in their
+superior intelligence and docility, and in their having strong limbs and
+a bill entire at the tip.  This parity of qualities becomes clearer when
+placed in a tabular form:—
+
+  _Orders of Birds_.        _Characters_.             _Tribes of
+                                                     Incessores_.
+Incessores              Most perfect of their   Conirostres.
+                        circle; notch of bill
+                        small
+Raptores                Notch of bill like a    Dentirostres.
+                        tooth
+Natatores               Slightly developed      Fissirostres.
+                        feet; strong flight
+Grallatores             Small mouths; long      Tenuirostres.
+                        soft bills
+Rasores                 Strong feet, short      Scansores.
+                        wings; docile and
+                        domestic
+
+Some comprehensive terms are much wanted to describe these five
+characters, so curiously repeated throughout the whole of the animal, and
+probably also the vegetable kingdom.  Meanwhile, Mr. Swainson calls them
+typical, sub-typical, natatorial, suctorial, {242} and rasorial.  Some of
+his illustrations of the principle are exceedingly interesting.  He shews
+that the leading animal of a typical circle usually 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 in bulk, but always those which are the
+most powerfully armed, either for inflicting injury on their own class,
+for exciting terror, producing injury, or creating annoyance to man.
+Their dispositions are often sanguinary, since the forms most conspicuous
+among them live by rapine, and subsist on the blood of other animals.
+They are, in short, symbolically types of _evil_.”  This symbolical
+character is most conspicuous about the centre of the series of
+gradations:—
+
+Kingdom               Annulosa.
+Sub-kingdom           Reptilia.
+Class (Mammalia)      Feræ.
+(Aves)                Raptores.
+
+In the annulosa it is not distinct, although we must also remember that
+insects do produce enormous ravages and annoyance in many parts of the
+earth.  In the reptilia it is more distinct, since to this class belong
+the ophidia, (serpents,) an order peculiarly noxious.  It comes to a kind
+of climax in the feræ and raptores, which fulfil the function of butchers
+among land animals.  As we descend through tribes, families, genera,
+species, it becomes fainter and fainter, but never altogether vanishes.
+In the dentirostres, for instance, we have in a subdued form the hooked
+bill and predaceous character of the raptores; to this tribe belongs the
+family of the shrikes, so deadly to all the lesser field birds.  In the
+genus bos, we have, in the sub-typical group, the bison, “wild,
+revengeful, and shewing an innate detestation of man.”  In equus, we
+have, in the same situation, the zebra, which actually shews the stripes
+of the tiger, and is as remarkable for its wildness as its congeners, the
+horse and ass, are for their docility and usefulness.  To quote again
+from Mr. Swainson, “the singular threatening aspect which the
+caterpillars of the sphinx moth assume on being disturbed, is a
+remarkable modification of the terrific or evil nature which is impressed
+in one form or another, palpable or remote, upon all sub-typical groups;
+for this division of the lepidopterous order is precisely of this
+denomination.  In the pre-eminent type of this order of insects, the
+butterflies, (papilionides,) our associations little prepare us for
+expecting any trace of the evil principle; but here, too, there is a
+sub-typical division.  These,” says our naturalist, “are distinguished by
+their caterpillars being armed with formidable spines or prickles, which
+in general are possessed of some highly acrimonious or poisonous quality,
+capable of injuring those who touch them.  It is only,” continues Mr.
+Swainson, “when extensive researches bring to light a uniformity of
+results, that we can venture to believe they are so universal as to
+deserve being ranked as primary laws.  Thus, when a celebrated
+entomologist denounced as impure the black and lurid beetles forming the
+saprophagous petalocera of Mr. Macleay, a tribe living only upon putrid
+vegetable matter, and hiding themselves in their disgusting food, or in
+dark hollows of the earth, neither of these celebrated men suspected the
+absolute fact, elicited from our analogies of this group, that this very
+tribe constituted the sub-typical group of one of the primary divisions
+of coleopterous insects: nor had they any suspicion that, by the filthy
+habits and repulsive forms of these beetles, nature had intended that
+they should be types or emblems of hundreds of other groups,
+distinguished by peculiarities equally indicative of evil.  On the other
+hand, the thalerophagous petalocera, forming the typical group of the
+same division, present us with all the perfections and habits belonging
+to their kind.  These families of beetles live only upon fresh
+vegetables; they are diurnal, and sport in the glare of day, pure in
+their food, elegant in their shapes, and beautiful in their colours.”
+{246}
+
+The third type, (first of the three aberrant,) called by Mr. Swainson,
+the _natatorial_, or aquatic, are chiefly remarkable for their bulk, the
+disproportionate size of the head, and the absence, or slight development
+of the feet.  They partake of the predaceous and destructive character of
+the adjoining sub-typical group, and the means of their predacity are
+generally found in the mouth alone.  In the primary division of the
+animal kingdom, we find the type in the radiata, not one of which lives
+out of water.  In the vertebrata, it is 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 the aves, as we have seen, the type is presented in the
+natatores, whose name has been adopted as an appropriate term for all the
+corresponding groups.  An enumeration of some other examples of the
+natatorial type, as the cephalopoda (instanced in the cuttle-fish) in the
+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 general character, and its
+pervasion of the whole animal world, forcibly before the mind of the
+reader.
+
+The next type is that of meanest and most imperfect organization, the
+lower termination of all groups, as the typical is the upper.  It is
+called by Mr. Swainson the suctorial, from a very generally prevalent
+peculiarity, that of drawing sustenance by suction.  The acrita, or
+polypes, 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 and
+tenuirostres, among birds; the coleoptera, (bug, louse, flea, &c.) among
+insects; the gastrobranchus, among fishes; are examples which will
+illustrate the special characters of this type.  These are smallness,
+particularly in the head and mouth, feebleness, and want of offensive
+protection, defect of organs of mastication, considerable powers of swift
+movement, and (often) a parasitic mode of living; while of negative
+qualities, there are, besides, indisposition to domestication, and an
+unsuitableness to serve as human food.
+
+The rasorial type comprehends most of the animals which become
+domesticated and useful to man, as, first, the fowls which give a name to
+the type, the ungulata, and more particularly the ruminantia, among
+quadrupeds, and the dog among the feræ.  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 and feet for locomotion on
+land, (to which the rasorial type is confined,) abundant tail and
+ornaments for the head, whether in the form of tufts, crests, horns, or
+bony excrescences.  In the animal kingdom, the mollusca are the rasorial
+type, which, however, only shews itself there in their soft and sluggish
+character, and their being very generally edible.  In the ptilota, or
+winged insects, the hymenopterous are the rasorial type, and it is not
+therefore surprising to find amongst them the ants and bees, “the most
+social, intelligent, and in the latter case, most useful to man, of all
+the annulose animals.”
+
+As yet the speculations on representation are imperfect, in consequence
+of the novelty of the doctrine, and the defective state of our knowledge
+of animated nature.  It has, however, been so fully proved in the aves,
+and traced so clearly in other parts of the animal kingdom, and as a
+general feature of that part of nature, that hardly a doubt can exist of
+its being universally applicable.  Even in the lowly forms of the acrita,
+(polypes,) the suctorial type of the animal kingdom, representation has
+been discerned, and with some remarkable results as to the history of our
+world.  The acrita were the first forms of animal life upon earth, the
+starting point of that great branch of organization.  Now, this
+sub-kingdom consists, like the rest, of five groups, (classes,) and these
+are respectively representations of the acrita itself, and the other four
+sub-kingdoms, which had not come into existence when the acrita were
+formed.  The polypi vaginati, in the crustaceous covering of the living
+mass, and their more or less articulated structure, represent the
+_annulosa_.  In the radiated forms of the rotifera, and the simple
+structure of the polypi rudes, we are reminded of the _radiata_.  The
+_mollusca_ are typified in the soft, mucous, sluggish intestina.  And,
+finally, in the fleshy living mass which surrounds the bony and hollow
+axis of the polypi natantes, we have a sketch of the _vertebrata_.  The
+acrita thus appear as a prophecy of the higher events of animal
+development.  They shew that the nobler orders of being, including man
+himself, were contemplated from the first, and came into existence by
+virtue of a law, the operation of which had commenced ages before their
+forms were realized.
+
+The system of representation is therefore to be regarded as _a powerful
+additional proof of the hypothesis of organic progress by virtue of law_.
+It establishes the unity of animated nature and the definite character of
+its entire constitution.  It enables us to see how, under the flowing
+robes of nature, where all looks arbitrary and accidental, there is an
+artificiality of the most rigid kind.  The natural, we now perceive,
+sinks into and merges in a Higher Artificial.  To adopt a comparison more
+apt than dignified, we may be said to be placed here as insects are in a
+garden of the old style.  Our first unassisted view is limited, and we
+perceive only the irregularities of the minute surface, and single shrubs
+which appear arbitrarily scattered.  But our view at length extending and
+becoming more comprehensive, we begin to see parterres balancing each
+other, trees, statues, and arbours placed symmetrically, and that the
+whole is an assemblage of parts mutually reflective.  It can scarcely be
+necessary to point to the inference hence arising with regard to the
+origination of nature in some Power, of which man’s mind is a faint and
+humble representation.  The insects of the garden, supposing them to be
+invested with reasoning power, and aware how artificial are their own
+works, might of course very reasonably conclude that, being in its
+totality an artificial object, the garden was the work of some maker or
+artificer.  And so also must we conclude, when we attain a knowledge of
+the artificiality which is at the basis of nature, that nature is wholly
+the production of a Being resembling, but infinitely greater than
+ourselves.
+
+Organic beings are, then, bound together in development, and in a system
+of both affinities and analogies.  Now, it will be asked, does this agree
+with what we know of the geographical distribution of organic beings, and
+of the history of organic progress as delineated by geology?  Let us
+first advert to the geographical question.
+
+Plants, as is well known, require various kinds of soil, forms of
+geographical surface, climate, and other conditions, for their existence.
+And it is everywhere found that, however isolated a particular spot may
+be with regard to these conditions,—as a mountain top in a torrid
+country, the marsh round a salt spring far inland, or an island placed
+far apart in the ocean,—appropriate plants have there taken up their
+abode.  But the torrid zone divides the two temperate regions from each
+other by the space of more than forty-six degrees, and the torrid and
+temperate zones together form a much broader line of division between the
+two arctic regions.  The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Persian
+Gulf, also divide the various portions of continent in the torrid and
+temperate zones from each other.  Australia is also divided by a broad
+sea from the continent of Asia.  Thus there are various portions of the
+earth separated from each other in such a way as to preclude anything
+like a general communication of the seeds of their respective plants
+towards each other.  Hence arises an interesting question—Are the plants
+of the various isolated regions which enjoy a parity of climate and other
+conditions, identical or the reverse?  The answer is—that in such regions
+the vegetation bears a general resemblance, but the _species_ are nearly
+all different, and there is even, in a considerable measure, a diversity
+of families.
+
+The general facts have been thus stated: in the arctic and antarctic
+regions, and in those parts of lower latitudes, which, from their
+elevation, possess the same cold climate, there is always a similar or
+analogous vegetation, but few species are common to the various
+situations.  In like manner, the intertropical vegetation of Asia,
+Africa, and America, are specifically different, though generally
+similar.  The southern region of America is equally diverse from that of
+Africa, a country similar in clime, but separated by a vast extent of
+ocean.  The vegetation of Australia, another region similarly placed in
+respect of clime, is even more peculiar.  These facts are the more
+remarkable when we discover that, in most instances, the plants of one
+region have thriven when transplanted to another of parallel clime.  This
+would shew that parity of conditions does not lead to a parity of
+productions so exact as to include identity of species, or even genera.
+Besides the various isolated regions here enumerated, there are some
+others indicated by naturalists as exhibiting a vegetation equally
+peculiar.  Some of these are isolated by mountains, or the interposition
+of sandy wastes.  For example, the temperate region of the elder
+continent is divided about the centre of Asia, and the east of that line
+is different from the west.  So also is the same region divided in North
+America by the Rocky Mountains.  Abyssinia and Nubia constitute another
+distinct botanical region.  De Candolle enumerates in all twenty
+well-marked portions of the earth’s surface which are peculiar with
+respect to vegetation; a number which would be greatly increased if
+remote islands and isolated 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 forms of being) is
+universal, and that several tribes, as the bear and dog, appear to have
+passed by the land connexion from the arctic regions of the eastern to
+those of the western hemisphere.  “With these exceptions,” says Dr.
+Prichard, “and without any others, as far as zoological researches have
+yet gone, it may be asserted that no individual species are common to
+distant regions.  In parallel climates, analogous species replace each
+other; sometimes, but not frequently, the same genus is found in two
+separate continents; but the species which are natives of one region are
+not identical with corresponding races indigenous in the opposite
+hemisphere.
+
+“A similar result arises when we compare the three great intertropical
+regions, as well as the extreme spaces of the three great continents,
+which advance into the temperate climates of the southern hemisphere.
+
+“Thus, the tribes of simiæ, (monkeys,) of the dog and cat kinds, of
+pachyderms, including elephants, tapirs, rhinoceroses, hogs, of bats, of
+saurian and ophidian reptiles, as well of birds and other terrene
+animals, are all different in the three great continents.  In the lower
+departments of the mammiferous family, we find that the bruta, or
+edendata, (sloths, armadillos, &c.,) of Africa, are differently organized
+from those of America, and these again from the tribes found in the
+Malayan archipelago and Terra Australis.” {255}
+
+It does not appear that the diversity between the similar regions of
+Africa, Asia, and America, is occasioned in all instances by any
+disqualification of these countries to support precisely the same genera
+or species.  The ox, horse, goat, &c., of the elder continent have
+thriven and extended themselves in the new, and many of the indigenous
+tribes of America would no doubt flourish in corresponding climates in
+Europe, Asia, and Africa.  It has, however, been remarked by naturalists
+unacquainted with the Macleay system, that the larger and more powerful
+animals of their respective orders belong to the elder continent, and
+that thus the animals of America, unlike the features of inanimate
+nature, appear to be upon a small scale.  The swiftest and most agile
+animals, and a large proportion of those most useful to man, are also
+natives of the elder continent.  On the other hand, the bulk of the
+edentata, a group remarkable for defects and meanness of organization,
+are American.  The zoology of America may be said, upon the whole, to
+recede from that of Asia, “and perhaps in a greater degree,” adds Dr.
+Prichard, “from that of Africa.”  A much greater recession is, however,
+observed in both the botany and zoology of Australia.
+
+There “we do not find, in the great masses of vegetation, either the
+majesty of the virgin forests of America, or the variety and elegance of
+those of Asia, or the delicacy and freshness of the woods of our
+temperate countries of Europe.  The vegetation is generally gloomy and
+sad; it has the aspect of our evergreens or heaths; the plants are for
+the most part woody; the leaves of nearly all the plants are linear,
+lanceolated, small, coriaceous, and spinescent.  The grasses, which
+elsewhere are generally soft and flexible, participate in the stiffness
+of the other vegetables.  The greater part of the plants of New Holland
+belong to new genera; and those included in the genera already known are
+of new species.  The natural families which prevail are those of the
+heaths, the proteæ, compositæ, leguminosæ, and myrthoideæ; the larger
+trees all belong to the last family.” {257}
+
+The prevalent animals of Australia are not less peculiar.  It is well
+known that none above the marsupialia, or pouched animals, are native to
+it.  The most conspicuous are these marsupials, which exist in great
+varieties here, though unknown in the elder continent, and only found in
+a few mean forms in America.  Next to them are the monotremata, which are
+entirely peculiar to this portion of the earth.  Now these are animals at
+the bottom of the mammiferous class, adjoining to that of birds, of whose
+character and organization the monotremata largely partake, the
+ornithorynchus presenting the bill and feet of a duck, producing its
+young in eggs, and having, like birds, a clavicle between the two
+shoulders.  The birds of Australia vary in structure and plumage, but all
+have some singularity about them—the swan, for instance, is black.  The
+country abounds in reptiles, and the prevalent fishes are of the early
+kinds, having a cartilaginous structure.
+
+Altogether, the plants and animals of this minor continent convey the
+impression of an early system of things, such as might be displayed in
+other parts of the earth about the time of the oolite.  In connexion with
+this circumstance, it is a fact of some importance, that the geognostic
+character of Australia, its vast arid plains, its little diversified
+surface and consequent paucity of streams, and the very slight
+development of volcanic rock on its surface, seem to indicate a system of
+physical conditions, such as we may suppose to have existed elsewhere in
+the oolitic era: perhaps we see the chalk formation preparing there in
+the vast coral beds frontiering the coast.  Australia thus appears as a
+portion of the earth which has, from some unknown causes, been belated in
+its physical and organic development.  And certainly the greater part of
+its surface is not fitted to be an advantageous place of residence for
+beings above the marsupialia, and judging from analogy, it may yet be
+subjected to a series of changes in the highest degree inconvenient to
+any human beings 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 organic production
+throughout the earth.  (2.) These have everywhere advanced in accordance
+with the local conditions of climate &c., as far as at least the class
+and order are concerned, a diversity taking place in the lower
+gradations.  No physical or geographical reason appearing for this
+diversity, we are led to infer that, (3,) it is the result of minute and
+inappreciable causes giving the law of organic development a particular
+direction in the lower subdivisions of the two kingdoms.  (4.)
+Development has not gone on to equal results in the various continents,
+being most advanced in the eastern continent, next in the western, and
+least in Australia, this inequality being perhaps the result of the
+comparative antiquity of the various regions, geologically and
+geographically.
+
+It must at the same time be admitted that the line of organic development
+has nowhere required for its advance the whole of the families
+comprehended in the two kingdoms, seeing that some of these are confined
+to one continent, and some to another, without a conceivable possibility
+of one having been connected with the other in the way of ancestry.  The
+two great families of quadrumana, cebidæ and simiadæ, are a noted
+instance, the one being exclusively American, while the other belongs
+entirely to the old world.  There are many other cases in which the full
+circular group can only be completed by taking subdivisions from various
+continents.  This would seem to imply that, while the entire system is so
+remarkable for its unity, it has nevertheless been produced in lines
+geographically detached, these lines perhaps consisting of particular
+typical groups placed in an independent succession, or of two or more of
+these groups.  And for this idea there is, even in the present imperfect
+state of our knowledge of animated nature, some countenance in
+ascertained facts, the birds of Australia, for example, being chiefly of
+the suctorial type, while it may be presumed that the observation as to
+the predominance of the useful animals in the Old World, is not much
+different from saying that the rasorial type is there peculiarly
+abundant.  It does not appear that the idea of independent lines,
+consisting of particular types, or sets of types, is necessarily
+inconsistent with the general hypothesis, as nothing yet ascertained of
+the Macleay system forbids their having an independent set of affinities.
+On this subject, however, there is as yet much obscurity, and it must be
+left to future inquirers to clear it up.
+
+We must now call to mind that the geographical distribution of plants and
+animals was very different in the geological ages from what it is now.
+Down to a time not long antecedent to man, the same vegetation overspread
+every clime, and a similar uniformity marked the zoology.  This is
+conceived by M. Brogniart, with great plausibility, to have been the
+result of a uniformity of climate, produced by the as yet unexhausted
+effect of the internal heat of the earth upon its surface; whereas
+climate has since depended chiefly on external sources of heat, as
+modified by the various meteorological influences.  However the early
+uniform climate was produced, certain it is that, from about the close of
+the geological epoch, plants and animals have been dispersed over the
+globe with a regard to their particular characters, and specimens of both
+are found so isolated in particular situations, as utterly to exclude the
+idea that they came thither from any common centre.  It may be
+asked,—Considering that, in the geological epoch, species are not limited
+to particular regions, and that since the close of that epoch, they are
+very peculiarly limited, are we to presume the present organisms of the
+world to have been created _ab initio_ after that time?  To this it may
+be answered,—Not necessarily, as it so happens that animals begin to be
+much varied, or to appear in a considerable variety of species, towards
+the close of the geological history.  It may have been that the
+multitudes of locally peculiar species only came into being after the
+uniform climate had passed away.  It may have only been when a varied
+climate arose, that the originally few species branched off into the
+present extensive variety.
+
+A question of a very interesting kind will now probably arise in the
+reader’s mind—_What place or status is assigned to man in the new natural
+system_.  Before going into this inquiry, it is necessary to advert to
+several particulars of the natural system not yet noticed.
+
+It is necessary, in particular, to ascertain the grades which exist in
+the classification of animals.  In the line of the aves, Mr. Swainson
+finds these to be nine, the species pica, for example, being thus
+indicated:—
+
+Kingdom                    Animalia.
+Sub-kingdom                Vertebrata.
+Class                      Aves.
+Order                      Incessores.
+Tribe                      Conirostres.
+Family                     Corvidæ.
+Sub-family                 Corvinæ.
+Genus                      Corvus.
+Sub-genus, or species      Pica.
+
+This brings us down to species, the subdivision where intermarriage or
+breeding is usually considered as natural to animals, and where a
+resemblance of offspring to parents is generally persevered in.  The dog,
+for instance, is a species, because all dogs can breed together, and the
+progeny partakes of the appearances of the parents.  The human race is
+held as a species, primarily for the same reasons.  Species, however, is
+liable to another subdivision, which naturalists call variety; and
+variety appears to be subject to exactly the same system of
+_representation_ which have been traced in species and higher
+denominations.  In canis, for instance, the bull-dog and mastiff
+represent the ferocious sub-typical group; the waterdog is natatorial; we
+see the speed and length of muzzle of the suctorial group in the
+greyhound; and the bushy tail and gentle and serviceable character of the
+rasorial in the shepherd’s dog and spaniel.  Even the striped and spotted
+skin of the tiger and panther is reproduced in the more ferocious kind of
+dogs—an indication of a fundamental connexion between physical and mental
+qualities which we have also seen in the zebra, and which is likewise
+displayed in the predominance of a yellow colour in the vultures and owls
+in common with the lion and his congeners.
+
+It is by no means clearly made out that this system of nine gradations
+over and above that of variety applies in all departments of nature.  On
+the contrary, even Mr. Swainson gives series in which several of them are
+omitted.  It may be that, in some departments of nature, variation from
+the class or order has gone down into fewer shades than in others; or it
+may be, that many of the variations have not survived till our era, or
+have not been as yet detected by naturalists; in either of which cases
+there may be a necessity for shortening the series by the omission of one
+or two grades, as for instance _tribe_ or _sub-family_.  This, however,
+is much to be regretted, as it introduces an irregularity into the
+natural system, and consequently throws a difficulty and doubt in the way
+of our investigating it.  With these preliminary remarks, I shall proceed
+to inquire 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 the
+characters on which these divisions are founded.  When we descend,
+however, below the _class_, we find no settled views on the subject
+amongst naturalists.  Mr. Swainson, who alone has given a review of the
+animal kingdom on the Macleay system, unfortunately writes on this
+subject in a manner which excites a suspicion as to his judgment.  His
+arrangement of the first or typical order of the mammalia is therefore to
+be received with great hesitation.  It is as follows:—
+
+Typical          Quadrumana      Pre-eminently organized for
+                                 grasping.
+Sub-typical      Feræ            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 following
+arrangement:—
+
+Typical          Simiadæ              (Monkeys of Old World.)
+Sub-typical      Cebidæ               (Monkeys of New World.)
+Natatorial       Unknown
+Suctorial        Vespertilionidæ      (Bats.)
+Rasorial         Lemuridæ             (Lemurs.)
+
+He considers the simiadæ as a complete circle, and argues thence that
+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 he were, there
+ought to be other animals on each hand having affinity to him, whereas
+there are none, the resemblance of the orangs being one of mere analogy.
+Mr. Swainson therefore considers our race as standing apart, and forming
+a link between the unintelligent order of beings and the angels!  And
+this in spite of the glaring fact that, in our teeth, hands, and other
+features grounded on by naturalists as characteristic, we do not differ
+more from the simiadæ than the bats do from the lemurs—in spite also of
+that resemblance of analogy to the orangs which he himself admits, and
+which, at the least, must be held to imply a certain relation.  He also
+overlooks that, though there may be no room for man in the circle of the
+simiadæ, (this, indeed, is quite true,) there may be in the order, where
+he actually leaves a place entirely blank, or only to be filled up, as he
+suggests, by mermen! {266}  Another argument in his arrangement is, that
+it leaves the grades of classification very much abridged, there being at
+the most seven instead of nine.  But serious argument on a theory so
+preposterous may be considered as nearly thrown away.  I shall therefore
+at once proceed to suggest a new arrangement of this portion of the
+animal kingdom, in which man is allowed the place to which he is
+zoologically entitled.
+
+I propose that the typical order of the mammalia should be designated
+cheirotheria, from the sole character which is universal amongst them,
+their possessing hands, and with a regard to that pre-eminent
+qualification for grasping which has been ascribed to them—an analogy to
+the perching habit of the typical order of birds, which is worthy of
+particular notice.  The tribes of the cheirotheria I arrange as follows:—
+
+Typical          Bimana.
+Sub-typical      Simiadæ.
+Natatorial       Vespertilionidæ.
+Suctorial        Lemuridæ.
+Rasorial         Cebidæ.
+
+Here man is put into the typical place, as the genuine head, not only of
+this order, but of the whole animal world.  The double affinity which is
+requisite is obtained, for here he has the simiadæ on one hand, and the
+cebidæ on the other.  The five tribes of the order are completed, the
+vespertilionidæ being shifted (provisionally) into the natatorial place,
+for which their appropriateness is so far evidenced by the aquatic habits
+of several of the tribe, and the lemuridæ into the suctorial, to which
+their length of muzzle and remarkable saltatory power are highly
+suitable.  At the same time, the simiadæ are degraded from the typical
+place, to which they have no sort of pretension, and placed where their
+mean and mischievous character seem to require; the cebidæ again being
+assigned that situation which their comparatively inoffensive
+dispositions, their arboreal 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 precisely what
+might be expected.  In order to understand its full value, it is
+necessary to observe how the various type peculiarities operate in fixing
+the character of the animals ranked in them.  It is easy to conceive that
+they must be, in some instances, much mixed up with each other, and
+consequently obscured.  If an animal, for example, is the suctorial
+member of a circle of species, forming the natatorial type of genera,
+forming a family or sub-family which in its turn is rasorial, its
+qualities must evidently be greatly mingled and ill to define.  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 again the rapacious or sub-typical
+group of its order, we may expect to find the qualities of that group
+exalted or intensified, and accordingly made the more conspicuous.  Such
+is really the case with the vultures, in the rapacious birds, a family
+remarkable above all of their order for their carnivorous and foul
+habits.  So, also, if we take the typical group of the birds, the
+incessores or perchers, and look in it for its typical group, the
+conirostres, and seek there again for the typical family of that group,
+the corvidæ, we may expect to find a very marked superiority in
+organization and character.  Such is really the case.  “The crow,” says
+Mr. Swainson, “unites in itself a greater number of properties than are
+to be found individually in any other genus of birds; as if in fact it
+had taken from all the other orders a portion of their peculiar
+qualities, for the purpose of exhibiting in what manner they could be
+combined.  From the rapacious birds this “type of types,” as the crow has
+been justly called, takes the power of soaring in the air, and of seizing
+upon living birds, like the hawks, while its habit of devouring putrid
+substances, and picking out the eyes of young animals, is borrowed from
+the vultures.  From the scansorial or climbing order it takes the faculty
+of picking the ground, and discovering its food when hidden from the eye,
+while the parrot family gives it the taste for 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 the perfection of the crow by giving it great
+powers of flight, and perfect facility in walking, such being among the
+chief attributes of the suctorial order.  Lastly, the aquatic birds
+contribute their portion, by giving this terrestrial bird the power of
+feeding not only on fish, which are their peculiar food, but actually of
+occasionally catching it. {270}  In this wonderful manner do we find the
+crow partially invested with the united properties of all other birds,
+while in its own order, that of the incessores or perchers, it stands the
+pre-eminent type.  We cannot also fail to regard it as a remarkable proof
+of the superior organization and character of the corvidæ, that they are
+adapted for all climates, and accordingly found 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 of man,
+evidently does so in a remarkable degree.  It prepares us to expect in
+the place among the mammalia, corresponding to that of the corvidæ in the
+aves, a being or set of beings possessing a remarkable concentration of
+qualities from all the other groups of their order, but in general
+character as far above the corvidæ as a typical group is above an
+aberrant one, the mammalia above the aves.  Can any of the simiadæ
+pretend to such a place, narrowly and imperfectly endowed as these
+creatures are—a mean reflection apparently of something higher?
+Assuredly not, and in this consideration alone Mr. Swainson’s arrangement
+must fall to the ground.  To fill worthily so lofty a station in the
+animated families man alone is competent.  In him only is to be found
+that concentration of qualities from all the other groups of his order
+which has been described as marking the corvidæ.  That grasping power,
+which has been selected as the leading physical quality of his order, is
+nowhere so beautifully or so powerfully developed as in his hand.  The
+intelligence and teachableness of the simiadæ rise to a climax in his
+pre-eminent mental nature.  His sub-analogy to the feræ is marked by his
+canine teeth, and the universality of his rapacity, for where is the
+department of animated nature which he does not without scruple sacrifice
+to his convenience?  With sanguinary, he has also gentle and domesticable
+dispositions, thus reflecting the characters of the ungulata, (the
+rasorial type of the class,) to which we perhaps see a further analogy in
+the use which he makes of the surface of the earth as a source of food.
+To the aquatic type his love of maritime adventure very readily
+assimilates him; and how far the suctorial is represented in his nature
+it is hardly necessary to say.  As the corvidæ, too, are found in every
+part of the earth—almost the only one of the inferior animals which has
+been acknowledged as universal—so do we find man.  He thrives in all
+climates, and with regard to style of living, can adapt himself to an
+infinitely greater diversity of circumstances than any other animated
+creature.
+
+Man, then, considered zoologically, and without regard to the distinct
+character assigned to him by theology, simply takes his place as the type
+of all types of the animal kingdom, the true and unmistakable head of
+animated nature upon this earth.  It will readily occur that some more
+particular investigations into the ranks of types might throw additional
+light on man’s status, and perhaps his nature; and such light we may hope
+to obtain when the philosophy of zoology shall have been studied as it
+deserves.  Perhaps some such diagram as the one given on the next page
+will be found to be an approximation to the expression of the merely
+natural or secular grade of man in comparison with other animals.
+
+                         [Picture: Diagram] {274}
+
+Here the upright lines, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, may represent the comparative
+height and grade of organization of both the five sub-kingdoms, and the
+five classes of each of these; 5 being the vertebrata in the one case,
+and the mammalia in the other.  The difference between the height of the
+line 1 and the line 5 gives an idea of the difference of being the head
+type of the aves, (corvidæ,) and the head type of the mammalia, (bimana;)
+_a. b. c. d_.  5, again, represent the five groups of the first order of
+the mammalia; _a_, being the organic structure of the highest simia, and
+5, that of man.  A set of tangent lines of this kind may yet prove one of
+the most satisfactory means of ascertaining the height and breadth of the
+psychology of our species.
+
+It may be asked,—Is the existing human race the only species designed to
+occupy the grade to which it is here referred?  Such a question evidently
+ought not to be answered rashly; and I shall therefore confine myself to
+the admission that, judging by analogy, we might expect to see several
+varieties of the being, homo.  There is no other family approaching to
+this in importance, which presents but one species.  The corvidæ, our
+parallel in aves, consist of several distinct genera and sub-genera.  It
+is startling to find such an appearance of imperfection in the circle to
+which man belongs, and the ideas which rise in consequence are not less
+startling.  Is our race but the initial of the grand crowning type?  Are
+there yet to be species superior to us in organization, purer in feeling,
+more powerful in device and act, and who shall take a rule over us!
+There is in this nothing improbable on other grounds.  The present race,
+rude and impulsive as it is, is perhaps the best adapted to the present
+state of things in the world; but the external world goes through slow
+and gradual changes, which may leave it in time a much serener field of
+existence.  There may then be occasion for a nobler type of humanity,
+which shall complete the zoological circle on this planet, and realize
+some of the dreams of the purest spirits of the present race.
+
+
+
+
+EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND.
+
+
+THE human race is known to consist of numerous nations, displaying
+considerable differences of external form and colour, and speaking in
+general different languages.  This has been the case since the
+commencement of written record.  It is also ascertained that the external
+peculiarities of particular nations do not rapidly change.  There is
+rather a tendency to a persistency of type in all lines of descent,
+insomuch that a subordinate admixture of various type is usually
+obliterated in a few generations.  Numerous as the varieties are, they
+have all been found classifiable under five leading ones:—1.  The
+Caucasian or Indo-European, which extends from India into Europe and
+Northern Africa; 2.  The Mongolian, which occupies Northern and Eastern
+Asia; 3.  The Malayan, which extends from the Ultra-Gangetic Peninsula
+into the numerous islands of the South Sea and Pacific; 4.  The Negro,
+chiefly confined to Africa; 5.  The aboriginal American.  Each of these
+is distinguished by certain general features of so marked a kind, as to
+give rise to a supposition that they have had distinct or independent
+origins.  Of these peculiarities, colour is the most conspicuous: the
+Caucasians are generally white, the Mongolians yellow, the Negroes black,
+and the Americans red.  The opposition of two of these in particular,
+white and black, is so striking, that of them, at least, it seems almost
+necessary to suppose separate origins.  Of late years, however, the whole
+of this question has been subjected to a rigorous investigation, and it
+has been successfully shewn that the human race might have had one
+origin, for anything that can be inferred from external peculiarities.
+
+It appears from this inquiry, {278} that colour and other physiological
+characters are of a more superficial and accidental nature than was at
+one time supposed.  One fact is at the very first extremely startling,
+that there are nations, such as the inhabitants of Hindostan, known to be
+one in descent, which nevertheless contain groups of people of almost all
+shades of colour, and likewise discrepant in other of those important
+features on which much stress has 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
+as those of the best European nations.  While we have no proof of Negro
+races becoming white in the course of generations, the converse may be
+held as established, for there are Arab and Jewish families of ancient
+settlement in Northern Africa, who have become as black as the other
+inhabitants.  There are also facts which seem to shew the possibility of
+a natural transition by generation from the black to the 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 perfectly black children being born to an
+Arab couple, in whose ancestry no such blood had intermingled.  This
+occurred in the valley of the Jordan, where it is remarkable that the
+Arab population in general have flatter features, darker skins, and
+coarser hair, than any other tribes of the same nation. {280}
+
+The style of living is ascertained to have a powerful effect in modifying
+the human figure in the course of generations, and this even in its
+osseous structure.  About two hundred years ago, a number of people were
+driven by a barbarous policy from the counties of Antrim and Down, in
+Ireland, towards the sea-coast, where they have ever since been settled,
+but in unusually miserable circumstances, even for Ireland; and the
+consequence is, that they exhibit peculiar features of the most repulsive
+kind, projecting jaws with large open mouths, depressed noses, high cheek
+bones, and bow legs, together with an extremely diminutive stature.
+These, with an abnormal slenderness of the limbs, are the outward marks
+of a low and barbarous condition all over the world; it is particularly
+seen in the Australian aborigines.  On the other hand, the beauty of the
+higher ranks in England is very remarkable, being, in the main, as
+clearly a result of good external conditions.  “Coarse, unwholesome, and
+ill-prepared food,” says Buffon, “makes the human race degenerate.  All
+those people who live miserably are ugly and ill-made.  Even in France,
+the country people are not so beautiful as those who live in towns; and I
+have often remarked that in those villages 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, cleanly habits, comfortable clothing, and being
+exposed to the open air only as much as health requires, cooperate with
+food in increasing the elegance 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, insomuch that a
+single individual thrown into a family different from himself is absorbed
+in it, and all trace of him lost after a few generations.  But while
+there is such a persistency to ordinary observation, it would also appear
+that nature has a power of producing new varieties, though this is only
+done rarely.  Such novelties of type abound in the vegetable world, are
+seen more rarely in the animal circle, and perhaps are least frequent of
+occurrence in our own race.  There is a noted instance in the production,
+on a New England farm, of a variety of sheep with unusually short legs,
+which was kept up by breeding, on account of the convenience in that
+country of having sheep which are unable to jump over low fences.  The
+starting and main taming a _breed_ of 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 place between individuals similarly characterized, in
+order to establish it.  Early in the last century, a man named Lambert,
+was born in Suffolk, with semi-horny excrescences of about half an inch
+long, thickly growing all over his body.  The peculiarity was transmitted
+to his children, and was last heard of in a third generation.  The
+peculiarity of six fingers on the hand and six toes on the feet, appears
+in like manner in families which have no record or tradition of such a
+peculiarity having affected them at any former period, and it is then
+sometimes seen to descend through several generations.  It was Mr.
+Lawrence’s opinion, that a pair, in which both parties were so
+distinguished, might be the progenitors of a new variety of the race who
+would be thus marked in all future time.  It is not easy to surmise the
+causes which operate in producing such varieties.  Perhaps they are
+simply types in nature, _possible to be realized under certain
+appropriate conditions_, but which conditions are such as altogether to
+elude notice.  I might cite as examples of such possible types, the rise
+of whites amongst the Negroes, the occurrence of the family of black
+children in the valley of the Jordan, and the comparatively frequent
+birth of red-haired children amongst not only the Mongolian and Malayan
+families, but amongst the Negroes.  We are ignorant of the laws of
+variety-production; but we see it going on as a principle in nature, and
+it is obviously favourable to the supposition that all the great families
+of men are of one stock.
+
+The tendency of the modern study of the languages of nations is to the
+same point.  The last fifty years have seen this study elevated to the
+character of a science, and the light which it throws upon the history of
+mankind is of a most remarkable nature.
+
+Following a natural analogy, philologists have thrown the earth’s
+languages into a kind of classification: a number bearing a considerable
+resemblance to each other, and in general geographically near, are styled
+a _group_ or _sub-family_; several groups, again, are associated as a
+_family_, with regard to more general features of resemblance.  Six
+families are spoken of.
+
+The Indo-European family nearly coincides in geographical limits with
+those which have been assigned to that variety of mankind which generally
+shews a fair complexion, called the Caucasian variety.  It may be said to
+commence in India, and thence to stretch through Persia into Europe, the
+whole of which it occupies, excepting Hungary, 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 includes the 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 our own Anglo-Saxon.  I give the name of Pelasgian
+to the group scattered along 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;
+but these have since been driven before superior nations into a few
+corners, and are now only to be found in the highlands of Scotland,
+Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and certain parts of France.  The Gaelic of
+Scotland, Erse of Ireland, and the Welsh, are the only living branches of
+this sub-family of languages.
+
+The resemblances amongst languages are of two kinds,—identity of words,
+and identity of grammatical forms; the latter being now generally
+considered as the most important towards the argument.  When we inquire
+into the first kind of affinity among the languages of the Indo-European
+family, we are surprised at the great number of common terms which exist
+amongst them, and these referring to such primary ideas, as to leave no
+doubt of their having all been derived from a common source.  Colonel
+Vans Kennedy presents nine hundred words common to the Sanskrit and other
+languages of the same family.  In the Sanskrit and Persian, we find
+several which require no sort of translation 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_, the eye-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_, a star; _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 a
+striking manner when Bopp and others investigated the grammatical
+structure of this family of languages.  Dr. Wiseman pronounces that the
+great philologist just named, “by a minute and sagacious analysis of the
+Sanskrit verb, compared with the conjugational system of the other
+members of this family, left no doubt of their intimate and positive
+affinity.”  It was now discovered that the peculiar terminations or
+inflections by which persons are expressed throughout the verbs of nearly
+the whole of these languages, have their foundations in pronouns; the
+pronoun was simply placed at the end, and thus became an inflexion.  “By
+an analysis of the Sanskrit pronouns, the elements of those existing in
+all the other languages were cleared of their anomalies; the verb
+substantive, which in Latin is composed of fragments referable to two
+distinct roots, here found both existing in regular form; the Greek
+conjugations, with all their complicated machinery of middle voice,
+augments, and reduplications, were here found and illustrated in a
+variety of ways, which a few years ago would have appeared chimerical.
+Even our own language may sometimes receive light from the study of
+distant members of our family.  Where, for instance, are we to seek for
+the root of our comparative _better_?  Certainly not in its positive,
+good, nor in the Teutonic dialects in which the same anomaly exists.  But
+in the Persian we have precisely the same comparative, _behter_, with
+exactly the same signification, regularly formed from its positive _beh_,
+good.” {287}
+
+The second great family is the _Syro-Phœnician_, comprising the Hebrew,
+Syro-Chaldaic, Arabic, and Gheez or Abyssinian, being localized
+principally in the countries to the west and south of the Mediterranean.
+Beyond them, again, is the African family, which, as far as research has
+gone, seems to be in like manner marked by common features, both verbal
+and grammatical.  The fourth is the Polynesian family, extending from
+Madagascar on the west through all the Indian Archipelago, besides taking
+in the Malayan dialect from the continent of India, and comprehending
+Australia and the islands of the western portion of the Pacific.  This
+family, however, bears such an affinity to that next to be described,
+that Dr. Leyden and some others do not give it a distinct place as a
+family of languages.
+
+The fifth family is the Chinese, embracing a large part of China, and
+most of the regions of Central and Northern Asia.  The leading features
+of the Chinese are, its consisting altogether of monosyllables, and being
+destitute of all grammatical forms, except certain arrangements and
+accentuations, which vary the sense of particular words.  It is also
+deficient in some of the consonants most conspicuous in other languages,
+b, d, r, v, and z; so that this people can scarcely pronounce our speech
+in such a way as to be intelligible: for example, the word Christus they
+call _Kuliss-ut-oo-suh_.  The Chinese, strange to say, though they early
+attained to a remarkable degree of civilization, and have preceded the
+Europeans in many of the most important inventions, have a language which
+resembles that of children, or deaf and dumb people.  The sentence of
+short, simple, unconnected words, in which an infant amongst us attempts
+to express some of its wants and its ideas—the equally broken and
+difficult terms which the deaf and dumb express by signs, as the
+following passage of the Lord’s Prayer:—“Our Father, heaven in, wish your
+name respect, wish your soul’s kingdom providence arrive, wish your will
+do heaven earth equality,” &c.—these are like the discourse of the
+refined people of the so-called Celestial Empire.  An attempt was made by
+the Abbé Sicard to teach the deaf and dumb grammatical signs; but they
+persisted in restricting themselves to the simple signs of ideas, leaving
+the structure undetermined by any but the natural order of connexion.
+Such is exactly the condition of the Chinese language.
+
+Crossing the Pacific, we come to the last great family in the languages
+of the aboriginal Americans, which have all of them features in common,
+proving them to constitute a group by themselves, without any regard to
+the very different degrees of civilization which these nations had
+attained at the time of the discovery.  The common resemblance is in the
+grammatical structure as well as in words, and the grammatical structure
+of this family is of a very peculiar and complicated kind.  The general
+character in this respect has caused the term Polysynthetic to be applied
+to the American languages.  A long many-syllabled word is used by the
+rude Algonquins and Delawares to express a whole sentence: for example, a
+woman of the latter nation, playing with a little dog or cat, would
+perhaps be heard saying, “_kuligatschis_,” meaning, “give me your pretty
+little paw;” the word, on examination, is found to be made up in this
+manner: _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 youth
+is called pilape, a word compounded from the first part of pilsit,
+innocent, and the latter part of lenape, a man.  Thus, it will be
+observed, a number of parts of words are taken and thrown together, by a
+process which has been happily termed _agglutination_, so as to form one
+word, conveying a complicated idea.  There is also an elaborate system of
+inflection; in nouns, for instance, there is one kind of inflection to
+express the presence or absence of vitality, and another to express
+number.  The genius of the language has been described as accumulative:
+it “tends rather to add syllables or letters, making farther distinctions
+in objects already before the mind, than to introduce new words.” {291}
+Yet it has also been shewn very distinctly, that these languages are
+based in words of one syllable, like those of the Chinese and Polynesian
+families; all the primary ideas are thus expressed: the elaborate system
+of inflection and agglutination is shewn to be simply a farther
+development of the language-forming principle, as it may be called—or the
+Chinese system may be described as an arrestment of this principle at a
+particular early point.  It has been fully shewn, that between the
+structure of the American and other families, sufficient affinities exist
+to make a common origin or early connexion extremely likely.  The verbal
+affinities are also very considerable.  Humboldt says, “In eighty-three
+American languages examined by Messrs. Barton and Vater, one hundred and
+seventy words have been found, the roots of which appear to be the same;
+and it is easy to perceive that this analogy is not accidental, since it
+does not rest merely upon imitative harmony, or on that conformity of
+organs which produces almost a perfect identity in the first sounds
+articulated by children.  Of these one hundred and seventy words which
+have this connexion, three-fifths resemble the Manchou, the Tongouse, the
+Mongal, and the Samoyed; and two-fifths, the Celtic and Tchoud, the
+Biscayan, the Coptic, and Congo languages.  These words have been found
+by comparing the whole of the American languages with the whole of those
+of the Old World; for hitherto we are acquainted with no American idiom
+which seems to have an exclusive correspondence with any of the Asiatic,
+African, or European tongues.” {293}  Humboldt and others considered
+these words as brought into America by recent immigrants; an idea resting
+on no proof, and which seems at once refuted by the common 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 refer to a curious mathematical
+calculation by Dr. Thomas Young, to the effect, that if three words
+coincide in two different languages, it is ten to one they must be
+derived in both cases from some parent language, or introduced in some
+other manner.  “Six words would give more,” he says, “than seventeen
+hundred to one, and eight near 100,000, so that in these cases the
+evidence would be little short of absolute certainty.”  He instances the
+following words to shew a connexion 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 seventy words
+in common between the languages of the new and old continents, and many
+of these are expressive of the most primitive ideas, there is, by Dr.
+Young’s calculation, overpowering proof of the original connexion of the
+American and other human families.
+
+This completes the slight outline which I have been able to give, of the
+evidence for the various races of men being descended from one stock.  It
+cannot be considered as conclusive, and there are many eminent persons
+who deem the opposite idea the more probable; but I must say that,
+without the least regard to any other kind of evidence, that which
+physiology and philology present seems to me decidedly favourable to the
+idea of a single origin.
+
+Assuming that the human race is _one_, we are next called upon to inquire
+in what part of the earth it may most probably be supposed to have
+originated.  One obvious mode of approximating to a solution of this
+question is to trace backward the lines in which the principal tribes
+appear to have migrated, and to see if these converge nearly to a point.
+It is very remarkable that the lines do converge, and are concentrated
+about the region of Hindostan.  The language, religion, modes of
+reckoning time, and some other peculiar ideas of the Americans, are now
+believed to refer their origin to North-Eastern Asia.  Trace them farther
+back in the same direction, and we come to the north of India.  The
+history of the Celts and Teutones represents 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 at the same place.  So does the line of Iranian
+population, which has peopled the east and south shores of the
+Mediterranean, Syria, Arabia, and Egypt.  The Malay variety, again, rests
+its limit in one direction on the borders of India.  Standing on that
+point, it is easy to see how the human family, originating there, might
+spread out in different directions, passing into varieties of aspect and
+of language as they spread, the Malay variety proceeding towards the
+Oceanic region, the Mongolians to the east and north, and sending off the
+red men as a sub-variety, the European population going off to the
+north-westward, and the Syrian, Arabian, and Egyptian, towards the
+countries which they are known to have so long occupied.  The Negro alone
+is here unaccounted for; and of that race it may fairly be said, that it
+is the one most likely to have had an independent origin, seeing that it
+is a type so peculiar in an inveterate black colour, and so mean in
+development.  But it is not necessary to presume such an origin for it,
+as much good argument might be employed to shew that it is only a
+deteriorated offshoot of the general stock.  Our view of the probable
+original seat of man agrees with the ancient traditions of the race.
+There is one among the Hindoos which places the cradle of the human
+family in Thibet; another makes Ceylon the residence of the first man.
+Our view is also in harmony with the hypothesis detailed in the chapter
+before the last.  According to that theory, we should expect man to have
+originated where the highest species of the quadrumana are to be found.
+Now these are unquestionably found in the Indian Archipelago.
+
+After all, it may be regarded as still an open question, whether mankind
+is of one or many origins.  The first human generation may have consisted
+of many pairs, though situated at one place, and these may have been
+considerably different from each other in external characters.  And we
+are equally bound to admit, though this does not as yet seem to have
+occurred to any other speculator, that there may have been different
+lines and sources of origination, geographically apart, 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 the human
+race was at first in a highly civilized state, and that barbarism was a
+second condition.  This idea probably took its origin in a wish to
+support certain interpretations of the Mosaic record, and it has never
+yet been propounded by any writer who seemed to have a due sense of the
+value of science in this class of investigations.  The principal argument
+for it is, that we see many examples of nations falling away from
+civilization into barbarism, while in some regions of the earth, the
+history of which we do not clearly know, there are remains of works of
+art far superior to any which the present unenlightened inhabitants could
+have produced.  It is to be readily admitted that such decadences are
+common; but do they necessarily prove that there has been anything like a
+regular and constant decline into the present state, from a state more
+generally refined?  May not these be only instances of local failures and
+suppressions of the principle of civilization, where it had begun to take
+root amongst a people generally barbarous?  It is, at least, as
+legitimate to draw this inference from the facts which are known.  But it
+is also alleged that we know of no such thing as civilization being ever
+self-originated.  It is always seen to be imparted from one people to
+another.  Hence, of course, we must infer that civilization at the first
+could only have been of supernatural origin.  This argument appears to be
+founded on false premises, for civilization does sometimes rise in a
+manner clearly independent amongst a horde of people generally barbarous.
+A striking instance is described in the laborious work of Mr. Catlin on
+the North-American tribes.  Far placed among those which inhabit the vast
+region of the north-west, and quite beyond the reach of any influence
+from the whites, he found a small tribe living in a fortified village,
+where they cultivated the arts of manufacture, realized comforts and
+luxuries, and had attained to a remarkable refinement of manners,
+insomuch as to be generally called the polite and friendly Mandans.  They
+were also more than usually elegant in their persons, and of every
+variety of complexion between that of their compatriots and a pure white.
+Up to the time of Mr. Catlin’s visit, these people had been able to
+defend themselves and their possessions against the roving bands which
+surrounded them on all sides; but, soon after, they were attacked by
+small-pox, which cut them all off except a small party, whom their
+enemies rushed in upon and destroyed to a man.  What is this but a
+repetition on a small scale of phenomena with which ancient history
+familiarizes us—a nation rising in arts and elegances amidst barbarous
+neighbours, but at length overpowered by the rude majority, leaving only
+a Tadmor or a Luxor as a monument of itself to beautify the waste?  What
+can we suppose the nation which built Palenque and Copan to have been but
+only a Mandan tribe, which chanced to have made its way farther along the
+path of civilization and the arts, before the barbarians broke in upon
+it?  The flame essayed to rise in many parts of the earth; but there were
+always 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 to have
+attained a strength against which the powers of barbarism can never more
+prevail.  The state of our knowledge of uncivilized nations is very apt
+to make us fall into error on this subject.  They are generally supposed
+to be all at one point in barbarism, which is far from being the case,
+for in the midst of every great region of uncivilized men, such as North
+America, there are nations partially refined.  The Jolofs, Mandingoes,
+and Kafirs, are African examples, where a natural and independent origin
+for the improvement which exists is as unavoidably to be presumed as in
+the case of the Mandans.
+
+The most conclusive argument against the original civilization of mankind
+is to be found in the fact that we do not now see civilization existing
+anywhere except in certain conditions altogether different from any we
+can suppose to have existed at the commencement of our race.  To have
+civilization, it is necessary that a people should be numerous and
+closely placed; that they should be fixed in their habitations, and safe
+from violent external and internal disturbance; that a considerable
+number of them should be exempt from the necessity of drudging for
+immediate subsistence.  Feeling themselves at ease about the first
+necessities of their nature, including self-preservation, and daily
+subjected to that intellectual excitement which society produces, men
+begin to manifest what is called civilization; but never in rude and
+shelterless circumstances, or when widely scattered.  Even men who have
+been civilized, when transferred to a wide wilderness, where each has to
+work hard and isolatedly for the first requisites of life, soon shew a
+retrogression to barbarism: witness the plains of Australia, as well as
+the backwoods of Canada and the prairies of Texas.  Fixity of residence
+and thickening of population are perhaps the prime requisites for
+civilization, and hence it will be found that all civilizations as yet
+known have taken place in regions physically limited.  That of Egypt
+arose in a narrow valley hemmed in by deserts on both sides.  That of
+Greece took its rise in a small peninsula bounded on the only land side
+by mountains.  Etruria and Rome were naturally limited regions.
+Civilizations have taken place at both the eastern and western
+extremities of the elder continent—China and Japan, on the one hand;
+Germany, Holland, Britain, France, on the other—while the great unmarked
+tract between contains nations decidedly less advanced.  Why is this, but
+because the sea, in both cases, has imposed limits to further migration,
+and caused the population to settle and condense—the conditions most
+necessary for social improvement. {302}  Even the simple case of the
+Mandans affords an illustration of this principle, for Mr. Catlin
+expressly, though without the least regard to theory, attributes their
+improvement to the fact of their being a small tribe, obliged, by fear of
+their more numerous enemies, to _settle in a permanent village_, so
+fortified as to ensure their preservation.  “By this means,” says he,
+“they have advanced farther in the arts of manufacture, and have supplied
+their lodges more abundantly with the comforts and even luxuries of life
+than any Indian nation I know of.  The consequence of this,” he adds, “is
+that the tribe have taken many steps ahead of other tribes in _manners
+and refinements_.”  These conditions can only be regarded as natural laws
+affecting civilization, and it might not be difficult, taking them into
+account, to predict of any newly settled country its social destiny.  An
+island like Van Dieman’s land might fairly be expected to go on more
+rapidly to good manners and sound institutions than a wide region like
+Australia.  The United States might be expected to make no great way in
+civilization till they be fully peopled to the Pacific; and it might not
+be unreasonable to expect that, when that even has occurred, the greatest
+civilizations of that vast territory will be found in the peninsula of
+California and the narrow stripe of country beyond the Rocky Mountains.
+This, however, is a digression.  To return: it is also necessary for a
+civilization that at least a portion of the community should be placed
+above mean and engrossing toils.  Man’s mind becomes subdued, like the
+dyer’s hand, to that it works in.  In rude and difficult circumstances we
+unavoidably become rude, because then only the inferior and harsher
+faculties of our nature are called into existence.  When, on the
+contrary, there is leisure and abundance, the self-seeking and
+self-preserving instincts are allowed to rest, the gentler and more
+generous sentiments are evoked, and man becomes that courteous and
+chivalric being which he is found to be amongst the upper classes of
+almost all civilized countries.  These, then, may be said to be the chief
+natural laws concerned in the moral phenomenon of civilization.  If I am
+right in so considering them, it will of course be readily admitted that
+the earliest families of the human race, although they might be simple
+and innocent, could not have been in anything like a civilized state,
+seeing that the conditions necessary for that state could not have then
+existed.  Let us only for a moment consider some of the things requisite
+for their being civilized,—namely, a set of elegant homes ready furnished
+for their reception, fields ready cultivated to yield them food without
+labour, stores of luxurious appliances of all kinds, a complete social
+enginery for the securing of life and property,—and we shall turn from
+the whole conceit as one worthy only of the philosophers of Utopia.
+
+Yet, as has been remarked, the earliest families might be simple and
+innocent, while at the same time unskilled and ignorant, and obliged to
+live merely upon such substances as they could readily procure.  The
+traditions of all nations refer to such a state as that in which mankind
+were at first: perhaps it is not so much a tradition as an idea which the
+human mind naturally inclines to form respecting the fathers of the race;
+but nothing that we see of mankind absolutely forbids our entertaining
+this idea, while there are some considerations rather favourable to it.
+A few families, in a state of nature, living near each other, in a
+country supplying the means of livelihood abundantly, are generally
+simple and innocent; their instinctive and perceptive faculties are also
+apt to be very active, although the higher intellect may be dormant.  If
+we therefore presume India to have been the cradle of our race, they
+might at first exemplify a sort of golden age; but it could not be of
+long continuance.  The very first movements from the primal seat would be
+attended with degradation, nor could there be any tendency to true
+civilization till groups had settled and thickened in particular seats
+physically limited.
+
+The probability may now be assumed that the human race sprung from one
+stock, which was at first in a state of simplicity, if not barbarism.  As
+yet we have not seen very distinctly how the various branches of the
+family, as they parted off, and took up separate ground, became marked by
+external features so peculiar.  Why are the Africans black, and generally
+marked by coarse features and ungainly forms?  Why are the Mongolians
+generally yellow, the Americans red, the Caucasians white?  Why the flat
+features of the Chinese, the small stature of the Laps, the soft round
+forms of the English, the lank features of their descendants, the
+Americans?  All of these phenomena appear, in a word, to be explicable on
+the ground of _development_.  We have already seen that various leading
+animal forms represent stages in the embryotic progress of the
+highest—the human being.  Our brain goes through the various stages of a
+fish’s, a reptile’s, and a mammifer’s brain, and finally becomes human.
+There is 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
+points in which ossification commences is the lower jaw.  This bone is
+consequently sooner completed than the other bones of the head, and
+acquires a predominance, which, as is well known, it never loses in the
+Negro.  During the soft pliant state of the bones of the skull, the
+oblong form which they naturally assume, approaches nearly the permanent
+shape of the Americans.  At birth, the flattened face, and broad smooth
+forehead of the infant, the position of the eyes rather towards the side
+of the head, and the widened space between, represent the Mongolian form;
+while it is only as the child advances to maturity, that the oval face,
+the arched forehead, and the marked features 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 of the highest or Caucasian type_.
+The Negro exhibits permanently the imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw,
+and slender bent limbs, of a Caucasian child, some considerable time
+before the period of its birth.  The aboriginal American represents the
+same child nearer birth.  The Mongolian is an arrested infant newly born.
+And so forth.  All this is as respects form; {307b} but whence colour?
+This might be supposed to have depended on climatal agencies only; but it
+has been shewn by overpowering evidence to be independent of these.  In
+further considering the matter, we are met by the very remarkable fact
+that colour is deepest in the least perfectly developed type, next in the
+Malay, next in the American, next in the Mongolian, the very order in
+which the degrees of development are ranged.  _May not colour_, _then_,
+_depend upon development also_?  We do not, indeed, see that a Caucasian
+fœtus at the stage which the African represents is anything like black;
+neither is a Caucasian child yellow, like the Mongolian.  There may,
+nevertheless, be a character of skin at a certain stage of development
+which is predisposed to a particular colour when it is presented as the
+envelope of a mature being.  Development being arrested at so immature a
+stage in the case of the Negro, the skin may take on the colour as an
+unavoidable consequence of its imperfect organization.  It is favourable
+to this view, that Negro infants are not deeply black at first, but only
+acquire the full colour tint after exposure for some time to the
+atmosphere.  Another consideration in its favour is that there is a
+likelihood of peculiarities of form and colour, since they are so
+coincident, depending on one set of phenomena.  If it be admitted as
+true, there can be no difficulty in accounting for all the varieties of
+mankind.  They are simply the result of so many advances and
+retrogressions in the developing power of the human mothers, these
+advances and retrogressions being, as we have formerly seen, the
+immediate effect of external conditions in nutrition, hardship, &c.,
+{309} and also, perhaps, to some extent, of the suitableness and
+unsuitableness of marriages, for it is found that parents too nearly
+related tend to produce offspring of the Mongolian type,—that is, persons
+who in maturity still are a kind of children.  According to this view,
+the greater part of the human race must be considered as having lapsed or
+declined from the original type.  In the Caucasian or Indo-European
+family alone has the primitive organization been improved upon.  The
+Mongolian, Malay, American, and Negro, comprehending perhaps five-sixths
+of mankind, are degenerate.  Strange that the great plan should admit of
+failures and aberrations of such portentous magnitude!  But pause and
+reflect; take time into consideration: the past 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 the earth by the best examples of the
+Caucasian type, promising not only to fill up the waste places, but to
+supersede the imperfect nations already existing.  Who can tell what
+progress may be made, even in a single century, towards reversing the
+proportions of the perfect and imperfect types? and who can tell but that
+the time during which the mean types have lasted, long as it appears, may
+yet be thrown entirely into the shade by the time during which the best
+types will remain predominant?
+
+We have seen that the traces of a common origin in all languages afford a
+ground of presumption for the unity of the human race.  They establish a
+still stronger probability that mankind had not yet begun to disperse
+before they were possessed of a means of communicating their ideas by
+conventional sounds—in short, speech.  This is a gift so peculiar to man,
+and in itself so remarkable, that there is a great inclination to surmise
+a miraculous origin for it, although there is no proper ground, or even
+support, for such an idea in Scripture, while it is clearly opposed to
+everything else that we know with regard to the providential arrangements
+for the creation of our race.  Here, as in many other cases, a little
+observation of nature might have saved much vain discussion.  The real
+character of language itself has not been thoroughly understood.
+Language, in its most comprehensive sense, is the communication of ideas
+by whatever means.  Ideas can be communicated by looks, gestures, and
+signs of various other kinds, as well as by speech.  The inferior animals
+possess some of those means of communicating ideas, and they have
+likewise a silent and unobservable mode of their own, the nature of which
+is a complete mystery to us, though we are assured of its reality by its
+effects.  Now, as the inferior animals were all in being before man,
+there was language upon earth long ere the history of our race commenced.
+The only additional fact in the history of language, which was produced
+by our creation, was the rise of a new mode of expression—namely, that by
+_sound-signs_ produced by the vocal organs.  In other words, speech was
+the only novelty in this respect attending the creation of the human
+race.  No doubt it was an addition of great importance, for, in
+comparison with it, the other natural modes of communicating ideas sink
+into insignificance.  Still, the main and fundamental phenomenon,
+language, as the communication of ideas, was no new gift of the Creator
+to man; and in speech itself, when we judge of it as a natural fact, we
+see only a result of some of those superior endowments of which so many
+others have fallen to our lot through the medium of an improved or
+advanced organization.
+
+The first and most obvious natural endowment concerned in speech is that
+peculiar organization of the larynx, trachea, and mouth, which enables us
+to produce the various sounds required in the case.  Man started at first
+with this organization ready for use, a constitution of the atmosphere
+adapted for the sounds which that organization was calculated to produce,
+and, lastly, but not leastly, as will afterwards 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 to produce sounds as an Eolian harp placed in a draught is
+to produce tones.  It was unavoidable that human beings so organized, and
+in such a relation to external nature, should utter sounds, and also come
+to attach to these conventional meanings, thus forming the elements of
+spoken language.  The great difficulty which has been felt was to account
+for man going in this respect beyond the inferior animals.  There could
+have been no such difficulty if speculators in this class of subjects had
+looked into physiology for an account of the superior vocal organization
+of man, and had they possessed a true science of mind to shew man
+possessing a faculty for the expression of ideas which is only rudimental
+in the lower animals.  Another difficulty has been in the consideration
+that, if men were at first utterly untutored and barbarous, they could
+scarcely be in a condition to form or employ language—an instrument which
+it requires the fullest powers of thought to analyse and speculate upon.
+But this difficulty also vanishes upon reflection—for, in the first
+place, we are not bound to suppose the fathers of our race early
+attaining to great proficiency in language, and, in the second, language
+itself seems to be amongst the things least difficult to be acquired, if
+we can form any judgment from what we see in children, most of whom have,
+by three years of age, while their information and judgment are still as
+nothing, mastered and familiarized themselves with a quantity of words,
+infinitely exceeding in proportion what they acquire in the course of any
+subsequent similar portion of time.
+
+Discussions as to which parts of speech were first formed, and the
+processes by which grammatical structure and inflections took their rise,
+appear in a great measure needless, after the matter has been placed in
+this light.  The mental powers could readily connect particular arbitrary
+sounds with particular ideas, whether those ideas were nouns, verbs, or
+interjections.  As the words of all languages can be traced back into
+roots which are monosyllables, we may 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 expressive of pronouns and such prepositions as of, by, and to,
+are processes which would or might occur as matters of course, being
+simple results of a mental power called into action, and partly directed,
+by external necessities.  This power, however, as we find it in very
+different degrees of endowment in individuals, so would it be in
+different degrees of endowment in nations, or branches of the human
+family.  Hence we find the formation of words and the process of their
+composition and grammatical arrangement, in very different stages of
+development in different races.  The Chinese have a language composed of
+a limited number of monosyllables, which they multiply in use by mere
+variations of accent, and which they have never yet attained the power of
+clustering or inflecting; the language of this immense nation—the third
+part of the human race—may be said to be in the condition of infancy.
+The aboriginal Americans, so inferior in civilization, have, on the other
+hand, a language of the most elaborately composite kind, perhaps even
+exceeding, in this respect, the languages of the most refined European
+nations.  These are but a few out of many facts tending to shew that
+language is in a great measure independent of civilization, as far as its
+advance and development are concerned.  Do they not also help to prove
+that cultivated intellect is not necessary for the origination of
+language?
+
+Facts daily presented to our observation afford equally simple reasons
+for the almost infinite diversification of language.  It is invariably
+found that, wherever society is at once dense and refined, language tends
+to be uniform throughout the whole population, and to undergo few changes
+in the course of time.  Wherever, on the contrary, we have a scattered
+and barbarous people, we have great diversities, and comparatively rapid
+alterations of language.  Insomuch that, while English, French, and
+German are each spoken with little variation by many millions, there are
+islands in the Indian archipelago, probably not inhabited by one million,
+but in which there are hundreds of languages, as diverse as are English,
+French, and German.  It is easy to see how this should be.  There are
+peculiarities in the vocal organization of every person, tending to
+produce peculiarities of pronunciation; for example, it has been stated
+that each child in a family of six gave the monosyllable, fly, in a
+different manner, (eye, fy, ly, &c.) until, when the organs were more
+advanced, correct example induced the proper pronunciation of this and
+similar words.  Such departures from orthoepy are only to be checked by
+the power of such example; but this is a power not always present, or not
+always of sufficient strength.  The able and self-devoted Robert Moffat,
+in his work on South Africa, states, without the least regard to
+hypothesis, that amongst the people of the towns of that great region,
+“the purity and harmony of language is kept up by their pitchos or public
+meetings, by their festivals and ceremonies, as well as by their songs
+and their constant intercourse.  With the isolated villages of the desert
+it is far otherwise.  They have no such meetings; they are compelled to
+traverse the wilds, often to a great distance from their native village.
+On such occasions, fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a burden,
+often set out for weeks at a time, and leave their children to the care
+of two or three infirm old people.  The infant progeny, some of whom are
+beginning to lisp, while others can just master a whole sentence, and
+those still farther advanced, romping and playing together, the children
+of nature, through the live-long day, _become habituated to a language of
+their own_.  The more voluble condescend to the less precocious, and
+thus, from this infant Babel, proceeds a dialect composed of a host of
+mongrel words and phrases, joined together without rule, and _in the
+course of a generation the entire character of the language is changed_.”
+{317}  I have been told, that in like manner the children of the
+Manchester factory workers, left for a great part of the day, in large
+assemblages, under the care of perhaps a single elderly person, and
+spending the time in amusements, are found to make a great deal of new
+language.  I have seen children in other circumstances amuse themselves
+by concocting and throwing into the family circulation entirely new
+words; and I believe I am running little risk of contradiction when I say
+that there is scarcely a family, even amongst the middle classes of this
+country, who have not some peculiarities of pronunciation and syntax,
+which have originated amongst themselves, it is hardly possible to say
+how.  All these things being considered, it is easy to understand how
+mankind have come at length to possess between three and four thousand
+languages, all different at least as much as French, German, and English,
+though, as has been shewn, the traces of a common origin are observable
+in them all.
+
+What has been said on the question whether mankind were originally
+barbarous or civilized, will have prepared the reader for understanding
+how the arts and sciences, and the rudiments of civilization itself, took
+their rise amongst men.  The only source of fallacious views on this
+subject is the so frequent observation of arts, sciences, and social
+modes, forms, and ideas, being not indigenous where we see them now
+flourishing, but known to have been derived elsewhere: thus Rome borrowed
+from Greece, Greece from Egypt, and Egypt itself, lost in the mists of
+historic antiquity, is now supposed to have obtained the light of
+knowledge from some still earlier scene of intellectual culture.  This
+has caused to many a great difficulty in supposing a natural or
+spontaneous origin for civilization and the attendant arts.  But, in the
+first place, several stages of derivation are no conclusive argument
+against there having been an originality at some earlier stage.  In the
+second, such observers have not looked far enough, for, if they had, they
+could have seen various instances of civilizations which it is
+impossible, with any plausibility, to trace back to a common origin with
+others; such are those of China and America.  They would also have seen
+civilization springing up, as it were, like oases amongst the arid plains
+of barbarism, as in the case of the Mandans.  A still more attentive
+study of the subject would have shewn, amongst living men, the very
+psychological procedure on which the origination of civilization and the
+arts and sciences depended.
+
+These things, like language, are simply the effects of the spontaneous
+working of certain mental faculties, each in relation to the things of
+the external world on which it was intended by creative Providence to be
+exercised.  The monkeys themselves, without instruction from any quarter,
+learn to use sticks in fighting, and some build houses—an act which
+cannot in their case be considered as one of instinct, but of
+intelligence.  Such being the case, there is no necessary difficulty in
+supposing how man, with his superior mental organization, (a brain five
+times heavier,) was able, in his primitive state, without instruction, to
+turn many things in nature to his use, and commence, in short, the circle
+of the domestic arts.  He appears, in the most unfavourable
+circumstances, to be able to provide himself with some sort of dwelling,
+to make weapons, and to practise some simple kind of cookery.  But,
+granting, it will be said, that he can go thus far, how does he ever
+proceed farther unprompted, seeing that many nations remain fixed for
+ever at this point, and seem unable to take one step in advance?  It is
+perfectly true that there is such a fixation in many nations; but, on the
+other hand, all nations are not alike in mental organization, and another
+point has been established, that only when some favourable circumstances
+have settled a people in one place, do arts and social arrangements get
+leave to flourish.  If we were to limit our view to humbly endowed
+nations, or the common class of minds in those called civilized, we
+should see absolutely no conceivable power for the origination of new
+ideas and devices.  But let us look at the inventive class of minds which
+stand out amongst their fellows—the men who, with little prompting or
+none, conceive new ideas in science, arts, morals—and we can be at no
+loss to understand how and whence have arisen the elements of that
+civilization which history traces from country to country throughout the
+course of centuries.  See a Pascal, reproducing the Alexandrian’s
+problems at fifteen; a Ferguson, making clocks from the suggestions of
+his own brain, while tending cattle on a Morayshire heath; a boy
+Lawrence, in an inn on the Bath road, producing, without a master,
+drawings which the educated could not but admire; or look at Solon and
+Confucius, devising sage laws, and breathing the accents of all but
+divine wisdom, for their barbarous fellow-countrymen, three thousand
+years ago—and the whole mystery is solved at once.  Amongst the
+arrangements of Providence is one for the production of original,
+inventive, and aspiring minds, which, when circumstances are not
+decidedly unfavourable, strike out new ideas for the benefit of their
+fellow-creatures, or put upon them a lasting impress of their own
+superior sentiments.  Nations, improved by these means, become in turn
+_foci_ for the diffusion of light over the adjacent regions of
+barbarism—their very passions helping to this end, for nothing can be
+more clear than that ambitious aggression has led to the civilization of
+many countries.  Such is the process which seems to form the destined
+means for bringing mankind from the darkness of barbarism to the day of
+knowledge and mechanical and social improvement.  Even the noble art of
+letters is but, as Dr. Adam Fergusson has remarked, “a natural produce of
+the human mind, which will rise spontaneously, wherever men are happily
+placed;” original alike amongst the ancient Egyptians and the dimly
+monumented Toltecans of Yucatan.  “Banish,” says Dr. Gall, “music,
+poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, all the arts and sciences, and
+let your Homers, Raphaels, Michael Angelos, Glucks, and Canovas, be
+forgotten, yet let men of genius of every description spring up, and
+poetry, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, and all the arts and
+sciences will again shine out in all their glory.  Twice within the
+records of history has the human race traversed the great circle of its
+entire destiny, and twice has the rudeness of barbarism been followed by
+a higher degree of refinement.  It is a great mistake to suppose one
+people to have proceeded from another on account of their conformity of
+manners, customs, and arts.  The swallow of Paris builds its nest like
+the swallow of Vienna, but does it thence follow that the former sprung
+from the latter?  With the same causes we have the same effects; with the
+same organization we have the manifestation of the same powers.”
+
+
+
+
+MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS.
+
+
+IT has been one of the most agreeable tasks of modern science to trace
+the wonderfully exact adaptations of the organization of animals to the
+physical circumstances amidst which they are destined to live.  From the
+mandibles of insects to the hand of man, all is seen to be in the most
+harmonious relation to the things of the outward world, thus clearly
+proving that _design_ presided in the creation of the whole—design again
+implying a designer, another word for a CREATOR.
+
+It would be tiresome to present in this place even a selection of the
+proofs which have been adduced on this point.  The Natural Theology of
+Paley, and the Bridgewater Treatises, place the subject in so clear a
+light, that the general postulate may be taken for granted.  The physical
+constitution of animals is, then, to be regarded as in the nicest
+congruity and adaptation to the external world.
+
+Less clear ideas have hitherto been entertained on the mental
+constitution of animals.  The very nature of this constitution is not as
+yet generally known or held as ascertained.  There is, indeed, a notion
+of old standing, that the mind is in some way connected with the brain;
+but the metaphysicians insist that it is, in reality, known only by its
+acts or effects, and they accordingly present the subject in a form which
+is unlike any other kind of science, for it does not so much as pretend
+to have nature for its basis.  There is a general disinclination to
+regard mind in connexion with organization, from a fear that this must
+needs interfere with the cherished religious doctrine of the spirit of
+man, and lower him to the level of the brutes.  A distinction is
+therefore drawn between our mental manifestations and those of the lower
+animals, the latter being comprehended under the term instinct, while
+ours are collectively described as mind, mind being again a received
+synonyme with soul, the immortal part of man.  There is here a strange
+system of confusion and error, which it is most imprudent to regard as
+essential to religion, since candid investigations of nature tend to shew
+its untenableness.  There is, in reality, nothing to prevent our
+regarding man as specially endowed with an immortal spirit, at the same
+time that his ordinary mental manifestations are looked upon as simple
+phenomena resulting from organization, those of the lower animals being
+phenomena absolutely the same in character, though developed within much
+narrower limits. {326}
+
+What has chiefly tended to take mind, in the eyes of learned and
+unlearned, out of the range of nature, is its apparently irregular and
+wayward character.  How different the manifestations in different beings!
+how unstable in all!—at one time so calm, at another so wild and
+impulsive!  It seemed impossible that anything so subtle and aberrant
+could be part of a system, the main features of which are regularity and
+precision.  But the irregularity of mental phenomena is only in
+appearance.  When we give up the individual, and take the mass, we find
+as much uniformity of result as in any other class of natural phenomena.
+The irregularity is exactly of the same kind as that 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 place in any five years, is precisely
+the same as the quantity which falls in any other five years at the same
+place.  Thus, while it is absolutely impossible to predict of any one
+Frenchman that during next year he will commit a crime, it is quite
+certain that about one in every six hundred and fifty of the French
+people will do so, because in past years the proportion has generally
+been about that amount, the tendencies to crime in relation to the
+temptations being everywhere invariable over a sufficiently wide range of
+time.  So also, the number of persons taken in charge by the police in
+London for being drunk and disorderly on the streets, is, week by week, a
+nearly uniform quantity, shewing that the inclination to drink to excess
+is always in the mass about the same, regard being had to the existing
+temptations or stimulations to this vice.  Even mistakes and oversights
+are of regular recurrence, for it is found in the post-offices of large
+cities, that the number of letters put in without addresses is year by
+year the same.  Statistics has made out an equally distinct regularity in
+a wide range, with regard to many other things concerning the mind, and
+the doctrine founded upon it has lately produced a scheme which may well
+strike the ignorant with surprise.  It was proposed to establish in
+London a society for ensuring the integrity of clerks, secretaries,
+collectors, and all such functionaries as are usually obliged to find
+security for money passing through their hands in the course of business.
+A gentleman of the highest character as an actuary spoke of the plan in
+the following terms:—“If a thousand bankers’ clerks were to club together
+to indemnify their securities, by the payment of one pound a year each,
+and if each had given security for 500_l._, it is obvious that two in
+each year might become defaulters to that amount, four to half the
+amount, and so on, without rendering the guarantee fund insolvent.  If it
+be tolerably well ascertained that the instances of dishonesty (yearly)
+among such persons amount to one in five hundred, this club would
+continue to exist, subject to being in debt in a bad year, to an amount
+which it would be able to discharge in good ones.  The only question
+necessary to be asked previous to the formation of such a club would
+be,—may it not be feared that the motive to resist dishonesty would be
+lessened by the existence of the club, or that ready-made rogues, by
+belonging to it, might find the means of obtaining situations which they
+would otherwise have been kept out of by the impossibility of obtaining
+security among those who know them?  Suppose this be sufficiently
+answered by saying, that none but those who could bring satisfactory
+testimony to their previous good character should be allowed to join the
+club; that persons who may now hope that a deficiency on their parts will
+be made up and hushed up by the relative or friend who is security, will
+know very well that the club will have no motive to decline a
+prosecution, or to keep the secret, and so on.  It then only remains to
+ask, whether the sum demanded for the guarantee is sufficient?” {331}
+The philosophical principle on which the scheme proceeds, seems to be
+simply this, that, amongst a given (large) number of persons of good
+character, there will be, within a year or other considerable space of
+time, a determinate number of instances in which moral principle and the
+terror of the consequences of guilt will be overcome by temptations of a
+determinate kind and amount, and thus occasion a certain periodical
+amount of loss which the association must make up.
+
+This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully establishes their
+being under the presidency of law.  Man is now seen to be an enigma only
+as an individual; in the mass he is a mathematical problem.  It is hardly
+necessary to say, much less to argue, that mental action, being proved to
+be under law, passes at once into the category of natural things.  Its
+old metaphysical character vanishes in a moment, and the distinction
+usually taken between physical and moral is annulled, as only an error in
+terms.  This view agrees with what all observation teaches, that mental
+phenomena flow directly from the brain.  They are seen to be dependent on
+naturally constituted and naturally conditioned organs, and thus
+obedient, like all other organic phenomena, to law.  And how wondrous
+must the constitution of this apparatus be, which gives us consciousness
+of thought and of affection, which makes us familiar with the numberless
+things of earth, and enables us to rise in conception and communion to
+the councils of God himself!  It is matter which forms the medium or
+instrument—a little mass which, decomposed, is but so much common dust;
+yet in its living constitution, designed, formed, and sustained by
+Almighty Wisdom, how admirable its character! how reflective of the
+unutterable depths of that Power by which it was so formed, and is so
+sustained!
+
+In the mundane economy, mental action takes its place as a means of
+providing for the independent existence and the various relations of
+animals, each species being furnished according to its special
+necessities and the demands of its various relations.  The nervous
+system—the more comprehensive term for its organic apparatus—is variously
+developed in different classes and species, and also in different
+individuals, the volume or mass bearing a general relation to the amount
+of power.  In the mollusca and crustacea we see simply a ganglionic cord
+pervading the extent of the body, and sending out lateral filaments.  In
+the vertebrata, we find a brain with a spinal cord, and branching lines
+of nervous tissue. {333}  But here, as in the general structure of
+animals, the great principle of unity is observed.  The brain of the
+vertebrata is merely an expansion of one of the ganglions of the nervous
+cord of the mollusca and crustacea.  Or the corresponding ganglion of the
+mollusca and crustacea may be regarded as the rudiment of a brain; the
+superior organ thus appearing as only a farther development of the
+inferior.  There are many facts which tend to prove that the action of
+this apparatus is of an electric nature, a modification of that
+surprising agent, which takes magnetism, heat, and light, as other
+subordinate forms, and of whose general scope in this great system of
+things we are only beginning to have a right conception.  It has been
+found that simple electricity, artificially produced, and sent along the
+nerves of a dead body, excites muscular action.  The brain of a
+newly-killed animal being taken out, and replaced by a substance which
+produces electric action, the operation of digestion, which had been
+interrupted by the death of the animal, was resumed, shewing the absolute
+identity of the brain with a galvanic battery.  Nor is this a very
+startling idea, when we reflect that electricity is almost as
+metaphysical as ever mind was supposed to be.  It is a thing perfectly
+intangible, weightless.  Metal may be magnetized, or heated to seven
+hundred of Fahrenheit, without becoming the hundredth part of a grain
+heavier.  And yet electricity is a real thing, an actual existence in
+nature, as witness the effects of heat and light in vegetation—the power
+of the galvanic current to re-assemble the particles of copper from a
+solution, and make them again into a solid plate—the rending force of the
+thunderbolt as it strikes the oak; see also how both heat and light
+observe the angle of incidence in reflection, as exactly as does the
+grossest stone thrown obliquely against 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 human mind
+over that of the inferior animals.  Man’s mind is almost infinite in
+device; it ranges over all the world; it forms the most wonderful
+combinations; it seeks back into the past, and stretches forward into the
+future; while the animals generally appear to have a narrow range of
+thought and action.  But so also has an infant but a limited range, and
+yet it is mind which works there, as well as in the most accomplished
+adults.  The difference between mind in the lower animals and in man is a
+difference in degree only; it is not a specific difference.  All who have
+studied animals by actual observation, and even those who have given a
+candid attention to the subject in books, must attain more or less clear
+convictions of this truth, notwithstanding all the obscurity which
+prejudice may have engendered.  We see animals capable of affection,
+jealousy, envy; we see them quarrel, and conduct quarrels, in the very
+manner pursued by the more impulsive of our own race.  We see them liable
+to flattery, inflated with pride, and dejected by shame.  We see them as
+tender to their young as human parents are, and as faithful to a trust as
+the most conscientious of human servants.  The horse is startled by
+marvellous objects, as a man is.  The dog and many others shew tenacious
+memory.  The dog also proves himself possessed of imagination, by the act
+of dreaming.  Horses, finding themselves in want of a shoe, have of their
+own accord gone to a farrier’s shop where they were shod before.  Cats,
+closed up in rooms, will endeavour to obtain their liberation by pulling
+a latch or ringing a bell.  It has several times been observed that in a
+field of cattle, when one or two were mischievous, and persisted long in
+annoying or tyrannizing 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
+in supplying the needs of a family reduced to orphanhood.  All of these
+are acts of reason, in no respect different from similar acts of men.
+Moreover, although there is no heritage of accumulated knowledge amongst
+the lower animals, as there is amongst us, they are in some degree
+susceptible of those modifications of natural character, and capable of
+those accomplishments, which we call education.  The taming and
+domestication of animals, and the changes thus produced upon their nature
+in the course of generations, are results identical with civilization
+amongst ourselves; and the quiet, servile steer is probably as unlike the
+original wild cattle of this country, as the English gentleman of the
+present day is unlike the rude baron of the age of King John.  Between a
+young, unbroken horse, and a trained one, there is, again, all the
+difference which exists between a wild youth reared at his own discretion
+in the country, and the same person when he has been toned down by long
+exposure to the influences of refined society.  On the accomplishments
+acquired by animals it were superfluous to enter at any length; but I may
+advert to the dogs of M. Leonard, as remarkable examples of what the
+animal intellect may be trained to.  When four pieces of card are laid
+down before them, each having a number pronounced _once_ in connexion
+with it, they will, after a re-arrangement of the pieces, select any one
+named by its number.  They also play at dominoes, and with so much skill
+as to triumph over biped opponents, whining if the adversary place a
+wrong piece, or if they themselves be deficient in a right one.  Of
+extensive combinations of thought we have no reason to believe that any
+animal is capable—and yet most of us must feel the force of Walter
+Scott’s remark, that there was scarcely anything which he would not
+believe of a dog.  There is a curious result of education in certain
+animals, namely, that habits to which they have been trained in some
+instances become hereditary.  For example, the accomplishment of pointing
+at game, although a pure result of education, appears in the young pups
+brought up apart from their parents and kind.  The peculiar leap of the
+Irish horse, acquired in the course of traversing a boggy country, is
+continued in the progeny brought up in England.  This hereditariness of
+specific habits suggests a relation to that form of psychological
+demonstration usually called instinct; but instinct is only another term
+for mind, or is mind in a peculiar stage of development; and though the
+fact were otherwise, it could not affect the postulate, that
+demonstrations such as have been enumerated are mainly intellectual
+demonstrations, not to be distinguished as such from those of human
+beings.
+
+More than this, the lower animals manifested mental phenomena long before
+man existed.  While as yet there was no brain capable of working out a
+mathematical problem, the economy of the six-sided figure was exemplified
+by the instinct of the bee.  Ere human musician had whistled or piped,
+the owl hooted in B flat, the cuckoo had her song of a falling third, and
+the chirp of the cricket was in B.  The dog and the elephant prefigured
+the sagacity of the human mind.  The love of a human mother for her babe
+was anticipated by nearly every humbler mammal, the carnaria not
+excepted.  The peacock strutted, the turkey blustered, and the cock
+fought for victory, just as human beings afterwards did, and still do.
+Our faculty of imitation, on which so much of our amusement depends, was
+exercised by the mocking-bird; and the whole tribe of monkeys must have
+walked about the pre-human world, playing off those tricks in which we
+see the comicality and mischief-making of our character so curiously
+exaggerated.
+
+The unity and simplicity which characterize nature give great antecedent
+probability to what observation seems about to establish, that, as the
+brain of the vertebrata generally is just an advanced condition of a
+particular ganglion in the mollusca and crustacea, so are the brains of
+the higher and more intelligent mammalia only farther developments of the
+brains of the inferior orders of the same class.  Or, to the same
+purpose, it may be said, that each species has certain superior
+developments, according to its needs, while others are in a rudimental or
+repressed state.  This will more clearly appear after some inquiry has
+been made into the various powers comprehended under the term mind.
+
+One of the first and simplest functions of mind is to give
+consciousness—consciousness of our identity and of our existence.  This,
+apparently, is independent of the _senses_, which are simply media, and,
+as Locke has shewn, the only media, through which ideas respecting the
+external world reach the brain.  The access of such ideas to the brain is
+the act to which the metaphysicians have given the name of perception.
+Gall, however, has shewn, by induction from a vast number of actual
+cases, that there is a part of the brain devoted to perception, and that
+even this is subdivided into portions which are respectively dedicated to
+the reception of different sets of ideas, as those of form, size, colour,
+weight, objects in their totality, events in their progress or
+occurrence, time, musical sounds, &c.  The system of mind invented by
+this philosopher—the only one founded upon nature, or which even pretends
+to or admits of that necessary basis—shews a portion of the brain acting
+as a faculty of comic ideas, another of imitation, another of wonder, one
+for discriminating or observing differences, and another in which resides
+the power of tracing effects to causes.  There are also parts of the
+brain for the sentimental part of our nature, or the affections, at the
+head of which stand the moral feelings of benevolence, conscientiousness,
+and veneration.  Through these, man stands in relation to himself, his
+fellow-men, the external world, and his God; and through these comes most
+of the happiness of man’s life, as well as that which he derives from the
+contemplation of the world to come, and the cultivation of his relation
+to it, (pure religion.)  The other sentiments may be briefly enumerated,
+their names being sufficient in general to denote their
+functions—firmness, hope, cautiousness, self-esteem, love of approbation,
+secretiveness, marvellousness, constructiveness, imitation,
+combativeness, destructiveness, concentrativeness, adhesiveness, love of
+the opposite sex, love of offspring, alimentiveness, and love of life.
+Through these faculties, man is connected with the external world, and
+supplied with active impulses to maintain his place in it as 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 the mind.  There is a
+particular state of each of these faculties, when the ideas of objects
+once formed by it are revived or reproduced, a process which seems to be
+intimately allied with some of the phenomena of the new science of
+photography, when images impressed by reflection of the sun’s rays upon
+sensitive paper are, after a temporary obliteration, resuscitated on the
+sheet being exposed to the fumes of mercury.  Such are the phenomena of
+memory, that handmaid of intellect, without which there could be no
+accumulation of mental capital, but an universal and continual infancy.
+Conception and imagination appear to be only intensities, so to speak, of
+the state of brain in which memory is produced.  On their promptness and
+power depend most of the exertions which distinguish the man of arts and
+letters, and even in no small measure the cultivator of science.
+
+The faculties above described—the actual elements of the mental
+constitution—are seen in mature man in an indefinite potentiality and
+range of action.  It is different with the lower animals.  They are there
+comparatively definite in their power and restricted in their
+application.  The reader is familiar with what are called instincts in
+some of the humbler species, that is, an uniform and unprompted tendency
+towards certain particular acts, as the building of cells by the bee, the
+storing of provisions by that insect and several others, and the
+construction of nests for a coming progeny by birds.  This quality is
+nothing more than a mode of operation peculiar to the faculties in a
+humble state of endowment, or early stage of development.  The cell
+formation of the bee, the house-building of ants and beavers, the
+web-spinning of spiders, are but primitive 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 where our labours are in vain, or nearly so.  The storing of
+provisions by the ants is an exercise of acquisitiveness,—the faculty
+which with us makes rich men and misers.  A vast number of curious
+devices, by which insects provide for the protection and subsistence of
+their young, whom they are perhaps never to see, are most probably a
+peculiar restricted effort of philoprogenitiveness.  The common source of
+this class of acts, and of common mental operations, is shewn very
+convincingly by the melting of the one set into the other.  Thus, for
+example, the bee and bird will make modifications in the ordinary form of
+their cells and nests when necessity compels them.  Thus, the
+alimentiveness of such animals as the dog, usually definite with regard
+to quantity and quality, can be pampered or educated up to a kind of
+epicurism, that is, an indefiniteness of object and action.  The same
+faculty acts limitedly in ourselves at first, dictating the special act
+of sucking; afterwards it acquires indefiniteness.  Such is the real
+nature of the distinction between what are called instincts and reason,
+upon which so many volumes have been written without profit to the world.
+All faculties are instinctive, that is, dependent on internal and
+inherent impulses.  This term is therefore not specially applicable to
+either of the recognised modes of the operation of the faculties.  We
+only, in the one case, see the faculty in an immature and slightly
+developed state; in the other, in its most advanced condition.  In the
+one case it is _definite_, in the other _indefinite_, in its range of
+action.  These terms would perhaps be the most suitable for expressing
+the distinction.
+
+In the humblest forms of being we can trace scarcely anything besides a
+definite action in a few of the faculties.  Generally speaking, as we
+ascend in the scale, we see more and more of the faculties in exercise,
+and these tending more to the indefinite mode of manifestation.  And for
+this there is the obvious reason in providence, that the lowest animals
+have all of them a very limited sphere of existence, born only to perform
+a few functions, and enjoy a brief term of life, and then give way to
+another generation, so that they do not need much mental guidance.  At
+higher points in the scale, the sphere of existence is considerably
+extended, and the mental operations are less definite accordingly.  The
+horse, dog, and a few other rasorial types, noted for their
+serviceableness to our race, have the indefinite powers in no small
+endowment.  Man, again, shews very little of the definite mode of
+operation, and that little chiefly in childhood, or in barbarism or
+idiocy.  Destined for a wide field of action, and to be applicable to
+infinitely varied contingencies, he has all the faculties developed to a
+high pitch of indefiniteness, that he may be ready to act well in all
+imaginable cases.  His commission, it may be said, gives large
+discretionary powers, while that of the inferior animals is limited to a
+few precise directions.  But when the human brain is congenitally
+imperfect or diseased, or when it is in the state of infancy, we see in
+it an approach towards the character of the brains of some of the
+inferior animals.  Dr. G. J. Davey states that he has frequently
+witnessed, among his patients at the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, indications
+of a particular abnormal cerebration which forcibly reminded him of the
+specific healthy characteristics of animals lower in the scale of
+organization; {346} and every one must have observed how often the
+actions of children, especially in their moments of play, and where their
+selfish feelings are concerned, bear a resemblance 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 the humbler forms, but a few of the mental faculties are
+traceable, just as we see in them but a few of the lineaments of
+universal structure.  In man the system has arrived at its highest
+condition.  The few gleams of reason, then, which we see in the lower
+animals, are precisely analogous to such a development of the fore-arm as
+we find in the paddle of the whale.  Causality, comparison, and other of
+the nobler faculties, are in them _rudimental_.
+
+Bound up as we thus are by an identity in the character of our mental
+organization with the lower animals, we are yet, it will be observed,
+strikingly distinguished from them by this great advance in development.
+We have faculties in full force and activity which the animals either
+possess not at all, or in so low and obscure a form as to be equivalent
+to non-existence.  Now these parts of mind are those which connect us
+with the things that are not of this world.  We have veneration,
+prompting us to the worship of the Deity, which the animals lack.  We
+have hope, to carry us on in thought beyond the bounds of time.  We have
+reason, to enable us to inquire into the character of the Great Father,
+and the relation of us, his humble creatures, towards him.  We have
+conscientiousness and benevolence, by which we can in a faint and humble
+measure imitate, in our conduct, that which he exemplifies in the whole
+of his wondrous doings.  Beyond this, mental science does not carry us in
+support of religion: the rest depends on evidence of a different kind.
+But it is surely much that we thus discover in nature a provision for
+things so important.  The existence of faculties having a regard to such
+things is a good evidence that such things exist.  The face of God is
+reflected in the organization of man, as a little pool reflects the
+glorious sun.
+
+The affective or sentimental faculties are all of them liable to operate
+whenever appropriate objects or stimuli are presented, and this they do
+as irresistibly and unerringly as the tree sucks up moisture which it
+requires, with only this exception, that one faculty often interferes
+with the action of another, and operates instead by force of superior
+inherent strength or temporary activity.  For example, alimentiveness may
+be in powerful operation with regard to its appropriate object, producing
+a keen appetite, and yet it may not act, in consequence of the more
+powerful operation of cautiousness, warning against evil consequences
+likely to ensue from the desired indulgence.  This liability to flit from
+under the control of one feeling to the control of another, constitutes
+what is recognised as free will in man, being nothing more than a
+vicissitude in the supremacy of the faculties over each other.
+
+It is a common mistake to suppose that the individuals of our own species
+are all of them formed with similar faculties—similar in power and
+tendency—and that education and the influence of circumstances produce
+all the differences which we observe.  There is not, in the old systems
+of mental philosophy, any doctrine more opposite to the truth than this.
+It is refuted at once by the great differences of intellectual tendency
+and moral disposition to be observed amongst a group of young children
+who have been all brought up in circumstances perfectly identical—even in
+twins, who have never been but in one place, under the charge of one
+nurse, attended to alike in all respects.  The mental characters of
+individuals are inherently various, as the forms of their persons and the
+features of their faces are; and education and circumstances, though
+their influence is not to be despised, are incapable of entirely altering
+these characters, where they are strongly developed.  That the original
+characters of mind are dependent on the volume of particular parts of the
+brain and the general quality of that viscus, is proved by induction from
+an extensive range of observations, the force of which must have been
+long since universally acknowledged but for the unpreparedness of mankind
+to admit a functional connexion between mind and body.  The different
+mental characters of individuals may be presumed from analogy to depend
+on the same law of development which we have seen determining forms of
+being and the mental characters of particular species.  This we may
+conceive as carrying forward the intellectual powers and moral
+dispositions of some to a high pitch, repressing those of others at a
+moderate amount, and thus producing all the varieties which we see in our
+fellow-creatures.  Thus a Cuvier and a Newton are but expansions of a
+clown, and the person emphatically called the wicked man, is one whose
+highest moral feelings are rudimental.  Such differences are not confined
+to our species; they are only less strongly marked in many of the
+inferior animals.  There are clever dogs and wicked horses, as well as
+clever men and wicked men, and education sharpens the talents, and in
+some degree regulates the dispositions of animals, as it does our own.
+Here I may advert to a very interesting analogy between the mental
+characters of the types in the quinary system of zoology and the
+characters of individual men.  We have seen that the pre-eminent type is
+usually endowed with an harmonious assemblage of the mental qualities
+belonging to the whole group, while the sub-typical inclines 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 limited number is given the finely
+assorted assemblage of qualities which places them on a parallel with the
+typical.  To this may be attributed the universality which marks all the
+very highest brains, such as those of Shakespeare and Scott, men of whom
+it has been remarked that they must have possessed within themselves not
+only the poet, but the warrior, the statesman, and the philosopher; and
+who, moreover, appear to have had the mild and manly, the moral and the
+forcible parts of our nature, in the most perfect balance.
+
+There is, nevertheless, a general adaptation of the mental constitution
+of man to the circumstances in which he lives, as there is between all
+the parts of nature to each other.  The goods of the physical world are
+only to be realized by ingenuity and industrious exertion; behold,
+accordingly, an intellect full of device, and a fabric of the faculties
+which would go to pieces or destroy itself if it were not kept in
+constant occupation.  Nature presents to us much that is sublime and
+beautiful: behold faculties which delight in contemplating these
+properties of hers, and in rising upon them, as upon wings, to the
+presence of the Eternal.  It is also a world of difficulties and perils,
+and see how a large portion of our species are endowed with vigorous
+powers which take a pleasure in meeting and overcoming difficulty and
+danger.  Even that principle on which our faculties are constituted—a
+wide range of freedom in which to act for all various
+occasions—necessitates a resentful faculty, by which individuals may
+protect themselves from the undue and capricious exercise of each other’s
+faculties, and thus preserve their individual rights.  So also there is
+cautiousness, to give us a tendency 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
+function which obviously has a certain legitimate range of action,
+however liable to be abused.  The constitution of the mind generally
+points to a state of intimate relation of individuals towards society,
+towards the external world, and towards things above this world.  No
+individual being is integral or independent; he is only part of an
+extensive piece of social mechanism.  The inferior mind, full of rude
+energy and unregulated impulse, does not more require a superior nature
+to act as its master and its mentor, than does the superior nature
+require to be surrounded by such rough elements on which to exercise its
+high endowments as a ruling and tutelary power.  This relation of each to
+each produces a vast portion of the active business of life.  It is easy
+to see that, if we were all alike in our moral tendencies, and all placed
+on a medium of perfect moderation in this respect, the world would be a
+scene of everlasting dulness and apathy.  It requires the variety of
+individual constitution to give moral life to the scene.
+
+The indefiniteness of the potentiality of the human faculties, and the
+complexity which thus attends their relations, lead unavoidably to
+occasional error.  If we consider for a moment that there are not less
+than thirty such faculties, that they are each given in different
+proportions to different persons, that each is at the same time endowed
+with a wide discretion as to the force and frequency of its action, and
+that our neighbours, the world, and our connexions with something beyond
+it, are all exercising an ever-varying influence over us, we cannot be
+surprised at the irregularities attending human conduct.  It is simply
+the penalty paid for the superior endowment.  It is here that the
+imperfection of our nature resides.  Causality and conscientiousness are,
+it is true, guides over all; but even these are only faculties of the
+same indeterminate constitution as the rest, and partake accordingly of
+the same inequality of action.  Man is therefore a piece of mechanism,
+which never can act so as to satisfy his own ideas of what he might
+be—for he can imagine a state of moral perfection, (as he can imagine a
+globe formed of diamonds, pearls, and rubies,) though his constitution
+forbids him to realize it.  There ever will, in the best disposed and
+most disciplined minds, be occasional discrepancies between the amount of
+temptation and the power summoned for regulation or resistance, or
+between the stimulus and the mobility of the faculty; and hence those
+errors, and shortcomings, and excesses, without end, with which the good
+are constantly finding cause to charge themselves.  There is at the same
+time even here a possibility of 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 be habitually humane, frank, and truthful.  So is
+human society, in its earliest stages, sanguinary, aggressive, and
+deceitful, but in time becomes just, faithful, and benevolent.  To such
+improvements there is a natural tendency which will operate in all fair
+circumstances, though it is not to be expected that irregular and undue
+impulses will ever be altogether banished from the system.
+
+It may still be a puzzle to many, how beings should be born into the
+world whose organization is such that they unavoidably, even in a
+civilized country, become malefactors.  Does God, it may be asked, make
+criminals?  Does he fashion certain beings with a predestination to evil?
+He does not do so; and yet the criminal type of brain, as it is called,
+comes into existence in accordance with laws which the Deity has
+established.  It is not, however, as the result of the first or general
+intention of those laws, but as an exception from their ordinary and
+proper action.  The production of those evilly disposed beings is in this
+manner.  The moral character of the progeny depends in a general way, (as
+does the physical character also,) upon conditions of the parents,—both
+general conditions, and conditions at the particular time of the
+commencement of the existence of the new being, and likewise external
+conditions affecting the fœtus through the mother.  Now the amount of
+these conditions is indefinite.  The faculties of the parents, as far as
+these are concerned, may have oscillated for the time towards the extreme
+of tensibility in one direction.  The influences upon the fœtus may have
+also been of an extreme and unusual kind.  Let us suppose that the
+conditions upon the whole have been favourable for the development, not
+of the higher, but of the lower sentiments, and of the propensities of
+the new being, the result will necessarily be a mean type of brain.
+Here, it will be observed, God no more decreed an immoral being, than he
+decreed an immoral paroxysm of the sentiments.  Our perplexity is in
+considering the ill-disposed being by himself.  He is only a part of a
+series of phenomena, traceable to a principle good in the main, but which
+admits of evil as an exception.  We have seen that it is for wise ends
+that God leaves our moral faculties to an indefinite range of action; the
+general good results of this arrangement are obvious; but exceptions of
+evil are inseparable from such a system, and this is one of them.  To
+come to particular illustration—when a people are oppressed, or kept in a
+state of slavery, they invariably contract habits of lying, for the
+purpose of deceiving and outwitting their superiors, falsehood being a
+refuge of the weak under difficulties.  What is a habit in parents
+becomes an inherent quality in children.  We are not, therefore, to be
+surprised when a traveller tells us that black children in the West
+Indies appear to lie by instinct, and never answer a white person truly
+even in the simplest matter.  Here we have secretiveness roused in a
+people to a state of constant and exalted exercise; an over tendency of
+the nervous energy in that direction is the consequence, and a new
+organic condition is established.  This tells upon the progeny, which
+comes into the world with secretiveness excessive in volume and activity.
+All other evil characteristics may be readily conceived as being
+implanted in a new generation in the same way.  And sometimes not one,
+but several generations, may be concerned in bringing up the result to a
+pitch which produces crime.  It is, however, to be observed, that the
+general tendency of things is to a limitation, not the extension of such
+abnormally constituted beings.  The criminal brain finds itself in a
+social scene where all is against it.  It may struggle on for a time, but
+the medium and superior natures are never long at a loss in getting the
+better of it.  The disposal of such beings will always depend much on the
+moral state of a community, the degree in which just views prevail with
+regard to human nature, and the feelings which accident may have caused
+to predominate at a particular time.  Where the mass was little
+enlightened or refined, and terrors for life or property were highly
+excited, malefactors have ever been treated severely.  But when order is
+generally triumphant, and reason allowed sway, men begin to see the true
+case of criminals—namely, that while one large department are victims of
+erroneous social conditions, another are brought to error by tendencies
+which they are only unfortunate in having inherited from nature.
+Criminal jurisprudence then addresses itself less to the direct
+punishment than to the reformation and care-taking of those liable to its
+attention.  And such a treatment of criminals, it may be farther
+remarked, so that it stop short of affording any encouragement to crime,
+(a point which experience will determine,) is evidently no more than
+justice, seeing how accidentally all forms of the moral constitution are
+distributed, and how thoroughly mutual obligation shines throughout the
+whole frame of society—the strong to help the weak, the good to redeem
+and restrain the 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 be
+developed from inherent qualities, and to have a mode of action depending
+solely on its own organization.  Thus the whole is complete on one
+principle.  The masses of space are formed by law; law makes them in due
+time theatres of existence for plants and animals; sensation,
+disposition, intellect, are all in like manner developed and sustained in
+action by law.  It is most interesting to observe into how small a field
+the whole of the mysteries of nature thus ultimately resolve themselves.
+The inorganic has one final comprehensive law, GRAVITATION.  The organic,
+the other great department of mundane things, rests in like manner on one
+law, and that is,—DEVELOPMENT.  Nor may even these be after all twain,
+but only branches of one still more comprehensive law, the expression of
+that 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 origin of
+nature bears upon the condition of man upon the earth, and his relation
+to supra-mundane things.
+
+That enjoyment is the proper attendant of animal existence is pressed
+upon us by all that we see and all we experience.  Everywhere we perceive
+in the lower creatures, in their ordinary condition, symptoms of
+enjoyment.  Their whole being is a system of needs, the supplying of
+which is gratification, and of faculties, the exercise of which is
+pleasurable.  When we consult our own sensations, we find that, even in a
+sense of a healthy performance of all the functions of the animal
+economy, God has furnished us with an innocent and very high enjoyment.
+The mere quiet consciousness of a healthy play of the mental functions—a
+mind at ease with itself and all around it—is in like manner extremely
+agreeable.  This negative class of enjoyments, it may be remarked, is
+likely to be even more extensively experienced by the lower animals than
+by man, at least in the proportion of their absolute endowments, as their
+mental and bodily functions are much less liable to derangement than
+ours.  To find the world constituted on this principle is only what in
+reason we would expect.  We cannot conceive that so vast a system could
+have been created for a contrary purpose.  No averagely constituted human
+being would, in his own limited sphere of action, think of producing a
+similar system upon an opposite principle.  But to form so vast a range
+of being, and to make being everywhere a source of gratification, is
+conformable to our ideas of a Creator in whom we are constantly
+discovering traits of a nature, of which our own is but a faint and
+far-cast shadow at the best.
+
+It appears at first difficult to reconcile with this idea the many
+miseries which we see all sentient beings, ourselves included,
+occasionally enduring.  How, the sage has asked in every age, should a
+Being so transcendently kind, have allowed of so large an admixture of
+evil in the condition of his creatures?  Do we not at length find an
+answer to a certain extent satisfactory, in the view which has now been
+given of the constitution of nature?  We there see the Deity operating in
+the most august of his works by fixed laws, an arrangement which, it is
+clear, only admits of the main and primary results being good, but
+disregards exceptions.  Now the mechanical laws are so definite in their
+purposes, that no exceptions ever take place in that department; if there
+is a certain quantity of nebulous matter to be agglomerated and divided
+and set in motion as a planetary system, it will be so with
+hair’s-breadth accuracy, and cannot be otherwise.  But the laws presiding
+over meteorology, life, and mind, are necessarily less definite, as they
+have to produce a great variety of mutually related results.  Left to act
+independently of each other, each according to its separate commission,
+and each with a wide range of potentiality to be modified by associated
+conditions, they can only have effects generally beneficial: often there
+must be an interference of one law with another, often a law will chance
+to operate in excess, or upon a wrong object, and thus evil will be
+produced.  Thus, winds are generally useful in many ways, and the sea is
+useful as a means of communication between one country and another; but
+the natural laws which produce winds are of indefinite range of action,
+and sometimes are unusually concentrated in space or in time, so as to
+produce storms and hurricanes, by which much damage is done; the sea may
+be by these causes violently agitated, so that many barks and many lives
+perish.  Here, it is evident, the evil is only exceptive.  Suppose,
+again, that a boy, in the course of the lively sports proper to his age,
+suffers a fall which injures his spine, and renders him a cripple for
+life.  Two things have been concerned in the case: first, the love of
+violent exercise, and second, the law of gravitation.  Both of these
+things are good in the main.  In the rash enterprises and rough sports in
+which boys engage, they prepare their bodies and minds for the hard tasks
+of life.  By gravitation, all moveable things, our own bodies included,
+are kept stable on the surface of the earth.  But when it chances that
+the playful boy loses his hold (we shall say) of the branch of a tree,
+and has no solid support immediately below, the law of gravitation
+unrelentingly pulls him to the ground, and thus he is hurt.  Now it was
+not a primary object of gravitation to injure boys; but gravitation could
+not but operate in the circumstances, its nature 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 the evils
+which afflict society.  War, it may be said, and said truly, is a
+tremendous example of evil, in the misery, hardship, waste of human life,
+and mis-spending of human energies, which it occasions.  But what is it
+that produces war?  Certain tendencies of human nature, as keen assertion
+of a supposed right, resentment of supposed injury, acquisitiveness,
+desire of admiration, combativeness, or mere love of excitement.  All of
+these are tendencies which are every day, in a legitimate extent of
+action, producing great and indispensable benefits to us.  Man would be a
+tame, indolent, unserviceable being without them, and his fate would be
+starvation.  War, then, huge evil though it be, is, after all, but the
+exceptive case, a casual misdirection of properties and powers
+essentially good.  God has given us the tendencies for a benevolent
+purpose.  He has only not laid down any absolute obstruction to our
+misuse of them.  That were an arrangement of a kind which he has nowhere
+made.  But he has established many laws in our nature which tend to
+lessen the frequency and destructiveness of these abuses.  Our reason
+comes to see that war is purely an evil, even to the conqueror.
+Benevolence interposes to make its ravages less mischievous to human
+comfort, and less destructive to human life.  Men begin to find that
+their more active powers can be exercised with equal gratification on
+legitimate objects; for example, in overcoming the natural difficulties
+of their path through life, or in a generous spirit of emulation in a
+line of duty beneficial to themselves and their fellow-creatures.  Thus,
+war at length shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass, though there
+certainly is no reason to suppose that it will be at any early period, if
+ever, altogether dispensed with, while man’s constitution remains as it
+is.  In considering an evil of this kind, we must not limit our view to
+our own or any past time.  Placed upon the earth with faculties prepared
+to act, but inexperienced, and with the more active propensities
+necessarily in great force to suit the condition of the globe, man was
+apt to misuse his powers much in this way at first, compared with what he
+is likely to do when he advances into a condition of civilization.  In
+the scheme of providence, thousands of years of frequent warfare, all the
+so-called glories which fill history, may be only an exception to the
+general rule.
+
+The sex passion in like manner leads to great evils; but the evils are
+only an exception from the vast mass of good connected with this
+affection.  Providence has seen it necessary to make very ample provision
+for the preservation and utmost possible extension of all species.  The
+aim seems to be to diffuse existence as widely as possible, to fill up
+every vacant piece of space with some sentient being to be a vehicle of
+enjoyment.  Hence this passion is conferred in great force.  But the
+relation between the number of beings, and the means of supporting them,
+is only on the footing of general law.  There may be occasional
+discrepancies between the laws operating for the multiplication of
+individuals, and the laws operating to supply them with the means of
+subsistence, and evils will be endured in consequence, even in our own
+highly favoured species.  But against all these evils, and against those
+numberless vexations which have arisen in all ages from the attachment of
+the sexes, place the vast amount of happiness which is derived from this
+source—the basis of the whole circle of the domestic affections, the
+sweetening principle of life, the prompter of all our most generous
+feelings, and even of our most virtuous resolves—and every ill that can
+be traced to it is but as dust in the balance.  And here, also, we must
+be on our guard against judging from what we see in the world at a
+particular era.  As reason and the higher sentiments of man’s nature
+increase in force, this passion is put under better regulation, so as to
+lessen many of the evils connected with it.  The civilized man is more
+able to give it due control; his attachments are less the result of
+impulse; he studies more the weal of his partner and offspring.  There
+are even some of the resentful feelings connected in early society with
+love, such as hatred of successful rivalry, and jealousy, which almost
+disappear in an advanced stage of civilization.  The evils springing, in
+our own species at least, from this passion, may therefore be an
+exception mainly peculiar to a particular term of the world’s progress,
+and which may be expected to decrease greatly in amount.
+
+With respect, again, to disease, so prolific a cause of suffering to man,
+the human constitution is merely a complicated but regular process in
+electro-chemistry, which goes on well, and is a source of continual
+gratification, so long as nothing occurs to interfere with it
+injuriously, but which is liable every moment to be deranged by various
+external agencies, when it becomes a source of pain, and, if the injury
+be severe, ceases to be capable of retaining life.  It may be readily
+admitted that the evils experienced in this way are very great; but,
+after all, such experiences are no more than occasional, and not
+necessarily frequent—exceptions from a general rule of which the direct
+action is to confer happiness.  The human constitution might have been
+made of a more hardy character; but we always see hardiness and
+insensibility go together, and it may be of course presumed that we only
+could have purchased this immunity from suffering at the expense of a
+large portion of that delicacy in which lie some of our most agreeable
+sensations.  Or man’s faculties might have been restricted to
+definiteness of action, as is greatly the case with those of the lower
+animals, and thus we should have been equally safe from the aberrations
+which lead to disease; but in that event we should have been incapable of
+acting to so many different purposes as we are, and of the many high
+enjoyments which the varied action of our faculties places in our power:
+we should not, in short, have been human beings, but merely on a level
+with the inferior animals.  Thus, it appears, that the very fineness of
+man’s constitution, that which places him in such a high relation to the
+mundane economy, and makes him the vehicle of so many exquisitely
+delightful sensations—it is this which makes him liable to the sufferings
+of disease.  It might be said, on the other hand, that the noxiousness of
+the agencies producing disease might have been diminished or
+extinguished; but the probability is, that this could not have been done
+without such a derangement of the whole economy of nature as would have
+been attended with more serious evils.  For example—a large class of
+diseases are the result of effluvia from decaying organic matter.  This
+kind of matter is known to be extremely useful, when mixed with earth, in
+favouring the process of vegetation.  Supposing the noxiousness to the
+human constitution done away with, might we not also lose that important
+quality which tends so largely to increase the food raised from the
+ground?  Perhaps (as has been suggested) the noxiousness is even a matter
+of special design, to induce us to put away decaying organic substances
+into the earth, where they are calculated to be so useful.  Now man has
+reason to enable him to see that such substances are beneficial under one
+arrangement, and noxious in the other.  He is, as it were, commanded to
+take the right method in dealing with it.  In point of fact, men do not
+always take this method, but allow accumulations of noxious matter to
+gather close about their dwellings, where they generate fevers and agues.
+But their doing so may be regarded as only a temporary exception from the
+operation of mental laws, the general tendency of which is to make men
+adopt the proper measures.  And these measures will probably be in time
+universally adopted, so that one extensive class of diseases will be
+altogether or nearly abolished.
+
+Another large class of diseases spring from mismanagement of our personal
+economy.  Eating to excess, eating and drinking what is noxious,
+disregard to that cleanliness which is necessary for the right action of
+the functions of the skin, want of fresh air for the supply of the lungs,
+undue, excessive, and irregular indulgence of the mental affections, are
+all of them recognised modes of creating that derangement of the system
+in which disease consists.  Here also it may be said that a limitation of
+the mental faculties to definite manifestations (_vulgo_, instincts)
+might have enabled us to avoid many of 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 lower animals are, wanting that transcendently
+higher character of sensation and power, by which our enjoyments are made
+so much greater.  In making the desire of food, for example, with us an
+indefinite mental manifestation, instead of the definite one, which it is
+amongst the lower animals, the Creator has given us a means of deriving
+far greater gratifications from food (consistently with health) than the
+lower animals appear to be capable of.  He has also given us reason to
+act as a guiding and controlling power over this and other propensities,
+so that they may be prevented from becoming causes of malady.  We can see
+that excess is injurious, and are thus prompted to moderation.  We can
+see that all the things which we feel inclined to take are not healthful,
+and are thus exhorted to avoid what are pernicious.  We can also see that
+a cleanly skin and a constant supply of pure air are necessary to the
+proper performance of some of the most important of the organic
+functions, and thus are stimulated to frequent ablution, and to a right
+ventilation of our parlours and sleeping apartments.  And so on with the
+other causes of disease.  Reason may not operate very powerfully to these
+purposes in an early state of society, and prodigious evils may therefore
+have been endured from disease in past ages; but these are not
+necessarily to be endured always.  As civilization advances, reason
+acquires a greater ascendancy; the causes of the evils are seen and
+avoided; and disease shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass.  The
+experience of our own country places this in a striking light.  In the
+middle ages, when large towns had no police regulations, society was
+every now and then scourged by pestilence.  The third of the people of
+Europe are said to have been carried off by one epidemic.  Even in London
+the annual mortality has greatly sunk within a century.  The improvement
+in human life, which has taken place since the construction of the
+Northampton tables by Dr. Price, is equally remarkable.  Modern tables
+still shew a prodigious mortality among the young in all civilized
+countries—evidently a result of some prevalent error in the usual modes
+of rearing them.  But to remedy this evil there is the sagacity of the
+human mind, and the sense to adopt any reformed plans which may be shewn
+to be necessary.  By a change in the management of an orphan institution
+in London, during the last fifty years, an immense reduction in the
+mortality took place.  We may of course hope to see measures devised and
+adopted for producing a similar improvement of infant life throughout the
+world at large.
+
+In this part of our subject, the most difficult point certainly lies in
+those occurrences of disease where the afflicted individual has been in
+no degree concerned in bringing the visitation upon himself.  Daily
+experience shews us infectious disease arising in a place where the
+natural laws in respect of cleanliness are neglected, and then spreading
+into regions where there is no blame of this kind.  We then see the
+innocent suffering equally with those who may be called the guilty.  Nay,
+the benevolent physician who comes to succour the miserable beings whose
+error may have caused the mischief, is sometimes seen to fall a victim to
+it, while many of his patients recover.  We are also only too familiar
+with the transmission of diseases from erring parents to innocent
+children, who, accordingly suffer, and perhaps die prematurely, as it
+were for the sins of others.  After all, however painful such cases may
+be in contemplation, they cannot be regarded in any other light than as
+exceptions from arrangements, the general working of which is beneficial.
+
+With regard to the innocence of the suffering parties, there is one
+important consideration which is pressed upon us from many quarters,
+namely—that moral conditions have not the least concern in the working of
+these simply physical laws.  These laws proceed with an entire
+independence of all such conditions, and desirably so, for otherwise
+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 the less cautious of
+the two, ventures upon an insecure place, falls, and is killed, while the
+other, choosing a better footing, remains uninjured.  It is not in what
+we can conceive of the nature of things, that there should be a special
+exemption from the ordinary laws of matter, to save this virtuous man.
+So it might be that, of two physicians, attending fever cases, in a mean
+part of a large city, the one, an excellent citizen, may stand in such a
+position with 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
+and father, and who, unlike the other, only attends such cases with
+selfish ends, takes care to be as much as possible out of the stream of
+infection, and accordingly escapes.  In both of these cases man’s sense
+of good and evil—his faculty of conscientiousness—would incline him to
+destine the vicious man to destruction and save the virtuous.  But the
+Great Ruler of Nature does not act on such principles.  He has
+established laws for the operation of inanimate matter, which are quite
+unswerving, so that when we know them, we have only to act in a certain
+way with respect to them, in order to obtain all the benefits and avoid
+all the evils connected with them.  He has likewise established moral
+laws in our nature, which are equally unswerving, (allowing for their
+wider range of action,) and from obedience to which unfailing good is to
+be derived.  But the two sets of laws are independent of each other.
+Obedience to each gives only its own proper advantage, not the advantage
+proper to the other.  Hence it is that virtue forms no protection against
+the evils connected with the physical laws, while, on the other hand, a
+man skilled in and attentive to these, but unrighteous and disregardful
+of his neighbour, is in like manner not protected by his attention to
+physical circumstances from the proper consequences of neglect or breach
+of the moral laws.
+
+Thus it is that the innocence of the party suffering for the faults of a
+parent, or of any other person or set of persons, is evidently a
+consideration quite apart from that suffering.
+
+It is clear, moreover, from the whole scope of the natural laws, that the
+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; the individual is left, as it
+were, to take his chance amidst the _mêlée_ of the various laws affecting
+him.  If he be found inferiorly endowed, or ill befalls him, there was at
+least no partiality against him.  The system has the fairness of a
+lottery, in which every one has 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 a compensating, a
+repairing, and a consoling effect.  Suppose, for instance, that, from a
+defect in the power of development in a mother, her offspring is ushered
+into the world destitute of some of the most useful members, or blind, or
+deaf, or of imperfect intellect, there is ever to be found in the parents
+and other relatives, and in the surrounding public, a sympathy with the
+sufferer, which tends to make up for the deficiency, so that he is in the
+long run not much a loser.  Indeed, the benevolence implanted in our
+nature seems to be an arrangement having for one of its principal objects
+to cause us, by sympathy and active aid, to remedy the evils unavoidably
+suffered by our fellow-creatures in the course of the operation of the
+other natural laws.  And even in the sufferer himself, it is often found
+that a defect in one point is made up for by an extra power in another.
+The blind come to have a sense of touch much more acute than those who
+see.  Persons born without hands have been known to acquire a power of
+using their feet for a number of the principal offices usually served by
+that member.  I need hardly say how remarkably fatuity is compensated by
+the more than usual regard paid to the children born with it by their
+parents, and the zeal which others usually feel to protect and succour
+such persons.  In short, we never see evil of any kind take place where
+there is not some remedy or compensating principle ready to interfere for
+its alleviation.  And there can be no doubt that in this manner suffering
+of all kinds is very much relieved.
+
+We may, then, regard the globes of space as theatres designed for the
+residence of animated sentient beings, placed there with this as their
+first and most obvious purpose—namely, to be sensible of enjoyments from
+the exercise of their faculties in relation to external things.  The
+faculties of the various species are very different, but the happiness of
+each depends on the harmony there may be 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 many more faculties, cannot be thus contented.
+Besides having a sufficiency of food and bodily comfort, he must have
+entertainment for his intellect, whatever be its grade, objects for the
+domestic and social affections, objects for the sentiments.  He is also a
+progressive being, and what pleases him to-day may not please him
+to-morrow; but, in each case he demands a sphere of appropriate
+conditions in order to be happy.  By virtue of his superior organization,
+his enjoyments are much higher and more varied than those of any of the
+lower animals; but the very complexity of circumstances affecting him
+renders it at the same time unavoidable, that his nature should be often
+inharmoniously placed and disagreeably affected, and that he should
+therefore be unhappy.  Still unhappiness amongst mankind is the exception
+from the rule of their condition, and an exception which is capable of
+almost infinite diminution, by virtue of the improving reason of man, and
+the experience which he acquires in working out the problems of society.
+
+To secure the immediate means of happiness it would seem to be necessary
+for men first to study with all care the constitution of nature, and,
+secondly, to accommodate themselves to that constitution, so as to obtain
+all the realizable advantages from acting conformably to it, and to avoid
+all likely evils from disregarding it.  It will be of no use to sit down
+and expect that things are to operate of their own accord, or through the
+direction of a partial deity, for our benefit; equally so were it to
+expose ourselves to palpable dangers, under the notion that we shall, for
+some reason, have a dispensation or exemption from them: we must
+endeavour so to place ourselves, and so to act, that the arrangements
+which Providence has made impartially for all may be in our favour, and
+not against us; such are the only means by which we can obtain good and
+avoid evil here below.  And, in doing this, it is especially necessary
+that care be taken to avoid interfering with the like efforts of other
+men, beyond what may have been agreed upon by the mass as necessary for
+the general good.  Such interferences, tending in any way to injure the
+body, property, or peace of a neighbour, or to the injury of society in
+general, tend very much to reflect evil upon ourselves, through the
+re-action which they produce in the feelings of our neighbour and of
+society, and also the offence which they give to our own
+conscientiousness and benevolence.  On the other hand, when we endeavour
+to promote the efforts of our fellow-creatures to attain happiness, we
+produce a re-action of the contrary kind, the tendency of which is
+towards our own benefit.  The one course of action tends to the injury,
+the other to the benefit of ourselves and others.  By the one course the
+general design of the Creator towards his creatures is thwarted; by the
+other it is favoured.  And thus we can readily see the most substantial
+grounds for regarding all moral emotions and doings as divine in their
+nature, and as a means of rising to and communing with God.  Obedience is
+not selfishness, which it would otherwise be—it is worship.  The merest
+barbarians have a glimmering sense of this philosophy, and it continually
+shines out more and more clearly in the public mind, as a nation advances
+in intelligence.  Nor are individuals alone concerned here.  The same
+rule applies as between one 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—this being a gross injustice to the subjected party,
+the mental manifestations of that party to the masters will be such as to
+mar the comfort of their lives; the minds of the masters themselves will
+be degraded by the association with beings so degraded; and thus, with
+some immediate or apparent benefit from keeping slaves, there will be in
+a far greater degree an experience of evil.  So also, if one portion of a
+nation, engaged in a particular department of industry, grasp at some
+advantages injurious to the other sections of the people, the first
+effect will be an injury to those other portions of the nation, and the
+second a re-active injury to the injurers, making their guilt their
+punishment.  And so when one nation commits an aggression upon the
+property or rights of another, or even pursues towards it a sordid or
+ungracious policy, the effects are sure to be redoubled evil from the
+offended party.  All of these things are under laws which make the
+effects, on a large range, absolutely certain; and an individual, a
+party, a people, can no more act unjustly with safety, than I could with
+safety place my leg in the track of a coming wain, or attempt to fast
+thirty days.  We have been constituted on the principle of only being
+able to realize happiness for ourselves when our fellow-creatures are
+also happy; we must therefore both do to others only as we would have
+others to do to us, and endeavour to promote their happiness as well as
+our own, in order to find ourselves truly comfortable in this field of
+existence.  These are words which God speaks to us as truly through his
+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 not imply
+the most perfect conceivable love or regard on the part of the Deity
+towards his creatures.  Constituted as we are, feeling how vain our
+efforts often are to attain happiness or avoid calamity, and knowing that
+much evil does unavoidably befall us from no fault of ours, we are apt to
+feel that this is a dreary view of the Divine economy; and before we have
+looked farther, we might be tempted to say, Far rather let us cling to
+the idea, so long received, that the Deity acts continually for special
+occasions, and gives such directions to the fate of each individual as he
+thinks meet; so that, when sorrow comes to us, we shall have at least the
+consolation of believing that it is imposed by a Father who loves us, and
+who seeks by these means to accomplish our ultimate good.  Now, in the
+first place, if this be an untrue notion of the Deity and his ways, it
+can be of no real benefit to us; and, in the second, it is proper to
+inquire if there be necessarily in the doctrine of natural law any
+peculiarity calculated materially to affect our hitherto supposed
+relation to the Deity.  It may be that while we are committed to take our
+chance in a natural system of undeviating operation, and are left with
+apparent ruthlessness to endure the consequences of every collision into
+which we knowingly or unknowingly come with each law of the system, there
+is a system of Mercy and Grace behind the screen of nature, which is to
+make up for all casualties endured here, and the very largeness of which
+is what makes these casualties a matter of indifference to God.  For the
+existence of such a system, the actual constitution of nature is itself
+an argument.  The reasoning may proceed thus: The system of nature
+assures us that benevolence is a leading principle in the divine mind.
+But that system is at the same time deficient in a means of making this
+benevolence of invariable operation.  To reconcile this to the recognised
+character of the Deity, it is necessary to suppose that the present
+system is but a part of a whole, a stage in a Great Progress, and that
+the Redress is in reserve.  Another argument here occurs—the economy of
+nature, beautifully arranged and vast in its extent as it is, does not
+satisfy even man’s idea of what might be; he feels that, if this
+multiplicity of theatres for the exemplification of such phenomena as we
+see on earth were to go on for ever unchanged, it would not be worthy of
+the Being capable of creating it.  An endless monotony of human
+generations, with their humble thinkings and doings, seems an object
+beneath that august Being.  But the mundane economy might be very well as
+a portion of some greater phenomenon, the rest of which was yet to be
+evolved.  It therefore appears that our system, though it may at first
+appear at issue with other doctrines in esteem amongst mankind, tends to
+come into harmony with them, and even to give them support.  I would say,
+in conclusion, that, even where the two above arguments may fail of
+effect, there may yet be a faith derived from this view of nature
+sufficient to sustain us under all sense of the imperfect happiness, the
+calamities, the woes, and pains of this sphere of being.  For let us but
+fully and truly consider what a system is here laid open to view, and we
+cannot well doubt that we are in the hands of One who is both able and
+willing to do us the 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, or though every hope we had built on the secular materials
+within our reach were felt to be melting from our grasp.  Thinking of all
+the contingencies of this world as to be in time melted into or lost in
+the greater system, to which the present is only subsidiary, let us wait
+the end with patience, and be of good cheer.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE CONCLUSORY.
+
+
+THUS ends a book, composed in solitude, and almost without the cognizance
+of a single human being, for the sole purpose (or as nearly so as may be)
+of improving the knowledge of mankind, and through that medium their
+happiness.  For reasons which need not be specified, the author’s name is
+retained in its original obscurity, and, in all probability, will never
+be generally known.  I do not expect that any word of praise which the
+work may elicit shall ever be responded to by me; or that any word of
+censure shall ever be parried or deprecated.  It goes forth to take its
+chance of instant oblivion, or of a long and active course of usefulness
+in the world.  Neither contingency can be of any importance to me, beyond
+the regret or the satisfaction which may be imparted by my sense of a
+lost or a realized benefit to my fellow-creatures.  The book, as far as I
+am aware, is the first attempt to connect the natural sciences into a
+history of creation.  The idea is a bold one, and there are many
+circumstances of time and place to render its boldness more than usually
+conspicuous.  But I believe my doctrines to be in the main true; I
+believe all truth to be valuable, and its dissemination a blessing.  At
+the same time, I hold myself duly sensible of the common liability to
+error, but am certain that no error in this line has the least chance of
+being allowed to injure the public mind.  Therefore I publish.  My views,
+if correct, will most assuredly stand, and may sooner or later prove
+beneficial; if otherwise, they will as surely pass out of notice without
+doing any harm.
+
+My sincere desire in the composition of the book was to give the true
+view of the history of nature, with as little disturbance as possible to
+existing beliefs, whether philosophical or religious.  I have made little
+reference to any doctrines of the latter kind which may be thought
+inconsistent with mine, because to do so would have been to enter upon
+questions for the settlement of which our knowledge is not yet ripe.  Let
+the reconciliation of whatever is true in my views with whatever is true
+in other systems come about in the fulness of calm and careful inquiry.
+I cannot but here remind the reader of what Dr. Wiseman has shewn so
+strikingly in his lectures, how different new philosophic doctrines are
+apt to appear after we have become somewhat familiar with them.  Geology
+at first seems inconsistent with the authority of the Mosaic record.  A
+storm of unreasoning indignation rises against its teachers.  In time,
+its truths, being found quite irresistible, are admitted, and mankind
+continue to regard the Scriptures with the same respect as before.  So
+also with several other sciences.  Now the only objection that can be
+made on such ground to this book, is, that it brings forward some new
+hypotheses, at first sight, like geology, not in perfect harmony with
+that record, and arranges all the rest into a system which partakes of
+the same character.  But may not the sacred text, on a liberal
+interpretation, or with the benefit of new light reflected from nature,
+or derived from learning, be shewn to be as much in harmony with the
+novelties of this volume as it has been with geology and natural
+philosophy?  What is there in the laws of organic creation more startling
+to the candid theologian than in the Copernican system or the natural
+formation of strata?  And if the whole series of facts is true, why
+should we shrink from inferences legitimately flowing from it?  Is it not
+a wiser course, since reconciliation has come in so many instances, still
+to hope for it, still to go on with our new truths, trusting that they
+also will in time be found harmonious with all others?  Thus we avoid the
+damage which the very appearance of an opposition to natural truth is
+calculated to inflict on any system presumed to require such support.
+Thus we give, as is meet, a respectful reception to what is revealed
+through the medium of nature, at the same time that we fully reserve our
+reverence for all we have been accustomed to hold sacred, not one tittle
+of which it may ultimately be found necessary to alter.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES.
+
+
+{3}  By Mr. Henderson, Professor of Astronomy in the Edinburgh
+University, 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 Dublin
+Philosophical Magazine_, February, 1843.
+
+{9}  The orbitual revolutions of the satellites of Uranus have not as yet
+been clearly scanned.  It has been thought that their path is retrograde
+compared with the rest.  Perhaps this may be owing to a _bouleversement_
+of the primary, for the inclination of its equator to the ecliptic is
+admitted to be unusually high; but the subject is altogether so obscure,
+that nothing can be founded on it.
+
+{12}  Astronomy, Lardner’s Cyclopædia.
+
+{17}  M. Compte combined Huygens’s theorems for the measure of
+centrifugal force with the law of gravitation, and thus formed a simple
+fundamental equation between the duration of the rotation of what he
+calls the producing star, and the distance of the star produced.  The
+constants of this equation were the radius of the central star, and the
+intensity of gravity at its surface, which is a direct consequence of its
+mass.  It leads directly to the third law of Kepler, which thus becomes
+susceptible of being conceived _à priori_ in a cosmogonical point of
+view.  M. Compte first applied it to the moon, and found, to his great
+delight, that the periodic time of that satellite agrees within an hour
+or two with the duration which the revolution of the earth ought to have
+had at the time when the lunar distance formed the limit of the earth’s
+atmosphere.  He found the coincidence less exact, but still very striking
+in every other case.  In those of the planets he obtained for the
+duration of the corresponding solar rotations a value always a little
+less than their actual periodic times.  “It is remarkable,” says he,
+“that this difference, though increasing as the planet is more distant,
+preserves very nearly the same relation to the corresponding periodic
+time, of which it commonly forms the forty-fifth part,”—shewing, we may
+suppose, that only some small elements of the question had been
+overlooked by the calculator.  The defect changes to an excess in the
+different systems of the satellites, where it is proportionally greater
+than in the planets, and unequal in the different systems.  “From the
+whole of these comparisons,” says he, “I deduced the following general
+result:—Supposing the mathematical limit of the solar atmosphere
+successively extended to the regions where the different planets are now
+found, the duration of the sun’s rotation was, at each of these epochs,
+sensibly equal to that of the actual sidereal revolution of the
+corresponding planet; and the same is true for each planetary atmosphere
+in relation to the different satellites.”—_Cours de Philosophie Positif_.
+
+{42}  The researches on this subject were conducted chiefly by the late
+Baron Fourier, perpetual secretary to the Academy of Sciences of Paris.
+See his _Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur_.  1822.
+
+{52}  Delabeche’s Geological Researches.
+
+{60}  In the Cumbrian limestone occur “calamoporæ, 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.  That fragments of
+crinoidea, though of no determinate species, occur in this system, we
+have the authority of Mr. Murchison.—_Silurian System_, 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 British Museum, is
+forty-five feet high.
+
+{93}  “Some of the most considerable dislocations of the border of the
+coal fields of Coalbrookdale and Dudley happened after the deposition of
+a part of the new red sandstone; but it is certain that those of
+Somersetshire and Gloucestershire were completed before the date of that
+rock.”—_Philips_.
+
+{97}  The immediate effects of the slow respiration of the reptilia are,
+a low temperature in their bodies, and a slow consumption of food.
+Requiring little oxygen, they could have existed in an atmosphere
+containing a less proportion of that gas to carbonic acid gas than what
+now obtains.
+
+{99}  The order to which frogs and toads belong.
+
+{103}  Dr. Buckland, quoting an article by Professor Hitchcock, in the
+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 contents of
+the stomach faithfully preserved, and even with pieces of the external
+skin.  The pellets ejected by them (_coprolites_) are found in vast
+numbers, each generally enclosed in a nodule of ironstone, and sometimes
+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 to an
+order in which the hog, elephant, horse, and rhinoceros are included.
+
+{149}  Intervals in the series were numerous in the department of the
+pachydermata; many of these gaps are now filled up from the extinct
+genera found in the tertiary formation.
+
+{151}  See paper by Professor Edward Forbes, read to the British
+Association, 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 the
+curve downwards, and in the bend is to be placed a small portion of
+mercury, not sufficient to close the connexion between the two legs; a
+solution of nitrate of silver is then to be introduced until it rises in
+both limbs of the tube.  The precipitation of the mercury, in the form of
+an Arbor Dianæ, will then take place, slowly, only when the syphon is
+placed in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic meridian; but if it be
+placed in a plane coinciding with the magnetic meridian, the action is
+rapid, and the crystallization particularly beautiful, taking place
+principally in that branch of the syphon towards the north.  If the
+syphon be placed in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic meridian, and a
+strong magnet brought near it, the precipitation will commence in a short
+time, and be most copious in the branch of the syphon nearest to the
+south pole of the magnet.”
+
+{169a}  Fatty matter has also been formed in the laboratory.  The process
+consisted in passing a mixture of carbonic acid, pure hydrogen, and
+carburetted hydrogen, in the proportion of one measure of the first,
+twenty of the second, and ten of the third, through a red-hot tube.
+
+{169b}  Supplement to the Atomic Theory.
+
+{170}  Carpenter on Life; Todd’s Cyclopædia of Physiology.
+
+{171}  Carpenter’s Report on the results obtained by the Microscope in
+the Study of Anatomy and Physiology, 1843.
+
+{172}  See Dr. Martin Barry on Fissiparous Generation; Jameson’s Journal,
+Oct. 1843.  Appearances precisely similar have been detected in the germs
+of the crustacea.
+
+{175}  Mr. Leonard Horner and Sir David Brewster, on a substance
+resembling shell.—_Philosophical Transactions_, 1836.
+
+{179a}  Dr. Allen Thomson, in the article _Generation_, in Todd’s
+Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology.
+
+{179b}  The term aboriginal is here suggested, as more correct than
+spontaneous, the one hitherto generally used.
+
+{182}  Article “Zoophytes,” Encyclopædia Britannica, 7th edition.
+
+{187}  See a pamphlet circulated by Mr. Weekes, in 1842.
+
+{195}  Daubenton established the rule, that all the viviparous quadrupeds
+have seven vertebræ in the neck.
+
+{201}  Lord’s Popular Physiology.  It is to Tiedemann that we chiefly owe
+these curious observations; but ground was first broken in this branch of
+physiological science by Dr. John Hunter.
+
+{204}  When I formed this idea, I was not aware of one which seems
+faintly to foreshadow it—namely, Socrates’s doctrine, afterwards dilated
+on by Plato, that “previous to the existence of the world, and beyond its
+present limits, there existed certain archetypes, the embodiment (if we
+may use such a word) of general ideas; and that these archetypes were
+models, in imitation of which all particular beings were created.”
+
+{208}  The numbers 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, &c. are formed by adding the
+successive terms of the series of natural numbers thus:
+
+1            = 1
+1+2          = 3
+1+2+3        = 6
+l+2+3+4      = 10, &c.
+
+They are called triangular numbers, because a number of points
+corresponding to any term can always be placed in the form of 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 the brain
+of every tribe of animals appears to pass, during its development, in
+succession through the types of all those below it, so the brain of man
+passes through the types of those of every tribe in the creation.  It
+represents, accordingly, before the second month of utero-gestation, that
+of an avertebrated animal; at the second month, that of an osseous fish;
+at the third, that of a turtle; at the fourth, that of a bird; at the
+fifth, that of one of the rodentia; at the sixth, that of one of the
+ruminantia; at the seventh, that of one of the digitigrada; at the
+eighth, that of one of the quadrumana; till at length, at the ninth, it
+compasses the brain of Man!  It is hardly necessary to say, that all this
+is only an approximation to the truth; since neither is the brain of all
+osseous fishes, of all turtles, of all birds, nor of all the species of
+any one of the above order of mammals, by any means precisely the same,
+nor does the brain of the human fœtus at any time precisely resemble,
+perhaps, that of any individual whatever among the lower animals.
+Nevertheless, it may be said to represent, at each of the above-mentioned
+periods, the aggregate, as it were, of the brains of each of the tribes
+stated; consisting as it does, about the second month, chiefly of the
+mesial parts of the cerebellum, the corpora quadrigemina, thalami optici,
+rudiments of the hemispheres of the cerebrum and corpora striata; and
+receiving in succession, at the third, the rudiments of the lobes of the
+cerebrum; at the fourth, those of the fornix, corpus callosum, and septum
+lucidum; at the fifth, the tubor annulare, and so forth; the posterior
+lobes of the cerebrum increasing from before to behind, so as to cover
+the thalami optici about the fourth month, the corpora quadrigemina about
+the sixth, and the cerebellum about the seventh.  This, then, is another
+example of an increase in the complexity of an organ succeeding its
+centralization; as if Nature, having first piled up her materials in one
+spot, delighted afterwards to employ her abundance, not so much in
+enlarging old parts as in forming new ones upon the old foundations, and
+thus adding to the complexity of a fabric, the rudimental structure of
+which is in all animals equally simple.”—_Fletcher’s Rudiments of
+Physiology_.
+
+{226}  Project Gutenberg note: the table in the book is very wide.  Since
+it won’t fit within the normal Gutenberg margins, and cannot be
+reproduced typographically, the rows of the table have been broken out as
+follows.—DP.
+
+Table shows: scale of animal kingdom (the numbers indicate orders); order
+of animals in; ascending series of rocks; fœtal human brain resembles, in
+
+(The numbers indicate orders)
+
+Rocks: 1. Gneiss and Mica Slate system
+
+Fœtal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;
+
+Scale: RADIATA (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
+
+Order: Zoophyta, Polypiaria
+
+Rocks: 2. Clay Slate and Grawacke system
+
+Fœtal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;
+
+Scale: MOLLUSCA (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
+
+Order: Conchifera, Double-shelled Mollusks
+
+Rocks: 3. Silurian system
+
+Fœtal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;
+
+Scale: ARTICULATA _Annelida_ (12, 13, 14)
+
+Rocks: 3. Silurian system
+
+Fœtal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;
+
+Scale: ARTICULATA _Crustacea_ (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
+
+Order: Crustacea, Annelida, Crustaceous Fishes
+
+Rocks: 3. Silurian system
+
+Fœtal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;
+
+Scale: ARTICULATA _Arachnida & Insecta_ (21–31)
+
+Order: Crustaceous Fishes
+
+Rocks: 4. Old Red Sandstone
+
+Fœtal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Pisces_ (32, 33, 34, 35, 36)
+
+Order: True Fishes
+
+Rocks: 5. Carboniferous formation
+
+Fœtal: 2nd month, that of a fish;
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Reptilia_ (37, 38, 39, 40)
+
+Order: Piscine Saurians (ichthyosaurus, &c.), Pterodactyles, Crocodiles,
+Tortoises, Batrachians
+
+Rocks: 6. New Red Sandstone
+
+Fœtal: 3rd month, that of a turtle;
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Aves_ (41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46)
+
+Order: Birds
+
+Rocks: 6. New Red Sandstone
+
+Fœtal: 4th month, that of a bird;
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 47 Cetacea
+
+Order: (Bone of a marsupial animal)
+
+Rocks: 7. Oolite
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 48 Ruminantia
+
+Order: (Bone of a marsupial animal)
+
+Rocks: 8. Cretaceous formation
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 49 Pachydermata
+
+Order: Pachydermata (tapirs, horses, &c.)
+
+Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 50 Edentata
+
+Order: Pachydermata (tapirs, horses, &c.)
+
+Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 51 Rodentia
+
+Order: Rodentia (dormouse, squirrel, &c.)
+
+Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene
+
+Fœtal: 5th month, that of a rodent;
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 52 Marsupialia
+
+Order: Marsupialia (racoon, opossum, &c.)
+
+Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene
+
+Fœtal: 6th month, that of a ruminant;
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 53 Amphibia
+
+Order: Marsupialia (racoon, opossum, &c.)
+
+Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene
+
+Fœtal: 6th month, that of a ruminant;
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 54 Digitigrada
+
+Order: Digitigrada (genette, fox, wolf, &c.)
+
+Rocks: 10. Miocene
+
+Fœtal: 7th month, that of a digitigrade animal;
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 55 Plantigrada
+
+Order: Plantigrada (bear)
+
+Rocks: 10. Miocene
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 55 Plantigrada
+
+Order: Cetacea (lamantins, seals, whales)
+
+Rocks: 10. Miocene
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 56 Insectivora
+
+Order: Edentata (sloths, &c.)
+
+Rocks: 11. Pliocene
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 56 Insectivora
+
+Order: Ruminantia (oxen, deer, &c.)
+
+Rocks: 11. Pliocene
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 57 Cheiroptera
+
+Rocks: 11. Pliocene
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 58 Quadrumana
+
+Order: Quadrumana (monkeys)
+
+Rocks: 11. Pliocene
+
+Fœtal: 8th month, that of the quadrumana;
+
+Scale: VERTEBRATA _Mammalia_: 59 Bimana
+
+Order: Bimana (man)
+
+Rocks: 12. Superficial deposits
+
+Fœtal: 9th month, attains full human character;
+
+{229}  Some poor people having taken up their abode in the cells under
+the fortifications of Lisle, the proportion of defective infants produced
+by them became so great, that it was deemed necessary to issue an order
+commanding these cells to be shut up.
+
+{232}  These affinities and analogies are explained in the next chapter.
+
+{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 be
+explained in the sequel.
+
+{242}  This is preferred to grallatorial, as more comprehensively
+descriptive.  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 circle
+simiadæ are only too rigid, for fossil geology has since added new genera
+to this group and the cebidæ, and there may be still farther additions.
+
+{270}  See Wilson’s American Ornithology; article, _Fishing Crow_.
+
+{274}  Project Gutenberg note: in the diagram the triangles extending
+from the 1,2,3,4 and the a,b,c,d meet at the same point—the line from the
+1,2,3,4 being at around 45° and the line from the a,b,c,d being at around
+60°.  Despite what the text says there is no line labelled 5 in the
+diagram.—DP.
+
+{278}  See Dr. Prichard’s Researches into the Physical History of Man.
+
+{280}  Buckingham’s Travels among the Arabs.  This fact is the more
+valuable to the argument, as having been set down with no regard to any
+kind of hypothesis.
+
+{287}  Wiseman’s Lectures on the Connexion between Science and Revealed
+Religion, i. 44.  The Celtic has been established as a member or group of
+the Indo-European family, by the work of Dr. Prichard, _on the Eastern
+Origin of the Celtic Nations_.  “First,” says Dr. Wiseman, “he has
+examined the lexical resemblances, and shewn that the primary and most
+simple words are the same in both, as well as the numerals and elementary
+verbal roots.  Then follows a minute analysis of the verb, directed to
+shew its analogies with other languages, and they are such as manifest no
+casual coincidence, but an internal structure radically the same.  The
+verb substantive, which is minutely analysed, presents more striking
+analogies to the Persian verb than perhaps any other language of the
+family.  But Celtic is not thus become a mere member of this confederacy,
+but has brought to it most important aid; for, from it alone can be
+satisfactorily explained some of the conjugational endings in the other
+languages.  For instance, the third person plural of the Latin, Persian,
+Greek, and Sanscrit ends in nt, nd, ντι, ντο, nti, or nt.  Now,
+supposing, with most grammarians, that the inflexions arose from the
+pronouns of the respective persons, it is only in Celtic that we find a
+pronoun that can explain this termination; for there, 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—so puzzling
+when we consider that they are only, as will be presently seen, the child
+race of mankind—is solved when we look to geographical position producing
+fixity of residence and density of population.
+
+{307a}  Lord’s Popular Physiology, explaining observations by M. Serres.
+
+{307b}  Conformably to this view, the beard, that peculiar attribute of
+maturity, is scanty in the Mongolian, and scarcely exists in the
+Americans and Negroes.
+
+{309}  Of this we have perhaps an illustration in the peculiarities which
+distinguish the Arabs residing in the valley of the Jordan.  They have
+flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair than other tribes of
+their nation; and we have seen one instance of a thoroughly Negro family
+being born to an ordinary couple.  It may be presumed that the conditions
+of the life of these people tend to arrest development.  We thus see how
+an offshoot of the human family migrating at an early period into Africa,
+might in time, from subjection 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?  Do not
+the first attributes of matter lie as inscrutable in the bosom of God—of
+its first author—as those of mind?  Has not even matter confessedly
+received from God the power of experiencing, in consequence 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 of other matter
+called ideas of the mind a wonder more flowing out of and in analogy with
+all former wonders, than would be, on the contrary, the wonder of this
+faculty of the mind not flowing out of any faculties of matter?  Is it
+not a wonder which, so far from destroying our hopes of immortality, can
+establish that doctrine on a train of inferences and inductions more
+firmly established and more connected with each other than the former
+belief can be, as soon as we have proved that matter is not perishable,
+but is only liable to successive combinations and decombinations.
+
+“Can we look farther back one way into the first origin of matter than we
+can look forward the other way into the last developments of mind?  Can
+we say that God has not in matter itself laid the seeds of every faculty
+of mind, rather than that he has made the first principle of mind
+entirely distinct from that of matter?  Cannot the first cause of all we
+see and know have _fraught matter itself_, _from its very beginning_,
+_with all the attributes necessary to develop into mind_, as well as he
+can have from the first made the attributes of mind wholly different from
+those of matter, only in order afterwards, by an imperceptible and
+incomprehensible link, to join the two together?
+
+“ * * [The decombination of the matter on which mind rests] is this a
+reason why mind must be annihilated?  Is the temporary reverting of the
+mind, and of the sense out of which that mind developes, to their
+original component elements, a reason for thinking that they cannot again
+at another later period, and in another higher globe, be again
+recombined, and with more splendour than before? * * The New Testament
+does not after death here promise us a soul hereafter unconnected with
+matter, and which has no connexion with our present mind—a soul
+independent of time and space.  That is a fanciful idea, not founded on
+its expressions, when taken in their just and real meaning.  On the
+contrary, it promises us a mind like the present, founded on time and
+space; since it is, like the present, to hold a certain situation in
+time, and a certain locality in space.  But it promises a mind situated
+in portions of time and of space different from the present; a mind
+composed of elements of matter more extended, more perfect, and more
+glorious: a mind which, formed of materials supplied by different globes,
+is consequently able to see farther into the past, and to think farther
+into the future, than any mind here existing: a mind which, freed from
+the partial and uneven combination incidental to it on this globe, will
+be exempt from the changes for evil to which, on the present globe, mind
+as well as matter is liable, and will only thenceforth experience the
+changes for the better which matter, more justly poised, will alone
+continue to experience: a mind which, no longer fearing the death, the
+total decomposition, to which it is subject on this globe, will
+thenceforth continue last and immortal.”—HOPE, _on the Origin and
+Prospects of Man_, 1831.
+
+{331}  Dublin Review, Aug. 1840.  The Guarantee Society has since been
+established, and is likely to become a useful and prosperous institution.
+
+{333}  The ray, which is considered the lowest in the scale of fishes, or
+next to the crustaceans, gives the first faint representation 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 of
+thought—that is, the quickness of the transmission of sensation and
+will—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 per second,
+and the experiments of Wheatstone have shewn that the electric agent
+travels (if I may so speak) at the same rate, thus shewing a likelihood
+that one law rules the movements of all the “imponderable bodies.”
+Mental action may accordingly be presumed to have a rapidity equal to one
+hundred and ninety-two thousand miles in the second—a rate evidently far
+beyond what is necessary to make the design and execution of any of our
+ordinary muscular movements apparently 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 own
+species, will hide any nice morsel which it cannot eat, under a rug, or
+in some other by-place, designing to enjoy it afterwards.  I have seen
+children do the same thing.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, by Robert Chambers</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,
+by Robert Chambers
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
+
+
+Author: Robert Chambers
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 2, 2014  [eBook #7116]
+[This file was first posted on March 11, 2003]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF
+CREATION***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1844 John Churchill edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<h1>VESTIGES<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">OF</span><br />
+THE NATURAL HISTORY<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">OF</span><br />
+CREATION.</h1>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">LONDON:</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">JOHN CHURCHILL, PRINCES STREET,
+SOHO.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">M DCCC
+XLIV.</span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Bodies of Space&mdash;Their arrangements and
+formation</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Constituent materials of the Earth and of the other Bodies
+of Space</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page27">27</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>The Earth formed&mdash;Era of the Primary Rocks</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page44">44</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Commencement of Organic Life&mdash;Sea Plants, Corals,
+etc.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page54">54</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Era of the Old Red Sandstone&mdash;Fishes abundant.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page66">66</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Secondary Rocks.&nbsp; Era of the Carboniferous
+Formation.&mdash;Land formed&mdash;Commencement of Land
+Plants</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page76">76</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Era of the New Red Sandstone&mdash;Terrestrial Zoology
+commences with Reptiles&mdash;First traces of Birds</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page94">94</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Era of the Oolite&mdash;Commencement of Mammalia</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page105">105</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Era of the Cretaceous Formation</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page116">116</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Era of the Tertiary Formation&mdash;Mammalia abundant</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page125">125</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Era of the Superficial Formations&mdash;Commencement of
+present Species</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page134">134</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>General Considerations respecting the Origin of the
+Animated Tribes</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page145">145</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Particular Considerations respecting the Origin of the
+Animated Tribes</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page165">165</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Hypothesis of the Development of the Vegetable and Animal
+Kingdoms</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page191">191</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Macleay System of Animated Nature&mdash;This System
+considered in connexion with the Progress of Organic Creation,
+and as indicating the natural status of Man</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page236">236</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Early History of Mankind</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page277">277</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Mental Constitution of Animals</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page324">324</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Purpose and General Condition of the Animated Creation</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page361">361</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Note Conclusory</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page387">387</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>THE
+BODIES OF SPACE,<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND
+FORMATION.</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is familiar knowledge that the
+earth which we inhabit is a globe of somewhat less than 8000
+miles in diameter, being one of a series of eleven which revolve
+at different distances around the sun, and some of which have
+satellites in like manner revolving around them.&nbsp; The sun,
+planets, and satellites, with the less intelligible orbs termed
+comets, are comprehensively called the solar system, and if we
+take as the uttermost bounds of this system the orbit of Uranus
+(though the comets actually have a wider range), we shall find
+that it occupies a portion of space not less than three thousand
+six hundred millions of miles in extent.&nbsp; The mind fails to
+form an exact notion of a portion of space so immense; but some
+faint idea of it may be obtained from the fact, that, if the
+swiftest race-horse ever known had begun to traverse it, at full
+speed, at the time of the birth of Moses, he would only as yet
+have accomplished half his journey.</p>
+<p>It has long been concluded amongst astronomers, that the
+stars, though they only appear to our eyes as brilliant points,
+are all to be considered as suns, representing so many solar
+systems, each bearing a general resemblance to our own.&nbsp; The
+stars have a brilliancy and apparent magnitude which we may
+safely presume to be in proportion to their actual size and the
+distance at which they are placed from us.&nbsp; Attempts have
+been made to ascertain the distance of some of the stars by
+calculations founded on parallax, it being previously 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 than 19,200
+millions of miles!&nbsp; In the case of the most brilliant star,
+Sirius, even this minute parallax could not be found; from which
+of course it was to be inferred that the distance of that star is
+something beyond the vast distance which has been stated.&nbsp;
+In some others, on which the experiment has been tried, no
+sensible parallax could be detected; from which the same
+inference was to be made in their case.&nbsp; But a sensible
+parallax of about one second has been ascertained in the case of
+the double star, &alpha; &alpha;, of the constellation of the
+Centaur, <a name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3"
+class="citation">[3]</a> and one of the third of that amount for
+the double star, 61 Cygni; which gave reason to presume that the
+distance of the former might be about twenty thousand millions of
+miles, and the latter of much greater amount.&nbsp; If we suppose
+that similar intervals exist between all the stars, we shall
+readily see that the space occupied by even the comparatively
+small number visible to the naked eye, must be vast beyond all
+powers of conception.</p>
+<p>The number visible to the eye is about three thousand; but
+when a telescope of small power is directed to the heavens, a
+great number more come into view, and the number is ever
+increased in proportion to the increased power of the
+instrument.&nbsp; In one place, where they are more thickly sown
+than elsewhere, Sir William Herschel reckoned that fifty thousand
+passed over a field of view two degrees in breadth in a single
+hour.&nbsp; It was first surmised by the ancient philosopher,
+Democritus, that the faintly white zone which spans the sky under
+the name of the Milky Way, might be only a dense collection of
+stars too remote to be distinguished.&nbsp; This conjecture has
+been verified by the instruments of modern astronomers, and some
+speculations of a most remarkable kind have been formed in
+connexion with it.&nbsp; By the joint labours of the two
+Herschels, the sky has been &ldquo;gauged&rdquo; in all
+directions by the telescope, so as to ascertain the conditions of
+different parts with respect to the frequency of the stars.&nbsp;
+The result has been a conviction that, as the planets are parts
+of solar systems, so are solar systems parts of what may be
+called astral systems&mdash;that is, systems composed of a
+multitude of stars, bearing a certain relation to each
+other.&nbsp; The astral system to which we belong, is conceived
+to be of an oblong, flattish form, with a space wholly or
+comparatively vacant in the centre, while the extremity in one
+direction parts into two.&nbsp; The stars are most thickly sown
+in the outer parts of this vast ring, and these constitute the
+Milky Way.&nbsp; Our sun is believed to be placed in the southern
+portion of the ring, near its inner edge, so that we are
+presented with many more stars, and see the Milky Way much more
+clearly, in that direction, than towards the north, in which line
+our eye has to traverse the vacant central space.&nbsp; Nor is
+this all.&nbsp; Sir William Herschel, so early as 1783, detected
+a motion in our solar system with respect to the stars, and
+announced that it was tending towards the star &lambda;, in the
+constellation Hercules.&nbsp; This has been generally verified by
+recent and more exact calculations, <a name="citation5"></a><a
+href="#footnote5" class="citation">[5]</a> which fix on a point
+in Hercules, near the star 143 of the 17th hour, according to
+Piozzi&rsquo;s catalogue, as that towards which our sun is
+proceeding.&nbsp; It is, therefore, receding from the inner edge
+of the ring.&nbsp; Motions of this kind, through such vast
+regions of space, must be long in producing any change sensible
+to the inhabitants of our planet, and it is not easy to grasp
+their general character; but grounds have nevertheless been found
+for supposing that not only our sun, but the other suns of the
+system pursue a wavy course round the ring <i>from west to
+east</i>, crossing and recrossing the middle of the annular
+circle.&nbsp; &ldquo;Some stars will depart more, others less,
+from either side of the circumference of equilibrium, according
+to the places in which they are situated, and according to the
+direction and the velocity with which they are put in
+motion.&nbsp; Our sun is probably one of those which depart
+furthest from it, and descend furthest into the empty space
+within the ring.&rdquo; <a name="citation6"></a><a
+href="#footnote6" class="citation">[6]</a>&nbsp; According to
+this view, a time may come when we shall be much more in the
+thick of the stars of our astral system than we are now, and have
+of course much more brilliant nocturnal skies; but it may be
+countless ages before the eyes which are to see this added
+resplendence shall exist.</p>
+<p>The evidence of the existence of other astral systems besides
+our own is much more decided than might be expected, when we
+consider that the nearest of them must needs be placed at a
+mighty interval beyond our own.&nbsp; The elder Herschel,
+directing his wonderful tube towards the <i>sides</i> of our
+system, where stars are planted most rarely, and raising the
+powers of the instrument to the required pitch, was enabled with
+awe-struck mind to see suspended in the vast empyrean astral
+systems, or, as he called them, firmaments, resembling our
+own.&nbsp; Like light cloudlets to a certain power of the
+telescope, they resolved themselves, under a greater power, into
+stars, though these generally seemed no larger than the finest
+particles of diamond dust.&nbsp; The general forms of these
+systems are various; but one at least has been detected as
+bearing a striking resemblance to the supposed form of our
+own.&nbsp; The distances are also various, as proved by the
+different degrees of telescopic power necessary to bring them
+into view.&nbsp; The farthest observed by the astronomer were
+estimated by him as thirty-five thousand times more remote than
+Sirius, supposing its distance to be about twenty thousand
+millions of miles.&nbsp; It would thus appear, that not only does
+gravitation keep our earth in its place in the solar system, and
+the solar system in its place in our astral system, but it also
+may be presumed to have the mightier duty of preserving a local
+arrangement between that astral system and an immensity of
+others, through which the imagination is left to wander on and on
+without limit or stay, save that which is given by its inability
+to grasp the unbounded.</p>
+<p>The two Herschels have in succession made some other most
+remarkable observations on the regions of space.&nbsp; They have
+found within the limits of our astral system, and generally in
+its outer fields, a great number of objects which, from their
+foggy appearance, are called <i>nebul&aelig;</i>; some of vast
+extent and irregular figure, as that in the sword of Orion, which
+is visible to the naked eye; others of shape more defined;
+others, again, in which small bright nuclei appear here and there
+over the surface.&nbsp; Between this last form and another class
+of objects, which appear as clusters of nuclei with nebulous
+matter around each nucleus, there is but a step in what appears a
+chain of related things.&nbsp; Then, again, our astral space
+shews what are called nebulous stars,&mdash;namely, luminous
+spherical objects, bright in the centre and dull towards the
+extremities.&nbsp; These appear to be only an advanced condition
+of the class of objects above described.&nbsp; Finally, nebulous
+stars exist in every stage of concentration, down to that state
+in which we see only a common star with a slight <i>bur</i>
+around it.&nbsp; It may be presumed that all these are but 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 the
+whole were only variations of one being.&nbsp; Are we to suppose
+that we have got a glimpse of the process through which a sun
+goes between its original condition, as a mass of diffused
+nebulous matter, and its full-formed state as a compact
+body?&nbsp; We shall see how far such an idea is supported by
+other things known with regard to the occupants of space, and the
+laws of matter.</p>
+<p>A superficial view of the astronomy of the solar system gives
+us only the idea of a vast luminous body (the sun) in the centre,
+and a few smaller, though various sized bodies, revolving at
+different distances around it; some of these, again, having
+smaller planets (satellites) revolving around them.&nbsp; There
+are, however, some general features of the solar system, which,
+when a profounder attention makes us acquainted with them, strike
+the mind very forcibly.</p>
+<p>It is, in the first place, remarkable, that the planets all
+move nearly <i>in one plane</i>, corresponding with the centre of
+the sun&rsquo;s body.&nbsp; Next, it is not less remarkable that
+the motion of the sun on its axis, those of the planets around
+the sun, and the satellites around their primaries, <a
+name="citation9"></a><a href="#footnote9"
+class="citation">[9]</a> and the motions of all on their axes,
+are <i>in one direction</i>&mdash;namely, from west to
+east.&nbsp; Had all these matters been left to accident, the
+chances against the uniformity which we find would have been,
+though calculable, inconceivably great.&nbsp; Laplace states them
+at four millions of millions to one.&nbsp; It is thus powerfully
+impressed on us, that the uniformity of the motions, as well as
+their general adjustment to one plane, must have been a
+consequence of some cause acting throughout the whole system.</p>
+<p>Some of the other relations of the bodies are not less
+remarkable.&nbsp; The primary planets shew a progressive increase
+of bulk and diminution of density, from the one nearest to the
+sun to that which is most distant.&nbsp; With respect to density
+alone, we find, taking water as a measure and counting it as one,
+that Saturn is 13/32, or less than half; Jupiter, 1 1/24; Mars, 3
+2/7; Earth, 4 1/2; Venus, 5 11/15; Mercury 9 9/10, or about the
+weight of lead.&nbsp; Then the distances are curiously
+relative.&nbsp; It has been found that if we place the following
+line of numbers,&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">0 3 6 12 24 48 96 192,</p>
+<p>and add 4 to each, we shall have a series denoting the
+respective distances of the planets from the sun.&nbsp; It will
+stand thus&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>4</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>7</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>10</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>16</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>28</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>52</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>100</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>196</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Merc.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Venus.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Earth.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Mars.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Jupiter.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Saturn.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Uranus.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>It will be observed that the first row of figures goes on from
+the second on the left hand in a succession of duplications, or
+multiplications by 2.&nbsp; Surely there is here a most
+surprising proof of the unity which I am claiming for the solar
+system.&nbsp; It was remarked when this curious relation was
+first detected, that there was a want of a planet corresponding
+to 28; the difficulty was afterwards considered as in a great
+measure overcome, by the discovery of four small planets
+revolving at nearly one mean distance from the sun, between Mars
+and Jupiter.&nbsp; The distances bear an equally interesting
+mathematical relation to the times of the revolutions round the
+sun.&nbsp; It has been found that, with respect to any two
+planets, the squares of the times of revolution are to each other
+in the same proportion as the cubes of their mean
+distances,&mdash;a most surprising result, for the discovery of
+which the world was indebted to the illustrious Kepler.&nbsp; Sir
+John Herschel truly observes&mdash;&ldquo;When we contemplate the
+constituents of the planetary system from the point of view which
+this relation affords us, it is no longer mere analogy which
+strikes us, no longer a general resemblance among them, as
+individuals independent of each other, and circulating about the
+sun, each according to its own peculiar nature, and connected
+with it by its own peculiar tie.&nbsp; The resemblance is now
+perceived to be a true <i>family likeness</i>; they are bound up
+in one chain&mdash;interwoven in one web of mutual relation and
+harmonious agreement, subjected to one pervading influence which
+extends from the centre to the farthest limits of that great
+system, of which all of them, the Earth included, must henceforth
+be regarded as members.&rdquo; <a name="citation12"></a><a
+href="#footnote12" class="citation">[12]</a></p>
+<p>Connecting what has been observed of the series of nebulous
+stars with this wonderful relationship seen to exist among the
+constituents of our system, and further taking advantage of the
+light afforded by the ascertained laws of matter, modern
+astronomers have suggested the following hypothesis of the
+formation of that system.</p>
+<p>Of nebulous matter in its original state we know too little to
+enable us to suggest how nuclei should be established in
+it.&nbsp; But, supposing that, from a peculiarity in its
+constitution, nuclei are formed, we know very well how, by virtue
+of the law of gravitation, the process of an aggregation of the
+neighbouring matter to those nuclei should proceed, until masses
+more or less solid should become detached from the rest.&nbsp; It
+is a well-known law in physics that, when fluid matter collects
+towards or meets in a centre, it establishes a rotatory
+motion.&nbsp; See minor results of this law in the whirlwind and
+the whirlpool&mdash;nay, on so humble a scale as the water
+sinking through the aperture of a funnel.&nbsp; It thus becomes
+certain that when we arrive at the stage of a nebulous star, we
+have a rotation on an axis commenced.</p>
+<p>Now, mechanical philosophy informs us that, the instant a mass
+begins to rotate, there is generated a tendency to fling off its
+outer portions&mdash;in other words, the law of centrifugal force
+begins to operate.&nbsp; There are, then, two forces acting in
+opposition to each other, the one attracting <i>to</i>, the other
+throwing <i>from</i>, the centre.&nbsp; While these remain
+exactly counterpoised, the mass necessarily continues entire; but
+the least excess of the centrifugal over the attractive force
+would be attended with the effect of separating the mass and its
+outer parts.&nbsp; These outer parts would, then, be left as a
+ring round the central body, which ring would continue to revolve
+with the velocity possessed by the central mass at the moment of
+separation, but not necessarily participating in any changes
+afterwards undergone by that body.&nbsp; This is a process which
+might be repeated as soon as a new excess arose in the
+centrifugal over the attractive forces working in the parent
+mass.&nbsp; It might, indeed, continue to be repeated, until the
+mass attained the ultimate limits of the condensation which its
+constitution imposed upon it.&nbsp; From what cause might arise
+the periodical occurrence of an excess of the centrifugal
+force?&nbsp; If we suppose the agglomeration of a nebulous mass
+to be a process attended by refrigeration or cooling, which many
+facts render likely, we can easily understand why the outer
+parts, hardening under this process, might, by virtue of the
+greater solidity thence acquired, begin to present some
+resistance to the attractive force.&nbsp; As the solidification
+proceeded, this resistance would become greater, though there
+would still be a tendency to adhere.&nbsp; Meanwhile, the
+condensation of the central mass would be going on, tending to
+produce a separation from what may now be termed the
+<i>solidifying crust</i>.&nbsp; During the contention between the
+attractions of these two bodies, or parts of one body, there
+would probably be a ring of attenuation between the mass and its
+crust.&nbsp; At length, when the central mass had reached a
+certain stage in its advance towards solidification, a separation
+would take place, and the crust would become a detached
+ring.&nbsp; It is clear, of course, that some law presiding over
+the refrigeration of heated gaseous bodies would determine the
+stages at which rings were thus formed and detached.&nbsp; We do
+not know any such law, but what we have seen assures us it is one
+observing and reducible to mathematical formul&aelig;.</p>
+<p>If these rings consisted of matter nearly uniform throughout,
+they would probably continue each in its original form; but there
+are many chances against their being uniform in
+constitution.&nbsp; The unavoidable effects of irregularity in
+their constitution would be to cause them to gather towards
+centres of superior solidity, by which the annular form would, of
+course, be destroyed.&nbsp; The ring would, in short, break into
+several masses, the largest of which would be likely to attract
+the lesser into itself.&nbsp; The whole mass would then
+necessarily settle into a spherical form by virtue of the law of
+gravitation; in short, would then become a planet revolving round
+the sun.&nbsp; Its rotatory motion would, of course, continue,
+and satellites might then be thrown off in turn from its body in
+exactly the same way as the primary planets had been thrown off
+from the sun.&nbsp; The rule, if I can be allowed so to call it,
+receives a striking support from what appear to be its
+exceptions.&nbsp; While there are many chances against the matter
+of the rings being sufficiently equable to remain in the annular
+form till they were consolidated, it might nevertheless be
+otherwise in some instances; that is to say, the equableness
+might, in those instances, be sufficiently great.&nbsp; Such was
+probably the case with the two rings around the body of Saturn,
+which remain a living picture of the arrangement, if not the
+condition, in which all the planetary masses at one time
+stood.&nbsp; It may also be admitted that, when a ring broke up,
+it was possible that the fragments might spherify
+separately.&nbsp; Such seems to be the actual history of the ring
+between Jupiter and Mars, in whose place we now find four planets
+much beneath the smallest of the rest in size, and moving nearly
+at the same distance from the sun, though in orbits so
+elliptical, and of such different planes, that they keep
+apart.</p>
+<p>It has been seen that there are mathematical proportions in
+the relative distances and revolutions of the planets of our
+system.&nbsp; It has also been suggested that the periods in the
+condensation of the nebulous mass, at which rings were
+disengaged, must have depended on some particular crises in the
+condition of that mass, in connexion with the laws of centrifugal
+force and attraction.&nbsp; M. Compte, of Paris, has made some
+approach to the verification of the hypothesis, by calculating
+what ought to have been the rotation of the solar mass at the
+successive times when its surface extended to the various
+planetary orbits.&nbsp; He ascertained that <i>that rotation
+corresponded in every case with the actual sidereal revolution of
+the planets</i>, <i>and that the rotation of the primary planets
+in like manner corresponded with the orbitual periods of the
+secondaries</i>.&nbsp; The process by which he arrived at this
+conclusion is not to be readily comprehended by the unlearned;
+but those who are otherwise, allow that it is a powerful support
+to the present hypothesis of the formation of the globes of
+space. <a name="citation17"></a><a href="#footnote17"
+class="citation">[17]</a></p>
+<p>The nebular hypothesis, as it has been called, obtains a
+remarkable support in what would at first seem to militate
+against it&mdash;the existence in our firmament of several
+thousands of solar systems, in which there are more than one
+sun.&nbsp; These are called double and triple stars.&nbsp; Some
+double stars, upon which careful observations have been made, are
+found to have a regular revolutionary motion round each other in
+ellipses.&nbsp; This kind of solar system has also been observed
+in what appears to be its rudimental state, for there are
+examples of nebulous stars containing two and three nuclei in
+near association.&nbsp; At a certain point in the confluence of
+the matter of these nebulous stars, they would all become
+involved in a common revolutionary motion, linked inextricably
+with each other, though it might be at sufficient distances to
+allow of each distinct centre having afterwards its attendant
+planets.&nbsp; We have seen that the law which causes rotation in
+the single solar masses, is exactly the same which produces the
+familiar phenomenon of a small whirlpool or dimple in the surface
+of a stream.&nbsp; Such dimples are not always single.&nbsp; Upon
+the face of a river where there are various contending currents,
+it may often be observed that two or more dimples are formed near
+each other with more or less regularity.&nbsp; 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 an illustration of the wonders of binary and
+ternary solar systems.</p>
+<p>The nebular hypothesis is, indeed, supported by so many
+ascertained features of the celestial scenery, and by so many
+calculations of exact science, that it is impossible for a candid
+mind to refrain from giving it a cordial reception, if not to
+repose full reliance upon it, even without seeking for it support
+of any other kind.&nbsp; Some other support I trust yet to bring
+to it; but in the meantime, assuming its truth, let us see what
+idea it gives of the constitution of what we term the universe,
+of the development of its various parts, and of its original
+condition.</p>
+<p>Reverting to a former illustration&mdash;if we could suppose a
+number of persons of various ages presented to the inspection of
+an intelligent being newly introduced into the world, we cannot
+doubt that he would soon become convinced that men had once been
+boys, that boys had once been infants, and, finally, that all had
+been brought into the world in exactly the same
+circumstances.&nbsp; Precisely thus, seeing in our astral system
+many thousands of worlds in all stages of formation, from the
+most rudimental to that immediately preceding the present
+condition of those we deem perfect, it is unavoidable to conclude
+that all the perfect have gone through the various stages which
+we see in the rudimental.&nbsp; This leads us at once to the
+conclusion that the whole of our firmament was at one time a
+diffused mass of nebulous matter, extending through the space
+which it still occupies.&nbsp; So also, of course, must have been
+the other astral systems.&nbsp; Indeed, we must presume the whole
+to have been originally in one connected mass, the astral systems
+being only the first division into parts, and solar systems the
+second.</p>
+<p>The first idea which all this impresses upon us is, that the
+formation of bodies in space is <i>still and at present in
+progress</i>.&nbsp; We live at a time when many have been formed,
+and many are still forming.&nbsp; Our own solar system is to be
+regarded as completed, supposing its perfection to consist in the
+formation of a series of planets, for there are mathematical
+reasons for concluding that Mercury is the nearest planet to the
+sun, which can, according to the laws of the system, exist.&nbsp;
+But there are other solar systems within our astral system, which
+are as yet in a less advanced state, and even some quantities of
+nebulous matter which have scarcely begun to advance towards the
+stellar form.&nbsp; On the other hand, there are vast numbers of
+stars which have all the appearance of being fully formed
+systems, if we are to judge from the complete and definite
+appearance which they present to our vision through the
+telescope.&nbsp; We have no means of judging of the seniority of
+systems; but it is reasonable to suppose that, among the many,
+some are older than ours.&nbsp; There is, indeed, one piece of
+evidence for the probability of the comparative youth of our
+system, altogether apart from human traditions and the geognostic
+appearances of the surface of our planet.&nbsp; This consists in
+a thin nebulous matter, which is diffused around the sun to
+nearly the orbit of Mercury, of a very oblately spheroidal
+shape.&nbsp; This matter, which sometimes appears to our naked
+eyes, at sunset, in the form of a cone projecting upwards in the
+line of the sun&rsquo;s path, and which bears the name of the
+Zodiacal Light, has been thought a residuum or last remnant of
+the concentrating matter of our system, and thus may be supposed
+to indicate the comparative recentness of the principal events of
+our cosmogony.&nbsp; Supposing the surmise and inference to be
+correct, and they may be held as so far supported by more
+familiar evidence, we might with the more confidence speak of our
+system as not amongst the elder born of Heaven, but one whose
+various phenomena, physical and moral, as yet lay undeveloped,
+while myriads of others were fully fashioned and in complete
+arrangement.&nbsp; Thus, in the sublime chronology to which we
+are directing our inquiries, we first find ourselves called upon
+to consider the globe which we inhabit as a child of the sun,
+elder than Venus and her younger brother Mercury, but posterior
+in date of birth to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; next to
+regard our whole system as probably of recent formation in
+comparison with many of the stars of our firmament.&nbsp; We
+must, however, be on our guard against supposing the earth as a
+recent globe in our ordinary conceptions of time.&nbsp; From
+evidence afterwards to be adduced, it will be seen that it cannot
+be presumed to be less than many hundreds of centuries old.&nbsp;
+How much older Uranus may be no one can tell, much less how more
+aged may be many of the stars of our firmament, or the stars of
+other firmaments than ours.</p>
+<p>Another and more important consideration arises from the
+hypothesis; namely, as to the means by which the grand process is
+conducted.&nbsp; The nebulous matter collects around nuclei by
+virtue of the law of attraction.&nbsp; The agglomeration brings
+into operation another physical law, by force of which the
+separate masses of matter are either made to rotate singly, or,
+in addition to that single motion, are set into a coupled
+revolution in ellipses.&nbsp; Next centrifugal force comes into
+play, flinging off portions of the rotating masses, which become
+spheres by virtue of the same law of attraction, and are held in
+orbits of revolution round the central body by means of a
+composition between the centrifugal and gravitating forces.&nbsp;
+All, we see, is done by certain laws of matter, so that it
+becomes a question of extreme interest, what are such laws?&nbsp;
+All that can yet be said, in answer, is, that we see certain
+natural events proceeding in an invariable order under certain
+conditions, and thence infer the existence of some fundamental
+arrangement which, for the bringing about of these events, has a
+force and certainty of action similar to, but more precise and
+unerring than those arrangements which human society makes for
+its own benefit, and calls laws.&nbsp; It is remarkable of
+physical laws, that we see them operating on every kind of scale
+as to magnitude, with the same regularity and perseverance.&nbsp;
+The tear that falls from childhood&rsquo;s cheek is globular,
+through the efficacy of that same law of mutual attraction of
+particles which made the sun and planets round.&nbsp; The
+rapidity of Mercury is quicker than that of Saturn, for the same
+reason that, when we wheel a ball round by a string and make the
+string wind up round our fingers, the ball always flies quicker
+and quicker as the string is shortened.&nbsp; Two eddies in a
+stream, as has been stated, fall into a mutual revolution at the
+distance of a couple of inches, through the same cause which
+makes a pair of suns link in mutual revolution at the distance of
+millions of miles.&nbsp; There is, we might say, a sublime
+simplicity in this indifference of the grand regulations to the
+vastness or minuteness of the field of their operation.&nbsp;
+Their being uniform, too, throughout space, as far as we can scan
+it, and their being so unfailing in their tendency to operate, so
+that only the proper conditions are presented, afford to our
+minds matter for the gravest consideration.&nbsp; Nor should it
+escape our careful notice that the regulations on which all the
+laws of matter operate, are established on a rigidly accurate
+mathematical basis.&nbsp; Proportions of numbers and geometrical
+figures rest at the bottom of the whole.&nbsp; All these
+considerations, when the mind is thoroughly prepared for them,
+tend to raise our ideas with respect to the character of physical
+laws, even though we do not go a single step further in the
+investigation.&nbsp; But it is impossible for an intelligent mind
+to stop there.&nbsp; We advance from law to the cause of law, and
+ask, What is that?&nbsp; Whence have come all these beautiful
+regulations?&nbsp; Here science leaves us, but only to conclude,
+from other grounds, that there is a First Cause to which all
+others are secondary and ministrative, a primitive almighty will,
+of which these laws are merely the mandates.&nbsp; That great
+Being, who shall say where is his dwelling-place, or what his
+history!&nbsp; Man pauses breathless at the contemplation of a
+subject so much above his finite faculties, and only can wonder
+and adore!</p>
+<h2><a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+27</span>CONSTITUENT MATERIALS <span class="GutSmall">OF
+THE</span> EARTH<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">AND OF THE OTHER BODIES OF
+SPACE.</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> nebular hypothesis almost
+necessarily supposes matter to have originally formed one
+mass.&nbsp; We have seen that the same physical laws preside over
+the whole.&nbsp; Are we also to presume that the constitution of
+the whole was uniform?&mdash;that is to say, that the whole
+consisted of similar elements.&nbsp; It seems difficult to avoid
+coming to this conclusion, at least under the qualification that,
+possibly, various bodies, under peculiar circumstances attending
+their formation, may contain elements which are wanting, and lack
+some which are present in others, or that some may entirely
+consist of elements in which others are entirely deficient.</p>
+<p>What are elements?&nbsp; This is a term applied by the chemist
+to a certain limited number of substances, (fifty-four or
+fifty-five are ascertained,) which, in their combinations, form
+all the matters of every kind present in and about our
+globe.&nbsp; They are called elements, or simple substances,
+because it has hitherto been found impossible to reduce them into
+others, wherefore they are presumed to be the primary bases of
+all matters.&nbsp; It has, indeed, been surmised that these
+so-called elements are only modifications of a primordial form of
+matter, brought about under certain conditions; but if this
+should prove to be the case, it would little affect the view
+which we are taking of cosmical arrangements.&nbsp; Analogy would
+lead us to conclude that the combinations of the primordial
+matter, forming our so-called elements, are as universal or as
+liable to take place everywhere as are the laws of gravitation
+and centrifugal force.&nbsp; We must therefore presume that the
+gases, the metals, the earths, and other simple substances,
+(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 times
+more distant than Sirius, as within the bounds of our own solar
+system or our own globe.</p>
+<p>Matter, whether it consist of about fifty-five ingredients, or
+only one, is liable to infinite varieties of condition under
+different circumstances, or, to speak more philosophically, under
+different laws.&nbsp; As a familiar illustration, water, when
+subjected to a temperature under 32&deg; Fahrenheit, becomes ice;
+raise the temperature to 212&deg;, and it becomes steam,
+occupying a vast deal more space than it formerly did.&nbsp; The
+gases, when subjected to pressure, become liquids; for example,
+carbonic acid gas, when subjected to a weight equal to a column
+of water 1230 feet high, at a temperature of 32&deg;, takes this
+form: the other gases require various amounts of pressure for
+this transformation, but all appear to be liable to it when the
+pressure proper in each case is administered.&nbsp; Heat is a
+power greatly concerned in regulating the volume and other
+conditions of matter.&nbsp; A chemist can reckon with
+considerable precision what additional amount of heat would be
+required to vaporise all the water of our globe; how much more to
+disengage the oxygen which is diffused in nearly a proportion of
+one-half throughout its solids; and, finally, how much more would
+be required to cause the whole to become vaporiform, which we may
+consider as equivalent to its being restored to its original
+nebulous state.&nbsp; He can calculate with equal certainty what
+would be the effect of a considerable diminution of the
+earth&rsquo;s temperature&mdash;what changes would take place in
+each of its component substances, and how much the whole would
+shrink in bulk.</p>
+<p>The earth and all its various substances have at present a
+certain volume in consequence of the temperature which actually
+exists.&nbsp; When, then, we find that its matter and that of the
+associate planets was at one time diffused throughout the whole
+space, now circumscribed by the orbit of Uranus, we cannot doubt,
+after what we know of the power of heat, that the nebulous form
+of matter was attended by the condition of a very high
+temperature.&nbsp; The nebulous matter of space, previously to
+the formation of stellar and planetary bodies, must have been a
+universal Fire Mist, an idea which we can scarcely comprehend,
+though the reasons for arriving at it seem irresistible.&nbsp;
+The formation of systems out of this matter implies a change of
+some kind with regard to the condition of the heat.&nbsp; Had
+this power continued to act with its full original repulsive
+energy, the process of agglomeration by attraction could not have
+gone on.&nbsp; We do not know enough of the laws of heat to
+enable us to surmise how the necessary change in this respect was
+brought about, but we can trace some of the steps and
+consequences of the process.&nbsp; Uranus would be formed at the
+time when the heat of our system&rsquo;s matter was at the
+greatest, Saturn at the next, and so on.&nbsp; Now this tallies
+perfectly with the exceeding diffuseness of the matter of those
+elder planets, Saturn being not more dense or heavy than the
+substance cork.&nbsp; It may be that a sufficiency of heat still
+remains in those planets to make up for their distance from the
+sun, and the consequent smallness of the heat which they derive
+from his rays.&nbsp; And it may equally be, since Mercury is
+twice the density of the earth, that its matter exists under a
+degree of cold for which that planet&rsquo;s large enjoyment of
+the sun&rsquo;s rays is no more than a compensation.&nbsp; Thus
+there may be upon the whole a nearly equal experience of heat
+amongst all these children of the sun.&nbsp; Where, meanwhile, is
+the heat once diffused through the system over and above what
+remains in the planets?&nbsp; May we not rationally presume it to
+have gone to constitute that luminous envelope of the sun, in
+which his warmth-giving power is now held to reside?&nbsp; It
+could not be destroyed&mdash;it cannot be supposed to have gone
+off into space&mdash;it must have simply been reserved to
+constitute, at the last, a means of sustaining the many
+operations of which the planets were destined to be the
+theatre.</p>
+<p>The tendency of the whole of the preceding considerations is
+to bring the conviction that our globe is a specimen of all the
+similarly-placed bodies of space, as respects its constituent
+matter and the physical and chemical laws governing it, with only
+this qualification, that there are <i>possibly</i> shades of
+variation with respect to the component materials, and
+<i>undoubtedly</i> with respect to the conditions under which the
+laws operate, and consequently the effects which they
+produce.&nbsp; Thus, there may be substances here which are not
+in some other bodies, and substances here solid may be elsewhere
+liquid or vaporiform.&nbsp; We are the more entitled to draw such
+conclusions, seeing that there is nothing at all singular or
+special in the astronomical situation of the earth.&nbsp; It
+takes its place third in a series of planets, which series is
+only one of numberless other systems forming one group.&nbsp; It
+is strikingly&mdash;if I may use such an expression&mdash;a
+member of a democracy.&nbsp; Hence, we cannot suppose that there
+is any peculiarity about it which does not probably attach to
+multitudes of other bodies&mdash;in fact, to all that are
+analogous to it in respect of cosmical arrangements.</p>
+<p>It therefore becomes a point of great interest&mdash;what are
+the materials of this specimen?&nbsp; What is the constitutional
+character of this object, which may be said to be a sample,
+presented to our immediate observation, of those crowds of worlds
+which seem to us as the particles of the desert sand-cloud in
+number, and to whose profusion there are no conceivable local
+limits?</p>
+<p>The solids, liquids, and aeriform fluids of our globe are all,
+as has been stated, reducible into fifty-five substances hitherto
+called elementary.&nbsp; Six are gases; oxygen, hydrogen, and
+nitrogen being the chief.&nbsp; Forty-two are metals, of which
+eleven are remarkable as composing, in combination with oxygen,
+certain earths, as magnesia, lime, alumin.&nbsp; The remaining
+six, including carbon, silicon, sulphur, have not any general
+appellation.</p>
+<p>The gas oxygen is considered as by far the most abundant
+substance in our globe.&nbsp; It constitutes a fifth part of our
+atmosphere, a third part of water, and a large proportion of
+every kind of rock in the crust of the earth.&nbsp; Hydrogen,
+which forms two-thirds of water, and enters into some mineral
+substances, is perhaps next.&nbsp; Nitrogen, of which the
+atmosphere is four-fifths composed, must be considered as an
+abundant substance.&nbsp; The metal silicium, which unites with
+oxygen in nearly equal parts to form silica, the basis of nearly
+a half of the rocks in the earth&rsquo;s crust, is, of course, an
+important ingredient.&nbsp; Aluminium, the metallic basis of
+alumin, a large material in many rocks, is another abundant
+elementary substance.&nbsp; So, also, is carbon a small
+ingredient in the atmosphere, but the chief constituent of animal
+and vegetable substances, and of all fossils which ever were in
+the latter condition, amongst which coal takes a conspicuous
+place.&nbsp; The familiarly-known metals, as iron, tin, lead,
+silver, gold, are elements of comparatively small magnitude in
+that exterior part of the earth&rsquo;s body which we are able to
+investigate.</p>
+<p>It is remarkable of the simple substances that they are
+generally in some compound form.&nbsp; Thus, oxygen and nitrogen,
+though in union they form the aerial envelope of the globe, are
+never found separate in nature.&nbsp; Carbon is pure only in the
+diamond.&nbsp; And the metallic bases of the earths, though the
+chemist can disengage them, may well be supposed unlikely to
+remain long uncombined, seeing that contact with moisture makes
+them burn.&nbsp; Combination and re-combination are principles
+largely pervading nature.&nbsp; There are few rocks, for example,
+that are not composed of at least two varieties of matter, each
+of which is again a compound of elementary substances.&nbsp; What
+is still more wonderful with respect to this principle of
+combination, all the elementary substances observe certain
+mathematical proportions in their unions.&nbsp; One volume of
+them unites with one, two, three, or more volumes of another, any
+extra quantity being sure to be left over, if such there should
+be.&nbsp; It is hence supposed that matter is composed of
+infinitely minute particles or atoms, each of which belonging to
+any one substance, can only (through the operation of some as yet
+hidden law) associate with a certain number of the atoms of any
+other.&nbsp; There are also strange predilections amongst
+substances for each other&rsquo;s company.&nbsp; One will remain
+combined in solution with another, till a third is added, when it
+will abandon the former and attach itself to the latter.&nbsp; A
+fourth being added, the third will perhaps leave the first, and
+join the new comer.</p>
+<p>Such is an outline of the information which chemistry gives us
+regarding the constituent materials of our globe.&nbsp; How
+infinitely is the knowledge increased in interest, when we
+consider the probability of such being the materials of the whole
+of the bodies of space, and the laws under which these everywhere
+combine, subject only to local and accidental variations!</p>
+<p>In considering the cosmogenic arrangements of our globe, our
+attention is called in a special degree to the moon.</p>
+<p>In the nebular hypothesis, satellites are considered as masses
+thrown off from their primaries, exactly as the primaries had
+previously been from the sun.&nbsp; The orbit of any satellite is
+also to be regarded as marking the bounds of the mass of the
+primary at the time when that satellite was thrown off; its speed
+likewise denotes the rapidity of the rotatory motion of the
+primary at that particular juncture.&nbsp; For example, the
+outermost of the four satellites of Jupiter 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.&nbsp; This large mass took
+rather more than sixteen days six hours and a half (the present
+revolutionary period of the outermost satellite) to rotate on its
+axis.&nbsp; The innermost satellite must have been formed when
+the planet was reduced to a circumference of 309,075 miles, and
+rotated in about forty-two hours and a half.</p>
+<p>From similar inferences, we find that the mass of the earth,
+at a certain point of time after it was thrown off from the sun,
+was no less than 482,000 miles in diameter, being sixty times
+what it has since shrunk to.&nbsp; At that time, the mass must
+have taken rather more than twenty-nine and a half days to
+rotate, (being the revolutionary period of the moon,) instead of
+as now, rather less than twenty-four hours.</p>
+<p>The time intervening between the formation of the moon and the
+earth&rsquo;s diminution to its present size, was probably one of
+those vast sums in which astronomy deals so largely, but which
+the mind altogether fails to grasp.</p>
+<p>The observations made upon the surface of the moon by
+telescopes, tend strongly to support the hypothesis as to all the
+bodies of space being composed of similar matters, subject to
+certain variations.&nbsp; It does not appear that our satellite
+is provided with that gaseous envelope which, on earth, performs
+so many important functions.&nbsp; Neither is there any
+appearance of water upon the surface; yet that surface is, like
+that of our globe, marked by inequalities and the appearance of
+volcanic operations.&nbsp; These inequalities and volcanic
+operations are upon a scale far greater than any which now exist
+upon the earth&rsquo;s surface.&nbsp; Although, from the greater
+force of gravitation upon its exterior, the mountains, other
+circumstances being equal, might have been expected to be much
+smaller than ours, they are, in many instances, equal in height
+to nearly the highest of our Andes.&nbsp; They are generally of
+extreme steepness, and sharp of outline, a peculiarity which
+might be looked for in a planet deficient in water and
+atmosphere, seeing that these are the agents which wear down
+ruggedness on the surface of our earth.&nbsp; The volcanic
+operations are on a stupendous scale.&nbsp; They are the cause of
+the bright spots of the moon, while the want of them is what
+distinguishes the duller portions, usually but erroneously called
+<i>seas</i>.&nbsp; In some parts, bright volcanic matter, besides
+covering one large patch, radiates out in long streams, which
+appear studded with subordinate <i>foci</i> of the same kind of
+energy.&nbsp; Other objects of a most remarkable character are
+ring mountains, mounts like those of the craters of earthly
+volcanoes, surrounded immediately by vast and profound circular
+pits, hollowed under the general surface, these again being
+surrounded by a circular wall of mountain, rising far above the
+central one, and in the inside of which are terraces about the
+same height as the inner eminence.&nbsp; The well-known bright
+spot in the south-east quarter, called by astronomers
+<i>Tycho</i>, and which can be readily distinguished by the naked
+eye, is one of these ring-mountains.&nbsp; There is one of 200
+miles in diameter, with a pit 22,000 feet deep; that is, twice
+the height of &AElig;tna.&nbsp; It is remarkable, that the maps
+given by Humboldt of a volcanic district in South America, and
+one illustrative of the formerly volcanic district of Auvergne,
+in France, present features strikingly like many parts of the
+moon&rsquo;s surface, as seen through a good glass.</p>
+<p>These characteristics of the moon forbid the idea that it can
+be at present a theatre of life like the earth, and almost seem
+to declare that it never can become so.&nbsp; But we must not
+rashly draw any such conclusions.&nbsp; The moon may be only in
+an earlier stage of the progress through which the earth has
+already gone.&nbsp; The elements which seem wanting may be only
+in combinations different in those which exist here, and may yet
+be developed as we here find them.&nbsp; Seas may yet fill the
+profound hollows of the surface; an atmosphere may spread over
+the whole.&nbsp; Should these events take place, meteorological
+phenomena, and all the phenomena of organic life, will commence,
+and the moon, like the earth, will become a green and inhabited
+world.</p>
+<p>It is unavoidably held as a strong proof in favour of any
+hypothesis, when all the relative phenomena are in harmony with
+it.&nbsp; This is eminently the case with the nebulous
+hypothesis, for here the associated facts cannot be explained on
+any other supposition.&nbsp; We have seen reason to conclude that
+the primary condition of matter was that of a diffused mass, in
+which the component molecules were probably kept apart through
+the efficacy of heat; that portions of this agglomerated into
+suns, which threw off planets; that these planets were at first
+very much diffused, but gradually contracted by cooling to their
+present dimensions.&nbsp; Now, as to our own globe, there is a
+remarkable proof of its having been in a fluid state at the time
+when it was finally solidifying, in the fact of its being bulged
+at the equator, the very form which a soft revolving body takes,
+and must inevitably take, under the influence of centrifugal
+force.&nbsp; This bulging makes the equatorial exceed the polar
+diameter as 230 to 229, which has been demonstrated to be
+precisely the departure from a correct sphere which might be
+predicated from a knowledge of the amount of the mass and the
+rate of rotation.&nbsp; There is an almost equally distinct
+memorial of the original high temperature of the materials, in
+the store of heat which still exists in the interior.&nbsp; The
+immediate surface of the earth, be it observed, exhibits only the
+temperature which might be expected to be imparted to such
+materials, by the heat of the sun.&nbsp; There is a point, very
+short way down, but varying in different climes, where all effect
+from the sun&rsquo;s rays ceases.&nbsp; Then, however, commences
+a temperature from an entirely different cause, one which
+evidently has its source in the interior of the earth, and which
+regularly increases as we descend to greater and greater depths,
+the rate of increment being about one degree Fahrenheit for every
+sixty feet; and of this high temperature there are other
+evidences, in the phenomena of volcanoes and thermal springs, as
+well as in what is ascertained with regard to the density of the
+entire mass of the earth.&nbsp; This, it will be remembered, is
+four and a half times the weight of water; but the actual weight
+of the principal solid substances composing the outer crust is as
+two and a half times the weight of water; and this, we know, if
+the globe were solid and cold, should increase vastly towards the
+centre, water acquiring the density of quicksilver at 362 miles
+below the surface, and other things in proportion, and these
+densities becoming much greater at greater depths; so that the
+entire mass of a cool globe should be of a gravity infinitely
+exceeding four and a half times the weight of water.&nbsp; The
+only alternative supposition is, that the central materials are
+greatly expanded or diffused by some means; and by what means
+could they be so expanded but by heat?&nbsp; Indeed, the
+existence of this central heat, a residuum of that which kept all
+matter in a vaporiform chaos at first, is amongst the most solid
+discoveries of modern science, <a name="citation42"></a><a
+href="#footnote42" class="citation">[42]</a> and the support
+which it gives to Herschel&rsquo;s explanation of the formation
+of worlds is most important.&nbsp; We shall hereafter see what
+appear to be traces of an operation of this heat upon the surface
+of the earth in very remote times; an effect, however, which has
+long passed entirely away.&nbsp; The central heat has, for ages,
+reached a fixed point, at which it will probably remain for ever,
+as the non-conducting quality of the cool crust absolutely
+prevents it from suffering any diminution.</p>
+<h2><a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>THE
+EARTH FORMED&mdash;ERA OF THE<br />
+PRIMARY ROCKS.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Although</span> the earth has not been
+actually penetrated to a greater depth than three thousand feet,
+the nature of its substance can, in many instances, be inferred
+for the depth of many miles by other means of observation.&nbsp;
+We see a mountain composed of a particular substance, with
+strata, or beds of other rock, lying against its sloped sides;
+we, of course, infer that the substance of the mountain dips away
+under the strata which we see lying against it.&nbsp; Suppose
+that we walk away from the mountain across the turned up edges of
+the stratified rocks, and that for many miles we continue to pass
+over other stratified rocks, all disposed in the same way, till
+by and bye we come to a place where we begin to cross the
+opposite edges of the same beds; after which we pass over these
+rocks all in reverse order till we come to another extensive
+mountain composed of similar material to the first, and shelving
+away under the strata in the same way.&nbsp; We should then infer
+that the stratified rocks occupied a basin formed by the rock of
+these two mountains, and by calculating the thickness right
+through these strata, could be able to say to what depth the rock
+of the mountain extended below.&nbsp; By such means, the kind of
+rock existing many miles below the surface can often be inferred
+with considerable confidence.</p>
+<p>The interior of the globe has now been inspected in this way
+in many places, and a tolerably distinct notion of its general
+arrangements has consequently been arrived at.&nbsp; It appears
+that the basis rock of the earth, as it may be called, is of hard
+texture, and crystalline in its constitution.&nbsp; Of this rock,
+granite may be said to be the type, though it runs into many
+varieties.&nbsp; Over this, except in the comparatively few
+places where it projects above the general level in mountains,
+other rocks are disposed in sheets or strata, with the appearance
+of having been deposited originally from water; but these last
+rocks have nowhere been allowed to rest in their original
+arrangement.&nbsp; Uneasy movements from below have broken them
+up in great inclined masses, while in many cases there has been
+projected through the rents rocky matter more or less resembling
+the great inferior crystalline mass.&nbsp; This rocky matter must
+have been in a state of fusion from heat at the time of its
+projection, for it is often found to have run into and filled up
+lateral chinks in these rents.&nbsp; There are even instances
+where it has been rent again, and a newer melted matter of the
+same character sent through the opening.&nbsp; Finally, in the
+crust as thus arranged there are, in many places, chinks
+containing veins of metal.&nbsp; Thus, there is first a great
+inferior mass, composed of crystalline rock, and probably resting
+immediately on the fused and expanded matter of the interior:
+next, layers or strata of aqueous origin; next, irregular masses
+of melted inferior rock that have been sent up volcanically and
+confusedly at various times amongst the aqueous rocks, breaking
+up these into masses, and tossing them out of their original
+levels.&nbsp; This is an outline of the arrangements of the crust
+of the earth, as far as we can observe it.&nbsp; It is, at first
+sight, a most confused scene; but after some careful observation,
+we readily detect in it a regularity and order from which much
+instruction in the history of our globe is to be derived.</p>
+<p>The deposition of the aqueous rocks, and the projection of the
+volcanic, have unquestionably taken place since the settlement of
+the earth in its present form.&nbsp; They are indeed of an order
+of events which we see going on, under the agency of more or less
+intelligible causes, even down to the present day.&nbsp; We may
+therefore consider them generally as comparatively recent
+transactions.&nbsp; Abstracting them from the investigations
+before us, we arrive at the idea of the earth in its first
+condition as a globe of its present size&mdash;namely, as a mass,
+externally at least, consisting of the crystalline kind of rock,
+with the waters of the present seas and the present atmosphere
+around it, though these were probably in considerably different
+conditions, both as to temperature and their constituent
+materials, from what they now are.&nbsp; We are thus to presume
+that that crystalline texture of rock which we see exemplified in
+granite is the condition into which the great bulk of the solids
+of our earth were agglomerated directly from the nebulous or
+vaporiform state.&nbsp; It is a condition eminently of
+combination, for such rock is invariably composed of two or more
+of four substances&mdash;silica, mica, quartz, and
+hornblende&mdash;which associate in it in the form of grains or
+crystals, and which are themselves each composed of a group of
+the simple or elementary substances.</p>
+<p>Judging from the results and from still remaining conditions,
+we must suppose that the heat retained in the interior of the
+globe was more intense, or had greater freedom to act, in some
+places than in others.&nbsp; These became the scenes of volcanic
+operations, and in time marked their situations by the extrusion
+of traps and basalts from below&mdash;namely, rocks composed of
+the crystalline matter fused by intense 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 open air, which
+conditions are found to have made considerable difference in its
+texture and appearance.&nbsp; The great stores of subterranean
+heat also served an important purpose in the formation of the
+aqueous rocks.&nbsp; These rocks might, according to Sir John
+Herschel, become subject to heat in the following
+manner:&mdash;While the surface of a particular mass of rock
+forms the bed of the sea, the heat is kept at a 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.&nbsp; But when new
+sediment settles at the bottom of that sea, the heat rises up to
+what was formerly the surface; and when a second quantity of
+sediment is laid down, it continues to rise through the first of
+the deposits, which then becomes subjected to those changes which
+heat is calculated to produce.&nbsp; This process is precisely
+the same as that of putting additional coats upon our own bodies;
+when, of course, the internal heat rises through each coat in
+succession, and the third (supposing there is a fourth above it)
+becomes as warm as perhaps the first originally was.</p>
+<p>In speaking of sedimentary rocks, we may be said to be
+anticipating.&nbsp; It is necessary, first, to shew how such
+rocks were formed, or how stratification commenced.</p>
+<p>Geology tells us as plainly as possible, that the original
+crystalline mass was not a perfectly smooth ball, with air and
+water playing round it.&nbsp; There were vast irregularities in
+the surface,&mdash;irregularities trifling, perhaps, compared
+with the whole bulk of the globe, but assuredly vast in
+comparison with any which now exist upon it.&nbsp; These
+irregularities might be occasioned by inequalities in the cooling
+of the substance, or by accidental and local sluggishness of the
+materials, or by local effects of the concentrated internal
+heat.&nbsp; From whatever cause they arose, there they
+were&mdash;enormous granitic mountains, interspersed with seas
+which sunk to a depth equally profound, and by which, perhaps,
+the mountains were wholly or partially covered.&nbsp; Now, it is
+a fact of which the very first principles of geology assure us,
+that the solids of the globe cannot for a moment be exposed to
+water, or to the atmosphere, without becoming liable to
+change.&nbsp; They instantly begin to wear down.&nbsp; This
+operation, we may be assured, proceeded with as much certainty in
+the earliest ages of our earth&rsquo;s history, as it does now,
+but upon a much more magnificent scale.&nbsp; There is the
+clearest evidence that the seas of those days were not in some
+instances less than a hundred miles in depth, however much
+more.&nbsp; The sub-aqueous mountains must necessarily have been
+of at least equal magnitude.&nbsp; The system of disintegration
+consequent upon such conditions would be enormous.&nbsp; The
+matters worn off, being carried into the neighbouring depths, and
+there deposited, became the components of the earliest stratified
+rocks, the first series of which is the <i>Gneiss and Mica Slate
+System</i>, or series, examples of which are exposed to view in
+the Highlands of Scotland and in the West of England.&nbsp; The
+vast thickness of these beds, in some instances, is what attests
+the profoundness of the primeval oceans in which they were
+formed; the Pensylvanian grawacke, a member of the next highest
+series, is not less than a hundred miles in direct
+thickness.&nbsp; We have also evidence that the earliest strata
+were formed in the presence of a stronger degree of heat than
+what operated in subsequent stages of the world, for the
+lamin&aelig; of the gneiss and of the mica and chlorite schists
+are contorted in a way which could only be the result of a very
+high temperature.&nbsp; It appears as if the seas in which these
+deposits were formed, had been in the troubled state of a caldron
+of water nearly at boiling heat.&nbsp; Such a condition would
+probably add not a little to the disintegrating power of the
+ocean.</p>
+<p>The earliest stratified rocks contain no matters which are not
+to be found in the primitive granite.&nbsp; They are the same in
+material, but only changed into new forms and combinations; hence
+they have been called by Mr. Lyell, metamorphic rocks.&nbsp; But
+how comes it that some of them are composed almost exclusively of
+one of the materials of granite; the mica schists, for example,
+of mica&mdash;the quartz rocks, of quartz, &amp;c.?&nbsp; For
+this there are both chemical and mechanical causes.&nbsp; Suppose
+that a river has a certain quantity of material to carry down, it
+is evident that it will soonest drop the larger particles, and
+carry the lightest farthest on.&nbsp; To such a cause is it owing
+that some of the materials of the worn-down granite have settled
+in one place and some in another. <a name="citation52"></a><a
+href="#footnote52" class="citation">[52]</a>&nbsp; Again, some of
+these materials must be presumed to have been in a state of
+chemical solution in the primeval seas.&nbsp; It would be, of
+course, in conformity with chemical laws, that certain of these
+materials would be precipitated singly, or in modified
+combinations, to the bottom, so as to form rocks by
+themselves.</p>
+<p>The rocks hitherto spoken of contain none of those petrified
+remains of vegetables and animals which abound so much in
+subsequently formed rocks, and tell so wondrous a tale of the
+past history of our globe.&nbsp; They simply contain, as has been
+said, mineral materials derived from the primitive mass, and
+which appear to have been formed into strata in seas of vast
+depth.&nbsp; The absence from these rocks of all traces of
+vegetable and animal life, joined to a consideration of the
+excessive temperature which seems to have prevailed in their
+epoch, has led to the inference that no plants or animals of any
+kind then existed.&nbsp; A few geologists have indeed endeavoured
+to shew that the absence of organic remains is no proof of the
+globe having been then unfruitful or uninhabited, as the heat to
+which these rocks have been subjected at the time of their
+solidification, might have obliterated any remains of either
+plants or animals which were included in them.&nbsp; But this is
+only an hypothesis of negation; and it certainly seems very
+unlikely that a degree of heat sufficient to obliterate the
+remains of plants or animals when dead, would ever allow of their
+coming into or continuing in existence.</p>
+<h2><a name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+54</span>COMMENCEMENT OF ORGANIC LIFE&mdash;<br />
+SEA PLANTS, CORALS, ETC.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> can scarcely be said to have
+passed out of these rocks, when we begin to find new conditions
+in the earth.&nbsp; It is here to be observed that the subsequent
+rocks are formed, in a great measure, of matters derived from the
+substance of those which went before, but contain also beds of
+limestone, which is to no small extent composed of an ingredient
+which has not hitherto appeared.&nbsp; Limestone is a carbonate
+of lime, a secondary compound, of which one of the ingredients,
+carbonic acid gas, presents the element <i>carbon</i>, a perfect
+novelty in our progress.&nbsp; Whence this substance?&nbsp; The
+question is the more interesting, from our knowing that carbon is
+the main ingredient in organic things.&nbsp; There is reason to
+believe that its primeval condition was that of a gas, confined
+in the interior of the earth, and diffused in the
+atmosphere.&nbsp; The atmosphere still contains about a
+two-thousandth part of carbonic acid gas, forming the grand store
+from which the substance of each year&rsquo;s crop of herbage and
+grain is derived, passing from herbage and grain into animal
+substance, and from animals again rendered back to the atmosphere
+in their expired breath, so that its amount is never
+impaired.&nbsp; Knowing this, when we hear of carbon beginning to
+appear in the ascending series of rocks, we are unavoidably led
+to consider it as marking a time of some importance in the
+earth&rsquo;s history, a new era of natural conditions, one in
+which organic life has probably played a part.</p>
+<p>It is not easy to suppose that, at this period, carbon was
+adopted directly in its gaseous form into rocks; for, if so, why
+should it not have been taken into earlier ones also?&nbsp; But
+we know that plants take it in, and transform it into substance;
+and we also know that there are classes of animals (marine
+polypes) which are capable of appropriating it, in connexion with
+lime, (carbonate of lime,) from the waters of the ocean, provided
+it be there in solution; and this substance do these animals
+deposit in masses (coral reefs) equal in extent to many
+strata.&nbsp; It has even been suggested, on strong grounds of
+probability, that a class of limestone beds are simply these
+reefs subjected to subsequent heat and pressure.</p>
+<p>The appearance, then, of limestone beds in the early part of
+the stratified series, may be presumed to be connected with the
+fact of the commencement of organic life upon our planet, and,
+indeed, a consequent and a symptom of it.</p>
+<p>It may not be out of place here to remark, that carbon is
+presumed to exist largely in the interior of the earth, from the
+fact of such considerable quantities of it issuing at this day,
+in the form of carbonic acid gas, from fissures and
+springs.&nbsp; The primeval and subsequent history of this
+element is worthy of much attention, and we shall have to revert
+to it as a matter greatly concerning our subject.&nbsp; Delabeche
+estimates the quantity of carbonic acid gas locked up in every
+cubic yard of limestone, at 16,000 cubic feet.&nbsp; The quantity
+locked up in coal, in which it forms from 64 to 75 per cent.,
+must also be enormous.&nbsp; If all this were disengaged in a
+gaseous form, the constitution of the atmosphere would undergo a
+change, of which the first effect would be the extinction of life
+in all land animals.&nbsp; But a large proportion of it must have
+at one time been in the atmosphere.&nbsp; The atmosphere would
+then, of course, be incapable of supporting life in land
+animals.&nbsp; It is important, however, to observe that such an
+atmosphere would not be inconsistent with a luxuriant land
+vegetation; for experiment has proved that plants will flourish
+in air containing <i>one-twelfth</i> of this gas, or 166 times
+more than the present charge of our atmosphere.&nbsp; The results
+which we observe are perfectly consistent with, and may be said
+to presuppose an atmosphere highly charged with this gas, from
+about the close of the primary non-fossiliferous rocks to the
+termination of the carboniferous series, for there we see vast
+deposits (coal) containing carbon as a large ingredient, while at
+the same time the leaves of the <i>Stone Book</i> present no
+record of the contemporaneous existence of land animals.</p>
+<p>The hypothesis of the connexion of the first limestone beds
+with the commencement of organic life upon our planet is
+supported by the fact, that in these beds we find the first
+remains of the bodies of animated creatures.&nbsp; My hypothesis
+may indeed be unsound; but, whether or not, it is clear, taking
+organic remains as upon the whole a faithful chronicle, that the
+deposition of these limestone beds was coeval with the existence
+of the earliest, or all but the earliest, living creatures upon
+earth.</p>
+<p>And what were those creatures?&nbsp; It might well be with a
+kind of awe that the uninstructed inquirer would wait for an
+answer to this question.&nbsp; But nature is simpler than
+man&rsquo;s wit would make her, and behold, the interrogation
+only brings before us the unpretending forms of various zoophytes
+and polypes, together with a few single and double-valved
+shell-fish (mollusks), all of them creatures of the sea.&nbsp; It
+is rather surprising to find these before any vegetable forms,
+considering that vegetables appear to us as forming the necessary
+first link in the chain of nutrition; but it is probable that
+there were sea plants, and also some simpler forms of animal
+life, before this period, although of too slight a substance to
+leave any fossil trace of their existence.</p>
+<p>The exact point in the ascending stratified series at which
+the first traces of organic life are to be found is not clearly
+determined.&nbsp; Dr. M&rsquo;Culloch states that he found fossil
+orthocerata (a kind of shell-fish) so early as the gneiss tract
+of Loch Eribol, in Sutherland; but Messrs. Sedgwick and
+Murchison, on a subsequent search, could not verify the
+discovery.&nbsp; It has also been stated, that the gneiss and
+mica tract of Bohemia contains some seams of grawacke, in which
+are organic remains; but British geologists have not as yet
+attached much importance to this statement.&nbsp; We have to look
+a little higher in the series for indubitable traces of organic
+life.</p>
+<p>Above the gneiss and mica slate system, or group of strata, is
+the <i>Clay Slate and Grawacke Slate System</i>; that is to say,
+it is higher in the <i>order of supraposition</i>, though very
+often it rests immediately on the primitive granite.&nbsp; The
+sub-groups of this system are in the following succession
+upwards:&mdash;1, hornblende slate; 2, chiastolite slate; 3, clay
+slate; 4, Snowdon rocks, (grawacke and conglomerates;) 5, Bala
+limestone; 6, Plynlymmon rocks, (grawacke and grawacke slates,
+with beds of conglomerates.)&nbsp; This system is largely
+developed in the west and north of England, and it has been well
+examined, partly because some of the slate beds are extensively
+quarried for domestic purposes.&nbsp; If we overlook the dubious
+statements respecting Sutherland and Bohemia, we have in this
+&ldquo;system&rdquo; the first appearances of life upon our
+planet.&nbsp; The animal remains are chiefly confined to the
+slate beds, those named from Bala, in Wales, being the most
+prolific.&nbsp; <i>Zoophyta</i>, <i>polyparia</i>,
+<i>crinoidea</i>, <i>conchifera</i>, and <i>crustacea</i>, <a
+name="citation60"></a><a href="#footnote60"
+class="citation">[60]</a> are the orders of the animal kingdom
+thus found in the earliest of earth&rsquo;s sepulchres.&nbsp; The
+<i>orders</i> are distinguished without difficulty, from the
+general characters of the creatures whose remains are found; but
+it is only in this general character that they bear a general
+resemblance to any creatures now existing.&nbsp; When we come to
+consider specific characters, we see that a difference
+exists&mdash;that, in short, the species and even genera are no
+longer represented upon earth.&nbsp; More than this, it will be
+found that the earliest species comparatively soon gave place to
+others, and that they are not represented even in the next higher
+group of rocks.&nbsp; One important remark has been made, that a
+comparatively small variety of species is found in the older
+rocks, although of some particular ones the remains are very
+abundant; as, for instance, of a species of asaphus, which is
+found between the lamin&aelig; of some of the slate rocks of
+Wales, and the corresponding rocks of Normandy and Germany in
+enormous quantities.</p>
+<p>Ascending to the next group of rocks, we find the traces of
+life become more abundant, the number of species extended, and
+important additions made in certain vestiges of fuci, or
+sea-plants, and of fishes.&nbsp; This group of rocks has been
+called by English geologists, the <i>Silurian System</i>, because
+largely developed at the surface of a district of western
+England, formerly occupied by a people whom the Roman historians
+call Silures.&nbsp; It is a series of sandstones, limestones, and
+beds of shale (hardened mud), which are classed in the following
+sub-groups, beginning with the undermost:&mdash;1, Llandillo
+rocks, (darkish calcareous flagstones;) 2 and 3, two groups
+called 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.)&nbsp; From the lowest beds upwards, there are
+polypiaria, though most prevalent in the Wenlock limestone;
+conchifera, a vast number of genera, but all of the order
+brachiopoda, (including terebratula, pentamerus, spirifer,
+orthis, lept&aelig;na;) mollusca, of several orders and many
+genera, (including turritella, orthoceras, nautilus,
+bellerophon;) crustacea, all of them trilobites, (including
+trinucleus, asaphus, calamene.)&nbsp; A little above the
+Llandillo rocks, there have been discovered certain convoluted
+forms, which are now established as annelids, or sea-worms, a
+tribe of creatures still existing, (nereidina and serpulina,) and
+which may often be found beneath stones on a sea-beach.&nbsp; One
+of these, figured by Mr. Murchison, is furnished with feet in
+vast numbers all along its body, like a centipede.&nbsp; The
+occurrence of annelids is important, on account of their
+character and status in the animal kingdom.&nbsp; They are
+red-blooded and hermaphrodite, and form a link of connexion
+between the annulosa (white-blooded worms) and a humble class of
+the vertebrata. <a name="citation62"></a><a href="#footnote62"
+class="citation">[62]</a>&nbsp; The Wenlock limestone is most
+remarkable amongst all the rocks of the Silurian system, for
+organic remains.&nbsp; Many slabs of it are wholly composed of
+corals, shells, and trilobites, held together by shale.&nbsp; It
+contains many genera of crinoidea and polypiaria, and it is
+thought that some beds of it are wholly the production of the
+latter creatures, or are, in other words, coral reefs transformed
+by heat and pressure into rocks.&nbsp; Remains of fishes, of a
+very minute size, have been detected by Mr. Philips in the
+Aymestry limestone, being apparently the first examples of
+vertebrated animals which breathed upon our planet.&nbsp; In the
+upper Ludlow rocks, remains of six genera of fish have been for a
+longer period known; they belong to the order of cartilaginous
+fishes, an order of mean organization and ferocious habits, of
+which the shark and sturgeon are living specimens.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Some were furnished with long palates, and squat,
+firmly-based teeth, well adapted for crushing the strong-cased
+zoophytes and shells of the period, fragments of which occur in
+the f&oelig;cal remains; some with teeth that, like the fossil
+sharks of the later formations, resemble lines of miniature
+pyramids, larger and smaller alternating; some with teeth sharp,
+thin, and so deeply serrated, that every individual tooth
+resembles a row of poniards set up against the walls of an
+armory; and these last, says Agassiz, furnished with weapons so
+murderous, must have been the pirates of the period.&nbsp; Some
+had their fins guarded with long spines, hooked like the beak of
+an eagle; some with spines of straighter and more slender form,
+and ribbed and furrowed longitudinally like columns; some were
+shielded by an armour of bony points, and some thickly covered
+with glistening scales.&rdquo; <a name="citation64"></a><a
+href="#footnote64" class="citation">[64]</a></p>
+<p>The traces of fuci in this system are all but sufficient to
+allow of a distinction of genera.&nbsp; In some parts of North
+America, extensive though thin beds of them have been
+found.&nbsp; A distinguished French geologist, M. Brogniart, has
+shewn that all existing marine plants are classifiable with
+regard to the zones of climate; some being fitted for the torrid
+zone, some for the temperate, some for the frigid.&nbsp; And he
+establishes that the fuci of these early rocks speak of a torrid
+climate, although they may be found in what are now temperate
+regions; he also states that those of the higher rocks betoken,
+as we ascend, a gradually diminishing temperature.</p>
+<p>We thus early begin to find proofs of the general uniformity
+of organic life over the surface of the earth, at the time when
+each particular system of rocks was formed.&nbsp; Species
+identical with the remains in the Wenlock limestone occur in the
+corresponding class of rocks in the Eifel, and partially in the
+Harz, Norway, Russia, and Brittany.&nbsp; The situations of the
+remains in Russia are fifteen hundred miles from the Wenlock
+beds; but at the distance of between six and seven thousand from
+those,&mdash;namely, in the vale of Mississippi, the same species
+are discovered.&nbsp; Uniformity in animal life over large
+geographical areas argues uniformity in the conditions of animal
+life; and hence arise some curious inferences.&nbsp; Species, in
+the same low class of animals, are now much more limited; for
+instance, the Red Sea gives different polypiaria, zoophytes, and
+shell-fish, from the Mediterranean.&nbsp; It is the opinion of M.
+Brogniart, that the uniformity which existed in the primeval
+times can only be attributed to the temperature arising from the
+internal heat, which had yet, as he supposes, been sufficiently
+great to overpower the ordinary meteorological influences, and
+spread a tropical clime all over the globe.</p>
+<h2><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>ERA OF
+THE OLD RED SANDSTONE&mdash;<br />
+FISHES ABUNDANT.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> advance to a new chapter in this
+marvellous history&mdash;the era of the <i>Old Red Sandstone
+System</i>.&nbsp; This term has been recently applied to a series
+of strata, of enormous thickness in the whole mass, largely
+developed in Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, and South
+Wales; also in the counties of Fife, Forfar, Moray, Cromarty, and
+Caithness; and in Russia and North America, if not in many other
+parts of the world.&nbsp; The particular strata forming the
+system are somewhat different in different countries; but there
+is a general character to the extent of these being a mixture of
+flagstones, marly rocks, and sandstones, usually of a laminous
+structure, with conglomerates.&nbsp; There is also a schist
+shewing the presence of bitumen; a remarkable new ingredient,
+since it is a vegetable production.&nbsp; In the conglomerates,
+of great extent and thickness, which form, in at least one
+district, the basis or leading feature of the system, inclosing
+water-worn fragments of quartz and other rocks, we have evidence
+of the seas of that period having been subjected to a violent and
+long-continued agitation, probably from volcanic causes.&nbsp;
+The upper members of the series bear the appearance of having
+been deposited in comparatively tranquil seas.&nbsp; The English
+specimens of this system shew a remarkable freedom from those
+disturbances which result in the interjection of trap; and they
+are thus defective in mineral ores.&nbsp; In some parts of
+England the old red sandstone system has been stated as 10,000
+feet in thickness.</p>
+<p>In this era, the forms of life which existed in the Silurian
+are continued: we have the same orders of marine creatures,
+zoophyta, polypiaria, conchifera, crustacea; but to these are
+added numerous fishes, some of which are of most extraordinary
+and surprising forms.&nbsp; Several of the strata are crowded
+with remains of fish, shewing that the seas in which those beds
+were deposited had swarmed with that class of inhabitants.&nbsp;
+The investigation of this system is recent; but already <a
+name="citation68"></a><a href="#footnote68"
+class="citation">[68]</a> M. Agassiz has ascertained about twenty
+genera, and thrice the number of species.&nbsp; And it is
+remarkable that the Silurian fishes are here only represented in
+genera; the whole of the <i>species</i> of that era had already
+passed away.&nbsp; Even throughout the sub-groups of the system
+itself, the species are changed; and these are phenomena observed
+throughout all the subsequent systems or geological eras;
+apparently arguing that, during the deposition of all the rocks,
+a gradual change of physical conditions was constantly going
+on.&nbsp; A varying temperature, or even a varying depth of sea,
+would at present be attended with similar changes in marine life;
+and by analogy we are entitled to assume that such variations in
+the ancient seas might be amongst the causes of that constant
+change of genera and species in the inhabitants of those seas to
+which the organic contents of the rocks bear witness.</p>
+<p>Some of the fossils of this system,&mdash;the cephalaspis,
+coccosteus, pterichthys, holoptychius&mdash;are, in form and
+structure, entirely different from any fishes now existing, only
+the sturgeon family having any trace of affinity to them in any
+respect.&nbsp; They seem to form a sort of connecting link
+between the crustacea and true fishes.</p>
+<p>The <i>cephalaspis</i> may be considered as making the
+smallest advance from the crustacean character; it very much
+resembles in form the asaphus of lower formations, having a
+longish tail-like body inserted within the cusp of a large
+crescent-shaped head, somewhat like a saddler&rsquo;s
+cutting-knife.&nbsp; The body is covered with strong plates of
+bone, enamelled, and the head was protected on the upper side
+with one large plate, as with a buckler&mdash;hence the name,
+implying <i>buckler-head</i>.&nbsp; A range of small fins conveys
+the idea of its having been as weak in motion as it is strong in
+structure.&nbsp; The <i>coccosteus</i> may be said to mark the
+next advance to fish creation.&nbsp; The outline of its body is
+of the form of a short thick coffin, rounded, covered with strong
+bony plates, and terminating in a long tail, which seems to have
+been the sole organ of motion.&nbsp; It is very remarkable, that,
+while the tail establishes this creature among the vertebrata and
+the fishes, its mouth has been opened vertically, like those of
+the crustaceans, but which is contrary to the mode of vertebrata
+generally.&nbsp; This seems a pretty strong mark of the link
+character of the coccosteus between these two great departments
+of the animal kingdom.&nbsp; The <i>pterichthys</i> has also
+strong bony plates over its body, arranged much like those of a
+tortoise, and has a long tail; but its most remarkable feature,
+and that which has suggested its name, is a pair of long and
+narrow wing-like appendages attached to the shoulders, which the
+creature is supposed to have erected for its defence when
+attacked by an enemy.</p>
+<p>The <i>holoptychius</i> is of a flat oval form, furnished with
+fins, and ending in a long tail; the whole body covered with
+strong plates which overlap each other, and the head forming only
+a slight rounded projection from the general figure.&nbsp; The
+specimens in the lower beds are not above the size of a flounder;
+but in the higher strata, to judge by the size of the scales or
+plates which have been found, the creature attained a
+comparatively monstrous size.</p>
+<p>The other fishes of the system,&mdash;the osteolepis,
+glyptolepis, dipterus, &amp;c., are, in general outline, much
+like fishes still existing, but their organization has,
+nevertheless, some striking peculiarities.&nbsp; They have been
+entirely covered with bony scales or plates, enamelled
+externally; their spines are tipped with bone, and, as one
+striking and unvarying feature, the tail is only finned on the
+lower side.&nbsp; The internal skeleton, of which no traces have
+been preserved, is presumed to have been cartilaginous.&nbsp;
+They therefore unite the character of cartilaginous fishes with a
+character peculiar to themselves, and in which we see pretty
+clear vestiges of the pre-existent crustaceous form.</p>
+<p>With regard to the link character of these animals, some
+curious facts are mentioned.&nbsp; It appears that in the
+imperfect condition of the vertebral column, and the inferior
+situation of the mouth in the pterichthys, coccosteus, &amp;c.,
+there is an analogy to the form of the dorsal cord and position
+of the mouth in the embryo of perfect fishes.&nbsp; The one-sided
+form of the tail in the osteolepis &amp;c. finds a similar
+analogy in the form of the tail in the embryo of the
+salmon.&nbsp; It is not premature to remark how broadly these
+facts seem to hint at a parity of law affecting the progress of
+general creation, and the progress of an individual f&oelig;tus
+of one of the more perfect animals.</p>
+<p>It is equally ascertained of the types of being prevalent in
+the old red, as of those of the preceding system, that they are
+uniform in the corresponding strata of distant parts of the
+earth; for instance, Russia and North America.</p>
+<p>In the old red sandstone, the marine plants, of which faint
+traces are observable in the Silurians, continue to appear.&nbsp;
+It would seem as if less change took place in the vegetation than
+in the animals of those early seas; and for this, as Mr. Miller
+has remarked, it is easy to imagine reasons.&nbsp; For example,
+an infusion of lime into the sea would destroy animal life, but
+be favourable to vegetation.</p>
+<p>As yet there were no land animals or plants, and for this the
+presumable reason is, that no dry land as yet existed.&nbsp; We
+are not left to make this inference solely from the absence of
+land animals and plants; in the arrangement of the primary
+(stratified) rocks, we have further evidence of it.&nbsp; That
+these rocks were formed in a generally horizontal position, we
+are as well assured as that they were formed at the bottom of
+seas.&nbsp; But they are always found greatly inclined in
+position, tilted up against the slopes of the granitic masses
+which are beneath them in geological order, though often shooting
+up to a higher point in the atmosphere.&nbsp; No doubt can be
+entertained that these granitic masses, forming our principal
+mountain ranges, have been protruded from below, or, at least,
+thrust much further up, <i>since</i> the deposition of the
+primary rocks.&nbsp; The protrusion was what tilted up the
+primary rocks; and the inference is, of course, unavoidable, that
+these mountains have risen chiefly, at least, since the primary
+rocks were laid down.&nbsp; It is remarkable that, while the
+primary rocks thus incline towards granitic nuclei or axes, the
+strata higher in the series rest against these again, generally
+at a less inclination, or none at all, shewing that these strata
+were laid down after the swelling mountain eminences had, by
+their protrusion, tilted up the primary strata.&nbsp; And thus it
+may be said an era of local upthrowing of the primitive and
+(perhaps) central matter of our planet, is established as
+happening about the close of the primary strata, and beginning of
+the next ensuing system.&nbsp; It may be called the <i>Era of the
+Oldest Mountains</i>, or, more boldly, of the formation of the
+detached portions of dry land over the hitherto watery surface of
+the globe&mdash;an important part of the designs of Providence,
+for which the time was now apparently come.&nbsp; It may be
+remarked, that volcanic disturbances and protrusions of trap took
+place throughout the whole period of the deposition of the
+primary rocks; but they were upon a comparatively limited scale,
+and probably all took place under water.&nbsp; It was only now
+that the central granitic masses of the great mountain ranges
+were thrown up, carrying up with them broken edges of the primary
+strata; a process which seems to have had this difference from
+the other, that it was the effect of a more tremendous force
+exerted at a lower depth in the earth, and generally acting in
+lines pervading a considerable portion of the earth&rsquo;s
+surface.&nbsp; We shall by-and-by see that the protrusion of some
+of the mountain ranges was not completed, or did not stop, at
+that period.&nbsp; There is no part of geological science more
+clear than that which refers to the ages of mountains.&nbsp; It
+is as certain that the Grampian mountains of Scotland are older
+than the Alps and Apennines, as it is that civilization had
+visited Italy, and had enabled her to subdue the world, while
+Scotland was the residence of &ldquo;roving
+barbarians.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Pyrenees, Carpathians, and other
+ranges of continental Europe, are all younger than the Grampians,
+or even the insignificant Mendip Hills of southern England.&nbsp;
+Stratification tells this tale as plainly as Livy tells the
+history of the Roman republic.&nbsp; It tells us&mdash;to use the
+words of Professor Philips&mdash;that at the time when the
+Grampians sent streams and detritus to straits where now the
+valleys of the Forth and Clyde meet, the greater part of Europe
+was a wide ocean.</p>
+<p>The last three systems&mdash;called, in England, the Cumbrian,
+Silurian, and Devonian, and collectively the pal&aelig;ozoic
+rocks, from their containing the remains of the earliest
+inhabitants of the globe&mdash;are of vast thickness; in England,
+not much less than 30,000 feet, or nearly six miles.&nbsp; In
+other parts of the world, as we have seen, the earliest of these
+systems alone is of much greater depth&mdash;arguing an enormous
+profundity in the ocean in which they were formed.</p>
+<h2><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+76</span>SECONDARY ROCKS.<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">ERA OF THE CARBONIFEROUS
+FORMATION.</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">LAND FORMED.</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">COMMENCEMENT OF LAND PLANTS.</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> now enter upon a new great epoch
+in the history of our globe.&nbsp; There was now dry land.&nbsp;
+As a consequence of this fact, there was fresh water, for rain,
+instead of immediately returning to the sea, as formerly, was now
+gathered in channels of the earth, and became springs, rivers,
+and lakes.&nbsp; There was now a theatre for the existence of
+land plants and animals, and it remains to be inquired if these
+accordingly were produced.</p>
+<p>The Secondary Rocks, in which our further researches are to be
+prosecuted, consist of a great and varied series, resting,
+generally unconformably, against flanks of the upturned primary
+rocks, sometimes themselves considerably inclined, at others,
+forming extensive basin-like beds, nearly horizontal; in many
+places, much broken up and shifted by disturbances from
+below.&nbsp; They have all been formed out of the materials of
+the older rocks, by virtue of the wearing power of air and water,
+which is still every day carrying down vast quantities of the
+elevated matter of the globe into the sea.&nbsp; But the separate
+strata are each much more distinct in the matter of its
+composition than might be expected.&nbsp; Some are siliceous or
+arenaceous (sandstones), composed mainly of fine grains from the
+quartz rocks&mdash;the most abundant of the primary strata.&nbsp;
+Others are argillaceous&mdash;clays, shales, &amp;c., chiefly
+derived, probably, from the slate beds of the primary
+series.&nbsp; Others are calcareous, derived from the early
+limestone.&nbsp; As a general feature, they are softer and less
+crystalline than the primary rocks, as if they had endured less
+of both heat and pressure than the senior formation.&nbsp; There
+are beds (<i>coal</i>) formed solely of vegetable matter, and
+some others in which the main ingredient is particles of iron,
+(<i>the iron black band</i>.)&nbsp; The secondary rocks are quite
+as communicative with regard to their portion of the
+earth&rsquo;s history as the primitive were.</p>
+<p>The first, or lowest, group of the secondary rocks is called
+the <i>Carboniferous Formation</i>, from the remarkable feature
+of its numerous interspersed beds of coal.&nbsp; It commences
+with the beds of the <i>mountain limestone</i>, which, in some
+situations, as in Derbyshire and Ireland, are of great thickness,
+being alternated with chert (a siliceous sandstone), sandstones,
+shales, and beds of coal, generally of the harder and less
+bituminous kind (<i>anthracite</i>), the whole being covered in
+some places by the millstone grit, a siliceous conglomerate
+composed of the detritus of the primary rocks.&nbsp; The mountain
+limestone, attaining in England to a depth of eight hundred
+yards, greatly exceeds in volume any of the primary limestone
+beds, and shews an enormous addition of power to the causes
+formerly suggested as having produced this substance.&nbsp; In
+fact, remains of corals, crinoidea, and shells, are so abundant
+in it, as to compose three-fourths of the mass in some
+parts.&nbsp; Above the mountain limestone commence the more
+conspicuous <i>coal beds</i>, alternating with sandstones,
+shales, beds of limestone, and ironstone.&nbsp; Coal is
+altogether composed of the matter of a terrestrial vegetation,
+transmuted by pressure.&nbsp; Some fresh-water shells have been
+found in it, but few of marine origin, and no remains of those
+zoophytes and crinoidea so abundant in the mountain limestone and
+other rocks.&nbsp; Coal beds exist in Europe, Asia, and America,
+and have hitherto been esteemed as the most valuable of mineral
+productions, from the important services which the substance
+renders in manufactures and in domestic economy.&nbsp; It is to
+be remarked, that there are some local variations in the
+arrangement of coal beds.&nbsp; In France, they rest immediately
+on the granite and other primary rocks, the intermediate strata
+not having been found at those places.&nbsp; In America, the kind
+called anthracite occurs among the slate beds, and this species
+also abounds more in the mountain limestone than with us.&nbsp;
+These last circumstances only shew that different parts of the
+earth&rsquo;s surface did not all witness the same events of a
+certain fixed series exactly at the same time.&nbsp; There had
+been an exhibition of dry land about the site of America, a
+little earlier than in Europe.</p>
+<p>Some features of the condition of the earth during the
+deposition of the carboniferous group, are made out with a
+clearness which must satisfy most minds.&nbsp; First we are told
+of a time when carbonate of lime was formed in vast abundance at
+the bottoms of profound seas, accompanied by an unusually large
+population of corals and encrinites; while in some parts of the
+earth there were patches of dry land, covered with a luxuriant
+vegetation.&nbsp; Next we have a comparatively brief period of
+volcanic disturbance, (when the conglomerate was formed.)&nbsp;
+Then the causes favourable to the so abundant production of
+limestone, and the large population of marine acrita, decline,
+and we find the masses of dry land increase in number and extent,
+and begin to bear an amount of forest vegetation, far exceeding
+that of the most sheltered tropical spots of the present
+surface.&nbsp; The climate, even in the latitude of
+Baffin&rsquo;s Bay, was torrid, and perhaps the atmosphere
+contained a larger charge of carbonic acid gas (the material of
+vegetation) than it now does.&nbsp; The forests or thickets of
+the period, included no species of plants now known upon
+earth.&nbsp; They mainly consisted of gigantic shrubs, which are
+either not represented by any existing types, or are akin to
+kinds which are now only found in small and lowly forms.&nbsp;
+That these forests grew upon a Polynesia, or multitude of small
+islands, is considered probable, from similar vegetation being
+now found in such situations within the tropics.&nbsp; With
+regard to the circumstances under which the masses of vegetable
+matter were transformed into successive coal strata, geologists
+are divided.&nbsp; From examples seen at the present day, at the
+mouths of such rivers as the Mississippi, which traverse
+extensive sylvan regions, and from other circumstances to be
+adverted to, it is held likely by some that the vegetable matter,
+the rubbish of decayed forests, was carried by rivers into
+estuaries, and there accumulated in vast natural rafts, until it
+sunk to the bottom, where an overlayer of sand or mud would
+prepare it for becoming a stratum of coal.&nbsp; Others conceive
+that the vegetation first went into the condition of a peat moss,
+that a sink in the level then exposed it to be overrun by the
+sea, and covered with a layer of sand or mud; that a subsequent
+uprise made the mud dry land, and fitted it to bear a new forest,
+which afterwards, like its predecessor, became a bed of peat;
+that, in short, by repetitions of this process, the alternate
+layers of coal, sandstone, and shale, constituting the
+carboniferous group, were formed.&nbsp; It is favourable to this
+last view that marine fossils are scarcely found in the body of
+the coal itself, though abundant in the shale layers above and
+below it; also that in several places erect stems of trees are
+found with their roots still fixed in the shale beds, and
+crossing the sandstone beds at almost right angles, shewing that
+these, at least, had not been drifted from their original
+situations.&nbsp; On the other hand, it is not easy to admit such
+repeated risings and sinkings of surface as would be required, on
+this hypothesis, to form a series of coal strata.&nbsp; Perhaps
+we may most safely rest at present with the supposition that coal
+has been formed under both classes of circumstances, though in
+the latter only as an exception to the former.</p>
+<p>Upwards of three hundred species of plants have been
+ascertained to exist in the coal formation; but it is not
+necessary to suppose that the whole contained in that system are
+now, or ever will be distinguished.&nbsp; Experiments shew that
+some great classes of plants become decomposed in water in a much
+less space of time than others, and it is remarkable that those
+which decompose soonest, are of the classes found most rare, or
+not at all, in the coal strata.&nbsp; It is consequently to be
+inferred that there may have been grasses and mosses at this era,
+and many species of trees, the remains of which had lost all
+trace of organic form before their substance sunk into the mass
+of which coal was formed.&nbsp; In speaking, therefore, of the
+vegetation of this period, we must bear in mind that it may have
+comprehended forms of which we have no memorial.</p>
+<p>Supposing, nevertheless, that, in the main, the ascertained
+vegetation of the coal system is that which grew at the time of
+its formation, it is interesting to find that the terrestrial
+botany of our globe begins with classes of comparatively simple
+forms and structure.&nbsp; In the ranks of the vegetable kingdom,
+the lowest place is taken by plants of cellular tissue, and which
+have no flowers, (<i>cryptogamia</i>,) as lichens, mosses, fungi,
+ferns, sea-weeds.&nbsp; Above these stand plants of vascular
+tissue, and bearing flowers, in which again there are two great
+subdivisions; first, plants having one seed-lobe,
+(<i>monocotyledons</i>,) and in which the new matter is added
+within, (<i>endogenous</i>,) of which the cane and palm are
+examples; second, plants having two seed-lobes,
+(<i>dicotyledons</i>,) and in which the new matter is added on
+the outside under the bark, (<i>exogenous</i>,) of which the
+pine, elm, oak, and most of the British forest-trees are
+examples; these subdivisions also ranking in the order in which
+they are here stated.&nbsp; Now it is clear that a predominance
+of these forms in succession marked the successive epochs
+developed by fossil geology; the simple abounding first, and the
+complex afterwards.</p>
+<p>Two-thirds of the plants of the carboniferous era are of the
+cellular or cryptogamic kind, a proportion which would probably
+be much increased if we knew the whole Flora of that era.&nbsp;
+The ascertained dicotyledons, or higher-class plants, are
+comparatively few in this formation; but it will be found that
+they constantly increased as the globe grew older.</p>
+<p>The master-form or type of the era was the <i>fern</i>, or
+breckan, of which about one hundred and thirty species have
+already been ascertained as entering into the composition of
+coal. <a name="citation84a"></a><a href="#footnote84a"
+class="citation">[84a]</a>&nbsp; The fern is a plant which
+thrives best in warm, shaded, and moist situations.&nbsp; In
+tropical countries, where these conditions abound, there are many
+more species than in temperate climes, and some of these are
+arborescent, or of a tree-like size and luxuriance. <a
+name="citation84b"></a><a href="#footnote84b"
+class="citation">[84b]</a>&nbsp; The ferns of the coal strata
+have been of this magnitude, and that without regard to the parts
+of the earth where they are found.&nbsp; In the coal of
+Baffin&rsquo;s Bay, of Newcastle, and of the torrid zone alike,
+are the fossil ferns arborescent, shewing clearly that, in that
+era, the present tropical temperature, or one even higher,
+existed in very high latitudes.</p>
+<p>In the swamps and ditches of England there grows a plant
+called the horse-tail (<i>equisetum</i>), having a succulent,
+erect, jointed stem, with slender leaves, and a scaly catkin at
+the top.&nbsp; A second large section of the plants of the
+carboniferous era were of this kind (<i>equisetace&aelig;</i>),
+but, like the fern, reaching the magnitudes of trees.&nbsp; While
+existing equiseta rarely exceed three feet in height, and the
+stems are generally under half an inch in diameter, their
+kindred, entombed in the coal beds, seem to have been generally
+fourteen or fifteen feet high, with stems from six inches to a
+foot in thickness.&nbsp; Arborescent plants of this family, like
+the arborescent ferns, now grow only in tropical countries, and
+their being found in the coal beds in all latitudes is
+consequently held as an additional proof, that at this era a warm
+climate was extended much farther to the north than at
+present.&nbsp; It is to be remarked that plants of this kind
+(forming two genera, the most abundant of which is the
+<i>calamites</i>) are only represented on the present surface by
+plants of the same <i>family</i>: the <i>species</i> which
+flourished at this era gradually lessen in number as we advance
+upwards in the series of rocks, and disappear before we arrive at
+the tertiary formation.</p>
+<p>The club-moss family (<i>lycopodiace&aelig;</i>) are other
+plants of the present surface, usually seen in a lowly and
+creeping form in temperate latitudes, but presenting species
+which rise to a greater magnitude within the tropics.&nbsp; Many
+specimens of this family are found in the coal beds; it is
+thought they have contributed more to the substance of the coal
+than any other family.&nbsp; But, like the ferns and
+equisetace&aelig;, they rise to a prodigious magnitude.&nbsp; The
+lepidodendra (so the fossil genus is called) have probably been
+from sixty-five to eighty feet in height, having at their base a
+diameter of about three feet, while their leaves measured twenty
+inches in length.&nbsp; In the forests of the coal era, the
+lepidodendra would enjoy the rank of firs in our forests,
+affording shade to the only less stately ferns and
+calamites.&nbsp; The internal structure of the stem, and the
+character of the seed-vessels, shew them to have been a link
+between single-lobed and double-lobed plants, a fact worthy of
+note, as it favours the idea that, in vegetable, as well as
+animal creation, a progress has been observed, in conformity with
+advancing conditions.&nbsp; It is also curious to find a missing
+link of so much importance in a genus of plants which has long
+ceased to have a living place upon earth.</p>
+<p>The other leading plants of the coal era are without
+representatives on the present surface, and their characters are
+in general less clearly ascertained.&nbsp; Amongst the most
+remarkable are&mdash;the <i>sigillaria</i>, of which large stems
+are very abundant, shewing that the interior has been soft, and
+the exterior fluted with separate leaves inserted in vertical
+rows along the flutings&mdash;and the <i>stigmaria</i>, plants
+apparently calculated to flourish in marshes or pools, having a
+short, thick, fleshy stem, with a dome-shaped top, from which
+sprung branches of from twenty to thirty feet long.&nbsp; Amongst
+monocotyledons were some palms, (<i>flabellaria</i> and
+<i>n&aelig;ggerathia</i>,) besides a few not distinctly
+assignable to any class.</p>
+<p>The dicotyledons of the coal are comparatively few, though on
+the present surface they are the most numerous sub-class.&nbsp;
+Besides some of doubtful affinity, (<i>annularia</i>,
+<i>asterophyllites</i>, &amp;c.,) there were a few of the pine
+family, which seem to have been the highest class of trees of
+this era, and are only as yet found in isolated cases, and in
+sandstone beds.&nbsp; The first discovered lay in the Craigleith
+quarry, near Edinburgh, and consisted of a stem about two feet
+thick, and forty-seven feet in length.&nbsp; Others have since
+been found, both in the same situation, and at Newcastle.&nbsp;
+Leaves and fruit being wanting, an ingenious mode of detecting
+the nature of these trees was hit upon by Mr. Witham of
+Lartington.&nbsp; Taking thin polished cross slices of the stem,
+and subjecting them to the microscope, he detected the structure
+of the wood to be that of a cone-bearing tree, by the presence of
+certain &ldquo;reticulations&rdquo; which distinguish that
+family, in addition to the usual radiating and concentric
+lines.&nbsp; That particular tree was concluded to be an
+araucaria, a species now found in Norfolk Island, in the South
+Sea, and in a few other remote situations.&nbsp; The
+conifer&aelig; of this era form the dawn of dicotyledenous trees,
+of which they may be said to be the simplest type, and to which,
+it has already been noticed, the lepidodendra are a link from the
+monocotyledons.&nbsp; The concentric rings of the Craigleith and
+other conifer&aelig; of this era have been mentioned.&nbsp; It is
+interesting to find in these a record of the changing seasons of
+those early ages, when as yet there were no human beings to
+observe time or tide.&nbsp; They are clearly traced; but it is
+observed that they are more slightly marked than is the case with
+their family at the present day, as if the changes of temperature
+had been within a narrower range.</p>
+<p>Such was the vegetation of the carbonigenous era, composed of
+forms at the bottom of the botanical scale, flowerless,
+fruitless, but luxuriant and abundant beyond what the most
+favoured spots on earth can now shew.&nbsp; The rigidity of the
+leaves of its plants, and the absence of fleshy fruits and
+farinaceous seeds, unfitted it to afford nutriment to animals;
+and, monotonous in its forms, and destitute of brilliant
+colouring, its sward probably unenlivened by any of the smaller
+flowering herbs, its shades uncheered by the hum of insects, or
+the music of birds, it must have been but a sombre scene to a
+human visitant.&nbsp; But neither man nor any other animals were
+then in existence to look for such uses or such beauties in this
+vegetation.&nbsp; It was serving other and equally important
+ends, clearing (probably) the atmosphere of matter noxious to
+animal life, and storing up mineral masses which were in long
+subsequent ages to prove of the greatest service to the human
+race, even to the extent of favouring the progress of its
+civilization.</p>
+<p>The animal remains of this era are not numerous, in comparison
+with those which go before, or those which come after.&nbsp; The
+mountain limestone, indeed, deposited at the commencement of it,
+abounds unusually in polypiaria and crinoidea; but when we ascend
+to the coal-beds themselves, the case is altered, and these
+marine remains altogether disappear.&nbsp; We have then only a
+limited variety of conchifers and shell mollusks, with fragments
+of a few species of fishes, and these are rarely or never found
+in the coal seams, but in the shales alternating with them.&nbsp;
+Some of the fishes are of a sauroid character, that is, partake
+of the nature of the lizard, a genus of the reptilia, a land
+class of animals, so that we may be said here to have the first
+approach to a kind of animals calculated to breathe the
+atmosphere.&nbsp; Such is the Megalichthys Hibbertii, found by
+Dr. Hibbert Ware, in a limestone bed of fresh-water origin,
+underneath the coal at Burdiehouse, near Edinburgh.&nbsp; Others
+of the same kind have been found in the coal measures in
+Yorkshire, and in the low coal shales at Manchester.&nbsp; This
+is no more than might be expected, as collections of fresh water
+now existed, and it is presumable that they would be
+peopled.&nbsp; The chief other fishes of the coal era are named
+pal&aelig;othrissum, pal&aelig;oniscus, diperdus.</p>
+<p>Coal strata are nearly confined to the group termed the
+carboniferous formation.&nbsp; Thin beds are not unknown
+afterwards, but they occur only as a rare exception.&nbsp; It is
+therefore thought that the most important of the conditions which
+allowed of so abundant a terrestrial vegetation, had ceased about
+the time when this formation was closed.&nbsp; The high
+temperature was not one of the conditions which terminated, for
+there are evidences of it afterwards; but probably the
+superabundance of carbonic acid gas supposed to have existed
+during this era was expended before its close.&nbsp; There can be
+little doubt that the infusion of a large dose of this gas into
+the atmosphere at the present day would be attended by precisely
+the same circumstances as in the time of the carboniferous
+formation.&nbsp; Land animal life would not have a place on
+earth; vegetation would be enormous; and coal strata would be
+formed from the vast accumulations of woody matter, which would
+gather in every sea, near the mouths of great rivers.&nbsp; On
+the exhaustion of the superabundance of carbonic acid gas, the
+coal formation would cease, and the earth might again become a
+suitable theatre of being for land animals.</p>
+<p>The termination of the carboniferous formation is marked by
+symptoms of volcanic violence, which some geologists have
+considered to denote the close of one system of things and the
+beginning of another.&nbsp; Coal beds generally lie in basins, as
+if following the curve of the bottom of seas.&nbsp; But there is
+no such basin which is not broken up into pieces, some of which
+have been tossed up on edge, others allowed to sink, causing the
+ends of strata to be in some instances many yards, and in a few
+several hundred feet, removed from the corresponding ends of
+neighbouring fragments.&nbsp; These are held to be results of
+volcanic movements below, the operation of which is further seen
+in numerous upbursts and intrusions of volcanic rock
+(trap).&nbsp; That these disturbances took place about the close
+of the formation, and not later, is shewn in the fact of the next
+higher group of strata being comparatively undisturbed.&nbsp;
+Other symptoms of this time of violence are seen in the beds of
+conglomerate which occur amongst the first strata above the
+coal.&nbsp; These, as usual, consist of fragments of the elder
+rocks, more or less worn from being tumbled about in agitated
+water, and laid down in a mud paste, afterwards hardened.&nbsp;
+Volcanic disturbances break up the rocks; the pieces are worn in
+seas; and a deposit of conglomerate is the consequence.&nbsp; Of
+porphyry, there are some such pieces in the conglomerate of
+Devonshire, three or four tons in weight.&nbsp; It is to be
+admitted for strict truth that, in some parts of Europe, the
+carboniferous formation is followed by superior deposits, without
+the appearance of such disturbances between their respective
+periods; but apparently this case belongs to the class of
+exceptions already noticed. <a name="citation93"></a><a
+href="#footnote93" class="citation">[93]</a>&nbsp; That
+disturbance was general, is supported by the further and
+important fact of the destruction of many forms of organic being
+previously flourishing, particularly of the vegetable
+kingdom.</p>
+<h2><a name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>ERA OF
+THE NEW RED SANDSTONE.<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">TERRESTRIAL ZOOLOGY COMMENCES</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">WITH REPTILES.</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">FIRST TRACES OF BIRDS.</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> next volume of the rock series
+refers to an era distinguished by an event of no less importance
+than the commencement of land animals.&nbsp; The <i>New Red
+Sandstone System</i> is subdivided into groups, some of which are
+wanting in some places; they are pretty fully developed in the
+north of England, in the following ascending
+order:&mdash;1.&nbsp; Lower red sandstone; 2.&nbsp; Magnesian
+limestone; 3.&nbsp; Red and white sandstones and conglomerate;
+4.&nbsp; Variegated marls.&nbsp; Between the third and fourth
+there is, in Germany, another group, called the Muschelkalk, a
+word expressing a limestone full of shells.</p>
+<p>The first group, containing the conglomerates already adverted
+to, seems to have been produced during the time of disturbance
+which occurred so generally after the carbonigenous era.&nbsp;
+This new era is distinguished by a paucity of organic remains, as
+might partly be expected from the appearances of disturbance, and
+the red tint of the rocks, the latter being communicated by a
+solution of oxide of iron, a substance unfavourable to animal
+life.</p>
+<p>The second group is a limestone with an infusion of
+magnesia.&nbsp; It is developed less generally than some others,
+but occurs conspicuously in England and Germany.&nbsp; Its place,
+above the red sandstone, shews the recurrence of circumstances
+favourable to animal life, and we accordingly find in it not only
+zoophytes, conchifera, and a few tribes of fish, but some faint
+traces of land plants, and a new and startling appearance&mdash;a
+reptile of saurian (lizard) character, analogous to the now
+existing family called monitors.&nbsp; Remains of this creature
+are found in cupriferous (copper-bearing) slate connected with
+the mountain limestone, at Mansfield and Glucksbrunn, in Germany,
+which may be taken as evidence that dry land existed in that age
+near those places.&nbsp; The magnesia limestone is also
+remarkable as the last rock in which appears the lept&aelig;na,
+or producta, a conchifer of numerous species which makes a
+conspicuous appearance in all previous seas.&nbsp; It is likewise
+to be observed, that the fishes of this age, to the genera of
+which the names pal&aelig;oniscus, catopterus, platysomus,
+&amp;c., have been applied, vanish, and henceforth appear no
+more.</p>
+<p>The third group, chiefly sandstones, variously coloured
+according to the amount and nature of the metallic oxide infused
+into them, shews a recurrence of agitation, and a consequent
+diminution of the amount of animal life.&nbsp; In the upper part,
+however, of this group, there are abundant symptoms of a revival
+of proper conditions for such life.&nbsp; There are marl beds,
+the origin of which substance in decomposed shells is obvious;
+and in Germany, though not in England, here occurs the
+muschelkalk, containing numerous organic remains, (generally
+different from those of the magnesian limestone,) and noted for
+the specimens of land animals, which it is the first to present
+in any considerable abundance to our notice.</p>
+<p>These animals are of the vertebrate sub-kingdom, but of its
+lowest class next after fishes,&mdash;namely, reptiles,&mdash;a
+portion of the terrestrial tribes whose imperfect respiratory
+system perhaps fitted them for enduring an atmosphere not yet
+quite suitable for birds or mammifers. <a
+name="citation97"></a><a href="#footnote97"
+class="citation">[97]</a>&nbsp; The specimens found in the
+muschelkalk are allied to the crocodile and lizard tribes of the
+present day, but in the latter instance are upon a scale of
+magnitude as much superior to present forms as the lepidodendron
+of the coal era was superior to the dwarf club-mosses of our
+time.&nbsp; These saurians also combine some peculiarities of
+structure of a most extraordinary character.</p>
+<p>The animal to which the name <i>ichthyosaurus</i> has been
+given, was as long as a young whale, and it was fitted for living
+in the water, though breathing the atmosphere.&nbsp; It had the
+vertebral column and general bodily form of a fish, but to that
+were added the head and breast-bone of a lizard, and the paddles
+of the whale tribes.&nbsp; The beak, moreover, was that of a
+porpoise, and the teeth were those of a crocodile.&nbsp; It must
+have been a most destructive creature to the fish of those early
+seas.</p>
+<p>The <i>plesiosaurus</i> was of similar bulk, with a
+turtle-like body and paddles, shewing that the sea was its
+element, but with a long serpent-like neck, terminating in a
+saurian head, calculated to reach prey at a considerable
+distance.&nbsp; These two animals, of which many varieties have
+been discovered, constituting distinct species, are supposed to
+have lived in the shallow borders of the seas of this and
+subsequent formations, devouring immense quantities of the finny
+tribes.&nbsp; It was at first thought that no creatures
+approaching them in character now inhabit the earth; but latterly
+Mr. Darwin has discovered, in the reptile-peopled Galapagos
+Islands, in the South Sea, a marine saurian from three to four
+feet long.</p>
+<p>The <i>megalosaurus</i> was an enormous lizard&mdash;a land
+creature, also carnivorous.&nbsp; The <i>pterodactyle</i> was
+another lizard, but furnished with wings to pursue its prey in
+the air, and varying in size between a cormorant and a
+snipe.&nbsp; Crocodiles abounded, and some of these were
+herbivorous.&nbsp; Such was the iguanodon, a creature of the
+character of the iguana of the Ganges, but reaching a hundred
+feet in length, or twenty times that of its modern
+representative.</p>
+<p>There were also numerous <i>tortoises</i>, some of them
+reaching a great size; and Professor Owen has found in
+Warwickshire some remains of an animal of the batrachian order,
+<a name="citation99"></a><a href="#footnote99"
+class="citation">[99]</a> to which, from the peculiar form of the
+teeth, he has given the name of labyrinthidon.&nbsp; Thus, three
+of Cuvier&rsquo;s four orders of reptilia (<i>sauria</i>,
+<i>chelonia</i>, and <i>batrachia</i>) are represented in this
+formation, the serpent order (<i>ophidia</i>) being alone
+wanting.</p>
+<p>The variegated marl beds which constitute the uppermost group
+of the formation, present two additional genera of huge
+saurians,&mdash;the phytosaurus and mastodonsaurus.</p>
+<p>It is in the upper beds of the red sandstone that beds of salt
+first occur.&nbsp; These are sometimes of such thickness, that
+the mine from which the material has been excavated looks like a
+lofty church.&nbsp; We see in the present world no circumstances
+calculated to produce the formation of a bed of rock salt; yet it
+is not difficult to understand how such strata were formed in an
+age marked by ultra-tropical heat and frequent volcanic
+disturbances.&nbsp; An estuary, cut off by an upthrow of trap, or
+a change of level, and left to dry up under the heat of the sun,
+would quickly become the bed of a dense layer of rock salt.&nbsp;
+A second shift of level, or some other volcanic disturbance,
+connecting it again with the sea, would expose this stratum to
+being covered over with a layer of sand or mud, destined in time
+to form the next stratum of rock above it.</p>
+<p>The plants of this era are few and unobtrusive.&nbsp;
+Equiseta, calamites, ferns, Voltzia, and a few of the other
+families found so abundantly in the preceding formation, here
+present themselves, but in diminished size and quantity.</p>
+<p>This seems to be the proper place to advert to certain
+memorials of a peculiar and unexpected character respecting these
+early ages in the sandstones.&nbsp; So low as the bottom of the
+carboniferous system, slabs are found marked over a great extent
+of surface with that peculiar corrugation or wrinkling which the
+receding tide leaves upon a sandy beach when the sea is but
+slightly agitated; and not only are these ripple-marks, as they
+are called, found on the surfaces, but casts of them are found on
+the under sides of slabs lying above.&nbsp; The phenomena
+suggests the time when the sand ultimately formed into these
+stone slabs, was part of the beach of a sea of the carbonigenous
+era; when, left wavy by one tide, it was covered over with a thin
+layer of fresh sand by the next, and so on, precisely as such
+circumstances might be expected to take place at the present
+day.&nbsp; Sandstone surfaces, ripple-marked, are found
+throughout the subsequent formations: in those of the new red, at
+more than one place in England, they further bear impressions of
+rain-drops which have fallen upon them&mdash;the rain, of course,
+of the inconceivably remote age in which the sandstones were
+formed.&nbsp; In the Greensill sandstone, near Shrewsbury, it has
+even been possible to tell from what direction the shower came
+which impressed the sandy surface, the rims of the marks being
+somewhat raised on one side, exactly as might be expected from a
+slanting shower falling at this day upon one of our
+beaches.&nbsp; These facts have the same sort of interest as the
+season rings of the Craigleith conifers, as speaking of a parity
+between some of the familiar processes of nature in those early
+ages and our own.</p>
+<p>In the new red sandstone, impressions still more important in
+the inferences to which they tend, have been
+observed,&mdash;namely, the footmarks of various animals.&nbsp;
+In a quarry of this formation, at Corncockle Muir, in
+Dumfriesshire, where the slabs incline at an angle of
+thirty-eight degrees, the vestiges of an animal supposed to have
+been a tortoise are distinctly traced up and down the slope, as
+if the creature had had occasion to pass backwards and forwards
+in that direction only, possibly in its daily visits to the
+sea.&nbsp; Some slabs similarly impressed, in the Stourton
+quarries in Cheshire, are further marked with a shower of rain
+which we know must have fallen <i>afterwards</i>, for its little
+hollows are impressed in the footmarks also, though more slightly
+than on the rest of the surface, the comparative hardness of a
+trodden place having apparently prevented so deep an impression
+being made.&nbsp; At Hessberg, in Saxony, the vestiges of four
+distinct animals have been traced, one of them a web-footed
+animal of small size, considered as a congener of the crocodile;
+another, whose footsteps having a resemblance to an impression of
+a swelled human hand, has caused it to be named the
+<i>cheirotherium</i>.&nbsp; The footsteps of the cheirotherium
+have been found also in the Stourton quarries above
+mentioned.&nbsp; Professor Owen, who stands at the head of
+comparative anatomy in the present day, has expressed his belief
+that this last animal was the same batrachian of which he has
+found fragments in the new red sandstone of Warwickshire.&nbsp;
+At Runcorn, near Manchester, and elsewhere, have been discovered
+the tracks of an animal which Mr. Owen calls the rynchosaurus,
+uniting with the body of a reptile the beak and feet of a bird,
+and which clearly had been a <i>link</i> between these two
+classes.</p>
+<p>If geologists shall ultimately give their approbation to the
+inferences made from a recent discovery in America, we shall have
+the addition of perfect birds, though probably of a low type, to
+the animal forms of this era.&nbsp; It is stated to be in
+quarries of this rock, in the valley of Connecticut, that
+footprints have been found, apparently produced by birds of the
+order grall&aelig;, or waders.&nbsp; &ldquo;The footsteps appear
+in regular succession on the continuous track of an animal, in
+the act of walking or running, with the right and left foot
+always in their relative places.&nbsp; The distance of the
+intervals between each footstep on the same track is occasionally
+varied, but to no greater amount than may be explained by the
+bird having altered its pace.&nbsp; Many tracks of different
+individuals and different species are often found crossing each
+other, and crowded, like impressions of feet upon the shores of a
+muddy stream, where ducks and geese resort.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation103"></a><a href="#footnote103"
+class="citation">[103]</a>&nbsp; Some of these prints indicate
+small animals, but others denote birds of what would now be an
+unusually large size.&nbsp; One animal, having a foot fifteen
+inches in length, (one-half more than that of the ostrich,) and a
+stride of from four to six feet, has been appropriately entitled,
+<i>ornithichnites giganteus</i>.</p>
+<h2><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span>ERA
+OF THE OOLITE.<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">COMMENCEMENT OF MAMMALIA.</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> chronicles of this period
+consist of a series of beds, mostly calcareous, taking their
+general name (<i>Oolite System</i>) from a conspicuous member of
+them&mdash;the oolite&mdash;a limestone composed of an
+aggregation of small round grains or spherules, and so called
+from its fancied resemblance to a cluster of eggs, or the roe of
+a fish.&nbsp; This texture of stone is novel and striking.&nbsp;
+It is supposed to be of chemical origin, each spherule being an
+aggregation of particles round a central nucleus.&nbsp; The
+oolite system is largely developed in England, France,
+Westphalia, and Northern Italy; it appears in Northern India and
+Africa, and patches of it exist in Scotland, and in the vale of
+the Mississippi.&nbsp; It may of course be yet discovered in many
+other parts of the world.</p>
+<p>The series, as shewn in the neighbourhood of Bath, is
+(beginning with the lowest) as follows:&mdash;1.&nbsp; Lias, a
+set of strata variously composed of limestone, clay, marl, and
+shale, clay being predominant; 2.&nbsp; Lower oolitic formation,
+including, besides the great oolite bed of central England,
+fullers&rsquo; earth beds, forest marble, and cornbrash; 3.&nbsp;
+Middle oolitic formation, composed of two sub-groups, the Oxford
+clay and coral rag, the latter being a mere layer of the works of
+the coral polype; 4.&nbsp; Upper oolitic formation, including
+what are called Kimmeridge clay and Portland oolite.&nbsp; In
+Yorkshire there is an additional group above the lias, and in
+Sutherlandshire there is another group above that again.&nbsp; In
+the wealds (moorlands) of Kent and Sussex, there is, in like
+manner, above the fourth of the Bath series, another additional
+group, to which the name of the <i>Wealden</i> has been given,
+from its situation, and which, composed of sandstones and clays,
+is subdivided into Purbeck beds, Hastings sand, and Weald
+clay.</p>
+<p>There are no particular appearances of disturbance between the
+close of the new red sandstone and the beginning of the oolite
+system, as far as has been observed in England.&nbsp; Yet there
+is a great change in the materials of the rocks of the two
+formations, shewing that while the bottoms of the seas of the one
+period had been chiefly arenaceous, those of the other were
+chiefly clayey and limy.&nbsp; And there is an equal difference
+between the two periods in respect of both botany and
+zoology.&nbsp; While the new red sandstone shews comparatively
+scanty traces of organic creation, those in the oolite are
+extremely abundant, particularly in the department of animals,
+and more particularly still of sea mollusca, which, it has been
+observed, are always the more conspicuous in proportion to the
+predominance of calcareous rocks.&nbsp; It is also remarkable
+that the animals of the oolitic system are entirely different in
+species from those of the preceding age, and that these species
+cease before the next.&nbsp; In this system we likewise find that
+uniformity over great space which has been remarked of the Faunas
+of earlier formations.&nbsp; &ldquo;In the equivalent deposits in
+the Himalaya Mountains, at Fernando Po, in the region north of
+the Cape of Good Hope, and in the Run of Cutch, and other parts
+of Hindostan, fossils have been discovered, which, as far as
+English naturalists who have seen them can determine, are
+undistinguishable from certain oolite and lias fossils of
+Europe.&rdquo; <a name="citation108a"></a><a href="#footnote108a"
+class="citation">[108a]</a></p>
+<p>The dry land of this age presented cycade&aelig;, &ldquo;a
+beautiful class of plants between the palms and conifers, having
+a tall, straight trunk, terminating in a magnificent crown of
+foliage.&rdquo; <a name="citation108b"></a><a
+href="#footnote108b" class="citation">[108b]</a>&nbsp; There were
+tree ferns, but in smaller proportion than in former ages; also
+equisetace&aelig;, lilia, and conifers.&nbsp; The vegetation was
+generally analogous to that of the Cape of Good Hope and
+Australia, which seems to argue a climate (we must remember, a
+universal climate) between the tropical and temperate.&nbsp; It
+was, however, sufficiently luxuriant in some instances to produce
+thin seams of coal, for such are found in the oolite formation of
+both Yorkshire and Sutherland.&nbsp; The sea, as for ages before,
+contained alg&aelig;, of which, however, only a few species have
+been preserved to our day.&nbsp; The lower classes of the
+inhabitants of the ocean were unprecedentedly abundant.&nbsp; The
+polypiaria were in such abundance as to form whole strata of
+themselves.&nbsp; The crinoidea and echinites were also extremely
+numerous.&nbsp; Shell mollusks, in hundreds of new species,
+occupied the bottoms of the seas of those ages, while of the
+swimming shell-fish, ammonites and belemnites, there were also
+many scores of varieties.&nbsp; The belemnite here calls for some
+particular notice.&nbsp; It commences in the oolite, and
+terminates in the next formation.&nbsp; It is an elongated,
+conical shell, terminating in a point, and having, at the larger
+end, a cavity for the residence of the animal, with a series of
+air-chambers below.&nbsp; The animal, placed in the upper cavity,
+could raise or depress itself in the water at pleasure by a
+pneumatic operation upon the entral air tube pervading its
+shell.&nbsp; Its tentacula, sent abroad over the summit of the
+shell, searched the sea for prey.&nbsp; The creature had an
+ink-bag, with which it could muddle the water around it, to
+protect itself from more powerful animals, and, strange to say,
+this has been found so well preserved that an artist has used it
+in one instance as a paint, wherewith to delineate the belemnite
+itself.</p>
+<p>The crustacea discovered in this formation are less
+numerous.&nbsp; There are many fishes, some of which
+(<i>acrodus</i>, <i>psammodus</i>, &amp;c.,) are presumed from
+remains of their palatal bones, to have been of the gigantic
+cartilaginous class, now represented by such as the
+cestraceon.&nbsp; It has been considered by Professor Owen as
+worthy of notice, that, the cestraceon being an inhabitant of the
+Australian seas, we have, in both the botany and ichthyology of
+this period, an analogy to that continent.&nbsp; The pycnodontes,
+(thick-toothed,) and lepidoides, (having thick scales,) are other
+families described by M. Agassiz as extensively prevalent.&nbsp;
+In the shallow waters of the oolitic formation, the
+ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, and other huge saurian carnivora of
+the preceding age, plied, in increased numbers, their destructive
+vocation. <a name="citation110"></a><a href="#footnote110"
+class="citation">[110]</a>&nbsp; To them were added new genera,
+the cetiosaurus, mososaurus, and some others, all of similar
+character and habits.</p>
+<p>Land reptiles abounded, including species of the pterodactyle
+of the preceding age&mdash;tortoises, trionyces,
+crocodilians&mdash;and the pliosaurus, a creature which appears
+to have formed a link between the plesiosaurus and the
+crocodile.&nbsp; We know of at least six species of the flying
+saurian, the pterodactyle, in this formation.</p>
+<p>Now, for the first time, we find remains of insects, an order
+of animals not well calculated for fossil preservation, and which
+are therefore amongst the rarest of the animal tribes found in
+rocks, though they are the most numerous of all living
+families.&nbsp; A single libellula (dragon-fly) was found in the
+Stonesfield slate, a member of the lower oolitic group quarried
+near Oxford; and this was for several years the only specimen
+known to exist so early; but now many species have been found in
+a corresponding rock at Solenhofen, in Germany.&nbsp; It is
+remarkable that the remains of insects are found most plentifully
+near the remains of pterodactyles, to which undoubtedly they
+served as prey.</p>
+<p>The first glimpse of the highest class of the vertebrate
+sub-kingdom&mdash;<i>mammalia</i>&mdash;is obtained from the
+Stonesfield slate, where there has been found the jaw-bone of a
+quadruped evidently insectivorous, and inferred, from
+peculiarities in the structure of that small fragment, to have
+belonged to the marsupial family, (pouched animals).&nbsp; It may
+be observed, although no specimens of so high a class of animals
+as mammalia are found earlier, such may nevertheless have
+existed: the defect may be in our not having found them; but,
+other things considered, the probability is that heretofore there
+were no mammifers.&nbsp; It is an interesting circumstance that
+the first mammifers found should have belonged to the
+marsupialia, when the place of that order in the scale of
+creation is considered.&nbsp; In the imperfect structure of their
+brain, deficient in the organs connecting the two
+hemispheres&mdash;and in the mode of gestation, which is only in
+small part uterine&mdash;this family is clearly a link between
+the oviparous vertebrata (birds, reptiles, and fishes) and the
+higher mammifers.&nbsp; This is further established by their
+possessing a faint development of two canals passing from near
+the anus to the external surface of the viscera, which are fully
+possessed in reptiles and fishes, for the purpose of supplying
+aerated water to the blood circulating in particular vessels, but
+which are unneeded by mammifers.&nbsp; Such rudiments of organs
+in certain species which do not require them in any degree, are
+common in both the animal and vegetable kingdoms, but are always
+most conspicuous in families approaching in character to those
+classes to which the full organs are proper.&nbsp; This subject
+will be more particularly adverted to in the sequel.</p>
+<p>The highest part of the oolitic formation presents some
+phenomena of an unusual and interesting character, which demand
+special notice.&nbsp; Immediately above the upper oolitic group
+in Buckinghamshire, in the vicinity of Weymouth, and other
+situations, there is a thin stratum, usually called by workmen
+the <i>dirt-bed</i>, which appears, from incontestable evidence,
+to have been a soil, formed, like soils of the present day, in
+the course of time, upon a surface which had previously been the
+bottom of the sea.&nbsp; The dirt-bed contains exuvi&aelig; of
+tropical trees, accumulated through time, as the forest shed its
+honours on the spot where it grew, and became itself
+decayed.&nbsp; Near Weymouth there is a piece of this stratum, in
+which stumps of trees remain rooted, mostly erect or slightly
+inclined, and from one to three feet high; while trunks of the
+same forest, also silicified, lie imbedded on the surface of the
+soil in which they grew.</p>
+<p>Above this bed lie those which have been called the Wealden,
+from their full development in the Weald of Sussex; and these as
+incontestably argue that the dry land forming the dirt-bed had
+next afterwards become the area of brackish estuaries, or lakes
+partially connected with the sea; for the Wealden strata contain
+exuvi&aelig; of fresh-water tribes, besides those of the great
+saurians and chelonia.&nbsp; The area of this estuary comprehends
+the whole south-east province of England.&nbsp; A geologist thus
+confidently narrates the subsequent events: &ldquo;Much
+calcareous matter was first deposited [in this estuary], and in
+it were entombed myriads of shells, apparently analogous to those
+of the vivipara.&nbsp; Then came a thick envelope of sand,
+sometimes interstratified with mud; and, finally, muddy matter
+prevailed.&nbsp; The solid surface beneath the waters would
+appear to have suffered a long continued and gradual depression,
+which was as gradually filled, or nearly so, with transported
+matter; in the end, however, after a depression of several
+hundred feet, the sea again entered upon the area, not suddenly
+or violently&mdash;for the Wealden rocks pass gradually into the
+superincumbent cretaceous series&mdash;but so quietly, that the
+mud containing the remains of terrestrial and fresh-water
+creatures was tranquilly covered up by sands replete with marine
+exuvi&aelig;.&rdquo; <a name="citation114"></a><a
+href="#footnote114" class="citation">[114]</a>&nbsp; A subsequent
+depression of the same area, to the depth of at least three
+hundred fathoms, is believed to have taken place, to admit of the
+deposition of the cretaceous beds lying above.</p>
+<p>From the scattered way in which remains of the larger
+terrestrial animals occur in the Wealden, and the intermixture of
+pebbles of the special appearance of those worn in rivers, it is
+also inferred that the estuary which once covered the south-east
+part of England was the mouth of a river of that far-descending
+class of which the Mississippi and Amazon are examples.&nbsp;
+What part of the earth&rsquo;s surface presented the dry land
+through which that and other similar rivers flowed, no one can
+tell for certain.&nbsp; It has been surmised, that the particular
+one here spoken of may have flowed from a point not nearer than
+the site of the present Newfoundland.&nbsp; Professor Philips has
+suggested, from the analogy of the mineral composition, that
+anciently elevated coal strata may have composed the dry land
+from which the sandy matters of these strata were washed.&nbsp;
+Such a deposit as the Wealden almost necessarily implies a local,
+not a general condition; yet it has been thought that similar
+strata and remains exist in the Pays de Bray, near
+Beauvais.&nbsp; This leads to the supposition that there may have
+been, in that age, a series of river-receiving estuaries along
+the border of some such great ocean as the Atlantic, of which
+that of modern Sussex is only an example.</p>
+<h2><a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>ERA
+OF THE CRETACEOUS FORMATION.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> record of this period consists
+of a series of strata, in which chalk beds make a conspicuous
+appearance, and which is therefore called the cretaceous system
+or formation.&nbsp; In England, a long stripe, extending from
+Yorkshire to Kent, presents the cretaceous beds upon the surface,
+generally lying conformably upon the oolite, and in many
+instances rising into bold escarpments towards the west.&nbsp;
+The celebrated cliffs of Dover are of this formation.&nbsp; It
+extends into northern France, and thence north-westward into
+Germany, whence it is traced into Scandinavia and Russia.&nbsp;
+The same system exists in North America, and probably in other
+parts of the earth not yet geologically investigated.&nbsp; Being
+a marine deposit, it establishes that seas existed at the time of
+its formation on the tracts occupied by it, while some of its
+organic remains prove that, in the neighbourhood of those seas,
+there were tracts of dry land.</p>
+<p>The cretaceous formation in England presents beds chiefly
+sandy in the lowest part, chiefly clayey in the middle, and
+chiefly of chalk in the upper part, the chalk beds being never
+absent, which some of the lower are in several places.&nbsp; In
+the vale of the Mississippi, again, the true chalk is wholly, or
+all but wholly absent.&nbsp; In the south of England, the lower
+beds are, (reckoning from the lowest upwards), 1.&nbsp;
+<i>Shankland</i> or <i>greensand</i>, &ldquo;a triple alternation
+of sands and sandstones with clay;&rdquo; 2.&nbsp; Galt, &ldquo;a
+stiff blue or black clay, abounding in shells, which frequently
+possess a pearly lustre;&rdquo; 3.&nbsp; <i>Hard</i> chalk;
+4.&nbsp; Chalk with flints; these two last being generally white,
+but in some districts red, and in others yellow.&nbsp; The whole
+are, in England, about 1200 feet thick, shewing the considerable
+depths of the ocean in which the deposits were made.</p>
+<p>Chalk is a carbonate of lime, and the manner of its production
+in such vast quantities was long a subject of speculation among
+geologists.&nbsp; Some light seemed to be thrown upon the subject
+a few years ago, when it was observed, that the detritus of coral
+reefs in the present tropical seas gave a powder,
+undistinguishable, when dried, from ordinary chalk.&nbsp; It then
+appeared likely that the chalk beds were the detritus of the
+corals which were in the oceans of that era.&nbsp; Mr. Darwin,
+who made some curious inquiries on this point, further suggested,
+that the matter might have intermediately passed through the
+bodies of worms and fish, such as feed on the corals of the
+present day, and in whose stomachs he has found impure
+chalk.&nbsp; This, however, cannot be a full explanation of the
+production of chalk, if we admit some more recent discoveries of
+Professor Ehrenberg.&nbsp; That master of microscopic
+investigation announces, that chalk is composed partly of
+&ldquo;inorganic particles of irregular elliptical structure and
+granular slaty disposition,&rdquo; and partly of shells of
+inconceivable minuteness, &ldquo;varying from the one-twelfth to
+the two hundred and eighty-eighth part of a line&rdquo;&mdash;a
+cubic inch of the substance containing above ten millions of
+them!&nbsp; The chalk of the north of Europe contains, he says, a
+larger proportion of the inorganic matter; that of the south, a
+larger proportion of the organic matter, being in some instances
+almost entirely composed of it.&nbsp; He has been able to
+classify many of these creatures, some of them being allied to
+the nautili, nummuli, cyprides, &amp;c.&nbsp; The shells of some
+are calcareous, of others siliceous.&nbsp; M. Ehrenberg has
+likewise detected microscopic sea-plants in the chalk.</p>
+<p>The distinctive feature of the uppermost chalk beds in
+England, is the presence of flint nodules.&nbsp; These are
+generally disposed in layers parallel to each other.&nbsp; It was
+readily presumed by geologists that these masses were formed by a
+chemical aggregation of particles of silica, originally held in
+solution in the mass of the chalk.&nbsp; But whence the silica in
+a substance so different from it?&nbsp; Ehrenberg suggests that
+it is composed of the siliceous coverings of a portion of the
+microscopic creatures, whose shells he has in other instances
+detected in their original condition.&nbsp; It is remarkable that
+the chalk <i>with</i> flint abounds in the north of Europe; that
+<i>without</i> flints in the south; while in the northern chalk
+siliceous animalcules are wanting, and in the southern present in
+great quantities.&nbsp; The conclusion seems but natural, that in
+the one case the siliceous exuvi&aelig; have been left in their
+original form; in the other dissolved chemically, and aggregated
+on the common principle of chemical affinity into nodules of
+flint, probably concentrating, in every instance, upon a piece of
+decaying organic matter, as has been the case with the nodules of
+ironstone in the earlier rocks, and the spherules of the
+oolite.</p>
+<p>What is more remarkable, M. Ehrenberg has ascertained that at
+least fifty-seven species of the microscopic animals of the
+chalk, being infusoria and calcareous-shelled polythalamia, are
+still found living in various parts of the earth.&nbsp; These
+species are the most abundant in the rock.&nbsp; Singly they are
+the most unimportant of all animals, but in the mass, forming as
+they do such enormous strata over a large part of the
+earth&rsquo;s surface, they have an importance greatly exceeding
+that of the largest and noblest of the beasts of the field.&nbsp;
+Moreover, these species have a peculiar interest, as the only
+specific types of that early age which are reproduced in the
+present day.&nbsp; Species of sea mollusks, of reptiles, and of
+mammifers, have been changed again and again, since the
+cretaceous era; and it is not till a long subsequent age that we
+find the first traces of any other of even the humblest species
+which now exist; but here have these humble infusoria and
+polythalamia kept their place on earth through all its
+revolutions since that time,&mdash;are we to say, safe in their
+very humility, which might adapt them to a greater variety of
+circumstances than most other animals, or are we required to look
+for some other explanation of the phenomenon?</p>
+<p>All the ordinary and more observable orders of the inhabitants
+of the sea, except the cetacea, have been found in the cretaceous
+formation&mdash;zoophytes, radiaria, mollusks, crustacea, (in
+great variety of species,) and fishes in smaller variety.&nbsp;
+In Europe, remains of the marine saurians have been found; they
+may be presumed to have become extinct in that part of the globe
+before this time, their place and destructive office being
+perhaps supplied by cartilaginous fishes, of which the teeth are
+found in great quantities.&nbsp; In America, however, remains of
+the plesiosaurus have been discovered in this part of the
+stratified series.&nbsp; The reptiles, too, so numerous in the
+two preceding periods, appear to have now much diminished in
+numbers.&nbsp; One, entitled the mos&aelig;saurus, seems to have
+held an intermediate place between the monitor and iguana, and to
+have been about twenty-five feet long, with a tail calculated to
+assist it powerfully in swimming.&nbsp; Crocodiles and turtles
+existed, and amongst the fishes were some of a saurian
+character.</p>
+<p>Fuci abounded in the seas of this era.&nbsp; Conferv&aelig;
+are found enclosed in flints.&nbsp; Of terrestrial vegetation, as
+of terrestrial animals, the specimens in the European area are
+comparatively rare, rendering it probable that there was no dry
+land near.&nbsp; The remains are chiefly of ferns, conifers, and
+cycade&aelig;, but in the two former cases we have only cones and
+leaves.&nbsp; There have been discovered many pieces of wood,
+containing holes drilled by the teredo, and thus shewing that
+they had been long drifted about in the ocean before being
+entombed at the bottom.</p>
+<p>The series in America corresponding to this, entitled the
+ferruginous sand formation, presents fossils generally identical
+with those of Europe, not excepting the fragments of drilled
+wood; shewing that, in this, as in earlier ages, there was a
+parity of conditions for animal life over a vast tract of the
+earth&rsquo;s surface.&nbsp; To European reptiles, the American
+formation adds a gigantic one, styled the saurodon, from the
+lizard-like character of its teeth.</p>
+<p>We have seen that footsteps of birds are considered to have
+been discovered in America, in the new red sandstone.&nbsp; Some
+similar isolated phenomena occur in the subsequent
+formations.&nbsp; Mr. Mantell discovered some bones of birds,
+apparently waders, in the Wealden.&nbsp; The immediate connexion
+of that set of birds with land, may account, of course, for their
+containing a terrestrial organic relic, which the marine beds
+above and below did not possess.&nbsp; In the slate of Glarus, in
+Switzerland, corresponding to the English galt, in the chalk
+formation, the remains of a bird have been found.&nbsp; From a
+chalk bed near Maidstone, have likewise been extracted some
+remains of a bird, supposed to have been of the long-winged
+swimmer family, and equal in size to the albatross.&nbsp; These,
+it must be owned, are less strong traces of the birds than we
+possess of the reptiles and other tribes; but it must be
+remembered, that the evidence of fossils, as to the absence of
+any class of animals from a certain period of the earth&rsquo;s
+history, can never be considered as more than negative.&nbsp;
+Animals, of which we find no remains in a particular formation,
+may, nevertheless, have lived at the time, and it may have only
+been from unfavourable circumstances that their remains have not
+been preserved for our inspection.&nbsp; The single circumstance
+of their being little liable to be carried down into seas, might
+be the cause of their non-appearance in our quarries.&nbsp; There
+is at the same time a limit to uncertainty on this point.&nbsp;
+We see, from what remains have been found in the whole series, a
+clear progress throughout, from humble to superior types of
+being.&nbsp; Hence we derive a light as to what animals may have
+existed at particular times, which is in some measure independent
+of the specialties of fossilology.&nbsp; The birds are below the
+mammalia in the animal scale; and therefore they may be supposed
+to 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.</p>
+<h2><a name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>ERA
+OF THE TERTIARY FORMATION.&mdash;<br />
+MAMMALIA ABUNDANT.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> chalk-beds are the highest
+which extend over a considerable space; but in hollows of these
+beds, comparatively limited in extent, there have been formed
+series of strata&mdash;clays, limestones, marls,
+alternating&mdash;to which the name of the <i>Tertiary
+Formation</i> has been applied.&nbsp; London and Paris alike rest
+on basins of this formation, and another such basin extends from
+near Winchester, under Southampton, and re-appears in the Isle of
+Wight.&nbsp; There is a patch, or fragment of the formation in
+one of the Hebrides.&nbsp; A stripe of it extends along the east
+coast of North America, from Massachusetts to Florida.&nbsp; It
+is also found in Sicily and Italy, insensibly blended with
+formations still in progress.&nbsp; Though comparatively a local
+formation, it is not of the less importance as a record of the
+condition of the earth during a certain period.&nbsp; As in other
+formations, it is marked, in the most distant localities, by
+identity of organic remains.</p>
+<p>The hollows filled by the tertiary formation must be
+considered as the beds of estuaries left at the conclusion of the
+cretaceous period.&nbsp; We have seen that an estuary, either by
+the drifting up of its mouth, or a change of level in that
+quarter, may be supposed to have become an inland sheet of water,
+and that, by another change, of the reverse kind, it may be
+supposed to have become an estuary again.&nbsp; Such changes the
+Paris basin appears to have undergone oftener than once, for,
+first, we have there a fresh-water formation of clay and
+limestone beds; then, a marine-limestone formation; next, a
+second fresh water formation, in which the material of the
+celebrated <i>plaster of Paris</i> (gypsum) is included; then, a
+second marine formation of sandy and limy beds; and finally, a
+third series of fresh-water strata.&nbsp; Such alternations occur
+in other examples of the tertiary formation likewise.</p>
+<p>The tertiary beds present all but an entirely new set of
+animals, and as we ascend in the series, we find more and more of
+these identical with species still existing upon earth, as if we
+had now reached the dawn of the present state of the zoology of
+our planet.&nbsp; By the study of the shells alone, Mr. Lyell has
+been enabled to divide the whole term into four sub-periods, to
+which he has given names with reference to the proportions which
+they respectively present of surviving species&mdash;first, the
+eocene, (from &rsquo;&eta;&omega;&sigmaf;, the dawn;
+&chi;&alpha;&iota;&nu;&omicron;&sigmaf;, recent;) second, the
+miocene, (&mu;&epsilon;&iota;&omega;&nu;, less;) third, older
+pliocene, (&pi;&lambda;&epsilon;&iota;&omega;&nu;, more;) fourth,
+newer pliocene.</p>
+<h3>EOCENE SUB-PERIOD.</h3>
+<p>The eocene period presents, in three continental groups, 1238
+species of shells, of which forty-two, or 3.5 per cent, yet
+flourish.&nbsp; Some of these are remarkable enough; but they all
+sink into insignificance beside the mammalian remains which the
+lower eocene deposits of the Paris basin present to us, shewing
+that the land had now become the theatre of an extensive creation
+of the highest class of animals.&nbsp; Cuvier ascertained about
+fifty species of these, all of them long since extinct.&nbsp; A
+considerable number are <i>pachydermata</i>, <a
+name="citation127"></a><a href="#footnote127"
+class="citation">[127]</a> of a character approximating to the
+South American tapir: the names, pal&aelig;otherium,
+anthracotherium, anoplotherium, lophiodon, &amp;c., have been
+applied to them with a consideration of more or less conspicuous
+peculiarities; but a description of the first may give some
+general idea of the whole.&nbsp; It was about the size of a
+horse, but more squat and clumsy, and with a heavier head, and a
+lower jaw shorter than the upper; the feet, also, instead of
+hooves, presented three large toes, rounded, and unprovided with
+claws.&nbsp; These animals were all herbivorous.&nbsp; Amongst an
+immense number of others are found many new reptiles, some of
+them adapted for fresh water; species of birds allied to the
+sea-lark, curlew, quail, buzzard, owl, and pelican; species
+allied to the dormouse and squirrel; also the opossum and racoon;
+and species allied to the genette, fox, and wolf.</p>
+<h3>MIOCENE SUB-PERIOD.</h3>
+<p>In the miocene sub-period, the shells give eighteen per cent.
+of existing species, shewing a considerable advance from the
+preceding era, with respect to the inhabitants of the sea.&nbsp;
+The advance in the land animals is less marked, but yet
+considerable.&nbsp; The predominating forms are still
+pachydermatous, and the tapir type continues to be
+conspicuous.&nbsp; One animal of this kind, called the
+<i>dinotherium</i>, is supposed to have been not less than
+eighteen feet long; it had a mole-like form of the
+shoulder-blade, conferring the power of digging for food, and a
+couple of tusks turning down from the lower jaw, by which it
+could have attached itself, like the walrus, to a shore or bank,
+while its body floated in the water.&nbsp; Dr. Buckland considers
+this and some similar miocene animals, as adapted for a
+semi-aquatic life, in a region where lakes abounded.&nbsp;
+Besides the tapirs, we have in this era animals allied to the
+glutton, the bear, the dog, the horse, the hog, and lastly,
+several felin&aelig;, (creatures of which the lion is the type;)
+all of which are new forms, as far as we know.&nbsp; There was
+also an abundance of marine mammalia, seals, dolphins, lamantins,
+walruses, and whales, none of which had previously appeared.</p>
+<h3>PLIOCENE SUB-PERIOD.</h3>
+<p>The shells of the older pliocene give from thirty-five to
+fifty; those of the newer, from ninety to ninety-five per cent.
+of existing species.&nbsp; The pachydermata of the preceding era
+now disappear, and are replaced by others belonging to still
+existing families&mdash;elephant, hippopotamus,
+rhinoceros&mdash;though now extinct as species.&nbsp; Some of
+these are startling, from their enormous magnitude.&nbsp; The
+great mastodon, whose remains are found in abundance in America,
+was a species of elephant, judged, from peculiarities of its
+teeth, to have lived on aquatic plants, and reaching the height
+of twelve feet.&nbsp; The mammoth was another elephant, but
+supposed to have survived till comparatively recent times, as a
+specimen, in all respects entire, was found in 1801, preserved in
+ice, in Siberia.&nbsp; We are more surprised by finding such
+gigantic proportions in an animal called the megatherium, which
+ranks in an order now assuming much humbler forms&mdash;the
+edentata&mdash;to which the sloth, ant-eater, and armadillo
+belong.&nbsp; The megatherium had a skeleton of enormous
+solidity, with an armour-clad body, and five toes, terminating in
+huge claws, wherewith to grasp the branches, from which, like its
+existing congener, the sloth, it derived its food.&nbsp; The
+megalonyx was a similar animal, only somewhat less than the
+preceding.&nbsp; Finally, the pliocene gives us for the first
+time, oxen, deer, camels, and other specimens of the
+<i>ruminantia</i>.</p>
+<p>Such is an outline of the fauna of the tertiary era, as
+ascertained by the illustrious naturalists who first devoted
+their attention to it.&nbsp; It will be observed that it brings
+us up to the felin&aelig;, or carnivora, a considerably elevated
+point in the animal scale, but still leaving a blank for the
+quadrumana (monkeys) and for man, who collectively form, as will
+be afterwards seen, the first group in that scale.&nbsp; It
+sometimes happens, however, as we have seen, that a few rare
+traces of a particular class of animals are in time found in
+formations originally thought to be destitute of them, displaying
+as it were a dawn of that department of creation.&nbsp; Such
+seems to be the case with at least the quadrumana.&nbsp; A
+jaw-bone and tooth of an animal of this order, and belonging to
+the genus macacus, were found in the London clay, (eocene,) at
+Kyson, near Woodbridge, in 1839.&nbsp; Another jaw-bone,
+containing several teeth, supposed to have belonged to a species
+of monkey about three feet high, was discovered about the same
+time in a stratum of marl surmounted by compact limestone, in the
+department of Gers, at the foot of the Pyrenees.&nbsp; Associated
+with this last were remains of not less than thirty mammiferous
+quadrupeds, including three species of rhinoceros, a large
+anoplotherium, three species of deer, two antelopes, a true dog,
+a large cat, an animal like a weasel, a small hare, and a huge
+species of the edentata.&nbsp; Both of these places are
+considerably to the north of any region now inhabited by the
+monkey tribes.&nbsp; Fossil remains of quadrumana have been found
+in at least two other parts of the earth,&mdash;namely, the
+sub-Himalayan hills, near the Sutlej, and in Brazil, (both in the
+tertiary strata;) the first being a large species of
+semnopithecus, and the second, a still larger animal belonging to
+the American group of monkeys, but a new genus, and denominated
+by its discoverer, Dr. Lund, protopithecus.&nbsp; The latter
+would be four feet in height.</p>
+<p>One remarkable circumstance connected with the tertiary
+formation remains to be noticed,&mdash;namely, the prevalence of
+volcanic action at that era.&nbsp; In Auvergne, in Catalonia,
+near Venice, and in the vicinity of Rome and Naples, lavas
+exactly resembling the produce of existing volcanoes, are
+associated and intermixed with the lacustrine as well as marine
+tertiaries.&nbsp; The superficies of tertiaries in England is
+disturbed by two great swells, forming what are called anticlinal
+axes, one of which divides the London from the Hampshire basin,
+while the other passes through the Isle of Wight, both throwing
+the strata down at violent inclination towards the north, as if
+the subterranean disturbing force had <i>waved</i> forward in
+that direction.&nbsp; The Pyrenees, too, and Alps, have both
+undergone elevation since the deposition of the tertiaries; and
+in Sicily there are mountains which have risen three thousand
+feet since the deposition of some of the most recent of these
+rocks.&nbsp; The general effect of these operations was of course
+to extend the land surface, and to increase the variety of its
+features, thus improving the natural drainage, and generally
+adapting the earth for the reception of higher classes of
+animals.</p>
+<h2><a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 134</span>ERA
+OF THE SUPERFICIAL FORMATIONS.<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">COMMENCEMENT OF PRESENT
+SPECIES.</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> have now completed our survey of
+the series of stratified rocks, and traced in their fossils the
+progress of organic creation down to a time which seems not long
+antecedent to the appearance of man.&nbsp; There are,
+nevertheless, monuments of still another era or space of time
+which it is all but certain did also precede that event.</p>
+<p>Over the rock formations of all eras, in various parts of the
+globe, but confined in general to situations not very elevated,
+there is a layer of stiff clay, mostly of a blue colour, mingled
+with fragments of rock of all sizes, travel-worn, and otherwise,
+and to which geologists give the name of diluvium, as being
+apparently the produce of some vast flood, or of the sea thrown
+into an unusual agitation.&nbsp; It seems to indicate that, at
+the time when it was laid down, much of the present dry land was
+under the ocean, a supposition which we shall see supported by
+other evidence.&nbsp; The included masses of rock have been
+carefully inspected in many places, and traced to particular
+parent beds at considerable distances.&nbsp; Connected with these
+phenomena are certain rock surfaces on the slopes of hills and
+elsewhere, which exhibit groovings and scratchings, such as we
+might suppose would be produced by a quantity of loose blocks
+hurried along over them by a flood.&nbsp; Another associated
+phenomenon is that called <i>crag and tail</i>, which exists in
+many places,&mdash;namely, a rocky mountain, or lesser elevation,
+presenting on one side the naked rock in a more or less abrupt
+form, and on the other a gentle slope; the sites of Windsor,
+Edinburgh, and Stirling, with their respective castles, are
+specimens of crag and tail.&nbsp; Finally, we may advert to
+certain long ridges of clay and gravel which arrest the attention
+of travellers on the surface of Sweden and Finland, and which are
+also found in the United States, where, indeed, the whole of
+these phenomena have been observed over a large surface, as well
+as in Europe.&nbsp; It is very remarkable that the direction from
+which the diluvial blocks have generally come, the lines of the
+grooved rock surfaces, the direction of the crag and tail
+eminences, and that of the clay and gravel
+ridges&mdash;phenomena, be it observed, extending over the
+northern parts of both Europe and America&mdash;are <i>all from
+the north and north-west towards the south-east</i>.&nbsp; We
+thus acquire the idea of a powerful current moving in a direction
+from north-west to south-east, carrying, besides mud, masses of
+rock which furrowed the solid surfaces as they passed along,
+abrading the north-west faces of many hills, but leaving the
+slopes in the opposite direction uninjured, and in some instances
+forming long ridges of detritus along the surface.&nbsp; These
+are curious considerations, and it has become a question of much
+interest, by what means, and under what circumstances, was such a
+current produced.&nbsp; One hypothetical answer has some
+plausibility about it.&nbsp; From an investigation of the nature
+of glaciers, and some observations which seem to indicate that
+these have at one time extended to lower levels, and existed in
+regions (the Scottish Highlands an example) where there is now no
+perennial snow, it has been surmised that there was a time,
+subsequent to the tertiary era, when the circumpolar ice extended
+far into the temperate zone, and formed a lofty, as well as
+extensive accumulation.&nbsp; A change to a higher temperature,
+producing a sudden thaw of this mass, might set free such a
+quantity of water as would form a large flood, and the southward
+flow of this deluge, joined to the direction which it would
+obtain from the rotatory motion of the globe, would of course
+produce that compound or south-easterly direction which the
+phenomena require.&nbsp; All of these speculations are as yet far
+too deficient in facts to be of much value; and I must freely own
+that, for one, I attach little importance to them.&nbsp; All that
+we can legitimately infer from the diluvium is, that the northern
+parts of Europe and America were then under the sea, and that a
+strong current set over them.</p>
+<p>Connected with the diluvium is the history of <i>ossiferous
+caverns</i>, of which specimens singly exist at Kirkdale in
+Yorkshire, Gailenreuth in Franconia, and other places.&nbsp; They
+occur in the calcareous strata, as the great caverns generally
+do, but have in all instances been naturally closed up till the
+recent period of their discovery.&nbsp; The floors are covered
+with what appears to be a bed of the diluvial clay, over which
+rests a crust of stalagmite, the result of the droppings from the
+roof since the time when the clay-bed was laid down.&nbsp; In the
+instances above specified, and several others, there have been
+found, under the clay bed, assemblages of the bones of animals,
+of many various kinds.&nbsp; At Kirkdale, for example, the
+remains of twenty-four species were ascertained&mdash;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.&nbsp; From many of the bones of the gentler of these
+animals being found in a broken state, it is supposed that the
+cave was a haunt of hyenas and other predaceous animals, by which
+the smaller ones were here consumed.&nbsp; This must have been at
+a time antecedent to the submersion which produced the diluvium,
+since the bones are covered by a bed of that formation.&nbsp; It
+is impossible not to see here a very natural series of
+incidents.&nbsp; First, the cave is frequented by wild beasts,
+who make it a kind of charnel-house.&nbsp; Then, submerged in the
+current which has been spoken of, it receives a clay flooring
+from the waters containing that matter in suspension.&nbsp;
+Finally, raised from the water, but with no mouth to the open
+air, it remains unintruded on for a long series of ages, during
+which the clay flooring receives a new calcareous covering, from
+the droppings of the roof.&nbsp; Dr. Buckland, who examined and
+described the Kirkdale cave, was at first of opinion that it
+presented a physical evidence of the Noachian deluge; but he
+afterwards saw reason to consider its phenomena as of a time far
+apart from that event, which rests on evidence of an entirely
+different kind.</p>
+<p>Our attention is next drawn to the erratic blocks or boulders,
+which in many parts of the earth are thickly strewn over the
+surface, particularly in the north of Europe.&nbsp; Some of these
+blocks are many tons in weight, yet are clearly ascertained to
+have belonged originally to situations at a great distance.&nbsp;
+Fragments, for example, of the granite of Shap Fell are found in
+every direction around to the distance of fifty miles, one piece
+being placed high upon Criffel Mountain, on the opposite side of
+the Solway estuary; so also are fragments of the Alps found far
+up the slopes of the Jura.&nbsp; There are even blocks on the
+east coast of England, supposed to have travelled from
+Norway.&nbsp; The only rational conjecture which can be formed as
+to the transport of such masses from so great a distance, is one
+which presumes them to have been carried and dropped by icebergs,
+while the space between their original and final sites was under
+ocean.&nbsp; Icebergs do even now carry off such masses from the
+polar coasts, which, falling when the retaining ice melts, must
+take up situations at the bottom of the sea analogous to those in
+which we find the erratic blocks of the present day.</p>
+<p>As the diluvium and erratic blocks clearly suppose one last
+long submersion of the surface, (<i>last</i>, geologically
+speaking,) there is another set of appearances which as
+manifestly shew the steps by which the land was made afterwards
+to reappear.&nbsp; These consist of <i>terraces</i>, which have
+been detected near, and at some distance inland from, the coast
+lines of Scandinavia, Britain, America, and other regions; being
+evidently ancient beaches, or platforms, on which the margin of
+the sea at one time rested.&nbsp; They have been observed at
+different heights above the present sea-level, from twenty to
+above twelve hundred feet; and in many places they are seen
+rising above each other in succession, to the number of three,
+four, and even more.&nbsp; The smooth flatness of these terraces,
+with generally a slight inclination towards the sea, the sandy
+composition of many of them, and, in some instances, the
+preservation of marine shells in the ground, identify them
+perfectly with existing sea-beaches, notwithstanding the cuts and
+scoopings which have every here and there been effected in them
+by water-courses.&nbsp; The irresistible inference from the
+phenomena is, that the highest was first the coast line; then an
+elevation took place, and the second highest became so, the first
+being now raised into the air and thrown inland.&nbsp; Then, upon
+another elevation, the sea began to form, at its new point of
+contact with the land, the third highest beach, and so on down to
+the platform nearest to the present sea-beach.&nbsp; Phenomena of
+this kind become comparatively familiar to us, when we hear of
+evidence that the last sixty feet of the elevation of Sweden, and
+the last eighty-five of that of Chili, have taken place since man
+first dwelt in those countries; nay, that the elevation of the
+former country goes on 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 one night, under the influence of
+a powerful earthquake, so lately as 1822.&nbsp; Subterranean
+forces, of the kind then exemplified in Chili, supply a ready
+explanation of the whole phenomena, though some other operating
+causes have been suggested.&nbsp; In an inquiry on this point, it
+becomes of consequence to learn some particulars respecting the
+levels.&nbsp; Taking a particular beach, it is generally observed
+that the level continues the same along a considerable number of
+miles, and nothing like breaks or hitches has as yet been
+detected in any case.&nbsp; A second and a third beach are also
+observed to be exactly parallel to the first.&nbsp; These facts
+would seem to indicate quiet elevating movements, uniform over a
+large tract.&nbsp; It must, however, be remarked that the raised
+beaches at one part of a coast rarely coincide with those at
+another part forty or fifty miles off.&nbsp; We might suppose
+this to indicate a limit in that extent of the uniformity of the
+elevating cause, but it would be rash to conclude positively that
+such is the case.&nbsp; In the present sea, as is well known,
+there are different levels at different places, owing to the
+operation of peculiar local causes, as currents, evaporation, and
+the influx of large rivers into narrow-mouthed estuaries.&nbsp;
+The differences of level in the ancient beaches might be
+occasioned by some such causes.&nbsp; But, whatever doubt may
+rest on this minor point, enough has been ascertained to settle
+the main one, that we have in these platforms indubitable
+monuments of the last rise of the land from the sea, and the
+concluding great event of the geological history.</p>
+<p>The idea of such a wide-spread and possibly universal
+submersion unavoidably suggests some considerations as to the
+effect which it might have upon terrestrial animal life.&nbsp; It
+seems likely that this would be, on such an occasion,
+extensively, if not universally destroyed.&nbsp; Nor does the
+idea of its universal destruction seem the less plausible, when
+we remark, that none of the species of land animals heretofore
+discovered can be detected at a subsequent period.&nbsp; The
+whole seem to have been now changed.&nbsp; Some geologists appear
+much inclined to think that there was at this time a new
+development of terrestrial animal life upon the globe, and M.
+Agassiz, whose opinion on such a subject must always be worthy of
+attention, speaks all but decidedly for such a conclusion.&nbsp;
+It must, however, be owned, that proofs for it are still scanty,
+beyond the bare fact of a submersion which appears to have had a
+very wide range.&nbsp; I must therefore be content to leave this
+point, as far as geological evidence is concerned, for future
+affirmation.</p>
+<p>There are some other superficial deposits, of less consequence
+on the present occasion than the diluvium&mdash;namely,
+lacustrine deposits, or filled-up lakes; alluvium, or the
+deposits of rivers beside their margins; deltas, the deposits
+made by great ones at their efflux into the sea; peat mosses; and
+the vegetable soil.&nbsp; The animal remains found in these
+generally testify to a zoology on the verge of that which still
+exists, or melting into it, there being included many species
+which still exist.&nbsp; In a lacustrine deposit at
+Market-Weighton, in the Vale of York, there have been found bones
+of the elephant, rhinoceros, bison, wolf, horse, felis, deer,
+birds, all or nearly all extinct species; associated with
+thirteen species of land and fresh water shells, &ldquo;exactly
+identical with types now living in the vicinity.&rdquo;&nbsp; In
+similar deposits in North America, are remains of the mammoth,
+mastodon, buffalo, and other animals of extinct and living
+types.&nbsp; In short, these superficial deposits shew precisely
+such remains as might be expected from a time at which the
+present system of things (to use a vague but not unexpressive
+phrase) obtained, but yet so far remote in chronology as to allow
+of the dropping of many species, through familiar causes, in the
+interval.&nbsp; Still, however, there is no authentic or
+satisfactory instance of human remains being found, except in
+deposits obviously of very modern date; a tolerably strong proof
+that the creation of our own species is a comparatively recent
+event, and one posterior (generally speaking) to all the great
+natural transactions chronicled by geology.</p>
+<h2><a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+145</span>GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">RESPECTING</span><br />
+THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Thus</span> concludes the wondrous chapter
+of the earth&rsquo;s history which is told by geology.&nbsp; It
+takes up our globe at the period when its original incandescent
+state had nearly ceased; conducts it through what we have every
+reason to believe were vast, or at least very considerable,
+spaces of time, in the course of which many superficial changes
+took place, and vegetable and animal life was gradually
+developed; and drops it just at the point when man was apparently
+about to enter on the scene.&nbsp; The compilation of such a
+history, from materials of so extraordinary a character, and the
+powerful nature of the evidence which these materials afford, are
+calculated to excite our admiration, and the result must be
+allowed to exalt the dignity of science, as a product of
+man&rsquo;s industry and his reason.</p>
+<p>If there is any thing more than another impressed on our minds
+by the course of the geological history, it is, that the same
+laws and conditions of nature now apparent to us have existed
+throughout the whole time, though the operation of some of these
+laws may now be less conspicuous than in the early ages, from
+some of the conditions having come to a settlement and a
+close.&nbsp; That seas have flowed and ebbed, and winds disturbed
+their surfaces, in the time of the secondary rocks, we have proof
+on the yet preserved surfaces of the sands which constituted
+margins of the seas in those days.&nbsp; Even the fall of
+wind-slanted rain is evidenced on the same tablets.&nbsp; The
+washing down of detached matter from elevated grounds, which we
+see rivers constantly engaged in at the present time, and which
+is daily shallowing the seas adjacent to their mouths, only
+appears to have proceeded on a greater scale in earlier
+epochs.&nbsp; The volcanic subterranean force, which we see
+belching forth lavas on the sides of mountains, and throwing up
+new elevations by land and sea, was only more powerfully
+operative in distant ages.&nbsp; To turn to organic nature,
+vegetation seems to have proceeded then exactly as now.&nbsp; The
+very alternations of the seasons has been read in unmistakable
+characters in sections of the trees of those days, precisely as
+it might be read in a section of a tree cut down yesterday.&nbsp;
+The system of prey amongst animals flourished throughout the
+whole of the pre-human period; and the adaptation of all plants
+and animals to their respective spheres of existence was as
+perfect in those early ages as it is still.</p>
+<p>But, as has been observed, the operation of the laws may be
+modified by conditions.&nbsp; At one early age, if there was any
+dry land at all, it was perhaps enveloped in an atmosphere unfit
+for the existence of terrestrial animals, and which had to go
+though some changes before that condition was altered.&nbsp; In
+the carbonigenous era, dry land seems to have consisted only of
+clusters of islands, and the temperature was much above what now
+obtains at the same places.&nbsp; Volcanic forces, and perhaps
+also the disintegrating power, seem to have been on the decrease
+since the first, or we have at least long enjoyed an exemption
+from such paroxysms of the former, as appear to have prevailed at
+the close of the coal formation in England and throughout the
+tertiary era.&nbsp; The surface has also undergone a gradual
+progress by which it has become always more and more variegated,
+and thereby fitted for the residence of a higher class of
+animals.</p>
+<p>In pursuing the progress of the development of both plants and
+animals upon the globe, we have seen an advance in both cases,
+along the line leading to the higher forms of organization.&nbsp;
+Amongst plants, we have first sea-weeds, afterwards land plants;
+and amongst these the simpler (cellular and cryptogamic) before
+the more complex.&nbsp; In the department of zoology, we see
+zoophytes, radiata, mollusca, articulata, existing for ages
+before there were any higher forms.&nbsp; The first step forward
+gives fishes, the humblest class of the vertebrata; and,
+moreover, the earliest fishes partake of the character of the
+next lowest sub-kingdom, the articulata.&nbsp; Afterwards come
+land animals, of which the first are reptiles, universally
+allowed to be the type next in advance from fishes, and to be
+connected with these by the links of an insensible
+gradation.&nbsp; From reptiles we advance to birds, and thence to
+mammalia, which are commenced by marsupialia, acknowledgedly low
+forms in their class.&nbsp; That there is thus a progress of some
+kind, the most superficial glance at the geological history is
+sufficient to convince us.&nbsp; Indeed the doctrine of the
+gradation of animal forms has received a remarkable support from
+the discoveries of this science, as several types formerly
+wanting to a completion of the series have been found in a fossil
+state. <a name="citation149"></a><a href="#footnote149"
+class="citation">[149]</a></p>
+<p>It is scarcely less evident, from the geological record, that
+the progress of organic life has observed some correspondence
+with the progress of physical conditions on the surface.&nbsp; We
+do not know for certain that the sea, at the time when it
+supported radiated, molluscous, and articulated families, was
+incapable of supporting fishes; but causes for such a limitation
+are far from inconceivable.&nbsp; The huge saurians appear to
+have been precisely adapted to the low muddy coasts and sea
+margins of the time when they flourished.&nbsp; Marsupials appear
+at the time when the surface was generally in that flat,
+imperfectly variegated state in which we find Australia, the
+region where they now live in the greatest abundance, and one
+which has no higher native mammalian type.&nbsp; Finally, it was
+not till the land and sea had come into their present relations,
+and the former, in its principal continents, had acquired the
+irregularity of surface necessary for man, that man
+appeared.&nbsp; We have likewise seen reason for supposing that
+land animals could not have lived before the carbonigenous era,
+owing to the great charge of carbonic acid gas presumed to have
+been contained in the atmosphere down to that time.&nbsp; The
+surplus of this having gone, as M. Brogniart suggests, to form
+the vegetation, whose ruins became coal, and the air being thus
+brought to its present state, land animals immediately
+appeared.&nbsp; So also, sea-plants were at first the only
+specimens of vegetation, because there appears to have been no
+place where other plants could be produced or supported.&nbsp;
+Land vegetation followed, at first simple, afterwards complex,
+probably in conformity with an advance of the conditions required
+by the higher class of plants.&nbsp; In short, we see everywhere
+throughout the geological history, strong traces of a parallel
+advance of the physical conditions and the organic forms.</p>
+<p>In examining the fossils of the lower marine creation, with a
+reference to the kind of rock in connexion, with which they are
+found, it is observed that some strata are attended by a much
+greater abundance of both species and individuals than
+others.&nbsp; They abound most in calcareous rocks, which is
+precisely what might be expected, since lime is necessary for the
+formation of the shells of the mollusks and articulata, and the
+hard substance of the crinoidea and corals; next in the
+carboniferous series; next in the tertiary; next in the new red
+sandstone; next in slates; and lastly, least of all, in the
+primary rocks. <a name="citation151"></a><a href="#footnote151"
+class="citation">[151]</a>&nbsp; This may have been the case
+without regard to the origination of new species, but more
+probably it was otherwise; or why, for instance, should the
+polypiferous zoophyta be found almost exclusively in the
+limestones?&nbsp; There are, indeed, abundant appearances as if,
+throughout all the changes of the surface, the various kinds of
+organic life invariably <i>pressed in</i>, immediately on the
+specially suitable conditions arising, so that no place which
+could support any form of organic being might be left for any
+length of time unoccupied.&nbsp; Nor is it less remarkable how
+various species are withdrawn from the earth, when the proper
+conditions for their particular existence are changed.&nbsp; The
+trilobite, of which fifty species existed during the earlier
+formations, was extirpated before the secondary had commenced,
+and appeared no more.&nbsp; The ammonite does not appear above
+the chalk.&nbsp; The species, and even genera of all the early
+radiata and mollusks were exchanged for others long ago.&nbsp;
+Not one species of any creature which flourished before the
+tertiary (Ehrenberg&rsquo;s infusoria excepted) now exists; and
+of the mammalia which arose during that series, many forms are
+altogether gone, while of others we have now only kindred
+species.&nbsp; Thus to find not only frequent additions to the
+previously existing forms, but frequent withdrawals of forms
+which had apparently become inappropriate&mdash;a constant
+shifting as well as advance&mdash;is a fact calculated very
+forcibly to arrest attention.</p>
+<p>A candid consideration of all these circumstances can scarcely
+fail to introduce into our minds a somewhat different idea of
+organic creation from what has hitherto been generally
+entertained.&nbsp; That God created animated beings, as well as
+the terraqueous theatre of their being, is a fact so powerfully
+evidenced, and so universally received, that I at once take it
+for granted.&nbsp; But in the particulars of this so highly
+supported idea, we surely here see cause for some
+re-consideration.&nbsp; It may now be inquired,&mdash;In what way
+was the creation of animated beings effected?&nbsp; The ordinary
+notion may, I think, be not unjustly described as
+this,&mdash;that the Almighty author produced the progenitors of
+all existing species by some sort of personal or immediate
+exertion.&nbsp; But how does this notion comport with what we
+have seen of the gradual advance of species, from the humblest to
+the highest?&nbsp; How can we suppose an immediate exertion of
+this creative power at one time to produce zoophytes, another
+time to add a few marine mollusks, another to bring in one or two
+conchifers, again to produce crustaceous fishes, again perfect
+fishes, and so on to the end?&nbsp; This would surely be to take
+a very mean view of the Creative Power&mdash;to, in short,
+anthropomorphize it, or reduce it to some such character as that
+borne by the ordinary proceedings of mankind.&nbsp; And yet this
+would be unavoidable; for that the organic creation was thus
+progressive through a long space of time, rests on evidence which
+nothing can overturn or gainsay.&nbsp; Some other idea must then
+be come to with regard to <i>the mode</i> in which the Divine
+Author proceeded in the organic creation.&nbsp; Let us seek in
+the history of the earth&rsquo;s formation for a new suggestion
+on this point.&nbsp; We have seen powerful evidence, that the
+construction of this globe and its associates, and inferentially
+that of all the other globes of space, was the result, not of any
+immediate or personal exertion on the part of the Deity, but of
+natural laws which are expressions of his will.&nbsp; What is to
+hinder our supposing that the organic creation is also a result
+of natural laws, which are in like manner an expression of his
+will?&nbsp; More than this, the fact of the cosmical arrangements
+being an effect of natural laws is a powerful argument for the
+organic arrangements being so likewise, for how can we suppose
+that the august Being who brought all these countless worlds into
+form by the simple establishment of a natural principle flowing
+from his mind, was to interfere personally and specially on every
+occasion when a new shell-fish or reptile was to be ushered into
+existence on <i>one</i> of these worlds?&nbsp; Surely this idea
+is too ridiculous to be for a moment entertained.</p>
+<p>It will be objected that the ordinary conceptions of Christian
+nations on this subject are directly derived from Scripture, or,
+at least, are in conformity with it.&nbsp; If they were clearly
+and unequivocally supported by Scripture, it may readily be
+allowed that there would be a strong objection to the reception
+of any opposite hypothesis.&nbsp; But the fact is, however
+startling the present announcement of it may be, that the first
+chapter of the Mosaic record is not only not in harmony with the
+ordinary ideas of mankind respecting cosmical and organic
+creation, but is opposed to them, and only in accordance with the
+views here taken.&nbsp; When we carefully peruse it with awakened
+minds, we find that all the procedure is represented primarily
+and pre-eminently as flowing <i>from commands and expressions of
+will</i>, <i>not from direct acts</i>.&nbsp; Let there be
+light&mdash;let there be a firmament&mdash;let the dry land
+appear&mdash;let the earth bring forth grass, the herb, the
+tree&mdash;let the waters bring forth the moving creature that
+hath life&mdash;let the earth bring forth the living creature
+after his kind&mdash;these are the terms in which the principal
+acts are described.&nbsp; The additional expressions,&mdash;God
+made the firmament&mdash;God made the beast of the earth,
+&amp;c., occur subordinately, and only in a few instances; they
+do not necessarily convey a different idea of the mode of
+creation, and indeed only appear as alternative phrases, in the
+usual duplicative manner of Eastern narrative.&nbsp; Keeping this
+in view, the words used in a subsequent place, &ldquo;God
+<i>formed</i> man in his own image,&rdquo; cannot well be
+understood as implying any more than what was implied
+before,&mdash;namely, that man was produced in consequence of an
+expression of the Divine will to that effect.&nbsp; Thus, the
+scriptural objection quickly vanishes, and the prevalent ideas
+about the organic creation appear only as a mistaken inference
+from the text, formed at a time when man&rsquo;s ignorance
+prevented him from drawing therefrom a just conclusion.&nbsp; At
+the same time, I freely own that I do not think it right to
+adduce the Mosaic record, either in objection to, or support of
+any natural hypothesis, and this for many reasons, but
+particularly for this, that there is not the least appearance of
+an intention in that book to give philosophically exact views of
+nature.</p>
+<p>To a reasonable mind the Divine attributes must appear, not
+diminished or reduced in any way, by supposing a creation by law,
+but infinitely exalted.&nbsp; It is the narrowest of all views of
+the Deity, and characteristic of a humble class of intellects, to
+suppose him acting constantly in particular ways for particular
+occasions.&nbsp; It, for one thing, greatly detracts from his
+foresight, the most undeniable of all the attributes of
+Omnipotence.&nbsp; It lowers him towards the level of our own
+humble intellects.&nbsp; Much more worthy of him it surely is, to
+suppose that all things have been commissioned by him from the
+first, though neither is he absent from a particle of the current
+of natural affairs in one sense, seeing that the whole system is
+continually supported by his providence.&nbsp; Even in human
+affairs, if I may be allowed to adopt a familiar illustration,
+there is a constant progress from specific action for particular
+occasions, to arrangements which, once established, shall
+continue to answer for a great multitude of occasions.&nbsp; Such
+plans the enlightened readily form for themselves, and conceive
+as being adopted by all who have to attend to a multitude of
+affairs, while the ignorant suppose every act of the greatest
+public functionary to be the result of some special consideration
+and care on his part alone.&nbsp; Are we to suppose the Deity
+adopting plans which harmonize only with the modes of procedure
+of the less enlightened of our race?&nbsp; Those who would object
+to the hypothesis of a creation by the intervention of law, do
+not perhaps consider how powerful an argument in favour of the
+existence of God is lost by rejecting this doctrine.&nbsp; When
+all is seen to be the result of law, the idea of an Almighty
+Author becomes irresistible, for the creation of a law for an
+endless series of phenomena&mdash;an act of intelligence above
+all else that we can conceive&mdash;could have no other
+imaginable source, and tells, moreover, as powerfully for a
+sustaining as for an originating power.&nbsp; On this point a
+remark of Dr. Buckland seems applicable: &ldquo;If the properties
+adopted by the elements at the moment of their creation adapted
+them beforehand to the infinity of complicated useful purposes
+which they have already answered, and may have still farther to
+answer, under many dispensations of the material world, such an
+aboriginal constitution, so far from superseding an intelligent
+agent, would only exalt our conceptions of the consummate skill
+and power that could comprehend such an infinity of future uses
+under future systems, in the original groundwork of his
+creation.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A late writer, in a work embracing a vast amount of
+miscellaneous knowledge, but written in a dogmatic style, argues
+at great length for the doctrine of more immediate exertions on
+the part of the Deity in the works of his creation.&nbsp; One of
+the most striking of his illustrations is as
+follows:&mdash;&ldquo;The coral polypi, united by a common animal
+bond, construct a defined form in stone; many kinds construct
+many forms.&nbsp; An allotted instinct may permit each polypus to
+construct its own cell, but there is no superintending one to
+direct the pattern, nor can the workers unite by consultation for
+such an end.&nbsp; There is no recipient for an instinct by which
+the pattern might be constructed.&nbsp; It is God alone,
+therefore, who is the architect; and for this end, consequently,
+he must dispose of every new polypus required to continue the
+pattern, in a new and peculiar position, which the animal could
+not have discovered by itself.&nbsp; Yet more, millions of these
+blind workers unite their works to form an island, which is also
+wrought out according to a constant general pattern, and of a
+very peculiar nature, though the separate coral works are
+numerously diverse.&nbsp; Still less, then, here is an instinct
+possible.&nbsp; The Great Architect himself must execute what he
+planned, in each case equally.&nbsp; He uses these little and
+senseless animals as hands; but they are hands which himself must
+direct.&nbsp; He must direct each one everywhere, and therefore
+he is ever acting.&rdquo; <a name="citation159"></a><a
+href="#footnote159" class="citation">[159]</a>&nbsp; This is a
+most notable example of a dangerous kind of reasoning.&nbsp; It
+is now believed that corals have a general life and sensation
+throughout the whole mass, residing in the nervous tissue which
+envelops them; consequently, there is nothing more wonderful in
+their determinate general forms than in those of other
+animals.</p>
+<p>It may here be remarked that there is in our doctrine that
+harmony in all the associated phenomena which generally marks
+great truths.&nbsp; First, it agrees, as we have seen, with the
+idea of planet-creation by natural law.&nbsp; Secondly, upon this
+supposition, all that geology tells us of the succession of
+species appears natural and intelligible.&nbsp; Organic life
+<i>presses in</i>, as has been remarked, wherever there was room
+and encouragement for it, the forms being always such as suited
+the circumstances, and in a certain relation to them, as, for
+example, where the limestone-forming seas produced an abundance
+of corals, crinoidea, and shell-fish.&nbsp; Admitting for a
+moment a re-origination of species after a cataclysm, as has been
+surmised by some geologists, though the hypothesis is always
+becoming less and less tenable, it harmonizes with nothing so
+well as the idea of a creation by law.&nbsp; The more solitary
+commencements of species, which would have been the most
+inconceivably paltry exercise for an immediately creative power,
+are sufficiently worthy of one operating by laws.</p>
+<p>It is also to be observed, that the thing to be accounted for
+is not merely the origination of organic being upon this little
+planet, third of a series which is but one of hundreds of
+thousands of series, the whole of which again form but one
+portion of an apparently infinite globe-peopled space, where all
+seems analogous.&nbsp; We have to suppose, that every one of
+these numberless globes is either a theatre of organic being, or
+in the way of becoming so.&nbsp; This is a conclusion which every
+addition to our knowledge makes only the more irresistible.&nbsp;
+Is it conceivable, as a fitting mode of exercise for creative
+intelligence, that it should be constantly moving from one sphere
+to another, to form and plant the various species which may be
+required in each situation at particular times?&nbsp; Is such an
+idea accordant with our general conception of the dignity, not to
+speak of the power, of the Great Author?&nbsp; Yet such is the
+notion which we must form, if we adhere to the doctrine of
+special exercise.&nbsp; Let us see, on the other hand, how the
+doctrine of a creation by law agrees with this expanded view of
+the organic world.</p>
+<p>Unprepared as most men may be for such an announcement, there
+can be no doubt that we are able, in this limited sphere, to form
+some satisfactory conclusions as to the plants and animals of
+those other spheres which move at such immense distances from
+us.&nbsp; Suppose that the first persons of an early nation who
+made a ship and ventured to sea in it, observed, as they sailed
+along, a set of objects which they had never before
+seen&mdash;namely, a fleet of other ships&mdash;would they not
+have been justified in supposing that those ships were occupied,
+like their own, by human beings possessing hands to row and
+steer, eyes to watch the signs of the weather, intelligence to
+guide them from one place to another&mdash;in short, beings in
+all respects like themselves, or only shewing such differences as
+they knew to be producible by difference of climate and habits of
+life.&nbsp; Precisely in this manner we can speculate on the
+inhabitants of remote spheres.&nbsp; We see that matter has
+originally been diffused in one mass, of which the spheres are
+portions.&nbsp; Consequently, inorganic matter must be presumed
+to be everywhere the same, although probably with differences in
+the proportions of ingredients in different globes, and also some
+difference of conditions.&nbsp; Out of a certain number of the
+elements of inorganic matter are composed organic bodies, both
+vegetable and animal; such must be the rule in Jupiter and in
+Sirius, as it is here.&nbsp; We, therefore, are all but certain
+that herbaceous and ligneous fibre, that flesh and blood, are the
+constituents of the organic beings of all those spheres which are
+as yet seats of life.&nbsp; Gravitation we see to be an
+all-pervading principle: therefore there must be a relation
+between the spheres and their respective organic occupants, by
+virtue of which they are fixed, as far as necessary, on the
+surface.&nbsp; Such a relation, of course, involves details as to
+the density and elasticity of structure, as well as size, of the
+organic tenants, in proportion to the gravity of the respective
+planets&mdash;peculiarities, however, which may quite well
+consist with the idea of a universality of general types, to
+which we are about to come.&nbsp; Electricity we also see to be
+universal; if, therefore, it be a principle concerned in life and
+in mental action, as science strongly suggests, life and mental
+action must everywhere be of one general character.&nbsp; We come
+to comparatively a matter of detail, when we advert to heat and
+light; yet it is important to consider that these are universal
+agents, and that, as they bear marked relations to organic life
+and structure on earth, they may be presumed to do so in other
+spheres also.&nbsp; The considerations as to light are
+particularly interesting, for, on our globe, the structure of one
+important organ, almost universally distributed in the animal
+kingdom, is in direct and precise relation to it.&nbsp; Where
+there is light there will be eyes, and these, in other spheres,
+will be the same in all respects as the eyes of tellurian
+animals, with only such differences as may be necessary to accord
+with minor peculiarities of condition and of situation.&nbsp; It
+is but a small stretch of the argument to suppose that, one
+conspicuous organ of a large portion of our animal kingdom being
+thus universal, a parity in all the other organs&mdash;species
+for species, class for class, kingdom for kingdom&mdash;is highly
+likely, and that thus the inhabitants of all the other globes of
+space bear not only a general, but a particular resemblance to
+those of our own.</p>
+<p>Assuming that organic beings are thus spread over all space,
+the idea of their having all come into existence by the operation
+of laws everywhere 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 of means.&nbsp; Thus, as one set of laws produced
+all orbs and their motions and geognostic arrangements, so one
+set of laws overspread them all with life.&nbsp; The whole
+productive or creative arrangements are therefore in perfect
+unity.</p>
+<h2><a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+165</span>PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">RESPECTING</span><br />
+THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> general likelihood of an
+organic creation by law having been shewn, we are next to inquire
+if science has any facts tending to bring the assumption more
+nearly home to nature.&nbsp; Such facts there certainly are; but
+it cannot be surprising that they are comparatively few and
+scattered, when we consider that the inquiry is into one of
+nature&rsquo;s profoundest mysteries, and one which has hitherto
+engaged no direct attention in almost any quarter.</p>
+<p>Crystallization is confessedly a phenomenon of inorganic
+matter; yet the simplest rustic observer is struck by the
+resemblance which the examples of it left upon a window by frost
+bear to vegetable forms.&nbsp; In some crystallizations the
+mimicry is beautiful and complete; for example, in the well-known
+one called the <i>Arbor Dian&aelig;</i>.&nbsp; An amalgam of four
+parts of silver and two of mercury being dissolved in nitric
+acid, and water equal to thirty weights of the metals being
+added, a small 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 <i>crystallization precisely
+resembling a shrub</i>.&nbsp; The experiment may be varied in a
+way which serves better to detect the influence of electricity in
+such operations, as noted below. <a name="citation166"></a><a
+href="#footnote166" class="citation">[166]</a>&nbsp; Vegetable
+figures are also presented in some of the most ordinary
+appearances of the electric fluid.&nbsp; In the marks caused by
+positive electricity, or which it leaves in its passage, we see
+the ramifications of a tree, as well as of its individual leaves;
+those of the negative, recal the bulbous or the spreading root,
+according as they are clumped or divergent.&nbsp; These phenomena
+seem to say that the electric energies have had something to do
+in determining the forms of plants.&nbsp; That they are
+intimately connected with vegetable life is indubitable, for
+germination will not proceed in water charged with negative
+electricity, while water charged positively greatly favours it;
+and a garden sensibly increases in luxuriance, when a number of
+conducting rods are made to terminate in branches over its
+beds.&nbsp; With regard to the resemblance of the ramifications
+of the branches and leaves of plants to the traces of the
+positive electricity, and that of the roots to the negative, it
+is a circumstance calling for especial remark, that the
+atmosphere, particularly its lower strata, is generally charged
+positively, while the earth is always charged negatively.&nbsp;
+The correspondence here is curious.&nbsp; A plant thus appears as
+a thing formed on the basis of a natural electrical
+operation&mdash;the <i>brush</i> realized.&nbsp; We can thus
+suppose the various forms of plants as, immediately, the result
+of a law in electricity variously affecting them according to
+their organic character, or respective germinal
+constituents.&nbsp; In the poplar, the brush is unusually
+vertical, and little divergent; the reverse in the beech: in the
+palm, a pencil has proceeded straight up for a certain distance,
+radiates there, and turns outwards and downwards; and so
+on.&nbsp; We can here see at least traces of secondary means by
+which the Almighty Deviser might establish all the vegetable
+forms with which the earth is overspread.</p>
+<p>Vegetable and animal bodies are mainly composed of the same
+four simple substances or elements&mdash;carbon, oxygen,
+hydrogen, and nitrogen.&nbsp; The first combinations of these in
+animals are into what are called proximate principles, as
+albumen, fibrin, urea, alantoin, &amp;c., out of which the
+structure of the animal body is composed.&nbsp; Now the chemist,
+by the association of two parts oxygen, four hydrogen, two
+carbon, and two nitrogen, can <i>make urea</i>.&nbsp; Alantoin
+has also been produced artificially.&nbsp; Two of the proximate
+principles being realizable by human care, the possibility of
+realizing or forming all is established.&nbsp; Thus the chemist
+may be said to have it in his power to realize the first step in
+organization. <a name="citation169a"></a><a href="#footnote169a"
+class="citation">[169a]</a>&nbsp; Indeed, it is fully
+acknowledged by Dr. Daubeny, that in the combinations forming the
+proximate principles there is no chemical peculiarity.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It is now certain,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;that the same
+simple laws of composition pervade the whole creation; and that,
+if the organic chemist only takes the requisite precautions to
+avoid resolving into their ultimate elements the proximate
+principles upon which he operates, the results of his analysis
+will shew that they are combined precisely according to the same
+plan as the elements of mineral bodies are known to be.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation169b"></a><a href="#footnote169b"
+class="citation">[169b]</a>&nbsp; A particular fact is here
+worthy of attention.&nbsp; &ldquo;The conversion of fecula into
+sugar, as one of the ordinary processes of vegetable economy, is
+effected by the production of a secretion termed <i>diastose</i>,
+which occasions both the rupture of the starch vesicles, and the
+change of their contained gum into sugar.&nbsp; This diastose may
+be separately obtained by the chemist, and it acts as effectually
+in his laboratory as in the vegetable organization.&nbsp; He can
+also imitate its effects by other chemical agents.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation170"></a><a href="#footnote170"
+class="citation">[170]</a>&nbsp; The writer quoted below adds,
+&ldquo;No reasonable ground has yet been adduced for supposing
+that, if we had the power of bringing together the elements of
+any organic compound, in their requisite states and proportions,
+the result would be any other than that which is found in the
+living body.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is much to know the elements out of which organic bodies
+are composed.&nbsp; It is something more to know their first
+combinations, and that these are simply chemical.&nbsp; How these
+combinations are associated in the structure of living bodies is
+the next inquiry, but it is one to which as yet no satisfactory
+answer can be given.&nbsp; The investigation of the minuti&aelig;
+of organic structure by the microscope is of such recent origin,
+that its results cannot be expected to be very clear.&nbsp; Some
+facts, however, are worthy of attention with regard to the
+present inquiry.&nbsp; It is ascertained that the basis of all
+vegetable and animal substances consists of nucleated cells; that
+is, cells having granules within them.&nbsp; Nutriment is
+converted into these before being assimilated by the
+system.&nbsp; The tissues are formed from them.&nbsp; The ovum
+destined to become a new creature, is originally only a cell with
+a contained granule.&nbsp; We see it acting this reproductive
+part in the simplest manner in the cryptogamic plants.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The parent cell, arrived at maturity by the exercise of
+its organic functions, bursts, and liberates its contained
+granules.&nbsp; These, at once thrown upon their own resources,
+and entirely dependent for their nutrition on the surrounding
+elements, develop themselves into new cells, which repeat the
+life of their original.&nbsp; Amongst the higher tribes of the
+cryptogamia, the reproductive cell does not burst, but the first
+cells of the new structure are developed within it, and these
+gradually extend, by a similar process of multiplication, into
+that primary leaf-like expansion which is the first formed
+structure in all plants.&rdquo;&nbsp; <a
+name="citation171"></a><a href="#footnote171"
+class="citation">[171]</a>&nbsp; <i>Here the little cell becomes
+directly a plant</i>, <i>the full formed living being</i>.&nbsp;
+It is also worthy of remark that, in the sponges, (an animal
+form,) a gemmule detached from the body of the parent, and
+trusting for sustentation only to the fluid into which it has
+been cast, becomes, without further process, the new
+creature.&nbsp; Further, it has been recently discovered by means
+of the microscope, that there is, as far as can be judged, a
+perfect resemblance between the ovum of the mammal tribes, during
+that early stage when it is passing through the oviduct, and the
+young of the infusory animalcules.&nbsp; One of the most
+remarkable of these, the <i>volvox globator</i>, has exactly the
+form of the germ which, after passing through a long f&oelig;tal
+progress, becomes a complete mammifer, an animal of the highest
+class.&nbsp; It has even been found that both are alike provided
+with those <i>cilia</i>, which, producing a revolving motion, or
+its appearance, is partly the cause of the name given to this
+animalcule.&nbsp; These resemblances are the more entitled to
+notice, that they were made by various observers, distant from
+each other at the time. <a name="citation172"></a><a
+href="#footnote172" class="citation">[172]</a>&nbsp; It has
+likewise been noted that the globules of the blood are reproduced
+by the expansion of contained granules; they are, in short,
+<i>distinct organisms multiplied by the same fissiparous
+generation</i>.&nbsp; So that all animated nature may be said to
+be based on this mode of origin; <i>the fundamental form of
+organic being is a globule</i>, <i>having a new globule forming
+within itself</i>, by which it is in time discharged, and which
+is again followed by another and another, in endless
+succession.&nbsp; It is of course obvious that, if these globules
+could be produced by any process from inorganic elements, we
+should be entitled to say that the fact of a transit from the
+inorganic into the organic had been witnessed in that instance;
+the possibility of the commencement of animated creation by the
+ordinary laws of nature might be considered as established.&nbsp;
+Now it was given out some years ago by a French physiologist,
+that <i>globules could be produced in albumen by
+electricity</i>.&nbsp; If, therefore, these globules be identical
+with the cells which are now held to be reproductive, it might be
+said that the production of albumen by artificial means is the
+only step in the process wanting.&nbsp; This has not 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, and two
+compounds perfectly co-ordinate, urea and alantoin, have actually
+been produced.</p>
+<p>In such an investigation as the present, it is not unworthy of
+notice that the production of shell is a natural operation which
+can be precisely imitated artificially.&nbsp; Such an
+incrustation takes place on both the outside and inside of the
+wheel in a bleaching establishment, in which cotton cloth is
+rinsed free of the lime employed in its purification.&nbsp; From
+the <i>dressing</i> employed by the weaver, the cloth obtains the
+animal matter, <i>gelatin</i>; this and the lime form the
+constituents of the incrustation, exactly as in natural
+shell.&nbsp; In the wheel employed at Catrine, in Ayrshire, where
+the phenomenon was first observed by the eye of science, it had
+required ten years to produce a coating the tenth of an inch in
+thickness.&nbsp; This incrustation has all the characters of
+shell, displaying a highly polished surface, beautifully
+iridescent, and, when broken, a foliated texture.&nbsp; The
+examination of it has even thrown some light on the character and
+mode of formation of natural shell.&nbsp; &ldquo;The plates into
+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 lamin&aelig; are
+separated by a thin iridescent film, varying from the three to
+the fifty millionth part of an inch in thickness, and producing
+all the various colours of thin plates which correspond to
+intermediate thicknesses: between some of the lamin&aelig; no
+such film exists, probably in consequence of the interval of time
+between their formation being too short; and between others the
+film has been formed of unequal thickness.&nbsp; There can be no
+doubt that these iridescent films are formed when the dash-wheel
+is at rest during the night, and that when no film exists between
+two lamin&aelig;, an interval too short for its formation,
+(arising, perhaps, from the stopping of the work during the day,)
+has elapsed during the drying or induration of one lamina and the
+deposition of another.&rdquo; <a name="citation175"></a><a
+href="#footnote175" class="citation">[175]</a>&nbsp; From this it
+has been deduced, by a patient investigation, that those colours
+of mother-of-pearl, which are incommunicable to wax, arise from
+iridescent films deposited between the lamin&aelig; of its
+structure, and it is hence inferred that <i>the animal</i>, like
+the wheel, <i>rests periodically from its labours in forming the
+natural substance</i>.</p>
+<p>These, it will be owned, are curious and not irrelevant facts;
+but it will be asked what actual experience says respecting the
+origination of life.&nbsp; Are there, it will be said, any
+authentic instances of either plants or animals, of however
+humble and simple a kind, having come into existence otherwise
+than in the ordinary way of generation, since the time of which
+geology forms the record?&nbsp; It may be answered, that the
+negative of this question could not be by any means formidable to
+the doctrine of law-creation, seeing that the conditions
+necessary for the operation of the supposed life-creating laws
+may not have existed within record to any great extent.&nbsp; On
+the other hand, as we see the physical laws of early times still
+acting with more or less force, it might not be unreasonable to
+expect that we should still see some remnants, or partial and
+occasional workings of the life-creating energy amidst a system
+of things generally stable and at rest.&nbsp; Are there, then,
+any such remnants to be traced in our own day, or during
+man&rsquo;s existence upon earth?&nbsp; If there be, it clearly
+would form a strong evidence in favour of the doctrine, as what
+now takes place upon a confined scale and in a comparatively
+casual manner may have formerly taken place on a great scale, and
+as the proper and eternity-destined means of supplying a vacant
+globe with suitable tenants.&nbsp; It will at the same time be
+observed that, the earth being now supplied with both kinds of
+tenants in great abundance, we only could expect to find the
+life-originating power at work in some very special and
+extraordinary circumstances, and probably only in the inferior
+and obscurer departments of the vegetable and animal
+kingdoms.</p>
+<p>Perhaps, if the question were asked of ten men of approved
+reputation in science, nine out of the number would answer in the
+negative.&nbsp; This is because, in a great number of instances
+where the superficial observers of former times assumed a
+non-generative origin for life, (as in the celebrated case in
+Virgil&rsquo;s fourth Georgic,) either the direct contrary has
+been ascertained, or exhaustive experiments have left no
+alternative from the conclusion that ordinary generation did take
+place, albeit in a manner which escapes observation.&nbsp;
+Finding that an erroneous assumption has been formed in many
+cases, modern inquirers have not hesitated to assume that there
+can be no case in which generation is not concerned; an
+assumption not only unwarranted by, but directly opposed to, the
+principles of philosophical investigation.&nbsp; Yet this is
+truly the point at which the question now rests in the scientific
+world.</p>
+<p>I have no wish here to enter largely into a subject so wide
+and so full of difficulties; but I may remark, that the
+explanations usually suggested where life takes its rise without
+apparent generative means, always appear to me to partake much of
+the fallacy of the <i>petitio principii</i>.&nbsp; When, for
+instance, lime is laid down upon a piece of waste moss ground,
+and a crop of white clover for which no seeds were sown is the
+consequence, the explanation that the seeds have been dormant
+there for an unknown time, and were stimulated into germination
+when the lime produced the appropriate circumstances, appears
+extremely unsatisfactory, especially when we know that (as in an
+authentic case under my notice) the spot is many miles from where
+clover is cultivated, and that there is nothing for six feet
+below but pure peat moss, clover seeds being, moreover, known to
+be too heavy to be transported, as many other seeds are, by the
+winds.&nbsp; Mushrooms, we know, can be propagated by their seed;
+but another mode of raising them, well known to the gardener, is
+to mix cow and horse dung together, and thus form a bed in which
+they are expected to grow without any seed being planted.&nbsp;
+It is assumed that the seeds are carried by the atmosphere,
+unperceived by us, and, finding here an appropriate field for
+germination, germinate accordingly; but this is only assumption,
+and though designed to be on the side of a severe philosophy, in
+reality makes a pretty large demand on credulity.&nbsp; There are
+several persons eminent in science who profess at least to find
+great difficulties in accepting the doctrine of invariable
+generation.&nbsp; One of these, in the work noted below, <a
+name="citation179a"></a><a href="#footnote179a"
+class="citation">[179a]</a> has stated several considerations
+arising from analogical reasoning, which appear to him to throw
+the balance of evidence in favour of the aboriginal production of
+infusoria, <a name="citation179b"></a><a href="#footnote179b"
+class="citation">[179b]</a> the vegetation called mould, and the
+like.&nbsp; One seems to be of great force; namely, that the
+animalcules, which are supposed (altogether hypothetically) to be
+produced by ova, are afterwards found increasing their numbers,
+not by that mode at all, but by division of their bodies.&nbsp;
+If it be the nature of these creatures to propagate in this
+splitting or fissiparous manner, how could they be communicated
+to a vegetable infusion?&nbsp; Another fact of very high
+importance is presented in the following terms:&mdash;&ldquo;The
+nature of the animalcule, or vegetable production, bears a
+constant relation to the state of the infusion, so that, in
+similar circumstances, the same are always produced without this
+being influenced by the atmosphere.&nbsp; There seems to be a
+certain <i>progressive advance in the productive powers of the
+infusion</i>, for at the first the animalcules are only of the
+smaller kinds, or monades, and afterwards <i>they become
+gradually larger and more complicated in their structure</i>;
+<i>after a time</i>, <i>the production ceases</i>, <i>although
+the materials are by no means exhausted</i>.&nbsp; When the
+quantity of water is very small, and the organic matter abundant,
+the production is usually of a vegetable nature; when there is
+much water, animalcules are more frequently
+produced.&rdquo;&nbsp; It has been shewn by the opponents of this
+theory, that when a vegetable infusion is debarred from the
+contact of the atmosphere, by being closely sealed up or covered
+with a layer of oil, no animalcules are produced; but it has been
+said, on the other hand, that the exclusion of the air may
+prevent some simple condition necessary for the aboriginal
+development of life&mdash;and nothing is more likely.&nbsp;
+Perhaps the prevailing doctrine is in nothing placed in greater
+difficulties than it is with regard to the entozoa, or creatures
+which live within the bodies of others.&nbsp; These creatures do,
+and apparently can, live nowhere else than in the interior of
+other living bodies, where they generally take up their abode in
+the viscera, but also sometimes in the chambers of the eye, the
+interior of the brain, the serous sacs, and other places having
+no communication from without.&nbsp; Some are viviparous, others
+oviparous.&nbsp; Of the latter it cannot reasonably be supposed
+that the ova ever pass through the medium of the air, or through
+the blood-vessels, for they are too heavy for the one transit,
+and too large for the other.&nbsp; Of the former, it cannot be
+conceived how they pass into young animals&mdash;certainly not by
+communication from the parent, for it has often been found that
+entozoa do not appear in certain generations, and some of
+peculiar and noted character have only appeared at rare
+intervals, and in very extraordinary circumstances.&nbsp; A
+candid view of the less popular doctrine, as to the origin of
+this humble form of life, is taken by a distinguished living
+naturalist.&nbsp; &ldquo;To explain the beginning of these worms
+within the human body, on the common doctrine that all created
+beings proceed from their likes, or a primordial egg, is so
+difficult, that the moderns have been driven to speculate, as our
+fathers did, on their spontaneous birth; but they have received
+the hypothesis with some modification.&nbsp; Thus it is not from
+putrefaction or fermentation that the entozoa are born, for both
+of these processes are rather fatal to their existence, but from
+the aggregation and fit apposition of matter which is already
+organized, or has been thrown from organized surfaces.&nbsp;
+Their origin in this manner is not more wonderful or more
+inexplicable than that of many of the inferior animals from
+sections of themselves. * * Particles of matter fitted by
+digestion, and their transmission through a living body, for
+immediate assimilation with it, or flakes of lymph detached from
+surfaces already organized, seem neither to exceed nor fall below
+that simplicity of structure which favours this wonderful
+development; and the supposition that, like morsels of a
+planaria, they may also, when retained in contact with living
+parts, and in other favourable circumstances, continue to live
+and be gradually changed into creatures of analogous
+conformation, is surely not so absurd as to be brought into
+comparison with the Metamorphoses of Ovid. * * We think the
+hypothesis is also supported in some degree by the fact, that the
+origin of the entozoa is favoured by all causes which tend to
+disturb the equality between the secerning and absorbent
+systems.&rdquo; <a name="citation182"></a><a href="#footnote182"
+class="citation">[182]</a>&nbsp; Here particles of organized
+matter are suggested as the germinal origin of distinct and fully
+organized animals, many of which have a highly developed
+reproductive system.&nbsp; How near such particles must be to the
+inorganic form of matter may be judged from what has been said
+within the last few pages.&nbsp; If, then, this view of the
+production of entozoa be received, it must be held as in no small
+degree favourable to the general doctrine of an organic creation
+by law.</p>
+<p>There is another series of facts, akin to the above, and which
+deserve not less attention.&nbsp; The pig, in its domestic state,
+is subject to the attacks of a hydatid, from which the wild
+animal is free; hence the disease called measles in pork.&nbsp;
+The domestication of the pig is of course an event subsequent to
+the origin of man; indeed, comparatively speaking, a recent
+event.&nbsp; Whence, then, the first progenitor of this
+hydatid?&nbsp; So also there is a tinea which attacks dressed
+wool, but never touches it in its unwashed state.&nbsp; A
+particular insect disdains all food but chocolate, and the larva
+of the <i>oinopota cellaris</i> lives nowhere but in wine and
+beer, all of these being articles manufactured by man.&nbsp;
+There is likewise a creature called the <i>pimelodes
+cyclopum</i>, which is only found in subterranean cavities
+connected with certain specimens of the volcanic formation in
+South America, dating from a time posterior to the arrangements
+of the earth for our species.&nbsp; Whence the first pymelodes
+cyclopum?&nbsp; Will it, to a geologist, appear irrational to
+suppose that, just as the pterodactyle was added in the era of
+the new red sandstone, when the earth had become suited for such
+a creature, so may these creatures have been added when media
+suitable for their existence arose, and that such phenomena may
+take place any day, the only cause for their taking place seldom
+being the rarity of the rise of new physical conditions on a
+globe which seems to have already undergone the principal part of
+its destined mutations?</p>
+<p>Between such isolated facts and the greater changes which
+attended various geological eras, it is not easy to see any
+difference, besides simply that of the scale on which the
+respective phenomena took place, as the throwing off of one copy
+from an engraved plate is exactly the same process as that by
+which a thousand are thrown off.&nbsp; Nothing is more easy to
+conceive than that to Creative Providence, the numbers of such
+phenomena, the time when, and the circumstances under which they
+take place, are indifferent matters.&nbsp; The Eternal One has
+arranged for everything beforehand, and trusted all to the
+operation of the laws of his appointment, himself being ever
+present in all things.&nbsp; We can even conceive that man, in
+his many doings upon the surface of the earth, may occasionally,
+without his being aware of it, or otherwise, act as an instrument
+in preparing the association of conditions under which the
+creative laws work; and perhaps some instances of his having
+acted as such an instrument have actually occurred in our own
+time.</p>
+<p>I allude, of course, to the experiments conducted a few years
+ago by Mr. Crosse, which seemed to result in the production of a
+heretofore unknown species of insect in considerable
+numbers.&nbsp; Various causes have prevented these experiments
+and their results from receiving candid treatment, but they may
+perhaps be yet found to have opened up a new and most interesting
+chapter of nature&rsquo;s mysteries.&nbsp; Mr. Crosse was
+pursuing some experiments in crystallization, causing a powerful
+voltaic battery to operate upon a saturated solution of silicate
+of potash, when the insects unexpectedly made their
+appearance.&nbsp; He afterwards tried nitrate of copper, which is
+a deadly poison, and from that fluid also did live insects
+emerge.&nbsp; Discouraged by the reception of his experiments,
+Mr. Crosse soon discontinued them; but they were some years after
+pursued by Mr. Weekes, of Sandwich, with precisely the same
+results.&nbsp; This gentleman, besides trying the first of the
+above substances, employed ferro-cyanet of potash, on account of
+its containing a larger proportion of carbon, the principal
+element of organic bodies; and from this substance the insects
+were produced <i>in increased numbers</i>.&nbsp; A few weeks
+sufficed for this experiment, with the powerful battery of Mr.
+Crosse; but the first attempts of Mr. Weekes required about
+eleven months, a ground of presumption in itself that the
+electricity was chiefly concerned in the phenomenon.&nbsp; The
+changes undergone by the fluid operated upon, were in both cases
+remarkable, and nearly alike.&nbsp; In Mr. Weekes&rsquo;
+apparatus, the silicate of potash became first turbid, then of a
+milky appearance; round the negative wire of the battery, dipped
+into the fluid, there gathered a quantity of <i>gelatinous
+matter</i>, a part of the process of considerable importance,
+considering that gelatin is one of the <i>proximate
+principles</i>, or first compounds, of which animal bodies are
+formed.&nbsp; From this matter Mr. Weekes observed one of the
+insects in the very act of emerging, immediately after which, it
+ascended to the surface of the fluid, and sought concealment in
+an obscure corner of the apparatus.&nbsp; The insects produced by
+both experimentalists seem to have been the same, a species of
+acarus, minute and semi-transparent, and furnished with long
+bristles, which can only be seen by the aid of the
+microscope.&nbsp; It is worthy of remark, that some of these
+insects, soon after their existence had commenced, were found to
+be likely to extend their species.&nbsp; They were sometimes
+observed to go back to the fluid to feed, and occasionally they
+devoured each other. <a name="citation187"></a><a
+href="#footnote187" class="citation">[187]</a></p>
+<p>The reception of novelties in science must ever be regulated
+very much by the amount of kindred or relative phenomena which
+the public mind already possesses and acknowledges, to which the
+new can be assimilated.&nbsp; A novelty, however true, if there
+be no received truths with which it can be shewn in harmonious
+relation, has little chance of a favourable hearing.&nbsp; In
+fact, as has been often observed, there is a measure of
+incredulity from our ignorance as well as from our knowledge, and
+if the most distinguished philosopher three hundred years ago had
+ventured to develop any striking new fact which only could
+harmonize with the as yet unknown Copernican solar system, we
+cannot doubt that it would have been universally scoffed at in
+the scientific world, such as it then was, or at the best
+interpreted in a thousand wrong ways in conformity with ideas
+already familiar.&nbsp; The experiments above described, finding
+a public mind which had never discovered a fact or conceived an
+idea at all analogous, were of course ungraciously
+received.&nbsp; It was held to be impious, even to surmise that
+animals could have been formed through any instrumentality of an
+apparatus devised by human skill.&nbsp; The more likely account
+of the phenomena was said to be, that the insects were only
+developed from ova, resting either in the fluid, or in the wooden
+frame on which the experiments took place.&nbsp; On these
+objections the following remarks may be made.&nbsp; The
+supposition of impiety arises from an entire misconception of
+what is implied by an aboriginal creation of insects.&nbsp; The
+experimentalist could never be considered as the author of the
+existence of these creatures, except by the most unreasoning
+ignorance.&nbsp; The utmost that can be claimed for, or imputed
+to him is that he arranged the natural conditions under which the
+true creative energy&mdash;that of the Divine Author of all
+things&mdash;was pleased to work in that instance.&nbsp; On the
+hypothesis here brought forward, the <i>acarus Crossii</i> was a
+type of being ordained from the beginning, and destined to be
+realized under certain physical conditions.&nbsp; When a human
+hand brought these conditions into the proper arrangement, it did
+an act akin to hundreds of familiar ones which we execute every
+day, and which are followed by natural results; but it did
+nothing more.&nbsp; The production of the insect, if it did take
+place as assumed, was as clearly an act of the Almighty himself,
+as if he had fashioned it with hands.&nbsp; For the presumption
+that an act of aboriginal creation did take place, there is this
+to be said, that, in Mr. Weekes&rsquo;s experiment, every care
+that ingenuity could devise was taken to exclude the possibility
+of a development of the insects from ova.&nbsp; The wood of the
+frame was baked in a powerful heat; a bell-shaped glass covered
+the apparatus, and from this the atmosphere was excluded by the
+constantly rising fumes from the liquid, for the emission of
+which there was an aperture so arranged at the top of the glass,
+that only these fumes could pass.&nbsp; The water was distilled,
+and the substance of the silicate had been subjected to white
+heat.&nbsp; Thus every source of fallacy seemed to be shut
+up.&nbsp; In such circumstances, a candid mind, which sees
+nothing either impious or unphilosophical in the idea of a new
+creation, will be disposed to think that there is less difficulty
+in believing in such a creation having actually taken place, than
+in believing that, in two instances, separated in place and time,
+exactly the same insects should have chanced to arise from
+concealed ova, and these a species heretofore unknown.</p>
+<h2><a name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+191</span>HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">OF THE</span><br />
+VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> has been already intimated, as a
+general fact, that there is an obvious gradation amongst the
+families of both the vegetable and animal kingdoms, from the
+simple lichen and animalcule respectively up to the highest order
+of dicotyledonous trees and the mammalia.&nbsp; Confining our
+attention, in the meantime, to the animal kingdom&mdash;it does
+not appear that this gradation passes along one line, on which
+every form of animal life can be, as it were, strung; there may
+be branching or double lines at some places; or the whole may be
+in a circle composed of minor circles, as has been recently
+suggested.&nbsp; But still it is incontestable that there are
+general appearances of a scale beginning with the simple and
+advancing to the complicated.&nbsp; The animal kingdom was
+divided by Cuvier into four sub-kingdoms, or divisions, and these
+exhibit an unequivocal gradation in the order in which they are
+here enumerated:&mdash;Radiata, (polypes, &amp;c.;) mollusca,
+(pulpy animals;) articulata, (jointed animals;) vertebrata,
+(animals with internal skeleton.)&nbsp; The gradation can, in
+like manner, be clearly traced in the <i>classes</i> into which
+the sub-kingdoms are subdivided, as, for instance, when we take
+those of the vertebrata in this order&mdash;reptiles, fishes,
+birds, mammals.</p>
+<p>While the external forms of all these various animals are so
+different, it is very remarkable that the whole are, after all,
+variations of a fundamental plan, which can be traced as a basis
+throughout the whole, the variations being merely modifications
+of that plan to suit the particular conditions in which each
+particular animal has been designed to live.&nbsp; Starting from
+the primeval germ, which, as we have seen, is the representative
+of a particular order of full-grown animals, we find all others
+to be merely advances from that type, with the extension of
+endowments and modification of forms which are required in each
+particular case; each form, also, retaining a strong affinity to
+that which precedes it, and tending to impress its own features
+on that which succeeds.&nbsp; This unity of structure, as it is
+called, becomes the more remarkable, when we observe that the
+organs, while preserving a resemblance, are often put to
+different uses.&nbsp; For example: the ribs become, in the
+serpent, organs of locomotion, and the snout is extended, in the
+elephant, into a prehensile instrument.</p>
+<p>It is equally remarkable that analogous purposes are served in
+different animals by organs essentially different.&nbsp; Thus,
+the mammalia breathe by lungs; the fishes, by gills.&nbsp; These
+are not modifications of one organ, but distinct organs.&nbsp; In
+mammifers, the gills exist and act at an early stage of the
+f&oelig;tal state, but afterwards go back and appear no more;
+while the lungs are developed.&nbsp; In fishes, again, the gills
+only are fully developed; while the lung structure either makes
+no advance at all, or only appears in the rudimentary form of an
+air-bladder.&nbsp; So, also, the baleen of the whale and the
+teeth of the land mammalia are different organs.&nbsp; The whale,
+in embryo, shews the rudiments of teeth; but these, not being
+wanted, are not developed, and the baleen is brought forward
+instead.&nbsp; The land animals, we may also be sure, have the
+rudiments of baleen in their organization.&nbsp; In many
+instances, a particular structure is found advanced to a certain
+point in a particular set of animals, (for instance, feet in the
+serpent tribe,) although it is not there required in any degree;
+but the peculiarity, being carried a little farther forward, is
+perhaps useful in the next set of animals in the scale.&nbsp;
+Such are called rudimentary organs.&nbsp; With this class of
+phenomena are to be ranked the useless mamm&aelig; of the male
+human being, and the unrequired process of bone in the male
+opossum, which is needed in the female for supporting her
+pouch.&nbsp; Such curious features are most conspicuous in
+animals which form links between various classes.</p>
+<p>As formerly stated, the marsupials, standing at the bottom of
+the mammalia, shew their affinity to the oviparous vertebrata, by
+the rudiments of two canals passing from near the anus to the
+external surfaces of the viscera, which are fully developed in
+fishes, being required by them for the respiration of aerated
+waters, but which are not needed by the atmosphere-breathing
+marsupials.&nbsp; We have also the peculiar form of the sternum
+and rib-bones of the lizards <i>represented</i> in the mammalia
+in certain white cartilaginous lines traceable among their
+abdominal muscles.&nbsp; The struphionid&aelig; (birds of the
+ostrich type) form a link between birds and mammalia, and in them
+we find the wings imperfectly or not at all developed, a
+diaphragm and urinary sac, (organs wanting in other birds,) and
+feathers approaching the nature of hair.&nbsp; Again, the
+ornithorynchus belongs to a class at the bottom of the mammalia,
+and approximating to birds, and in it behold the bill and
+web-feet of that order!</p>
+<p>For further illustration, it is obvious that, various as may
+be the lengths of the upper part of the vertebral column in the
+mammalia, it always consists of the same parts.&nbsp; The giraffe
+has in its tall neck the same number of bones with the pig, which
+scarcely appears to have a neck at all. <a
+name="citation195"></a><a href="#footnote195"
+class="citation">[195]</a>&nbsp; Man, again, has no tail; but the
+notion of a much-ridiculed philosopher of the last century is not
+altogether, as it happens, without foundation, for the bones of a
+caudal extremity exist in an undeveloped state in the <i>os
+coccygis</i> of the human subject.&nbsp; The limbs of all the
+vertebrate animals are, in like manner, on one plan, however
+various they may appear.&nbsp; In the hind-leg of a horse, for
+example, the angle called the hock is the same part which in us
+forms the heel; and the horse, and all other quadrupeds, with
+almost the solitary exception of the bear, walk, in reality, upon
+what answers to the toes of a human being.&nbsp; In this and many
+other quadrupeds the fore part of the extremities is shrunk up in
+a hoof, as the tail of the human being is shrunk up in the bony
+mass at the bottom of the back.&nbsp; The bat, on the other hand,
+has these parts largely developed.&nbsp; The membrane, commonly
+called its wing, is framed chiefly upon bones answering precisely
+to those of the human hand; its extinct congener, the
+pterodactyle, had the same membrane extended upon the fore-finger
+only, which in that animal was prolonged to an extraordinary
+extent.&nbsp; In the paddles of the whale and other animals of
+its order, we see the same bones as in the more highly developed
+extremities of the land mammifers; and even the serpent tribes,
+which present no external appearance of such extremities, possess
+them in reality, but in an undeveloped or rudimental state.</p>
+<p>The same law of development presides over the vegetable
+kingdom.&nbsp; Amongst phanerogamous plants, a certain number of
+organs appear to be always present, either in a developed or
+rudimentary state; and those which are rudimentary can be
+developed by cultivation.&nbsp; The flowers which bear stamens on
+one stalk and pistils on another, can be caused to produce both,
+or to become perfect flowers, by having a sufficiency of
+nourishment supplied to them.&nbsp; So also, where a special
+function is required for particular circumstances, nature has
+provided for it, not by a new organ, but by a modification of a
+common one, which she has effected in development.&nbsp; Thus,
+for instance, some plants destined to live in arid situations,
+require to have a store of water which they may slowly
+absorb.&nbsp; The need is arranged for by a cup-like expansion
+round the stalk, in which water remains after a shower.&nbsp; Now
+the <i>pitcher</i>, as this is called, is not a new organ, but
+simply a metamorphose of a leaf.</p>
+<p>These facts clearly shew how all the various organic forms of
+our world are bound up in one&mdash;how a fundamental unity
+pervades and embraces them all, collecting them, from the
+humblest lichen up to the highest mammifer, in one system, the
+whole creation of which must have depended upon one law or decree
+of the Almighty, though it did not all come forth at one
+time.&nbsp; After what we have seen, the idea of a separate
+exertion for each must appear totally inadmissible.&nbsp; The
+single fact of abortive or rudimentary organs condemns it; for
+these, on such a supposition, could be regarded in no other light
+than as blemishes or blunders&mdash;the thing of all others most
+irreconcilable with that idea of Almighty Perfection which a
+general view of nature so irresistibly conveys.&nbsp; On the
+other hand, when the organic creation is admitted to have been
+effected by a general law, we see nothing in these abortive parts
+but harmless peculiarities of development, and interesting
+evidences of the manner in which the Divine Author has been
+pleased to work.</p>
+<p>We have yet to advert to the most interesting class of facts
+connected with the laws of organic development.&nbsp; It is only
+in recent times that physiologists have observed that each animal
+passes, in the course of its germinal history, through a series
+of changes resembling the <i>permanent forms</i> of the various
+orders of animals inferior to it in the scale.&nbsp; Thus, for
+instance, an insect, standing at the head of the articulated
+animals, is, in the larva state, a true annelid, or worm, the
+annelida being the lowest in the same class.&nbsp; The embryo of
+a crab resembles the perfect animal of the inferior order
+myriapoda, and passes through all the forms of transition which
+characterize the intermediate tribes of crustacea.&nbsp; The
+frog, for some time after its birth, is a fish with external
+gills, and other organs fitting it for an aquatic life, all of
+which are changed as it advances to maturity, and becomes a land
+animal.&nbsp; The mammifer only passes through still more stages,
+according to its higher place in the scale.&nbsp; Nor is man
+himself exempt from this law.&nbsp; His first form is that which
+is permanent in the animalcule.&nbsp; His organization gradually
+passes through conditions generally resembling a fish, a reptile,
+a bird, and the lower mammalia, before it attains its specific
+maturity.&nbsp; At one of the last stages of his f&oelig;tal
+career, he exhibits an intermaxillary bone, which is
+characteristic of the perfect ape; this is suppressed, and he may
+then be said to take leave of the simial type, and become a true
+human creature.&nbsp; Even, as we shall see, the varieties of his
+race are represented in the progressive development of an
+individual of the highest, before we see the adult Caucasian, the
+highest point yet attained in the animal scale.</p>
+<p>To come to particular points of the organization.&nbsp; The
+brain of man, which exceeds that of all other animals in
+complexity of organization and fulness of development, is, at one
+early period, only &ldquo;a simple fold of nervous matter, with
+difficulty distinguishable into three parts, while a little
+tail-like prolongation towards the hinder parts, and which had
+been the first to appear, is the only representation of a spinal
+marrow.&nbsp; Now, in this state it perfectly resembles the brain
+of an adult fish, thus assuming <i>in transitu</i> the form that
+in the fish is permanent.&nbsp; In a short time, however, the
+structure is become more complex, the parts more distinct, the
+spinal marrow better marked; it is now the brain of a
+reptile.&nbsp; The change continues; by a singular motion,
+certain parts (<i>corpora quadragemina</i>) which had hitherto
+appeared on the upper surface, now pass towards the lower; the
+former is their permanent situation in fishes and reptiles, the
+latter in birds and mammalia.&nbsp; This is another advance in
+the scale, but more remains yet to be done.&nbsp; The
+complication of the organ increases; cavities termed
+<i>ventricles</i> are formed, which do not exist in fishes,
+reptiles, or birds; curiously organized parts, such as the
+corpora striata, are added; it is now the brain of the
+mammalia.&nbsp; Its last and final change alone seems wanting,
+that which shall render it the brain of <span
+class="GutSmall">MAN</span>.&rdquo; <a name="citation201"></a><a
+href="#footnote201" class="citation">[201]</a>&nbsp; And this
+change in time takes place.</p>
+<p>So also with the heart.&nbsp; This organ, in the mammalia,
+consists of four cavities, but in the reptiles of only three, and
+in fishes of two only, while in the articulated animals it is
+merely a prolonged tube.&nbsp; Now in the mammal f&oelig;tus, at
+a certain early stage, the organ has the form of a prolonged
+tube; and a human being may be said to have then the heart of an
+insect.&nbsp; Subsequently it is shortened and widened, and
+becomes divided by a contraction into two parts, a ventricle and
+an auricle; it is now the heart of a fish.&nbsp; A subdivision of
+the auricle afterwards makes a triple-chambered form, as in the
+heart of the reptile tribes; lastly, the ventricle being also
+subdivided, it becomes a full mammal heart.</p>
+<p>Another illustration here presents itself with the force of
+the most powerful and interesting analogy.&nbsp; Some of the
+earliest fishes of our globe, those of the Old Red Sandstone,
+present, as we have seen, certain peculiarities, as the one-sided
+tail and an inferior position of the mouth.&nbsp; No fishes of
+the present day, in a mature state, are so characterized; but
+some, at a certain stage of their existence, have such
+peculiarities.&nbsp; It occurred to a geologist to inquire if the
+fish which existed before the Old Red Sandstone had any
+peculiarities assimilating them to the f&oelig;tal condition of
+existing fish, and particularly if they were small.&nbsp; The
+first which occur before the time of the Old Red Sandstone, are
+those described by Mr. Murchison, as belonging to the Upper
+Ludlow Rocks; <i>they are all rather small</i>.&nbsp; Still older
+are those detected by Mr. Philips, in the Aymestry Limestone,
+being the most ancient of the class which have as yet been
+discovered; <i>these are so extremely minute as only to be
+distinguishable by the microscope</i>.&nbsp; Here we apparently
+have very clear demonstrations of a parity, or rather identity,
+of laws presiding over the development of the animated tribes on
+the face of the earth, and that of the individual in embryo.</p>
+<p>The tendency of all these illustrations is to make us look to
+<i>development</i> as the principle which has been immediately
+concerned in the peopling of this globe, a process extending over
+a vast space of time, but which is nevertheless connected in
+character with the briefer process by which an individual being
+is evoked from a simple germ.&nbsp; What mystery is there
+here&mdash;and how shall I proceed to enunciate the conception
+which I have ventured to form of what may prove to be its proper
+solution!&nbsp; It is an idea by no means calculated to impress
+by its greatness, or to puzzle by its profoundness.&nbsp; It is
+an idea more marked by simplicity than perhaps any other of those
+which have explained the great secrets of nature.&nbsp; But in
+this lies, perhaps, one of its strongest claims to the faith of
+mankind.</p>
+<p>The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and
+oldest up to the highest and most recent, are, then, to be
+regarded as a series of <i>advances of the principle of
+development</i>, which have depended upon external physical
+circumstances, to which the resulting animals are
+appropriate.&nbsp; I contemplate the whole phenomena as having
+been in the first place arranged in the counsels of Divine
+Wisdom, to take place, not only upon this sphere, but upon all
+the others in space, under necessary modifications, and as being
+carried on, from first to last, here and elsewhere, under
+immediate favour of the creative will or energy. <a
+name="citation204"></a><a href="#footnote204"
+class="citation">[204]</a>&nbsp; The nucleated vesicle, the
+fundamental form of all organization, we must regard as the
+meeting-point between the inorganic and the organic&mdash;the end
+of the mineral and beginning of the vegetable and animal
+kingdoms, which thence start in different directions, but in
+perfect parallelism and analogy.&nbsp; We have already seen that
+this nucleated vesicle is itself a type of mature and independent
+being in the infusory animalcules, as well as the starting point
+of the f&oelig;tal progress of every higher individual in
+creation, both animal and vegetable.&nbsp; We have seen that it
+is a form of being which electric agency will
+produce&mdash;though not perhaps usher into full life&mdash;in
+albumen, one of those compound elements of animal bodies, of
+which another (urea) has been made by artificial means.&nbsp;
+Remembering these things, we are drawn on to the supposition,
+that the first step in the creation of life upon this planet was
+<i>a chemico-electric operation</i>, <i>by which simple germinal
+vesicles were produced</i>.&nbsp; This is so much, but what were
+the next steps?&nbsp; Let a common vegetable infusion help us to
+an answer.&nbsp; There, as we have seen, simple forms are
+produced at first, but afterwards they become more complicated,
+until at length the life-producing powers of the infusion are
+exhausted.&nbsp; Are we to presume that, in this case, the simple
+engender the complicated?&nbsp; Undoubtedly, this would not be
+more wonderful as a natural process than one which we never think
+of wondering at, because familiar to us&mdash;namely, that in the
+gestation of 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 all the subsequent stages&mdash;fish, reptile,
+&amp;c.&mdash;the one may, with scarcely a metaphor, be said to
+be the progenitor of the other.&nbsp; I suggest, then, as an
+hypothesis already countenanced by much that is ascertained, and
+likely to be further sanctioned by much that remains to be known,
+that the first step was <i>an advance under favour of peculiar
+conditions</i>, <i>from the simplest forms of being</i>, <i>to
+the next more complicated</i>, <i>and this through the medium of
+the ordinary process of generation</i>.</p>
+<p>Unquestionably, what we ordinarily see of nature is calculated
+to impress a conviction that each species invariably produces its
+like.&nbsp; But I would here call attention to a remarkable
+illustration of natural law which has been brought forward by Mr.
+Babbage, in his <i>Ninth Bridgewater Treatise</i>.&nbsp; The
+reader is requested to suppose himself seated before the
+calculating machine, and observing it.&nbsp; It is moved by a
+weight, and there is a wheel which revolves through a small angle
+round its axis, at short intervals, presenting to his eye
+successively, a series of numbers engraved on its divided
+circumference.</p>
+<p>Let the figures thus seen be the series, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
+&amp;c., of natural numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate
+antecedent by unity.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, reader,&rdquo; says Mr. Babbage, &ldquo;let me ask
+you how long you will have counted before you are firmly
+convinced that the engine has been so adjusted, that it will
+continue, while its motion is maintained, to produce the same
+series of natural numbers?&nbsp; Some minds are so constituted,
+that, after passing the first hundred terms, they will be
+satisfied that they are acquainted with the law.&nbsp; After
+seeing five hundred terms few will doubt, and after the fifty
+thousandth term the propensity to believe that the succeeding
+term will be fifty thousand and one, will be almost
+irresistible.&nbsp; That term <i>will</i> be fifty thousand and
+one; and the same regular succession will continue; the five
+millionth and the fifty millionth term will still appear in their
+expected order, and one unbroken chain of natural numbers will
+pass before your eyes, from <i>one</i> up to <i>one hundred
+million</i>.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;True to the vast induction which has been made, the
+next succeeding term will be one hundred million and one; but the
+next number presented by the rim of the wheel, instead of being
+one hundred million and two, is one hundred million <i>ten
+thousand</i> and two.&nbsp; The whole series from the
+commencement being thus,&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">1</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">2</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">3</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">4</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">5</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">. .</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">. . .</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">99,999,999</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">100,000,000</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>regularly as far as</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">100,000,001</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">100,010,002</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>the law changes.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">100,030,003</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">100,060,004</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">100,100,005</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">100,150,006</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">100,210,007</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">100,280,008</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">. . .</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">. . .</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">. . .</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>&ldquo;The law which seemed at first to govern this series
+failed at the hundred million and second term.&nbsp; This term is
+larger than we expected by 10,000.&nbsp; The next term is larger
+than was anticipated by 30,000, and the excess of each term above
+what we had expected forms the following table:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">10,000</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">30,000</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">60,000</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">100,000</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">150,000</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">. . .</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: right">. . .</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>being, in fact, the series of <i>triangular numbers</i>, <a
+name="citation208"></a><a href="#footnote208"
+class="citation">[208]</a> each multiplied by 10,000.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If we now continue to observe the numbers presented by
+the wheel, we shall find, that for a hundred, or even for a
+thousand terms, they continue to follow the new law relating to
+the triangular numbers; but after watching them for 2761 terms,
+we find that this law fails in the case of the 2762d term.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If we continue to observe, we shall discover another
+law then coming into action, which also is dependent, but in a
+different manner, on triangular numbers.&nbsp; This will continue
+through about 1430 terms, when a new law is again introduced
+which extends over about 950 terms, and this, too, like all its
+predecessors, fails, and gives place to other laws, which appear
+at different intervals.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now it must be observed that <i>the law that each
+number presented by the engine is greater by unity than the
+preceding number</i>, which law the observer had deduced from an
+induction of a hundred million instances, <i>was not the true law
+that regulated its action</i>, and that the occurrence of the
+number 100,010,002 at the 100,000,002nd term was <i>as necessary
+a consequence of the original adjustment</i>, <i>and might have
+been as fully foreknown at the commencement</i>, <i>as was the
+regular succession of any one of the intermediate numbers to its
+immediate antecedent</i>.&nbsp; The same remark applies to the
+next apparent deviation from the new law, which was founded on an
+induction of 2761 terms, and also to the succeeding law, with
+this limitation only&mdash;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 periods
+themselves at which the more distant laws will be
+introduced.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is not difficult to apply the philosophy of this passage to
+the question under consideration.&nbsp; It must be borne in mind
+that the gestation 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 a matter probably involving enormous spaces of
+time.&nbsp; Suppose that an ephemeron, hovering over a pool for
+its one April day of life, were capable of observing the fry of
+the frog in the water below.&nbsp; In its aged afternoon, having
+seen no change upon them for such a long time, it would be little
+qualified to conceive that the external branchi&aelig; of these
+creatures were to decay, and be replaced by internal lungs, that
+feet were to be developed, the tail erased, and the animal then
+to become a denizen of the land.&nbsp; Precisely such may be our
+difficulty in conceiving that any of the species which people our
+earth is capable of advancing by generation to a higher type of
+being.&nbsp; During the whole time which we call the historical
+era, the limits of species have been, to ordinary observation,
+rigidly adhered to.&nbsp; But the historical era is, we know,
+only a small portion of the entire age of our globe.&nbsp; We do
+not know what may have happened during the ages which preceded
+its commencement, as we do not know what may happen in ages yet
+in the distant future.&nbsp; All, therefore, that we can properly
+infer from the apparently invariable production of like by like
+is, that such is the ordinary procedure of nature in the time
+immediately passing before our eyes.&nbsp; Mr. Babbage&rsquo;s
+illustration powerfully suggests that this ordinary procedure may
+be subordinate to a higher law which only <i>permits</i> it for a
+time, and in proper season interrupts and changes it.&nbsp; We
+shall soon see some philosophical evidence for this very
+conclusion.</p>
+<p>It has been seen that, in the reproduction of the higher
+animals, the new being passes through stages in which it is
+successively fish-like and reptile-like.&nbsp; But the
+resemblance is not to the adult fish or the adult reptile, but to
+the fish and reptile at a certain point in their f&oelig;tal
+progress; this holds true with regard to the vascular, nervous,
+and other systems alike.&nbsp; It may be illustrated by a simple
+diagram.&nbsp; The f&oelig;tus of all the four classes may be
+supposed to advance in an identical condition to the point
+A.&nbsp; 
+<a href="images/p212b.jpg">
+<img class='floatright' alt=
+"Diagram"
+title=
+"Diagram"
+src="images/p212s.jpg" />
+</a>&nbsp; The fish there diverges and passes along a line apart,
+and peculiar to A itself, to its mature state at F.&nbsp; The
+reptile, bird, and mammal, go on together to C, where the reptile
+diverges in like manner, and advances by itself to R.&nbsp; The
+bird diverges at D, and goes on to B.&nbsp; The mammal then goes
+forward in a straight line to the highest point of organization
+at M.&nbsp; This diagram shews only the main ramifications; but
+the reader must suppose minor ones, representing the subordinate
+differences of orders, tribes, families, genera, &amp;c., if he
+wishes to extend his views to the whole varieties of being in the
+animal kingdom.&nbsp; Limiting ourselves at present to the
+outline afforded by this diagram, it is apparent that the only
+thing required for an advance from one type to another in the
+generative process is that, for example, the fish embryo should
+not diverge at A, but go on to C before it diverges, in which
+case the progeny will be, not a fish, but a reptile.&nbsp; To
+protract the <i>straightforward part of the gestation over a
+small space</i>&mdash;and from species to species the space would
+be small indeed&mdash;is all that is necessary.</p>
+<p>This might be done by the force of certain external conditions
+operating upon the parturient system.&nbsp; The nature of these
+conditions we can only conjecture, for their operation, which in
+the geological eras was so powerful, has in its main strength
+been long interrupted, and is now perhaps only allowed to work in
+some of the lowest departments of the organic world, or under
+extraordinary casualties in some of the higher, and to these
+points the attention of science has as yet been little
+directed.&nbsp; But though this knowledge were never to be
+clearly attained, it need not much affect the present argument,
+provided it be satisfactorily shewn that there must be some such
+influence within the range of natural things.</p>
+<p>To this conclusion it must be greatly conducive that the law
+of organic development is still daily seen at work to certain
+effects, only somewhat short of a transition from species to
+species.&nbsp; Sex we have seen to be a matter of
+development.&nbsp; There is an instance, in a humble department
+of the animal world, of arrangements being made by the animals
+themselves for adjusting this law to the production of a
+particular sex.&nbsp; Amongst bees, as amongst several other
+insect tribes, there is in each community but one true female,
+the queen bee, the workers being false females or neuters; that
+is to say, sex is carried on in them to a point where it is
+attended by sterility.&nbsp; The preparatory states of the queen
+bee occupy sixteen days; those of the neuters, twenty; and those
+of males, twenty-four.&nbsp; Now it is a fact, settled by
+innumerable observations and experiments, that the bees can so
+modify a worker in the larva state, that, when it emerges from
+the pupa, it is found to be a queen or true female.&nbsp; For
+this purpose they enlarge its cell, make a pyramidal hollow to
+allow of its assuming a vertical instead of a horizontal
+position, keep it warmer than other larv&aelig; are kept, and
+feed it with a peculiar kind of food.&nbsp; From these simple
+circumstances, leading to a shortening of the embryotic
+condition, results a creature different in form, and also in
+dispositions, from what would have otherwise been produced.&nbsp;
+Some of the organs possessed by the worker are here altogether
+wanting.&nbsp; We have a creature &ldquo;destined to enjoy love,
+to burn with jealousy and anger, to be incited to vengeance, and
+to pass her time without labour,&rdquo; instead of one
+&ldquo;zealous for the good of the community, a defender of the
+public rights, enjoying an immunity from the stimulus of sexual
+appetite and the pains of parturition; laborious, industrious,
+patient, ingenious, skilful; incessantly engaged in the nurture
+of the young, in collecting honey and pollen, in elaborating wax,
+in constructing cells and the like!&mdash;paying the most
+respectful and assiduous attention to objects which, had its
+ovaries been developed, it would have hated and pursued with the
+most vindictive fury till it had destroyed them!&rdquo; <a
+name="citation215"></a><a href="#footnote215"
+class="citation">[215]</a>&nbsp; All these changes may be
+produced by a mere modification of the embryotic progress, which
+it is within the power of the adult animals to effect.&nbsp; But
+it is important to observe that this modification is different
+from working a direct change upon the embryo.&nbsp; It is not the
+different food which effects a metamorphosis.&nbsp; All that is
+done is merely to accelerate the period of the insect&rsquo;s
+perfection.&nbsp; By the arrangements made and the food given,
+the embryo becomes sooner fit for being ushered forth in its
+imago or perfect state.&nbsp; Development may be said to be thus
+arrested at a particular stage&mdash;that early one at which the
+female sex is complete.&nbsp; In the other circumstances, it is
+allowed to go on four days longer, and a stage is then reached
+between the two sexes, which in this species is designed to be
+the perfect condition of a large portion of the community.&nbsp;
+Four days more make it a perfect male.&nbsp; It is at the same
+time to be observed that there is, from the period of
+oviposition, a destined distinction between the sexes of the
+young bees.&nbsp; The queen lays the whole of the eggs which are
+designed to become workers, before she begins to lay those which
+become males.&nbsp; But probably the condition of her
+reproductive system governs the matter of sex, for it is remarked
+that when her impregnation is delayed beyond the twenty-eighth
+day of her entire existence, she lays only eggs which become
+males.</p>
+<p>We have here, it will be admitted, a most remarkable
+illustration of the principle of development, although in an
+operation limited to the production of sex only.&nbsp; Let it not
+be said that the phenomena concerned in the generation of bees
+may be very different from those concerned in the reproduction of
+the higher animals.&nbsp; There is a unity throughout nature
+which makes the one case an instructive reflection of the
+other.</p>
+<p>We shall now see an instance of development operating within
+the production of what approaches to the character of variety of
+species.&nbsp; It is fully established that a human family,
+tribe, or nation, is liable, in the course of generations, to be
+either advanced from a mean form to a higher one, or degraded
+from a higher to a lower, by the influence of the physical
+conditions in which it lives.&nbsp; The coarse features, and
+other structural peculiarities of the negro race only continue
+while these people live amidst the circumstances usually
+associated with barbarism.&nbsp; In a more temperate clime, and
+higher social state, the face and figure become greatly
+refined.&nbsp; The few African nations which possess any
+civilization also exhibit forms approaching the European; and
+when the same people in the United States of America have enjoyed
+a within-door life for several generations, they assimilate to
+the whites amongst whom they live.&nbsp; On the other hand, there
+are authentic instances of a people originally well-formed and
+good-looking, being brought, by imperfect diet and a variety of
+physical hardships, to a meaner form.&nbsp; It is remarkable that
+prominence of the jaws, a recession and diminution of the
+cranium, and an elongation and attenuation of the limbs, are
+peculiarities always produced by these miserable conditions, for
+they indicate an unequivocal retrogression towards the type of
+the lower animals.&nbsp; Thus we see nature alike willing to go
+back and to go forward.&nbsp; Both effects are simply the result
+of the operation of the law of development in the generative
+system.&nbsp; Give good conditions, it advances; bad ones, it
+recedes.&nbsp; Now, perhaps, it is only because there is no
+longer a possibility, in the higher types of being, of giving
+sufficiently favourable conditions to carry on species to
+species, that we see the operation of the law so far limited.</p>
+<p>Let us trace this law also in the production of certain
+classes of monstrosities.&nbsp; A human f&oelig;tus is often left
+with one of the most important parts of its frame imperfectly
+developed: the heart, for instance, goes no farther than the
+three-chambered form, so that it is the heart of a reptile.&nbsp;
+There are even instances of this organ being left in the
+two-chambered or fish form.&nbsp; Such defects are the result of
+nothing more than a failure of the power of development in the
+system of the mother, occasioned by weak health or misery.&nbsp;
+Here we have apparently a realization of the converse of those
+conditions which carry on species to species, so far, at least,
+as one organ is concerned.&nbsp; Seeing a complete specific
+retrogression in this one point, how easy it is to imagine an
+access of favourable conditions sufficient to reverse the
+phenomenon, and make a fish mother develop a reptile heart, or a
+reptile mother develop a mammal one.&nbsp; It is no great
+boldness to surmise that a super-adequacy in the measure of this
+under-adequacy (and the one thing seems as natural an occurrence
+as the other) would suffice in a goose to give its progeny the
+body of a rat, and produce the ornithorynchus, or might give the
+progeny of an ornithorynchus the mouth and feet of a true rodent,
+and thus complete at two stages the passage from the aves to the
+mammalia.</p>
+<p>Perhaps even the transition from species to species does still
+take place in some of the obscurer fields of creation, or under
+extraordinary casualties, though science professes to have no
+such facts on record.&nbsp; It is here to be remarked, that such
+facts might often happen, and yet no record be taken of them, for
+so strong is the prepossession for the doctrine of invariable
+like-production, that such circumstances, on occurring, would be
+almost sure to be explained away on some other supposition, or,
+if presented, would be disbelieved and neglected.&nbsp; Science,
+therefore, has no such facts, for the very same reason that some
+small sects are said to have no discreditable
+members&mdash;namely, that they do not receive such persons, and
+extrude all who begin to verge upon the character.&nbsp; There
+are, nevertheless, some facts which have chanced to be reported
+without any reference to this hypothesis, and which it seems
+extremely difficult to explain satisfactorily upon any
+other.&nbsp; One of these has already been mentioned&mdash;a
+progression in the forms of the animalcules in a vegetable
+infusion from the simpler to the more complicated, a sort of
+microcosm, representing the whole history of the progress of
+animal creation as displayed by geology.&nbsp; Another is given
+in the history of the Acarus Crossii, which may be only the
+ultimate stage of a series of similar transformations effected by
+electric agency in the solution subjected to it.&nbsp; There is,
+however, one direct case of a translation of species, which has
+been presented with a respectable amount of authority. <a
+name="citation221"></a><a href="#footnote221"
+class="citation">[221]</a>&nbsp; It appears that, whenever oats
+sown at the usual time are kept cropped down during summer and
+autumn, and allowed to remain over the winter, a thin crop of rye
+is the harvest presented at the close of the ensuing
+summer.&nbsp; This experiment has been tried repeatedly, with but
+one result; invariably the <i>secale cereale</i> is the crop
+reaped where the <i>avena sativa</i>, a recognised different
+species, was sown.&nbsp; Now it will not satisfy a strict
+inquirer to be told that the seeds of the rye were latent in the
+ground and only superseded the dead product of the oats; for if
+any such fact were in the case, why should the usurping grain be
+always rye?&nbsp; Perhaps those curious facts which have been
+stated with regard to 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 which takes place under certain favouring
+conditions, now apparently of comparatively rare
+occurrence.&nbsp; The case of the oats is the more valuable, as
+bearing upon the suggestion as to a protraction of the gestation
+at a particular part of its course.&nbsp; Here, the generative
+process is, by the simple mode of cropping down, kept up for a
+whole year beyond its usual term.&nbsp; The type is thus allowed
+to advance, and what was oats becomes rye.</p>
+<p>The idea, then, which I form of the progress of organic life
+upon the globe&mdash;and the hypothesis is applicable to all
+similar theatres of vital being&mdash;is, <i>that the simplest
+and most primitive type</i>, <i>under a law to which that of
+like-production is subordinate</i>, <i>gave birth to the type
+next above it</i>, <i>that this again produced the next
+higher</i>, <i>and so on to the very highest</i>, the stages of
+advance being in all cases very small&mdash;namely, from one
+species only to another; so that the phenomenon has always been
+of a simple and modest character.&nbsp; Whether the whole of any
+species was at once translated forward, or only a few parents
+were employed to give birth to the new type, must remain
+undetermined; but, supposing that the former was the case, we
+must presume that the moves along the line or lines were
+simultaneous, so that the place vacated by one species was
+immediately taken by the next in succession, and so on back to
+the first, for the supply of which the formation of a new
+germinal vesicle out of inorganic matter was alone
+necessary.&nbsp; Thus, the production of new forms, as shewn in
+the pages of the geological record, has never been anything more
+than a new stage of progress in gestation, an event as simply
+natural, and attended as little by any circumstances of a
+wonderful or startling kind, as the silent advance of an ordinary
+mother from one week to another of her pregnancy.&nbsp; Yet, be
+it remembered, the whole phenomena are, in another point of view,
+wonders of the highest kind, for in each of them we have to trace
+the effect of an Almighty Will which had arranged the whole in
+such harmony with external physical circumstances, that both were
+developed in parallel steps&mdash;and probably this development
+upon our planet is but a sample of what has taken place, through
+the same cause, in all the other countless theatres of being
+which are suspended in space.</p>
+<p>This may be the proper place at which to introduce the
+preceding illustrations in a form calculated to bring them more
+forcibly before the mind of the reader.&nbsp; The following table
+was suggested to me, in consequence of seeing the scale of
+animated nature presented in Dr. Fletcher&rsquo;s Rudiments of
+Physiology.&nbsp; 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, and
+also in the f&oelig;tal progress of one of the principal human
+organs. <a name="citation224"></a><a href="#footnote224"
+class="citation">[224]</a>&nbsp; This scale, it may be remarked,
+was not made up with a view to support such an hypothesis as the
+present, nor with any apparent regard to the history of fossils,
+but merely to express the appearance of advancement in the orders
+of the Cuvierian system, assuming, as the criterion of that
+advancement, &ldquo;an increase in the number and extent of the
+manifestations of life, or of the relations which an organized
+being bears to the external world.&rdquo;&nbsp; Excepting in the
+relative situation of the annelida and a few of the mammal
+orders, the parity is perfect; nor may even these small
+discrepancies appear when the order of fossils shall have been
+further investigated, or a more correct scale shall have been
+formed.&nbsp; Meanwhile, it is a wonderful evidence in favour of
+our hypothesis, that a scale formed so arbitrarily should
+coincide to such a nearness with our present knowledge of the
+succession of animal forms upon earth, and also that both of
+these series should harmonize so well with the view given by
+modern physiologists of the embryotic progress of one of the
+organs of the highest order of animals.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p226b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Complex table of animal kingdom"
+title=
+"Complex table of animal kingdom"
+src="images/p226s.jpg" />
+</a> <a name="citation226"></a><a href="#footnote226"
+class="citation">[226]</a></p>
+<p>The reader has seen physical conditions several times referred
+to, as to be presumed to have in some way governed the progress
+of the development of the zoological circle.&nbsp; This language
+may seem vague, and, it may be asked,&mdash;can any particular
+physical condition be adduced as likely to have affected
+development?&nbsp; To this it may be answered, that air and light
+are probably amongst the principal agencies of this kind which
+operated in educing the various forms of being.&nbsp; Light is
+found to be essential to the development of the individual
+embryo.&nbsp; When tadpoles were placed in a perforated box, and
+that box sunk in the Seine, light being the only condition thus
+abstracted, they grew to a great size in their original form, but
+did not pass through the usual metamorphose which brings them to
+their mature state as frogs.&nbsp; The proteus, an animal of the
+frog kind, inhabiting the subterraneous waters of Carniola, and
+which never acquires perfect lungs so as to become a land animal,
+is presumed to be an example of arrested development, from the
+same cause.&nbsp; When, in connexion with these facts, we learn
+that human mothers living in dark and close cells under
+ground,&mdash;that is to say, with an inadequate provision of air
+and light,&mdash;are found to produce an unusual proportion of
+defective children, <a name="citation229"></a><a
+href="#footnote229" class="citation">[229]</a> we can appreciate
+the important effects of both these physical conditions in
+ordinary reproduction.&nbsp; Now there is nothing to forbid the
+supposition that the earth has been at different stages of its
+career under different conditions, as to both air and
+light.&nbsp; On the contrary, we have seen reason for supposing
+that the proportion of carbonic acid gas (the element fatal to
+animal life) was larger at the time of the carboniferous
+formation than it afterwards became.&nbsp; We have also seen that
+astronomers regard the zodiacal light as a residuum of matter
+enveloping the sun, and which was probably at one time denser
+than it is now.&nbsp; Here we have the indications of causes for
+a progress in the purification of the atmosphere and in the
+diffusion of light during the earlier ages of the earth&rsquo;s
+history, with which the progress of organic life may have been
+conformable.&nbsp; An accession to the proportion of oxygen, and
+the effulgence of the central luminary, may have been the
+immediate prompting cause of all those advances from species to
+species which we have seen, upon other grounds, to be necessarily
+supposed as having taken place.&nbsp; And causes of the like
+nature may well be supposed to operate on other spheres of being,
+as well as on this.&nbsp; I do not indeed present these ideas as
+furnishing the true explanation of the progress of organic
+creation; they are merely thrown out as hints towards the
+formation of a just hypothesis, the completion of which is only
+to be looked for when some considerable advances shall have been
+made in the amount and character of our stock of knowledge.</p>
+<p>Early in this century, M. Lamarck, a naturalist of the highest
+character, suggested an hypothesis of organic progress which
+deservedly incurred much ridicule, although it contained a
+glimmer of the truth.&nbsp; He surmised, and endeavoured, with a
+great deal of ingenuity, to prove, that one being advanced in the
+course of generations to another, in consequence merely of its
+experience of wants calling for the exercise of its faculties in
+a particular direction, by which exercise new developments of
+organs took place, ending in variations sufficient to constitute
+a new species.&nbsp; Thus he thought that a bird would be driven
+by necessity to seek its food in the water, and that, in its
+efforts to swim, the outstretching of its claws would lead to the
+expansion of the intermediate membranes, and it would thus become
+web-footed.&nbsp; Now it is possible that wants and the exercise
+of faculties have entered in some manner into the production of
+the phenomena which we have been considering; but certainly not
+in the way suggested by Lamarck, whose whole notion is obviously
+so inadequate to account for the rise of the organic kingdoms,
+that we only can place it with pity among the follies of the
+wise.&nbsp; Had the laws of organic development been known in his
+time, his theory might have been of a more imposing kind.&nbsp;
+It is upon these that the present hypothesis is mainly
+founded.&nbsp; I take existing natural means, and shew them to
+have been capable of producing all the existing organisms, with
+the simple and easily conceivable aid of a higher generative law,
+which we perhaps still see operating upon a limited scale.&nbsp;
+I also go beyond the French philosopher to a very important
+point, the original Divine conception of all the forms of being
+which these natural laws were only instruments in working out and
+realizing.&nbsp; The actuality of such a conception I hold to be
+strikingly demonstrated by the discoveries of Macleay, Vigors,
+and Swainson, with respect to the affinities and analogies of
+animal (and by implication vegetable) organisms. <a
+name="citation232"></a><a href="#footnote232"
+class="citation">[232]</a>&nbsp; Such a regularity in the
+<i>structure</i>, as we may call it, of the <i>classification of
+animals</i>, as is shewn in their systems, is totally
+irreconcilable with the idea of form going on to form merely as
+needs and wishes in the animals themselves dictated.&nbsp; Had
+such been the case, all would have been irregular, as things
+arbitrary necessarily are.&nbsp; But, lo, the whole plan of being
+is as symmetrical as the plan of a house, or the laying out of an
+old-fashioned garden!&nbsp; This must needs have been devised and
+arranged for beforehand.&nbsp; And what a preconception or
+forethought have we here!&nbsp; Let us only for a moment consider
+how various are the external physical conditions in which animals
+live&mdash;climate, soil, temperature, land, water, air&mdash;the
+peculiarities of food, and the various ways in which it is to be
+sought; the peculiar circumstances in which the business of
+reproduction and the care-taking of the young are to be attended
+to&mdash;all these required to be taken into account, and
+thousands of animals were to be formed suitable in organization
+and mental character for the concerns they were to have with
+these various conditions and circumstances&mdash;here a tooth
+fitted for crushing nuts; there a claw fitted to serve as a hook
+for suspension; here to repress teeth and develop a bony net-work
+instead; there to arrange for a bronchial apparatus, to last only
+for a 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 rigidly regular: let us, I say, only consider these
+things, and we shall see that the decreeing of laws to bring the
+whole about was an act involving such a degree of wisdom and
+device as we only can attribute, adoringly, to the one Eternal
+and Unchangeable.&nbsp; It may be asked, how does this reflection
+comport with that timid philosophy which would have us to draw
+back from the investigation of God&rsquo;s works, lest the
+knowledge of them should make us undervalue his greatness and
+forget his paternal character?&nbsp; Does it not rather appear
+that our ideas of the Deity can only be worthy of him in the
+ratio in which we advance in a knowledge of his works and ways;
+and that the acquisition of this knowledge is consequently an
+available means of our growing in a genuine reverence for
+him!</p>
+<p>But the idea that any of the lower animals have been concerned
+in any way with the origin of man&mdash;is not this
+degrading?&nbsp; Degrading is a term, expressive of a notion of
+the human mind, and the human mind is liable to prejudices which
+prevent its notions from being invariably correct.&nbsp; Were we
+acquainted for the first time with the circumstances attending
+the production of an individual of our race, we might equally
+think them degrading, and be eager to deny them, and exclude them
+from the admitted truths of nature.&nbsp; Knowing this fact
+familiarly and beyond contradiction, a healthy and natural mind
+finds no difficulty in regarding it complacently.&nbsp; Creative
+Providence has been pleased to order that it should be so, and it
+must therefore be submitted to.&nbsp; Now the idea as to the
+progress of organic creation, if we become satisfied of its
+truth, ought to be received precisely in this spirit.&nbsp; It
+has pleased Providence to arrange that one species should give
+birth to another, until the second highest gave birth to man, who
+is the very highest: be it so, it is our part to admire and to
+submit.&nbsp; The very faintest notion of there being anything
+ridiculous or degrading in the theory&mdash;how absurd does it
+appear, when we remember that every individual amongst us
+actually passes through the characters of the insect, the fish,
+and reptile, (to speak nothing of others,) before he is permitted
+to breathe the breath of life!&nbsp; But such notions are mere
+emanations of false pride and ignorant prejudice.&nbsp; He who
+conceives them little reflects that they, in reality, involve the
+principle of a contempt for the works and ways of God.&nbsp; For
+it may be asked, if He, as appears, has chosen to employ inferior
+organisms as a generative medium for the production of higher
+ones, even including ourselves, what right have we, his humble
+creatures, to find fault?&nbsp; There is, also, in this
+prejudice, an element of unkindliness towards the lower animals,
+which is utterly out of place.&nbsp; These creatures are all of
+them part products of the Almighty Conception, as well as
+ourselves.&nbsp; All of them display wondrous evidences of his
+wisdom and benevolence.&nbsp; All of them have had assigned to
+them by their Great Father a part in the drama of the organic
+world, as well as ourselves.&nbsp; Why should they be held in
+such contempt?&nbsp; Let us regard them in a proper spirit, as
+parts of the grand plan, instead of contemplating them in the
+light of frivolous prejudices, and we shall be altogether at a
+loss to see how there should be any degradation in the idea of
+our race having been genealogically connected with them.</p>
+<h2><a name="page236"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+236</span>MACLEAY SYSTEM OF ANIMATED NATURE.<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THIS SYSTEM CONSIDERED IN CONNEXION WITH
+THE</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">PROGRESS OF ORGANIC CREATION, AND AS
+INDICATING</span><br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE NATURAL STATUS OF MAN.</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is now high time to advert to
+the system formed by the animated tribes, both with a view to the
+possible illustration of the preceding argument, and for the
+light which it throws upon that general system of nature which it
+is the more comprehensive object of this book to ascertain.</p>
+<p>The vegetable and animal kingdoms are arranged upon a scale,
+starting from simply organized forms, and going on to the more
+complex, each of these forms being but slightly different from
+those next to it on both sides.&nbsp; The lowest and most
+slightly developed forms in the two kingdoms are so closely
+connected, that it is impossible to say where vegetable ends and
+animal begins.&nbsp; United at what may be called their bases,
+they start away in different directions, but not altogether to
+lose sight of each other.&nbsp; On the contrary, they maintain a
+strict analogy throughout the whole of their subsequent courses,
+sub-kingdom for sub-kingdom, class for class; shewing a
+beautiful, though as yet obscure relation between the two grand
+forms of being, and consequently a unity in the laws which
+brought them both into existence.&nbsp; So complete does this
+analogy appear, even in the present imperfect state of science,
+that I fully expect in a few years to see the animal and
+vegetable kingdoms duly ranked up against each other in a system
+of parallels, which will admit of our assigning to each species
+in the former the particular shrub or tree corresponding to it in
+the latter, all marked by unmistakable analogies of the most
+interesting kind.</p>
+<p>It is as yet but a few years since a system of subordinate
+analogies not less remarkable began to be speculated upon as
+within the range of the animal kingdom.&nbsp; Probably it also
+exists in the vegetable kingdom; but to this point no direct
+attention has been given; so we are left to infer that such is
+the case from theoretical considerations only.&nbsp; We are
+indebted for what we know of these beautiful analogies to three
+naturalists&mdash;Macleay, Vigors, and Swainson, whose labours
+tempt us to dismiss in a great measure the artificial
+classifications hitherto used, and make an entirely new
+conspectus of the animal kingdom, not to speak of the
+corresponding reform which will be required in our systems of
+botany also.</p>
+<p>The Macleay system, as it may be called in honour of its
+principal author, announces that, whether we take the whole
+animal kingdom, or any definite division of it, we shall find
+that we are examining a group of beings which is capable of being
+arranged along a series of close affinities, <i>in a circular
+form</i>,&mdash;that is to say, starting from any one portion of
+the group, when it is properly arranged, we can proceed from one
+to another by minute gradations, till at length, having run
+through the whole, we return to the point whence we set
+out.&nbsp; All natural groups of animals are, therefore, in the
+language of Mr. Macleay, <i>circular</i>; and the possibility of
+throwing any supposed group into a circular arrangement is held
+as a decisive test of its being a real or natural one.&nbsp; It
+is of course to be understood that each circle is composed of a
+set of inferior circles: for example, a set of <i>tribe</i>
+circles composes an <i>order</i>; a set of <i>order</i> circles,
+again, forms a <i>class</i>; and so on.&nbsp; Of each group, the
+component circles are <i>invariably five in number</i>: thus, in
+the animal kingdom, there are five sub-kingdoms,&mdash;the
+vertebrata, annulosa, <a name="citation239a"></a><a
+href="#footnote239a" class="citation">[239a]</a> radiata, acrita,
+<a name="citation239b"></a><a href="#footnote239b"
+class="citation">[239b]</a> mollusca.&nbsp; Take, again, one of
+these sub-kingdoms, the vertebrata, and we find it composed of
+five classes,&mdash;the mammalia, reptilia, pisces, amphibia, and
+aves, each of the other sub-kingdoms being similarly
+divisible.&nbsp; Take the mammalia, and it is in like manner
+found to be composed of five orders,&mdash;the cheirotheria, <a
+name="citation239c"></a><a href="#footnote239c"
+class="citation">[239c]</a> fer&aelig;, cetacea, glires,
+ungulata.&nbsp; Even in this numerical uniformity, which goes
+down to the lowest ramifications of the system, there would be
+something very remarkable, as arguing a definite and preconceived
+arrangement; but this is only the least curious part of the
+Macleay theory.</p>
+<p>We shall best understand the wonderfully complex system of
+analogies developed by that theory, if we start from the part of
+the kingdom in which they were first traced,&mdash;namely, the
+class aves, or birds.&nbsp; This gives for its five
+orders,&mdash;<i>incessores</i>, (perching birds,)
+<i>raptores</i>, (birds of prey,) <i>natatores</i>, (swimming
+birds,) <i>grallatores</i>, (waders,) <i>rasores</i>,
+(scrapers.)&nbsp; In these orders our naturalists discerned
+distinct organic characters, of different degrees of perfectness,
+the first being the most perfect with regard to the general
+character of the class, and therefore the best representative of
+that class; whence it was called the <i>typical</i> order.&nbsp;
+The second was found to be inferior, or rather to have a less
+perfect balance of qualities; hence it was designated the
+<i>sub-typical</i>.&nbsp; In this are comprehended the chief
+noxious and destructive animals of the circle to which it
+belongs.&nbsp; The other three groups were called aberrant, as
+exhibiting a much wider departure from the typical standard,
+although the last of the three is observed to make a certain
+recovery, and join on to the typical group, so as to complete the
+circle.&nbsp; The first of the aberrant groups (natatores) is
+remarkable for making the water the theatre of its existence, and
+the birds composing it are in general of comparatively large
+bulk.&nbsp; The second (grallatores) are long-limbed and
+long-billed, that they may wade and pick up their subsistence in
+the shallows and marshes in which they chiefly live.&nbsp; The
+third (rasores) are distinguished by strong feet, for walking or
+running on the ground, and for scraping in it for their food;
+also by wings designed to scarcely raise them off the earth and,
+farther, by a general domesticity of character and usefulness to
+man.</p>
+<p>Now the most remarkable circumstance is, that these organic
+characters, habits, and moral properties, were found to be
+traceable more or less distinctly in the corresponding portions
+of every other group, even of those belonging to distant
+subdivisions of the animal kingdom, as, for instance, the
+insects.&nbsp; The incessores (typical order of aves) being
+reduced to its constituent circles or tribes, it was found that
+these strictly represented the five orders.&nbsp; In the
+<i>conirostres</i> are the perfections which belong to the
+incessores as an order, with the conspicuous external feature of
+a comparatively small notch in their bills; in the
+<i>dentirostres</i>, the notch is strong and toothlike, (hence
+the name of the tribe) assimilating them to the raptores; the
+<i>fissirostres</i> come into analogy with the natatores in the
+slight development of their feet and their great powers of
+flight; the <i>tenuirostres</i> have the small mouths and long
+soft bills of the grallatores.&nbsp; Finally, the
+<i>scansores</i> resemble the rasores in their superior
+intelligence and docility, and in their having strong limbs and a
+bill entire at the tip.&nbsp; This parity of qualities becomes
+clearer when placed in a tabular form:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: center"><i>Orders of Birds</i>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: center"><i>Characters</i>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: center"><i>Tribes of
+Incessores</i>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Incessores</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Most perfect of their circle; notch of bill small</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Conirostres.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Raptores</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Notch of bill like a tooth</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Dentirostres.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Natatores</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Slightly developed feet; strong flight</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Fissirostres.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Grallatores</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Small mouths; long soft bills</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Tenuirostres.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Rasores</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Strong feet, short wings; docile and domestic</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Scansores.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>Some comprehensive terms are much wanted to describe these
+five characters, so curiously repeated throughout the whole of
+the animal, and probably also the vegetable kingdom.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile, Mr. Swainson calls them typical, sub-typical,
+natatorial, suctorial, <a name="citation242"></a><a
+href="#footnote242" class="citation">[242]</a> and
+rasorial.&nbsp; Some of his illustrations of the principle are
+exceedingly interesting.&nbsp; He shews that the leading animal
+of a typical circle usually has a combination of properties
+concentrated in itself, without any of these preponderating
+remarkably over others.&nbsp; The sub-typical circles, he says,
+&ldquo;do not comprise the largest individuals in bulk, but
+always those which are the most powerfully armed, either for
+inflicting injury on their own class, for exciting terror,
+producing injury, or creating annoyance to man.&nbsp; Their
+dispositions are often sanguinary, since the forms most
+conspicuous among them live by rapine, and subsist on the blood
+of other animals.&nbsp; They are, in short, symbolically types of
+<i>evil</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; This symbolical character is most
+conspicuous about the centre of the series of
+gradations:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Kingdom</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Annulosa.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Sub-kingdom</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Reptilia.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Class (Mammalia)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Fer&aelig;.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>(Aves)</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Raptores.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>In the annulosa it is not distinct, although we must also
+remember that insects do produce enormous ravages and annoyance
+in many parts of the earth.&nbsp; In the reptilia it is more
+distinct, since to this class belong the ophidia, (serpents,) an
+order peculiarly noxious.&nbsp; It comes to a kind of climax in
+the fer&aelig; and raptores, which fulfil the function of
+butchers among land animals.&nbsp; As we descend through tribes,
+families, genera, species, it becomes fainter and fainter, but
+never altogether vanishes.&nbsp; In the dentirostres, for
+instance, we have in a subdued form the hooked bill and
+predaceous character of the raptores; to this tribe belongs the
+family of the shrikes, so deadly to all the lesser field
+birds.&nbsp; In the genus bos, we have, in the sub-typical group,
+the bison, &ldquo;wild, revengeful, and shewing an innate
+detestation of man.&rdquo;&nbsp; In equus, we have, in the same
+situation, the zebra, which actually shews the stripes of the
+tiger, and is as remarkable for its wildness as its congeners,
+the horse and ass, are for their docility and usefulness.&nbsp;
+To quote again from Mr. Swainson, &ldquo;the singular threatening
+aspect which the caterpillars of the sphinx moth assume on being
+disturbed, is a remarkable modification of the terrific or evil
+nature which is impressed in one form or another, palpable or
+remote, upon all sub-typical groups; for this division of the
+lepidopterous order is precisely of this denomination.&nbsp; In
+the pre-eminent type of this order of insects, the butterflies,
+(papilionides,) our associations little prepare us for expecting
+any trace of the evil principle; but here, too, there is a
+sub-typical division.&nbsp; These,&rdquo; says our naturalist,
+&ldquo;are distinguished by their caterpillars being armed with
+formidable spines or prickles, which in general are possessed of
+some highly acrimonious or poisonous quality, capable of injuring
+those who touch them.&nbsp; It is only,&rdquo; continues Mr.
+Swainson, &ldquo;when extensive researches bring to light a
+uniformity of results, that we can venture to believe they are so
+universal as to deserve being ranked as primary laws.&nbsp; Thus,
+when a celebrated entomologist denounced as impure the black and
+lurid beetles forming the saprophagous petalocera of Mr. Macleay,
+a tribe living only upon putrid vegetable matter, and hiding
+themselves in their disgusting food, or in dark hollows of the
+earth, neither of these celebrated men suspected the absolute
+fact, elicited from our analogies of this group, that this very
+tribe constituted the sub-typical group of one of the primary
+divisions of coleopterous insects: nor had they any suspicion
+that, by the filthy habits and repulsive forms of these beetles,
+nature had intended that they should be types or emblems of
+hundreds of other groups, distinguished by peculiarities equally
+indicative of evil.&nbsp; On the other hand, the thalerophagous
+petalocera, forming the typical group of the same division,
+present us with all the perfections and habits belonging to their
+kind.&nbsp; These families of beetles live only upon fresh
+vegetables; they are diurnal, and sport in the glare of day, pure
+in their food, elegant in their shapes, and beautiful in their
+colours.&rdquo; <a name="citation246"></a><a href="#footnote246"
+class="citation">[246]</a></p>
+<p>The third type, (first of the three aberrant,) called by Mr.
+Swainson, the <i>natatorial</i>, or aquatic, are chiefly
+remarkable for their bulk, the disproportionate size of the head,
+and the absence, or slight development of the feet.&nbsp; They
+partake of the predaceous and destructive character of the
+adjoining sub-typical group, and the means of their predacity are
+generally found in the mouth alone.&nbsp; In the primary division
+of the animal kingdom, we find the type in the radiata, not one
+of which lives out of water.&nbsp; In the vertebrata, it is in
+the fishes.&nbsp; In both of these, feet are totally
+wanting.&nbsp; Descending to the class mammalia, we have this
+type in the cetacea, which present a comparatively slight
+development of limbs.&nbsp; In the aves, as we have seen, the
+type is presented in the natatores, whose name has been adopted
+as an appropriate term for all the corresponding groups.&nbsp; An
+enumeration of some other examples of the natatorial type, as the
+cephalopoda (instanced in the cuttle-fish) in the mollusca; the
+crustacea (crabs, &amp;c.) in the annulosa; the owls (which often
+duck for fish) in the raptores; the ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus,
+&amp;c., among reptilia, will serve to bring the general
+character, and its pervasion of the whole animal world, forcibly
+before the mind of the reader.</p>
+<p>The next type is that of meanest and most imperfect
+organization, the lower termination of all groups, as the typical
+is the upper.&nbsp; It is called by Mr. Swainson the suctorial,
+from a very generally prevalent peculiarity, that of drawing
+sustenance by suction.&nbsp; The acrita, or polypes, 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 and
+tenuirostres, among birds; the coleoptera, (bug, louse, flea,
+&amp;c.) among insects; the gastrobranchus, among fishes; are
+examples which will illustrate the special characters of this
+type.&nbsp; These are smallness, particularly in the head and
+mouth, feebleness, and want of offensive protection, defect of
+organs of mastication, considerable powers of swift movement, and
+(often) a parasitic mode of living; while of negative qualities,
+there are, besides, indisposition to domestication, and an
+unsuitableness to serve as human food.</p>
+<p>The rasorial type comprehends most of the animals which become
+domesticated and useful to man, as, first, the fowls which give a
+name to the type, the ungulata, and more particularly the
+ruminantia, among quadrupeds, and the dog among the
+fer&aelig;.&nbsp; Gentleness, familiarity with man, and a
+peculiar approach to human intelligence, are the leading mental
+characteristics of animals of this type.&nbsp; Amongst external
+characters, we generally find power of limbs and feet for
+locomotion on land, (to which the rasorial type is confined,)
+abundant tail and ornaments for the head, whether in the form of
+tufts, crests, horns, or bony excrescences.&nbsp; In the animal
+kingdom, the mollusca are the rasorial type, which, however, only
+shews itself there in their soft and sluggish character, and
+their being very generally edible.&nbsp; In the ptilota, or
+winged insects, the hymenopterous are the rasorial type, and it
+is not therefore surprising to find amongst them the ants and
+bees, &ldquo;the most social, intelligent, and in the latter
+case, most useful to man, of all the annulose animals.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As yet the speculations on representation are imperfect, in
+consequence of the novelty of the doctrine, and the defective
+state of our knowledge of animated nature.&nbsp; It has, however,
+been so fully proved in the aves, and traced so clearly in other
+parts of the animal kingdom, and as a general feature of that
+part of nature, that hardly a doubt can exist of its being
+universally applicable.&nbsp; Even in the lowly forms of the
+acrita, (polypes,) the suctorial type of the animal kingdom,
+representation has been discerned, and with some remarkable
+results as to the history of our world.&nbsp; The acrita were the
+first forms of animal life upon earth, the starting point of that
+great branch of organization.&nbsp; Now, this sub-kingdom
+consists, like the rest, of five groups, (classes,) and these are
+respectively representations of the acrita itself, and the other
+four sub-kingdoms, which had not come into existence when the
+acrita were formed.&nbsp; The polypi vaginati, in the crustaceous
+covering of the living mass, and their more or less articulated
+structure, represent the <i>annulosa</i>.&nbsp; In the radiated
+forms of the rotifera, and the simple structure of the polypi
+rudes, we are reminded of the <i>radiata</i>.&nbsp; The
+<i>mollusca</i> are typified in the soft, mucous, sluggish
+intestina.&nbsp; And, finally, in the fleshy living mass which
+surrounds the bony and hollow axis of the polypi natantes, we
+have a sketch of the <i>vertebrata</i>.&nbsp; The acrita thus
+appear as a prophecy of the higher events of animal
+development.&nbsp; They shew that the nobler orders of being,
+including man himself, were contemplated from the first, and came
+into existence by virtue of a law, the operation of which had
+commenced ages before their forms were realized.</p>
+<p>The system of representation is therefore to be regarded as
+<i>a powerful additional proof of the hypothesis of organic
+progress by virtue of law</i>.&nbsp; It establishes the unity of
+animated nature and the definite character of its entire
+constitution.&nbsp; It enables us to see how, under the flowing
+robes of nature, where all looks arbitrary and accidental, there
+is an artificiality of the most rigid kind.&nbsp; The natural, we
+now perceive, sinks into and merges in a Higher Artificial.&nbsp;
+To adopt a comparison more apt than dignified, we may be said to
+be placed here as insects are in a garden of the old style.&nbsp;
+Our first unassisted view is limited, and we perceive only the
+irregularities of the minute surface, and single shrubs which
+appear arbitrarily scattered.&nbsp; But our view at length
+extending and becoming more comprehensive, we begin to see
+parterres balancing each other, trees, statues, and arbours
+placed symmetrically, and that the whole is an assemblage of
+parts mutually reflective.&nbsp; It can scarcely be necessary to
+point to the inference hence arising with regard to the
+origination of nature in some Power, of which man&rsquo;s mind is
+a faint and humble representation.&nbsp; The insects of the
+garden, supposing them to be invested with reasoning power, and
+aware how artificial are their own works, might of course very
+reasonably conclude that, being in its totality an artificial
+object, the garden was the work of some maker or artificer.&nbsp;
+And so also must we conclude, when we attain a knowledge of the
+artificiality which is at the basis of nature, that nature is
+wholly the production of a Being resembling, but infinitely
+greater than ourselves.</p>
+<p>Organic beings are, then, bound together in development, and
+in a system of both affinities and analogies.&nbsp; Now, it will
+be asked, does this agree with what we know of the geographical
+distribution of organic beings, and of the history of organic
+progress as delineated by geology?&nbsp; Let us first advert to
+the geographical question.</p>
+<p>Plants, as is well known, require various kinds of soil, forms
+of geographical surface, climate, and other conditions, for their
+existence.&nbsp; And it is everywhere found that, however
+isolated a particular spot may be with regard to these
+conditions,&mdash;as a mountain top in a torrid country, the
+marsh round a salt spring far inland, or an island placed far
+apart in the ocean,&mdash;appropriate plants have there taken up
+their abode.&nbsp; But the torrid zone divides the two temperate
+regions from each other by the space of more than forty-six
+degrees, and the torrid and temperate zones together form a much
+broader line of division between the two arctic regions.&nbsp;
+The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Persian Gulf, also
+divide the various portions of continent in the torrid and
+temperate zones from each other.&nbsp; Australia is also divided
+by a broad sea from the continent of Asia.&nbsp; Thus there are
+various portions of the earth separated from each other in such a
+way as to preclude anything like a general communication of the
+seeds of their respective plants towards each other.&nbsp; Hence
+arises an interesting question&mdash;Are the plants of the
+various isolated regions which enjoy a parity of climate and
+other conditions, identical or the reverse?&nbsp; The answer
+is&mdash;that in such regions the vegetation bears a general
+resemblance, but the <i>species</i> are nearly all different, and
+there is even, in a considerable measure, a diversity of
+families.</p>
+<p>The general facts have been thus stated: in the arctic and
+antarctic regions, and in those parts of lower latitudes, which,
+from their elevation, possess the same cold climate, there is
+always a similar or analogous vegetation, but few species are
+common to the various situations.&nbsp; In like manner, the
+intertropical vegetation of Asia, Africa, and America, are
+specifically different, though generally similar.&nbsp; The
+southern region of America is equally diverse from that of
+Africa, a country similar in clime, but separated by a vast
+extent of ocean.&nbsp; The vegetation of Australia, another
+region similarly placed in respect of clime, is even more
+peculiar.&nbsp; These facts are the more remarkable when we
+discover that, in most instances, the plants of one region have
+thriven when transplanted to another of parallel clime.&nbsp;
+This would shew that parity of conditions does not lead to a
+parity of productions so exact as to include identity of species,
+or even genera.&nbsp; Besides the various isolated regions here
+enumerated, there are some others indicated by naturalists as
+exhibiting a vegetation equally peculiar.&nbsp; Some of these are
+isolated by mountains, or the interposition of sandy
+wastes.&nbsp; For example, the temperate region of the elder
+continent is divided about the centre of Asia, and the east of
+that line is different from the west.&nbsp; So also is the same
+region divided in North America by the Rocky Mountains.&nbsp;
+Abyssinia and Nubia constitute another distinct botanical
+region.&nbsp; De Candolle enumerates in all twenty well-marked
+portions of the earth&rsquo;s surface which are peculiar with
+respect to vegetation; a number which would be greatly increased
+if remote islands and isolated mountain ranges were to be
+included.</p>
+<p>When we come to the zoology, we find precisely similar
+results, excepting that man (with, perhaps, some of the less
+conspicuous forms of being) is universal, and that several
+tribes, as the bear and dog, appear to have passed by the land
+connexion from the arctic regions of the eastern to those of the
+western hemisphere.&nbsp; &ldquo;With these exceptions,&rdquo;
+says Dr. Prichard, &ldquo;and without any others, as far as
+zoological researches have yet gone, it may be asserted that no
+individual species are common to distant regions.&nbsp; In
+parallel climates, analogous species replace each other;
+sometimes, but not frequently, the same genus is found in two
+separate continents; but the species which are natives of one
+region are not identical with corresponding races indigenous in
+the opposite hemisphere.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A similar result arises when we compare the three great
+intertropical regions, as well as the extreme spaces of the three
+great continents, which advance into the temperate climates of
+the southern hemisphere.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thus, the tribes of simi&aelig;, (monkeys,) of the dog
+and cat kinds, of pachyderms, including elephants, tapirs,
+rhinoceroses, hogs, of bats, of saurian and ophidian reptiles, as
+well of birds and other terrene animals, are all different in the
+three great continents.&nbsp; In the lower departments of the
+mammiferous family, we find that the bruta, or edendata, (sloths,
+armadillos, &amp;c.,) of Africa, are differently organized from
+those of America, and these again from the tribes found in the
+Malayan archipelago and Terra Australis.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation255"></a><a href="#footnote255"
+class="citation">[255]</a></p>
+<p>It does not appear that the diversity between the similar
+regions of Africa, Asia, and America, is occasioned in all
+instances by any disqualification of these countries to support
+precisely the same genera or species.&nbsp; The ox, horse, goat,
+&amp;c., of the elder continent have thriven and extended
+themselves in the new, and many of the indigenous tribes of
+America would no doubt flourish in corresponding climates in
+Europe, Asia, and Africa.&nbsp; It has, however, been remarked by
+naturalists unacquainted with the Macleay system, that the larger
+and more powerful animals of their respective orders belong to
+the elder continent, and that thus the animals of America, unlike
+the features of inanimate nature, appear to be upon a small
+scale.&nbsp; The swiftest and most agile animals, and a large
+proportion of those most useful to man, are also natives of the
+elder continent.&nbsp; On the other hand, the bulk of the
+edentata, a group remarkable for defects and meanness of
+organization, are American.&nbsp; The zoology of America may be
+said, upon the whole, to recede from that of Asia, &ldquo;and
+perhaps in a greater degree,&rdquo; adds Dr. Prichard,
+&ldquo;from that of Africa.&rdquo;&nbsp; A much greater recession
+is, however, observed in both the botany and zoology of
+Australia.</p>
+<p>There &ldquo;we do not find, in the great masses of
+vegetation, either the majesty of the virgin forests of America,
+or the variety and elegance of those of Asia, or the delicacy and
+freshness of the woods of our temperate countries of
+Europe.&nbsp; The vegetation is generally gloomy and sad; it has
+the aspect of our evergreens or heaths; the plants are for the
+most part woody; the leaves of nearly all the plants are linear,
+lanceolated, small, coriaceous, and spinescent.&nbsp; The
+grasses, which elsewhere are generally soft and flexible,
+participate in the stiffness of the other vegetables.&nbsp; The
+greater part of the plants of New Holland belong to new genera;
+and those included in the genera already known are of new
+species.&nbsp; The natural families which prevail are those of
+the heaths, the prote&aelig;, composit&aelig;, leguminos&aelig;,
+and myrthoide&aelig;; the larger trees all belong to the last
+family.&rdquo; <a name="citation257"></a><a href="#footnote257"
+class="citation">[257]</a></p>
+<p>The prevalent animals of Australia are not less
+peculiar.&nbsp; It is well known that none above the marsupialia,
+or pouched animals, are native to it.&nbsp; The most conspicuous
+are these marsupials, which exist in great varieties here, though
+unknown in the elder continent, and only found in a few mean
+forms in America.&nbsp; Next to them are the monotremata, which
+are entirely peculiar to this portion of the earth.&nbsp; Now
+these are animals at the bottom of the mammiferous class,
+adjoining to that of birds, of whose character and organization
+the monotremata largely partake, the ornithorynchus presenting
+the bill and feet of a duck, producing its young in eggs, and
+having, like birds, a clavicle between the two shoulders.&nbsp;
+The birds of Australia vary in structure and plumage, but all
+have some singularity about them&mdash;the swan, for instance, is
+black.&nbsp; The country abounds in reptiles, and the prevalent
+fishes are of the early kinds, having a cartilaginous
+structure.</p>
+<p>Altogether, the plants and animals of this minor continent
+convey the impression of an early system of things, such as might
+be displayed in other parts of the earth about the time of the
+oolite.&nbsp; In connexion with this circumstance, it is a fact
+of some importance, that the geognostic character of Australia,
+its vast arid plains, its little diversified surface and
+consequent paucity of streams, and the very slight development of
+volcanic rock on its surface, seem to indicate a system of
+physical conditions, such as we may suppose to have existed
+elsewhere in the oolitic era: perhaps we see the chalk formation
+preparing there in the vast coral beds frontiering the
+coast.&nbsp; Australia thus appears as a portion of the earth
+which has, from some unknown causes, been belated in its physical
+and organic development.&nbsp; And certainly the greater part of
+its surface is not fitted to be an advantageous place of
+residence for beings above the marsupialia, and judging from
+analogy, it may yet be subjected to a series of changes in the
+highest degree inconvenient to any human beings who may have
+settled upon it.</p>
+<p>The general conclusions regarding the geography of organic
+nature, may be thus stated.&nbsp; (1.) There are numerous
+distinct foci of organic production throughout the earth.&nbsp;
+(2.) These have everywhere advanced in accordance with the local
+conditions of climate &amp;c., as far as at least the class and
+order are concerned, a diversity taking place in the lower
+gradations.&nbsp; No physical or geographical reason appearing
+for this diversity, we are led to infer that, (3,) it is the
+result of minute and inappreciable causes giving the law of
+organic development a particular direction in the lower
+subdivisions of the two kingdoms.&nbsp; (4.) Development has not
+gone on to equal results in the various continents, being most
+advanced in the eastern continent, next in the western, and least
+in Australia, this inequality being perhaps the result of the
+comparative antiquity of the various regions, geologically and
+geographically.</p>
+<p>It must at the same time be admitted that the line of organic
+development has nowhere required for its advance the whole of the
+families comprehended in the two kingdoms, seeing that some of
+these are confined to one continent, and some to another, without
+a conceivable possibility of one having been connected with the
+other in the way of ancestry.&nbsp; The two great families of
+quadrumana, cebid&aelig; and simiad&aelig;, are a noted instance,
+the one being exclusively American, while the other belongs
+entirely to the old world.&nbsp; There are many other cases in
+which the full circular group can only be completed by taking
+subdivisions from various continents.&nbsp; This would seem to
+imply that, while the entire system is so remarkable for its
+unity, it has nevertheless been produced in lines geographically
+detached, these lines perhaps consisting of particular typical
+groups placed in an independent succession, or of two or more of
+these groups.&nbsp; And for this idea there is, even in the
+present imperfect state of our knowledge of animated nature, some
+countenance in ascertained facts, the birds of Australia, for
+example, being chiefly of the suctorial type, while it may be
+presumed that the observation as to the predominance of the
+useful animals in the Old World, is not much different from
+saying that the rasorial type is there peculiarly abundant.&nbsp;
+It does not appear that the idea of independent lines, consisting
+of particular types, or sets of types, is necessarily
+inconsistent with the general hypothesis, as nothing yet
+ascertained of the Macleay system forbids their having an
+independent set of affinities.&nbsp; On this subject, however,
+there is as yet much obscurity, and it must be left to future
+inquirers to clear it up.</p>
+<p>We must now call to mind that the geographical distribution of
+plants and animals was very different in the geological ages from
+what it is now.&nbsp; Down to a time not long antecedent to man,
+the same vegetation overspread every clime, and a similar
+uniformity marked the zoology.&nbsp; This is conceived by M.
+Brogniart, with great plausibility, to have been the result of a
+uniformity of climate, produced by the as yet unexhausted effect
+of the internal heat of the earth upon its surface; whereas
+climate has since depended chiefly on external sources of heat,
+as modified by the various meteorological influences.&nbsp;
+However the early uniform climate was produced, certain it is
+that, from about the close of the geological epoch, plants and
+animals have been dispersed over the globe with a regard to their
+particular characters, and specimens of both are found so
+isolated in particular situations, as utterly to exclude the idea
+that they came thither from any common centre.&nbsp; It may be
+asked,&mdash;Considering that, in the geological epoch, species
+are not limited to particular regions, and that since the close
+of that epoch, they are very peculiarly limited, are we to
+presume the present organisms of the world to have been created
+<i>ab initio</i> after that time?&nbsp; To this it may be
+answered,&mdash;Not necessarily, as it so happens that animals
+begin to be much varied, or to appear in a considerable variety
+of species, towards the close of the geological history.&nbsp; It
+may have been that the multitudes of locally peculiar species
+only came into being after the uniform climate had passed
+away.&nbsp; It may have only been when a varied climate arose,
+that the originally few species branched off into the present
+extensive variety.</p>
+<p>A question of a very interesting kind will now probably arise
+in the reader&rsquo;s mind&mdash;<i>What place or status is
+assigned to man in the new natural system</i>.&nbsp; Before going
+into this inquiry, it is necessary to advert to several
+particulars of the natural system not yet noticed.</p>
+<p>It is necessary, in particular, to ascertain the grades which
+exist in the classification of animals.&nbsp; In the line of the
+aves, Mr. Swainson finds these to be nine, the species pica, for
+example, being thus indicated:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Kingdom</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Animalia.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Sub-kingdom</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Vertebrata.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Class</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Aves.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Order</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Incessores.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Tribe</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Conirostres.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Family</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Corvid&aelig;.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Sub-family</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Corvin&aelig;.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Genus</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Corvus.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Sub-genus, or species</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Pica.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>This brings us down to species, the subdivision where
+intermarriage or breeding is usually considered as natural to
+animals, and where a resemblance of offspring to parents is
+generally persevered in.&nbsp; The dog, for instance, is a
+species, because all dogs can breed together, and the progeny
+partakes of the appearances of the parents.&nbsp; The human race
+is held as a species, primarily for the same reasons.&nbsp;
+Species, however, is liable to another subdivision, which
+naturalists call variety; and variety appears to be subject to
+exactly the same system of <i>representation</i> which have been
+traced in species and higher denominations.&nbsp; In canis, for
+instance, the bull-dog and mastiff represent the ferocious
+sub-typical group; the waterdog is natatorial; we see the speed
+and length of muzzle of the suctorial group in the greyhound; and
+the bushy tail and gentle and serviceable character of the
+rasorial in the shepherd&rsquo;s dog and spaniel.&nbsp; Even the
+striped and spotted skin of the tiger and panther is reproduced
+in the more ferocious kind of dogs&mdash;an indication of a
+fundamental connexion between physical and mental qualities which
+we have also seen in the zebra, and which is likewise displayed
+in the predominance of a yellow colour in the vultures and owls
+in common with the lion and his congeners.</p>
+<p>It is by no means clearly made out that this system of nine
+gradations over and above that of variety applies in all
+departments of nature.&nbsp; On the contrary, even Mr. Swainson
+gives series in which several of them are omitted.&nbsp; It may
+be that, in some departments of nature, variation from the class
+or order has gone down into fewer shades than in others; or it
+may be, that many of the variations have not survived till our
+era, or have not been as yet detected by naturalists; in either
+of which cases there may be a necessity for shortening the series
+by the omission of one or two grades, as for instance
+<i>tribe</i> or <i>sub-family</i>.&nbsp; This, however, is much
+to be regretted, as it introduces an irregularity into the
+natural system, and consequently throws a difficulty and doubt in
+the way of our investigating it.&nbsp; With these preliminary
+remarks, I shall proceed to inquire what is the natural status of
+man.</p>
+<p>That man&rsquo;s place is to be looked for in the class
+mammalia and sub-kingdom vertebrata admits of no doubt, from his
+possessing both the characters on which these divisions are
+founded.&nbsp; When we descend, however, below the <i>class</i>,
+we find no settled views on the subject amongst
+naturalists.&nbsp; Mr. Swainson, who alone has given a review of
+the animal kingdom on the Macleay system, unfortunately writes on
+this subject in a manner which excites a suspicion as to his
+judgment.&nbsp; His arrangement of the first or typical order of
+the mammalia is therefore to be received with great
+hesitation.&nbsp; It is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Typical</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Quadrumana</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Pre-eminently organized for grasping.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Sub-typical</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Fer&aelig;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Claws retractile; carnivorous.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Natatorial</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Cetacea</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Pre-eminently aquatic; feet very short.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Suctorial</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Glires</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Muzzle lengthened and pointed.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Rasorial</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Ungulata</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Crests and other processes on the head.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>He then takes the quadrumana, and places it in the following
+arrangement:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Typical</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Simiad&aelig;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>(Monkeys of Old World.)</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Sub-typical</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Cebid&aelig;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>(Monkeys of New World.)</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Natatorial</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Unknown</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Suctorial</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Vespertilionid&aelig;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>(Bats.)</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Rasorial</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Lemurid&aelig;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>(Lemurs.)</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>He considers the simiad&aelig; as a complete circle, and
+argues thence that there is no room in the range of the animal
+kingdom for man.&nbsp; Man, he says, is not a constituent part of
+any circle, for, if he were, there ought to be other animals on
+each hand having affinity to him, whereas there are none, the
+resemblance of the orangs being one of mere analogy.&nbsp; Mr.
+Swainson therefore considers our race as standing apart, and
+forming a link between the unintelligent order of beings and the
+angels!&nbsp; And this in spite of the glaring fact that, in our
+teeth, hands, and other features grounded on by naturalists as
+characteristic, we do not differ more from the simiad&aelig; than
+the bats do from the lemurs&mdash;in spite also of that
+resemblance of analogy to the orangs which he himself admits, and
+which, at the least, must be held to imply a certain
+relation.&nbsp; He also overlooks that, though there may be no
+room for man in the circle of the simiad&aelig;, (this, indeed,
+is quite true,) there may be in the order, where he actually
+leaves a place entirely blank, or only to be filled up, as he
+suggests, by mermen! <a name="citation266"></a><a
+href="#footnote266" class="citation">[266]</a>&nbsp; Another
+argument in his arrangement is, that it leaves the grades of
+classification very much abridged, there being at the most seven
+instead of nine.&nbsp; But serious argument on a theory so
+preposterous may be considered as nearly thrown away.&nbsp; I
+shall therefore at once proceed to suggest a new arrangement of
+this portion of the animal kingdom, in which man is allowed the
+place to which he is zoologically entitled.</p>
+<p>I propose that the typical order of the mammalia should be
+designated cheirotheria, from the sole character which is
+universal amongst them, their possessing hands, and with a regard
+to that pre-eminent qualification for grasping which has been
+ascribed to them&mdash;an analogy to the perching habit of the
+typical order of birds, which is worthy of particular
+notice.&nbsp; The tribes of the cheirotheria I arrange as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Typical</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Bimana.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Sub-typical</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Simiad&aelig;.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Natatorial</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Vespertilionid&aelig;.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Suctorial</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Lemurid&aelig;.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Rasorial</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Cebid&aelig;.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>Here man is put into the typical place, as the genuine head,
+not only of this order, but of the whole animal world.&nbsp; The
+double affinity which is requisite is obtained, for here he has
+the simiad&aelig; on one hand, and the cebid&aelig; on the
+other.&nbsp; The five tribes of the order are completed, the
+vespertilionid&aelig; being shifted (provisionally) into the
+natatorial place, for which their appropriateness is so far
+evidenced by the aquatic habits of several of the tribe, and the
+lemurid&aelig; into the suctorial, to which their length of
+muzzle and remarkable saltatory power are highly suitable.&nbsp;
+At the same time, the simiad&aelig; are degraded from the typical
+place, to which they have no sort of pretension, and placed where
+their mean and mischievous character seem to require; the
+cebid&aelig; again being assigned that situation which their
+comparatively inoffensive dispositions, their arboreal habits,
+and their extraordinary development of the tail, (which with them
+is like a fifth hand,) render so proper.</p>
+<p>The zoological status thus assigned to the human race is
+precisely what might be expected.&nbsp; In order to understand
+its full value, it is necessary to observe how the various type
+peculiarities operate in fixing the character of the animals
+ranked in them.&nbsp; It is easy to conceive that they must be,
+in some instances, much mixed up with each other, and
+consequently obscured.&nbsp; If an animal, for example, is the
+suctorial member of a circle of species, forming the natatorial
+type of genera, forming a family or sub-family which in its turn
+is rasorial, its qualities must evidently be greatly mingled and
+ill to define.&nbsp; 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 again the rapacious or sub-typical group of its
+order, we may expect to find the qualities of that group exalted
+or intensified, and accordingly made the more conspicuous.&nbsp;
+Such is really the case with the vultures, in the rapacious
+birds, a family remarkable above all of their order for their
+carnivorous and foul habits.&nbsp; So, also, if we take the
+typical group of the birds, the incessores or perchers, and look
+in it for its typical group, the conirostres, and seek there
+again for the typical family of that group, the corvid&aelig;, we
+may expect to find a very marked superiority in organization and
+character.&nbsp; Such is really the case.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+crow,&rdquo; says Mr. Swainson, &ldquo;unites in itself a greater
+number of properties than are to be found individually in any
+other genus of birds; as if in fact it had taken from all the
+other orders a portion of their peculiar qualities, for the
+purpose of exhibiting in what manner they could be
+combined.&nbsp; From the rapacious birds this &ldquo;type of
+types,&rdquo; as the crow has been justly called, takes the power
+of soaring in the air, and of seizing upon living birds, like the
+hawks, while its habit of devouring putrid substances, and
+picking out the eyes of young animals, is borrowed from the
+vultures.&nbsp; From the scansorial or climbing order it takes
+the faculty of picking the ground, and discovering its food when
+hidden from the eye, while the parrot family gives it the taste
+for vegetable food, and furnishes it with great cunning,
+sagacity, and powers of imitation, even to counterfeiting the
+human voice.&nbsp; Next come the order of waders, who impart
+their quota to the perfection of the crow by giving it great
+powers of flight, and perfect facility in walking, such being
+among the chief attributes of the suctorial order.&nbsp; Lastly,
+the aquatic birds contribute their portion, by giving this
+terrestrial bird the power of feeding not only on fish, which are
+their peculiar food, but actually of occasionally catching it. <a
+name="citation270"></a><a href="#footnote270"
+class="citation">[270]</a>&nbsp; In this wonderful manner do we
+find the crow partially invested with the united properties of
+all other birds, while in its own order, that of the incessores
+or perchers, it stands the pre-eminent type.&nbsp; We cannot also
+fail to regard it as a remarkable proof of the superior
+organization and character of the corvid&aelig;, that they are
+adapted for all climates, and accordingly found all over the
+world.</p>
+<p>Mr. Swainson&rsquo;s description of the zoological status of
+the crow, written without the least design of throwing any light
+upon that of man, evidently does so in a remarkable degree.&nbsp;
+It prepares us to expect in the place among the mammalia,
+corresponding to that of the corvid&aelig; in the aves, a being
+or set of beings possessing a remarkable concentration of
+qualities from all the other groups of their order, but in
+general character as far above the corvid&aelig; as a typical
+group is above an aberrant one, the mammalia above the
+aves.&nbsp; Can any of the simiad&aelig; pretend to such a place,
+narrowly and imperfectly endowed as these creatures are&mdash;a
+mean reflection apparently of something higher?&nbsp; Assuredly
+not, and in this consideration alone Mr. Swainson&rsquo;s
+arrangement must fall to the ground.&nbsp; To fill worthily so
+lofty a station in the animated families man alone is
+competent.&nbsp; In him only is to be found that concentration of
+qualities from all the other groups of his order which has been
+described as marking the corvid&aelig;.&nbsp; That grasping
+power, which has been selected as the leading physical quality of
+his order, is nowhere so beautifully or so powerfully developed
+as in his hand.&nbsp; The intelligence and teachableness of the
+simiad&aelig; rise to a climax in his pre-eminent mental
+nature.&nbsp; His sub-analogy to the fer&aelig; is marked by his
+canine teeth, and the universality of his rapacity, for where is
+the department of animated nature which he does not without
+scruple sacrifice to his convenience?&nbsp; With sanguinary, he
+has also gentle and domesticable dispositions, thus reflecting
+the characters of the ungulata, (the rasorial type of the class,)
+to which we perhaps see a further analogy in the use which he
+makes of the surface of the earth as a source of food.&nbsp; To
+the aquatic type his love of maritime adventure very readily
+assimilates him; and how far the suctorial is represented in his
+nature it is hardly necessary to say.&nbsp; As the corvid&aelig;,
+too, are found in every part of the earth&mdash;almost the only
+one of the inferior animals which has been acknowledged as
+universal&mdash;so do we find man.&nbsp; He thrives in all
+climates, and with regard to style of living, can adapt himself
+to an infinitely greater diversity of circumstances than any
+other animated creature.</p>
+<p>Man, then, considered zoologically, and without regard to the
+distinct character assigned to him by theology, simply takes his
+place as the type of all types of the animal kingdom, the true
+and unmistakable head of animated nature upon this earth.&nbsp;
+It will readily occur that some more particular investigations
+into the ranks of types might throw additional light on
+man&rsquo;s status, and perhaps his nature; and such light we may
+hope to obtain when the philosophy of zoology shall have been
+studied as it deserves.&nbsp; Perhaps some such diagram as the
+one given on the next page will be found to be an approximation
+to the expression of the merely natural or secular grade of man
+in comparison with other animals.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p274b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Diagram"
+title=
+"Diagram"
+src="images/p274s.jpg" />
+</a> <a name="citation274"></a><a href="#footnote274"
+class="citation">[274]</a></p>
+<p>Here the upright lines, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, may represent the
+comparative height and grade of organization of both the five
+sub-kingdoms, and the five classes of each of these; 5 being the
+vertebrata in the one case, and the mammalia in the other.&nbsp;
+The difference between the height of the line 1 and the line 5
+gives an idea of the difference of being the head type of the
+aves, (corvid&aelig;,) and the head type of the mammalia,
+(bimana;) <i>a. b. c. d</i>.&nbsp; 5, again, represent the five
+groups of the first order of the mammalia; <i>a</i>, being the
+organic structure of the highest simia, and 5, that of man.&nbsp;
+A set of tangent lines of this kind may yet prove one of the most
+satisfactory means of ascertaining the height and breadth of the
+psychology of our species.</p>
+<p>It may be asked,&mdash;Is the existing human race the only
+species designed to occupy the grade to which it is here
+referred?&nbsp; Such a question evidently ought not to be
+answered rashly; and I shall therefore confine myself to the
+admission that, judging by analogy, we might expect to see
+several varieties of the being, homo.&nbsp; There is no other
+family approaching to this in importance, which presents but one
+species.&nbsp; The corvid&aelig;, our parallel in aves, consist
+of several distinct genera and sub-genera.&nbsp; It is startling
+to find such an appearance of imperfection in the circle to which
+man belongs, and the ideas which rise in consequence are not less
+startling.&nbsp; Is our race but the initial of the grand
+crowning type?&nbsp; Are there yet to be species superior to us
+in organization, purer in feeling, more powerful in device and
+act, and who shall take a rule over us!&nbsp; There is in this
+nothing improbable on other grounds.&nbsp; The present race, rude
+and impulsive as it is, is perhaps the best adapted to the
+present state of things in the world; but the external world goes
+through slow and gradual changes, which may leave it in time a
+much serener field of existence.&nbsp; There may then be occasion
+for a nobler type of humanity, which shall complete the
+zoological circle on this planet, and realize some of the dreams
+of the purest spirits of the present race.</p>
+<h2><a name="page277"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+277</span>EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> human race is known to consist
+of numerous nations, displaying considerable differences of
+external form and colour, and speaking in general different
+languages.&nbsp; This has been the case since the commencement of
+written record.&nbsp; It is also ascertained that the external
+peculiarities of particular nations do not rapidly change.&nbsp;
+There is rather a tendency to a persistency of type in all lines
+of descent, insomuch that a subordinate admixture of various type
+is usually obliterated in a few generations.&nbsp; Numerous as
+the varieties are, they have all been found classifiable under
+five leading ones:&mdash;1.&nbsp; The Caucasian or Indo-European,
+which extends from India into Europe and Northern Africa;
+2.&nbsp; The Mongolian, which occupies Northern and Eastern Asia;
+3.&nbsp; The Malayan, which extends from the Ultra-Gangetic
+Peninsula into the numerous islands of the South Sea and Pacific;
+4.&nbsp; The Negro, chiefly confined to Africa; 5.&nbsp; The
+aboriginal American.&nbsp; Each of these is distinguished by
+certain general features of so marked a kind, as to give rise to
+a supposition that they have had distinct or independent
+origins.&nbsp; Of these peculiarities, colour is the most
+conspicuous: the Caucasians are generally white, the Mongolians
+yellow, the Negroes black, and the Americans red.&nbsp; The
+opposition of two of these in particular, white and black, is so
+striking, that of them, at least, it seems almost necessary to
+suppose separate origins.&nbsp; Of late years, however, the whole
+of this question has been subjected to a rigorous investigation,
+and it has been successfully shewn that the human race might have
+had one origin, for anything that can be inferred from external
+peculiarities.</p>
+<p>It appears from this inquiry, <a name="citation278"></a><a
+href="#footnote278" class="citation">[278]</a> that colour and
+other physiological characters are of a more superficial and
+accidental nature than was at one time supposed.&nbsp; One fact
+is at the very first extremely startling, that there are nations,
+such as the inhabitants of Hindostan, known to be one in descent,
+which nevertheless contain groups of people of almost all shades
+of colour, and likewise discrepant in other of those important
+features on which much stress has been laid.&nbsp; Some other
+facts, which I may state in brief terms, are scarcely less
+remarkable.&nbsp; In Africa, there are Negro nations,&mdash;that
+is, nations of intensely black complexion, as the Jolofs,
+Mandingoes, and Kafirs, whose features and limbs are as elegant
+as those of the best European nations.&nbsp; While we have no
+proof of Negro races becoming white in the course of generations,
+the converse may be held as established, for there are Arab and
+Jewish families of ancient settlement in Northern Africa, who
+have become as black as the other inhabitants.&nbsp; There are
+also facts which seem to shew the possibility of a natural
+transition by generation from the black to the white complexion,
+and from the white to the black.&nbsp; True whites (apart from
+Albinoes) are not unfrequently born among the Negroes, and the
+tendency to this singularity is transmitted in families.&nbsp;
+There is, at least, one authentic instance of a set of perfectly
+black children being born to an Arab couple, in whose ancestry no
+such blood had intermingled.&nbsp; This occurred in the valley of
+the Jordan, where it is remarkable that the Arab population in
+general have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair,
+than any other tribes of the same nation. <a
+name="citation280"></a><a href="#footnote280"
+class="citation">[280]</a></p>
+<p>The style of living is ascertained to have a powerful effect
+in modifying the human figure in the course of generations, and
+this even in its osseous structure.&nbsp; About two hundred years
+ago, a number of people were driven by a barbarous policy from
+the counties of Antrim and Down, in Ireland, towards the
+sea-coast, where they have ever since been settled, but in
+unusually miserable circumstances, even for Ireland; and the
+consequence is, that they exhibit peculiar features of the most
+repulsive kind, projecting jaws with large open mouths, depressed
+noses, high cheek bones, and bow legs, together with an extremely
+diminutive stature.&nbsp; These, with an abnormal slenderness of
+the limbs, are the outward marks of a low and barbarous condition
+all over the world; it is particularly seen in the Australian
+aborigines.&nbsp; On the other hand, the beauty of the higher
+ranks in England is very remarkable, being, in the main, as
+clearly a result of good external conditions.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Coarse, unwholesome, and ill-prepared food,&rdquo; says
+Buffon, &ldquo;makes the human race degenerate.&nbsp; All those
+people who live miserably are ugly and ill-made.&nbsp; Even in
+France, the country people are not so beautiful as those who live
+in towns; and I have often remarked that in those villages where
+the people are richer and better fed than in others, the men are
+likewise more handsome, and have better
+countenances.&rdquo;&nbsp; He might have added, that elegant and
+commodious dwellings, cleanly habits, comfortable clothing, and
+being exposed to the open air only as much as health requires,
+cooperate with food in increasing the elegance of a race of human
+beings.</p>
+<p>Subject only to these modifying agencies, there is, as has
+been said, a remarkable persistency in national features and
+forms, insomuch that a single individual thrown into a family
+different from himself is absorbed in it, and all trace of him
+lost after a few generations.&nbsp; But while there is such a
+persistency to ordinary observation, it would also appear that
+nature has a power of producing new varieties, though this is
+only done rarely.&nbsp; Such novelties of type abound in the
+vegetable world, are seen more rarely in the animal circle, and
+perhaps are least frequent of occurrence in our own race.&nbsp;
+There is a noted instance in the production, on a New England
+farm, of a variety of sheep with unusually short legs, which was
+kept up by breeding, on account of the convenience in that
+country of having sheep which are unable to jump over low
+fences.&nbsp; The starting and main taming a <i>breed</i> of
+cattle, that is, a variety marked by some desirable peculiarity,
+are familiar to a large class of persons.&nbsp; It appears only
+necessary, when a variety has been thus produced, that a union
+should take place between individuals similarly characterized, in
+order to establish it.&nbsp; Early in the last century, a man
+named Lambert, was born in Suffolk, with semi-horny excrescences
+of about half an inch long, thickly growing all over his
+body.&nbsp; The peculiarity was transmitted to his children, and
+was last heard of in a third generation.&nbsp; The peculiarity of
+six fingers on the hand and six toes on the feet, appears in like
+manner in families which have no record or tradition of such a
+peculiarity having affected them at any former period, and it is
+then sometimes seen to descend through several generations.&nbsp;
+It was Mr. Lawrence&rsquo;s opinion, that a pair, in which both
+parties were so distinguished, might be the progenitors of a new
+variety of the race who would be thus marked in all future
+time.&nbsp; It is not easy to surmise the causes which operate in
+producing such varieties.&nbsp; Perhaps they are simply types in
+nature, <i>possible to be realized under certain appropriate
+conditions</i>, but which conditions are such as altogether to
+elude notice.&nbsp; I might cite as examples of such possible
+types, the rise of whites amongst the Negroes, the occurrence of
+the family of black children in the valley of the Jordan, and the
+comparatively frequent birth of red-haired children amongst not
+only the Mongolian and Malayan families, but amongst the
+Negroes.&nbsp; We are ignorant of the laws of variety-production;
+but we see it going on as a principle in nature, and it is
+obviously favourable to the supposition that all the great
+families of men are of one stock.</p>
+<p>The tendency of the modern study of the languages of nations
+is to the same point.&nbsp; The last fifty years have seen this
+study elevated to the character of a science, and the light which
+it throws upon the history of mankind is of a most remarkable
+nature.</p>
+<p>Following a natural analogy, philologists have thrown the
+earth&rsquo;s languages into a kind of classification: a number
+bearing a considerable resemblance to each other, and in general
+geographically near, are styled a <i>group</i> or
+<i>sub-family</i>; several groups, again, are associated as a
+<i>family</i>, with regard to more general features of
+resemblance.&nbsp; Six families are spoken of.</p>
+<p>The Indo-European family nearly coincides in geographical
+limits with those which have been assigned to that variety of
+mankind which generally shews a fair complexion, called the
+Caucasian variety.&nbsp; It may be said to commence in India, and
+thence to stretch through Persia into Europe, the whole of which
+it occupies, excepting Hungary, the Basque provinces of Spain,
+and Finland.&nbsp; Its sub-families are the Sanskrit, or ancient
+language of India, the Persian, the Slavonic, Celtic, Gothic, and
+Pelasgian.&nbsp; The Slavonic includes the modern languages of
+Russia and Poland.&nbsp; 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
+our own Anglo-Saxon.&nbsp; I give the name of Pelasgian to the
+group scattered along the north shores of the Mediterranean, the
+Greek and Latin, including the modifications of the latter under
+the names of Italian, Spanish, &amp;c.&nbsp; The Celtic was from
+two to three thousand years ago, the speech of a considerable
+tribe dwelling in Western Europe; but these have since been
+driven before superior nations into a few corners, and are now
+only to be found in the highlands of Scotland, Ireland, Wales,
+Cornwall, and certain parts of France.&nbsp; The Gaelic of
+Scotland, Erse of Ireland, and the Welsh, are the only living
+branches of this sub-family of languages.</p>
+<p>The resemblances amongst languages are of two
+kinds,&mdash;identity of words, and identity of grammatical
+forms; the latter being now generally considered as the most
+important towards the argument.&nbsp; When we inquire into the
+first kind of affinity among the languages of the Indo-European
+family, we are surprised at the great number of common terms
+which exist amongst them, and these referring to such primary
+ideas, as to leave no doubt of their having all been derived from
+a common source.&nbsp; Colonel Vans Kennedy presents nine hundred
+words common to the Sanskrit and other languages of the same
+family.&nbsp; In the Sanskrit and Persian, we find several which
+require no sort of translation to an English reader, as
+<i>pader</i>, <i>mader</i>, <i>sunu</i>, <i>dokhter</i>,
+<i>brader</i>, <i>mand</i>, <i>vidhava</i>; likewise
+<i>asthi</i>, a bone, (Greek, <i>ostoun</i>;) <i>denta</i>, a
+tooth, (Latin, <i>dens</i>, <i>dentis</i>;) <i>eyeumen</i>, the
+eye; <i>brouwa</i>, the eye-brow, (German, <i>braue</i>;)
+<i>nasa</i>, the nose; <i>karu</i>, the hand, (Gr. <i>cheir</i>;)
+<i>genu</i>, the knee, (Lat. <i>genu</i>;) <i>ped</i>, the foot,
+(Lat. <i>pes</i>, <i>pedis</i>;) <i>hrti</i>, the heart;
+<i>jecur</i>, the liver, (Lat. <i>jecur</i>;) <i>stara</i>, a
+star; <i>gela</i>, cold, (Lat. <i>gelu</i>, ice;) <i>aghni</i>,
+fire, (Lat. <i>ignis</i>;) <i>dhara</i>, the earth, (Lat.
+<i>terra</i>, Gaelic, <i>tir</i>;) <i>arrivi</i>, a river;
+<i>nau</i>, a ship, (Gr. <i>naus</i>, Lat. <i>navis</i>;)
+<i>ghau</i>, a cow; <i>sarpam</i>, a serpent.</p>
+<p>The inferences from these verbal coincidences were confirmed
+in a striking manner when Bopp and others investigated the
+grammatical structure of this family of languages.&nbsp; Dr.
+Wiseman pronounces that the great philologist just named,
+&ldquo;by a minute and sagacious analysis of the Sanskrit verb,
+compared with the conjugational system of the other members of
+this family, left no doubt of their intimate and positive
+affinity.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was now discovered that the peculiar
+terminations or inflections by which persons are expressed
+throughout the verbs of nearly the whole of these languages, have
+their foundations in pronouns; the pronoun was simply placed at
+the end, and thus became an inflexion.&nbsp; &ldquo;By an
+analysis of the Sanskrit pronouns, the elements of those existing
+in all the other languages were cleared of their anomalies; the
+verb substantive, which in Latin is composed of fragments
+referable to two distinct roots, here found both existing in
+regular form; the Greek conjugations, with all their complicated
+machinery of middle voice, augments, and reduplications, were
+here found and illustrated in a variety of ways, which a few
+years ago would have appeared chimerical.&nbsp; Even our own
+language may sometimes receive light from the study of distant
+members of our family.&nbsp; Where, for instance, are we to seek
+for the root of our comparative <i>better</i>?&nbsp; Certainly
+not in its positive, good, nor in the Teutonic dialects in which
+the same anomaly exists.&nbsp; But in the Persian we have
+precisely the same comparative, <i>behter</i>, with exactly the
+same signification, regularly formed from its positive
+<i>beh</i>, good.&rdquo; <a name="citation287"></a><a
+href="#footnote287" class="citation">[287]</a></p>
+<p>The second great family is the <i>Syro-Ph&oelig;nician</i>,
+comprising the Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic, Arabic, and Gheez or
+Abyssinian, being localized principally in the countries to the
+west and south of the Mediterranean.&nbsp; Beyond them, again, is
+the African family, which, as far as research has gone, seems to
+be in like manner marked by common features, both verbal and
+grammatical.&nbsp; The fourth is the Polynesian family, extending
+from Madagascar on the west through all the Indian Archipelago,
+besides taking in the Malayan dialect from the continent of
+India, and comprehending Australia and the islands of the western
+portion of the Pacific.&nbsp; This family, however, bears such an
+affinity to that next to be described, that Dr. Leyden and some
+others do not give it a distinct place as a family of
+languages.</p>
+<p>The fifth family is the Chinese, embracing a large part of
+China, and most of the regions of Central and Northern
+Asia.&nbsp; The leading features of the Chinese are, its
+consisting altogether of monosyllables, and being destitute of
+all grammatical forms, except certain arrangements and
+accentuations, which vary the sense of particular words.&nbsp; It
+is also deficient in some of the consonants most conspicuous in
+other languages, b, d, r, v, and z; so that this people can
+scarcely pronounce our speech in such a way as to be
+intelligible: for example, the word Christus they call
+<i>Kuliss-ut-oo-suh</i>.&nbsp; The Chinese, strange to say,
+though they early attained to a remarkable degree of
+civilization, and have preceded the Europeans in many of the most
+important inventions, have a language which resembles that of
+children, or deaf and dumb people.&nbsp; The sentence of short,
+simple, unconnected words, in which an infant amongst us attempts
+to express some of its wants and its ideas&mdash;the equally
+broken and difficult terms which the deaf and dumb express by
+signs, as the following passage of the Lord&rsquo;s
+Prayer:&mdash;&ldquo;Our Father, heaven in, wish your name
+respect, wish your soul&rsquo;s kingdom providence arrive, wish
+your will do heaven earth equality,&rdquo; &amp;c.&mdash;these
+are like the discourse of the refined people of the so-called
+Celestial Empire.&nbsp; An attempt was made by the Abb&eacute;
+Sicard to teach the deaf and dumb grammatical signs; but they
+persisted in restricting themselves to the simple signs of ideas,
+leaving the structure undetermined by any but the natural order
+of connexion.&nbsp; Such is exactly the condition of the Chinese
+language.</p>
+<p>Crossing the Pacific, we come to the last great family in the
+languages of the aboriginal Americans, which have all of them
+features in common, proving them to constitute a group by
+themselves, without any regard to the very different degrees of
+civilization which these nations had attained at the time of the
+discovery.&nbsp; The common resemblance is in the grammatical
+structure as well as in words, and the grammatical structure of
+this family is of a very peculiar and complicated kind.&nbsp; The
+general character in this respect has caused the term
+Polysynthetic to be applied to the American languages.&nbsp; A
+long many-syllabled word is used by the rude Algonquins and
+Delawares to express a whole sentence: for example, a woman of
+the latter nation, playing with a little dog or cat, would
+perhaps be heard saying, &ldquo;<i>kuligatschis</i>,&rdquo;
+meaning, &ldquo;give me your pretty little paw;&rdquo; the word,
+on examination, is found to be made up in this manner: <i>k</i>,
+the second personal pronoun; <i>uli</i>, part of the word wulet,
+pretty; <i>gat</i>, part of the word wichgat, signifying a leg or
+paw; <i>schis</i>, conveying the idea of littleness.&nbsp; In the
+same tongue, a youth is called pilape, a word compounded from the
+first part of pilsit, innocent, and the latter part of lenape, a
+man.&nbsp; Thus, it will be observed, a number of parts of words
+are taken and thrown together, by a process which has been
+happily termed <i>agglutination</i>, so as to form one word,
+conveying a complicated idea.&nbsp; There is also an elaborate
+system of inflection; in nouns, for instance, there is one kind
+of inflection to express the presence or absence of vitality, and
+another to express number.&nbsp; The genius of the language has
+been described as accumulative: it &ldquo;tends rather to add
+syllables or letters, making farther distinctions in objects
+already before the mind, than to introduce new words.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation291"></a><a href="#footnote291"
+class="citation">[291]</a>&nbsp; Yet it has also been shewn very
+distinctly, that these languages are based in words of one
+syllable, like those of the Chinese and Polynesian families; all
+the primary ideas are thus expressed: the elaborate system of
+inflection and agglutination is shewn to be simply a farther
+development of the language-forming principle, as it may be
+called&mdash;or the Chinese system may be described as an
+arrestment of this principle at a particular early point.&nbsp;
+It has been fully shewn, that between the structure of the
+American and other families, sufficient affinities exist to make
+a common origin or early connexion extremely likely.&nbsp; The
+verbal affinities are also very considerable.&nbsp; Humboldt
+says, &ldquo;In eighty-three American languages examined by
+Messrs. Barton and Vater, one hundred and seventy words have been
+found, the roots of which appear to be the same; and it is easy
+to perceive that this analogy is not accidental, since it does
+not rest merely upon imitative harmony, or on that conformity of
+organs which produces almost a perfect identity in the first
+sounds articulated by children.&nbsp; Of these one hundred and
+seventy words which have this connexion, three-fifths resemble
+the Manchou, the Tongouse, the Mongal, and the Samoyed; and
+two-fifths, the Celtic and Tchoud, the Biscayan, the Coptic, and
+Congo languages.&nbsp; These words have been found by comparing
+the whole of the American languages with the whole of those of
+the Old World; for hitherto we are acquainted with no American
+idiom which seems to have an exclusive correspondence with any of
+the Asiatic, African, or European tongues.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation293"></a><a href="#footnote293"
+class="citation">[293]</a>&nbsp; Humboldt and others considered
+these words as brought into America by recent immigrants; an idea
+resting on no proof, and which seems at once refuted by the
+common 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.&nbsp; I may here refer to a curious mathematical
+calculation by Dr. Thomas Young, to the effect, that if three
+words coincide in two different languages, it is ten to one they
+must be derived in both cases from some parent language, or
+introduced in some other manner.&nbsp; &ldquo;Six words would
+give more,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;than seventeen hundred to one,
+and eight near 100,000, so that in these cases the evidence would
+be little short of absolute certainty.&rdquo;&nbsp; He instances
+the following words to shew a connexion between the ancient
+Egyptian and the Biscayan:&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Biscayan</span>.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Egyptian</span>.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>New</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Beria</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Beri.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>A dog</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Ora</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Whor.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Little</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Gutchi</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Kudchi.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Bread</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Ognia</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Oik.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>A wolf</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Otgsa</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Ounsh.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><i>Seven</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Shashpi</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>Shashf.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>Now, as there are, according to Humboldt, one hundred and
+seventy words in common between the languages of the new and old
+continents, and many of these are expressive of the most
+primitive ideas, there is, by Dr. Young&rsquo;s calculation,
+overpowering proof of the original connexion of the American and
+other human families.</p>
+<p>This completes the slight outline which I have been able to
+give, of the evidence for the various races of men being
+descended from one stock.&nbsp; It cannot be considered as
+conclusive, and there are many eminent persons who deem the
+opposite idea the more probable; but I must say that, without the
+least regard to any other kind of evidence, that which physiology
+and philology present seems to me decidedly favourable to the
+idea of a single origin.</p>
+<p>Assuming that the human race is <i>one</i>, we are next called
+upon to inquire in what part of the earth it may most probably be
+supposed to have originated.&nbsp; One obvious mode of
+approximating to a solution of this question is to trace backward
+the lines in which the principal tribes appear to have migrated,
+and to see if these converge nearly to a point.&nbsp; It is very
+remarkable that the lines do converge, and are concentrated about
+the region of Hindostan.&nbsp; The language, religion, modes of
+reckoning time, and some other peculiar ideas of the Americans,
+are now believed to refer their origin to North-Eastern
+Asia.&nbsp; Trace them farther back in the same direction, and we
+come to the north of India.&nbsp; The history of the Celts and
+Teutones represents 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 at the same place.&nbsp; So does the line of
+Iranian population, which has peopled the east and south shores
+of the Mediterranean, Syria, Arabia, and Egypt.&nbsp; The Malay
+variety, again, rests its limit in one direction on the borders
+of India.&nbsp; Standing on that point, it is easy to see how the
+human family, originating there, might spread out in different
+directions, passing into varieties of aspect and of language as
+they spread, the Malay variety proceeding towards the Oceanic
+region, the Mongolians to the east and north, and sending off the
+red men as a sub-variety, the European population going off to
+the north-westward, and the Syrian, Arabian, and Egyptian,
+towards the countries which they are known to have so long
+occupied.&nbsp; The Negro alone is here unaccounted for; and of
+that race it may fairly be said, that it is the one most likely
+to have had an independent origin, seeing that it is a type so
+peculiar in an inveterate black colour, and so mean in
+development.&nbsp; But it is not necessary to presume such an
+origin for it, as much good argument might be employed to shew
+that it is only a deteriorated offshoot of the general
+stock.&nbsp; Our view of the probable original seat of man agrees
+with the ancient traditions of the race.&nbsp; There is one among
+the Hindoos which places the cradle of the human family in
+Thibet; another makes Ceylon the residence of the first
+man.&nbsp; Our view is also in harmony with the hypothesis
+detailed in the chapter before the last.&nbsp; According to that
+theory, we should expect man to have originated where the highest
+species of the quadrumana are to be found.&nbsp; Now these are
+unquestionably found in the Indian Archipelago.</p>
+<p>After all, it may be regarded as still an open question,
+whether mankind is of one or many origins.&nbsp; The first human
+generation may have consisted of many pairs, though situated at
+one place, and these may have been considerably different from
+each other in external characters.&nbsp; And we are equally bound
+to admit, though this does not as yet seem to have occurred to
+any other speculator, that there may have been different lines
+and sources of origination, geographically apart, but which all
+resulted uniformly in the production of a being, one in species,
+although variously marked.</p>
+<p>It has of late years been a favourite notion with many, that
+the human race was at first in a highly civilized state, and that
+barbarism was a second condition.&nbsp; This idea probably took
+its origin in a wish to support certain interpretations of the
+Mosaic record, and it has never yet been propounded by any writer
+who seemed to have a due sense of the value of science in this
+class of investigations.&nbsp; The principal argument for it is,
+that we see many examples of nations falling away from
+civilization into barbarism, while in some regions of the earth,
+the history of which we do not clearly know, there are remains of
+works of art far superior to any which the present unenlightened
+inhabitants could have produced.&nbsp; It is to be readily
+admitted that such decadences are common; but do they necessarily
+prove that there has been anything like a regular and constant
+decline into the present state, from a state more generally
+refined?&nbsp; May not these be only instances of local failures
+and suppressions of the principle of civilization, where it had
+begun to take root amongst a people generally barbarous?&nbsp; It
+is, at least, as legitimate to draw this inference from the facts
+which are known.&nbsp; But it is also alleged that we know of no
+such thing as civilization being ever self-originated.&nbsp; It
+is always seen to be imparted from one people to another.&nbsp;
+Hence, of course, we must infer that civilization at the first
+could only have been of supernatural origin.&nbsp; This argument
+appears to be founded on false premises, for civilization does
+sometimes rise in a manner clearly independent amongst a horde of
+people generally barbarous.&nbsp; A striking instance is
+described in the laborious work of Mr. Catlin on the
+North-American tribes.&nbsp; Far placed among those which inhabit
+the vast region of the north-west, and quite beyond the reach of
+any influence from the whites, he found a small tribe living in a
+fortified village, where they cultivated the arts of manufacture,
+realized comforts and luxuries, and had attained to a remarkable
+refinement of manners, insomuch as to be generally called the
+polite and friendly Mandans.&nbsp; They were also more than
+usually elegant in their persons, and of every variety of
+complexion between that of their compatriots and a pure
+white.&nbsp; Up to the time of Mr. Catlin&rsquo;s visit, these
+people had been able to defend themselves and their possessions
+against the roving bands which surrounded them on all sides; but,
+soon after, they were attacked by small-pox, which cut them all
+off except a small party, whom their enemies rushed in upon and
+destroyed to a man.&nbsp; What is this but a repetition on a
+small scale of phenomena with which ancient history familiarizes
+us&mdash;a nation rising in arts and elegances amidst barbarous
+neighbours, but at length overpowered by the rude majority,
+leaving only a Tadmor or a Luxor as a monument of itself to
+beautify the waste?&nbsp; What can we suppose the nation which
+built Palenque and Copan to have been but only a Mandan tribe,
+which chanced to have made its way farther along the path of
+civilization and the arts, before the barbarians broke in upon
+it?&nbsp; The flame essayed to rise in many parts of the earth;
+but there were always 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 to have attained a strength against which the
+powers of barbarism can never more prevail.&nbsp; The state of
+our knowledge of uncivilized nations is very apt to make us fall
+into error on this subject.&nbsp; They are generally supposed to
+be all at one point in barbarism, which is far from being the
+case, for in the midst of every great region of uncivilized men,
+such as North America, there are nations partially refined.&nbsp;
+The Jolofs, Mandingoes, and Kafirs, are African examples, where a
+natural and independent origin for the improvement which exists
+is as unavoidably to be presumed as in the case of the
+Mandans.</p>
+<p>The most conclusive argument against the original civilization
+of mankind is to be found in the fact that we do not now see
+civilization existing anywhere except in certain conditions
+altogether different from any we can suppose to have
+existed at the commencement of our race.&nbsp; To have
+civilization, it is necessary that a people should be numerous
+and closely placed; that they should be fixed in their
+habitations, and safe from violent external and internal
+disturbance; that a considerable number of them should be exempt
+from the necessity of drudging for immediate subsistence.&nbsp;
+Feeling themselves at ease about the first necessities of their
+nature, including self-preservation, and daily subjected to that
+intellectual excitement which society produces, men begin to
+manifest what is called civilization; but never in rude and
+shelterless circumstances, or when widely scattered.&nbsp; Even
+men who have been civilized, when transferred to a wide
+wilderness, where each has to work hard and isolatedly for the
+first requisites of life, soon shew a retrogression to barbarism:
+witness the plains of Australia, as well as the backwoods of
+Canada and the prairies of Texas.&nbsp; Fixity of residence and
+thickening of population are perhaps the prime requisites for
+civilization, and hence it will be found that all civilizations
+as yet known have taken place in regions physically
+limited.&nbsp; That of Egypt arose in a narrow valley hemmed in
+by deserts on both sides.&nbsp; That of Greece took its rise in a
+small peninsula bounded on the only land side by mountains.&nbsp;
+Etruria and Rome were naturally limited regions.&nbsp;
+Civilizations have taken place at both the eastern and western
+extremities of the elder continent&mdash;China and Japan, on the
+one hand; Germany, Holland, Britain, France, on the
+other&mdash;while the great unmarked tract between contains
+nations decidedly less advanced.&nbsp; Why is this, but because
+the sea, in both cases, has imposed limits to further migration,
+and caused the population to settle and condense&mdash;the
+conditions most necessary for social improvement. <a
+name="citation302"></a><a href="#footnote302"
+class="citation">[302]</a>&nbsp; Even the simple case of the
+Mandans affords an illustration of this principle, for Mr. Catlin
+expressly, though without the least regard to theory, attributes
+their improvement to the fact of their being a small tribe,
+obliged, by fear of their more numerous enemies, to <i>settle in
+a permanent village</i>, so fortified as to ensure their
+preservation.&nbsp; &ldquo;By this means,&rdquo; says he,
+&ldquo;they have advanced farther in the arts of manufacture, and
+have supplied their lodges more abundantly with the comforts and
+even luxuries of life than any Indian nation I know of.&nbsp; The
+consequence of this,&rdquo; he adds, &ldquo;is that the tribe
+have taken many steps ahead of other tribes in <i>manners and
+refinements</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; These conditions can only be
+regarded as natural laws affecting civilization, and it might not
+be difficult, taking them into account, to predict of any newly
+settled country its social destiny.&nbsp; An island like Van
+Dieman&rsquo;s land might fairly be expected to go on more
+rapidly to good manners and sound institutions than a wide region
+like Australia.&nbsp; The United States might be expected to make
+no great way in civilization till they be fully peopled to the
+Pacific; and it might not be unreasonable to expect that, when
+that even has occurred, the greatest civilizations of that vast
+territory will be found in the peninsula of California and the
+narrow stripe of country beyond the Rocky Mountains.&nbsp; This,
+however, is a digression.&nbsp; To return: it is also necessary
+for a civilization that at least a portion of the community
+should be placed above mean and engrossing toils.&nbsp;
+Man&rsquo;s mind becomes subdued, like the dyer&rsquo;s hand, to
+that it works in.&nbsp; In rude and difficult circumstances we
+unavoidably become rude, because then only the inferior and
+harsher faculties of our nature are called into existence.&nbsp;
+When, on the contrary, there is leisure and abundance, the
+self-seeking and self-preserving instincts are allowed to rest,
+the gentler and more generous sentiments are evoked, and man
+becomes that courteous and chivalric being which he is found to
+be amongst the upper classes of almost all civilized
+countries.&nbsp; These, then, may be said to be the chief natural
+laws concerned in the moral phenomenon of civilization.&nbsp; If
+I am right in so considering them, it will of course be readily
+admitted that the earliest families of the human race, although
+they might be simple and innocent, could not have been in
+anything like a civilized state, seeing that the conditions
+necessary for that state could not have then existed.&nbsp; Let
+us only for a moment consider some of the things requisite for
+their being civilized,&mdash;namely, a set of elegant homes ready
+furnished for their reception, fields ready cultivated to yield
+them food without labour, stores of luxurious appliances of all
+kinds, a complete social enginery for the securing of life and
+property,&mdash;and we shall turn from the whole conceit as one
+worthy only of the philosophers of Utopia.</p>
+<p>Yet, as has been remarked, the earliest families might be
+simple and innocent, while at the same time unskilled and
+ignorant, and obliged to live merely upon such substances as they
+could readily procure.&nbsp; The traditions of all nations refer
+to such a state as that in which mankind were at first: perhaps
+it is not so much a tradition as an idea which the human mind
+naturally inclines to form respecting the fathers of the race;
+but nothing that we see of mankind absolutely forbids our
+entertaining this idea, while there are some considerations
+rather favourable to it.&nbsp; A few families, in a state of
+nature, living near each other, in a country supplying the means
+of livelihood abundantly, are generally simple and innocent;
+their instinctive and perceptive faculties are also apt to be
+very active, although the higher intellect may be dormant.&nbsp;
+If we therefore presume India to have been the cradle of our
+race, they might at first exemplify a sort of golden age; but it
+could not be of long continuance.&nbsp; The very first movements
+from the primal seat would be attended with degradation, nor
+could there be any tendency to true civilization till groups had
+settled and thickened in particular seats physically limited.</p>
+<p>The probability may now be assumed that the human race sprung
+from one stock, which was at first in a state of simplicity, if
+not barbarism.&nbsp; As yet we have not seen very distinctly how
+the various branches of the family, as they parted off, and took
+up separate ground, became marked by external features so
+peculiar.&nbsp; Why are the Africans black, and generally marked
+by coarse features and ungainly forms?&nbsp; Why are the
+Mongolians generally yellow, the Americans red, the Caucasians
+white?&nbsp; Why the flat features of the Chinese, the small
+stature of the Laps, the soft round forms of the English, the
+lank features of their descendants, the Americans?&nbsp; All of
+these phenomena appear, in a word, to be explicable on the ground
+of <i>development</i>.&nbsp; We have already seen that various
+leading animal forms represent stages in the embryotic progress
+of the highest&mdash;the human being.&nbsp; Our brain goes
+through the various stages of a fish&rsquo;s, a reptile&rsquo;s,
+and a mammifer&rsquo;s brain, and finally becomes human.&nbsp;
+There is 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.&nbsp; The face partakes of these
+alterations.&nbsp; &ldquo;One of the earliest points in which
+ossification commences is the lower jaw.&nbsp; This bone is
+consequently sooner completed than the other bones of the head,
+and acquires a predominance, which, as is well known, it never
+loses in the Negro.&nbsp; During the soft pliant state of the
+bones of the skull, the oblong form which they naturally assume,
+approaches nearly the permanent shape of the Americans.&nbsp; At
+birth, the flattened face, and broad smooth forehead of the
+infant, the position of the eyes rather towards the side of the
+head, and the widened space between, represent the Mongolian
+form; while it is only as the child advances to maturity, that
+the oval face, the arched forehead, and the marked features of
+the true Caucasian, become perfectly developed.&rdquo; <a
+name="citation307a"></a><a href="#footnote307a"
+class="citation">[307a]</a>&nbsp; <i>The leading characters</i>,
+<i>in short</i>, <i>of the various races of mankind</i>, <i>are
+simply representations of particular stages in the development of
+the highest or Caucasian type</i>.&nbsp; The Negro exhibits
+permanently the imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw, and
+slender bent limbs, of a Caucasian child, some considerable time
+before the period of its birth.&nbsp; The aboriginal American
+represents the same child nearer birth.&nbsp; The Mongolian is an
+arrested infant newly born.&nbsp; And so forth.&nbsp; All this is
+as respects form; <a name="citation307b"></a><a
+href="#footnote307b" class="citation">[307b]</a> but whence
+colour?&nbsp; This might be supposed to have depended on climatal
+agencies only; but it has been shewn by overpowering evidence to
+be independent of these.&nbsp; In further considering the matter,
+we are met by the very remarkable fact that colour is deepest in
+the least perfectly developed type, next in the Malay, next in
+the American, next in the Mongolian, the very order in which the
+degrees of development are ranged.&nbsp; <i>May not colour</i>,
+<i>then</i>, <i>depend upon development also</i>?&nbsp; We do
+not, indeed, see that a Caucasian f&oelig;tus at the stage which
+the African represents is anything like black; neither is a
+Caucasian child yellow, like the Mongolian.&nbsp; There may,
+nevertheless, be a character of skin at a certain stage of
+development which is predisposed to a particular colour when it
+is presented as the envelope of a mature being.&nbsp; Development
+being arrested at so immature a stage in the case of the Negro,
+the skin may take on the colour as an unavoidable consequence of
+its imperfect organization.&nbsp; It is favourable to this view,
+that Negro infants are not deeply black at first, but only
+acquire the full colour tint after exposure for some time to the
+atmosphere.&nbsp; Another consideration in its favour is that
+there is a likelihood of peculiarities of form and colour, since
+they are so coincident, depending on one set of phenomena.&nbsp;
+If it be admitted as true, there can be no difficulty in
+accounting for all the varieties of mankind.&nbsp; They are
+simply the result of so many advances and retrogressions in the
+developing power of the human mothers, these advances and
+retrogressions being, as we have formerly seen, the immediate
+effect of external conditions in nutrition, hardship, &amp;c., <a
+name="citation309"></a><a href="#footnote309"
+class="citation">[309]</a> and also, perhaps, to some extent, of
+the suitableness and unsuitableness of marriages, for it is found
+that parents too nearly related tend to produce offspring of the
+Mongolian type,&mdash;that is, persons who in maturity still are
+a kind of children.&nbsp; According to this view, the greater
+part of the human race must be considered as having lapsed or
+declined from the original type.&nbsp; In the Caucasian or
+Indo-European family alone has the primitive organization been
+improved upon.&nbsp; The Mongolian, Malay, American, and Negro,
+comprehending perhaps five-sixths of mankind, are
+degenerate.&nbsp; Strange that the great plan should admit of
+failures and aberrations of such portentous magnitude!&nbsp; But
+pause and reflect; take time into consideration: the past history
+of mankind may be, to what is to come, but as a day.&nbsp; Look
+at the progress even now making over the barbaric parts of the
+earth by the best examples of the Caucasian type, promising not
+only to fill up the waste places, but to supersede the imperfect
+nations already existing.&nbsp; Who can tell what progress may be
+made, even in a single century, towards reversing the proportions
+of the perfect and imperfect types? and who can tell but that the
+time during which the mean types have lasted, long as it appears,
+may yet be thrown entirely into the shade by the time during
+which the best types will remain predominant?</p>
+<p>We have seen that the traces of a common origin in all
+languages afford a ground of presumption for the unity of the
+human race.&nbsp; They establish a still stronger probability
+that mankind had not yet begun to disperse before they were
+possessed of a means of communicating their ideas by conventional
+sounds&mdash;in short, speech.&nbsp; This is a gift so peculiar
+to man, and in itself so remarkable, that there is a great
+inclination to surmise a miraculous origin for it, although there
+is no proper ground, or even support, for such an idea in
+Scripture, while it is clearly opposed to everything else that we
+know with regard to the providential arrangements for the
+creation of our race.&nbsp; Here, as in many other cases, a
+little observation of nature might have saved much vain
+discussion.&nbsp; The real character of language itself has not
+been thoroughly understood.&nbsp; Language, in its most
+comprehensive sense, is the communication of ideas by whatever
+means.&nbsp; Ideas can be communicated by looks, gestures, and
+signs of various other kinds, as well as by speech.&nbsp; The
+inferior animals possess some of those means of communicating
+ideas, and they have likewise a silent and unobservable mode of
+their own, the nature of which is a complete mystery to us,
+though we are assured of its reality by its effects.&nbsp; Now,
+as the inferior animals were all in being before man, there was
+language upon earth long ere the history of our race
+commenced.&nbsp; The only additional fact in the history of
+language, which was produced by our creation, was the rise of a
+new mode of expression&mdash;namely, that by <i>sound-signs</i>
+produced by the vocal organs.&nbsp; In other words, speech was
+the only novelty in this respect attending the creation of the
+human race.&nbsp; No doubt it was an addition of great
+importance, for, in comparison with it, the other natural modes
+of communicating ideas sink into insignificance.&nbsp; Still, the
+main and fundamental phenomenon, language, as the communication
+of ideas, was no new gift of the Creator to man; and in speech
+itself, when we judge of it as a natural fact, we see only a
+result of some of those superior endowments of which so many
+others have fallen to our lot through the medium of an improved
+or advanced organization.</p>
+<p>The first and most obvious natural endowment concerned in
+speech is that peculiar organization of the larynx, trachea, and
+mouth, which enables us to produce the various sounds required in
+the case.&nbsp; Man started at first with this organization ready
+for use, a constitution of the atmosphere adapted for the sounds
+which that organization was calculated to produce, and, lastly,
+but not leastly, as will afterwards be more particularly shewn, a
+mental power within, prompting to, and giving directions for, the
+expression of ideas.&nbsp; Such an arrangement of mutually
+adapted things was as likely to produce sounds as an Eolian harp
+placed in a draught is to produce tones.&nbsp; It was unavoidable
+that human beings so organized, and in such a relation to
+external nature, should utter sounds, and also come to attach to
+these conventional meanings, thus forming the elements of spoken
+language.&nbsp; The great difficulty which has been felt was to
+account for man going in this respect beyond the inferior
+animals.&nbsp; There could have been no such difficulty if
+speculators in this class of subjects had looked into physiology
+for an account of the superior vocal organization of man, and had
+they possessed a true science of mind to shew man possessing a
+faculty for the expression of ideas which is only rudimental in
+the lower animals.&nbsp; Another difficulty has been in the
+consideration that, if men were at first utterly untutored and
+barbarous, they could scarcely be in a condition to form or
+employ language&mdash;an instrument which it requires the fullest
+powers of thought to analyse and speculate upon.&nbsp; But this
+difficulty also vanishes upon reflection&mdash;for, in the first
+place, we are not bound to suppose the fathers of our race early
+attaining to great proficiency in language, and, in the second,
+language itself seems to be amongst the things least difficult to
+be acquired, if we can form any judgment from what we see in
+children, most of whom have, by three years of age, while their
+information and judgment are still as nothing, mastered and
+familiarized themselves with a quantity of words, infinitely
+exceeding in proportion what they acquire in the course of any
+subsequent similar portion of time.</p>
+<p>Discussions as to which parts of speech were first formed, and
+the processes by which grammatical structure and inflections took
+their rise, appear in a great measure needless, after the matter
+has been placed in this light.&nbsp; The mental powers could
+readily connect particular arbitrary sounds with particular
+ideas, whether those ideas were nouns, verbs, or
+interjections.&nbsp; As the words of all languages can be traced
+back into roots which are monosyllables, we may presume these
+sounds to have all been monosyllabic accordingly.&nbsp; The
+clustering of two or more together to express a compound idea,
+and the formation of inflections by additional syllables
+expressive of pronouns and such prepositions as of, by, and to,
+are processes which would or might occur as matters of course,
+being simple results of a mental power called into action, and
+partly directed, by external necessities.&nbsp; This power,
+however, as we find it in very different degrees of endowment in
+individuals, so would it be in different degrees of endowment in
+nations, or branches of the human family.&nbsp; Hence we find the
+formation of words and the process of their composition and
+grammatical arrangement, in very different stages of development
+in different races.&nbsp; The Chinese have a language composed of
+a limited number of monosyllables, which they multiply in use by
+mere variations of accent, and which they have never yet attained
+the power of clustering or inflecting; the language of this
+immense nation&mdash;the third part of the human race&mdash;may
+be said to be in the condition of infancy.&nbsp; The aboriginal
+Americans, so inferior in civilization, have, on the other hand,
+a language of the most elaborately composite kind, perhaps even
+exceeding, in this respect, the languages of the most refined
+European nations.&nbsp; These are but a few out of many facts
+tending to shew that language is in a great measure independent
+of civilization, as far as its advance and development are
+concerned.&nbsp; Do they not also help to prove that cultivated
+intellect is not necessary for the origination of language?</p>
+<p>Facts daily presented to our observation afford equally simple
+reasons for the almost infinite diversification of
+language.&nbsp; It is invariably found that, wherever society is
+at once dense and refined, language tends to be uniform
+throughout the whole population, and to undergo few changes in
+the course of time.&nbsp; Wherever, on the contrary, we have a
+scattered and barbarous people, we have great diversities, and
+comparatively rapid alterations of language.&nbsp; Insomuch that,
+while English, French, and German are each spoken with little
+variation by many millions, there are islands in the Indian
+archipelago, probably not inhabited by one million, but in which
+there are hundreds of languages, as diverse as are English,
+French, and German.&nbsp; It is easy to see how this should
+be.&nbsp; There are peculiarities in the vocal organization of
+every person, tending to produce peculiarities of pronunciation;
+for example, it has been stated that each child in a family of
+six gave the monosyllable, fly, in a different manner, (eye, fy,
+ly, &amp;c.) until, when the organs were more advanced, correct
+example induced the proper pronunciation of this and similar
+words.&nbsp; Such departures from orthoepy are only to be checked
+by the power of such example; but this is a power not always
+present, or not always of sufficient strength.&nbsp; The able and
+self-devoted Robert Moffat, in his work on South Africa, states,
+without the least regard to hypothesis, that amongst the people
+of the towns of that great region, &ldquo;the purity and harmony
+of language is kept up by their pitchos or public meetings, by
+their festivals and ceremonies, as well as by their songs and
+their constant intercourse.&nbsp; With the isolated villages of
+the desert it is far otherwise.&nbsp; They have no such meetings;
+they are compelled to traverse the wilds, often to a great
+distance from their native village.&nbsp; On such occasions,
+fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a burden, often set out
+for weeks at a time, and leave their children to the care of two
+or three infirm old people.&nbsp; The infant progeny, some of
+whom are beginning to lisp, while others can just master a whole
+sentence, and those still farther advanced, romping and playing
+together, the children of nature, through the live-long day,
+<i>become habituated to a language of their own</i>.&nbsp; The
+more voluble condescend to the less precocious, and thus, from
+this infant Babel, proceeds a dialect composed of a host of
+mongrel words and phrases, joined together without rule, and
+<i>in the course of a generation the entire character of the
+language is changed</i>.&rdquo; <a name="citation317"></a><a
+href="#footnote317" class="citation">[317]</a>&nbsp; I have been
+told, that in like manner the children of the Manchester factory
+workers, left for a great part of the day, in large assemblages,
+under the care of perhaps a single elderly person, and spending
+the time in amusements, are found to make a great deal of new
+language.&nbsp; I have seen children in other circumstances amuse
+themselves by concocting and throwing into the family circulation
+entirely new words; and I believe I am running little risk of
+contradiction when I say that there is scarcely a family, even
+amongst the middle classes of this country, who have not some
+peculiarities of pronunciation and syntax, which have originated
+amongst themselves, it is hardly possible to say how.&nbsp; All
+these things being considered, it is easy to understand how
+mankind have come at length to possess between three and four
+thousand languages, all different at least as much as French,
+German, and English, though, as has been shewn, the traces of a
+common origin are observable in them all.</p>
+<p>What has been said on the question whether mankind were
+originally barbarous or civilized, will have prepared the reader
+for understanding how the arts and sciences, and the rudiments of
+civilization itself, took their rise amongst men.&nbsp; The only
+source of fallacious views on this subject is the so frequent
+observation of arts, sciences, and social modes, forms, and
+ideas, being not indigenous where we see them now flourishing,
+but known to have been derived elsewhere: thus Rome borrowed from
+Greece, Greece from Egypt, and Egypt itself, lost in the mists of
+historic antiquity, is now supposed to have obtained the light of
+knowledge from some still earlier scene of intellectual
+culture.&nbsp; This has caused to many a great difficulty in
+supposing a natural or spontaneous origin for civilization and
+the attendant arts.&nbsp; But, in the first place, several stages
+of derivation are no conclusive argument against there having
+been an originality at some earlier stage.&nbsp; In the second,
+such observers have not looked far enough, for, if they had, they
+could have seen various instances of civilizations which it is
+impossible, with any plausibility, to trace back to a common
+origin with others; such are those of China and America.&nbsp;
+They would also have seen civilization springing up, as it were,
+like oases amongst the arid plains of barbarism, as in the case
+of the Mandans.&nbsp; A still more attentive study of the subject
+would have shewn, amongst living men, the very psychological
+procedure on which the origination of civilization and the arts
+and sciences depended.</p>
+<p>These things, like language, are simply the effects of the
+spontaneous working of certain mental faculties, each in relation
+to the things of the external world on which it was intended by
+creative Providence to be exercised.&nbsp; The monkeys
+themselves, without instruction from any quarter, learn to use
+sticks in fighting, and some build houses&mdash;an act which
+cannot in their case be considered as one of instinct, but of
+intelligence.&nbsp; Such being the case, there is no necessary
+difficulty in supposing how man, with his superior mental
+organization, (a brain five times heavier,) was able, in his
+primitive state, without instruction, to turn many things in
+nature to his use, and commence, in short, the circle of the
+domestic arts.&nbsp; He appears, in the most unfavourable
+circumstances, to be able to provide himself with some sort of
+dwelling, to make weapons, and to practise some simple kind of
+cookery.&nbsp; But, granting, it will be said, that he can go
+thus far, how does he ever proceed farther unprompted, seeing
+that many nations remain fixed for ever at this point, and seem
+unable to take one step in advance?&nbsp; It is perfectly true
+that there is such a fixation in many nations; but, on the other
+hand, all nations are not alike in mental organization, and
+another point has been established, that only when some
+favourable circumstances have settled a people in one place, do
+arts and social arrangements get leave to flourish.&nbsp; If we
+were to limit our view to humbly endowed nations, or the common
+class of minds in those called civilized, we should see
+absolutely no conceivable power for the origination of new ideas
+and devices.&nbsp; But let us look at the inventive class of
+minds which stand out amongst their fellows&mdash;the men who,
+with little prompting or none, conceive new ideas in science,
+arts, morals&mdash;and we can be at no loss to understand how and
+whence have arisen the elements of that civilization which
+history traces from country to country throughout the course of
+centuries.&nbsp; See a Pascal, reproducing the
+Alexandrian&rsquo;s problems at fifteen; a Ferguson, making
+clocks from the suggestions of his own brain, while tending
+cattle on a Morayshire heath; a boy Lawrence, in an inn on the
+Bath road, producing, without a master, drawings which the
+educated could not but admire; or look at Solon and Confucius,
+devising sage laws, and breathing the accents of all but divine
+wisdom, for their barbarous fellow-countrymen, three thousand
+years ago&mdash;and the whole mystery is solved at once.&nbsp;
+Amongst the arrangements of Providence is one for the production
+of original, inventive, and aspiring minds, which, when
+circumstances are not decidedly unfavourable, strike out new
+ideas for the benefit of their fellow-creatures, or put upon them
+a lasting impress of their own superior sentiments.&nbsp;
+Nations, improved by these means, become in turn <i>foci</i> for
+the diffusion of light over the adjacent regions of
+barbarism&mdash;their very passions helping to this end, for
+nothing can be more clear than that ambitious aggression has led
+to the civilization of many countries.&nbsp; Such is the process
+which seems to form the destined means for bringing mankind from
+the darkness of barbarism to the day of knowledge and mechanical
+and social improvement.&nbsp; Even the noble art of letters is
+but, as Dr. Adam Fergusson has remarked, &ldquo;a natural produce
+of the human mind, which will rise spontaneously, wherever men
+are happily placed;&rdquo; original alike amongst the ancient
+Egyptians and the dimly monumented Toltecans of Yucatan.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Banish,&rdquo; says Dr. Gall, &ldquo;music, poetry,
+painting, sculpture, architecture, all the arts and sciences, and
+let your Homers, Raphaels, Michael Angelos, Glucks, and Canovas,
+be forgotten, yet let men of genius of every description spring
+up, and poetry, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, and all
+the arts and sciences will again shine out in all their
+glory.&nbsp; Twice within the records of history has the human
+race traversed the great circle of its entire destiny, and twice
+has the rudeness of barbarism been followed by a higher degree of
+refinement.&nbsp; It is a great mistake to suppose one people to
+have proceeded from another on account of their conformity of
+manners, customs, and arts.&nbsp; The swallow of Paris builds its
+nest like the swallow of Vienna, but does it thence follow that
+the former sprung from the latter?&nbsp; With the same causes we
+have the same effects; with the same organization we have the
+manifestation of the same powers.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page324"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+324</span>MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> has been one of the most
+agreeable tasks of modern science to trace the wonderfully exact
+adaptations of the organization of animals to the physical
+circumstances amidst which they are destined to live.&nbsp; From
+the mandibles of insects to the hand of man, all is seen to be in
+the most harmonious relation to the things of the outward world,
+thus clearly proving that <i>design</i> presided in the creation
+of the whole&mdash;design again implying a designer, another word
+for a <span class="smcap">Creator</span>.</p>
+<p>It would be tiresome to present in this place even a selection
+of the proofs which have been adduced on this point.&nbsp; The
+Natural Theology of Paley, and the Bridgewater Treatises, place
+the subject in so clear a light, that the general postulate may
+be taken for granted.&nbsp; The physical constitution of animals
+is, then, to be regarded as in the nicest congruity and
+adaptation to the external world.</p>
+<p>Less clear ideas have hitherto been entertained on the mental
+constitution of animals.&nbsp; The very nature of this
+constitution is not as yet generally known or held as
+ascertained.&nbsp; There is, indeed, a notion of old standing,
+that the mind is in some way connected with the brain; but the
+metaphysicians insist that it is, in reality, known only by its
+acts or effects, and they accordingly present the subject in a
+form which is unlike any other kind of science, for it does not
+so much as pretend to have nature for its basis.&nbsp; There is a
+general disinclination to regard mind in connexion with
+organization, from a fear that this must needs interfere with the
+cherished religious doctrine of the spirit of man, and lower him
+to the level of the brutes.&nbsp; A distinction is therefore
+drawn between our mental manifestations and those of the lower
+animals, the latter being comprehended under the term instinct,
+while ours are collectively described as mind, mind being again a
+received synonyme with soul, the immortal part of man.&nbsp;
+There is here a strange system of confusion and error, which it
+is most imprudent to regard as essential to religion, since
+candid investigations of nature tend to shew its
+untenableness.&nbsp; There is, in reality, nothing to prevent our
+regarding man as specially endowed with an immortal spirit, at
+the same time that his ordinary mental manifestations are looked
+upon as simple phenomena resulting from organization, those of
+the lower animals being phenomena absolutely the same in
+character, though developed within much narrower limits. <a
+name="citation326"></a><a href="#footnote326"
+class="citation">[326]</a></p>
+<p>What has chiefly tended to take mind, in the eyes of learned
+and unlearned, out of the range of nature, is its apparently
+irregular and wayward character.&nbsp; How different the
+manifestations in different beings! how unstable in all!&mdash;at
+one time so calm, at another so wild and impulsive!&nbsp; It
+seemed impossible that anything so subtle and aberrant could be
+part of a system, the main features of which are regularity and
+precision.&nbsp; But the irregularity of mental phenomena is only
+in appearance.&nbsp; When we give up the individual, and take the
+mass, we find as much uniformity of result as in any other class
+of natural phenomena.&nbsp; The irregularity is exactly of the
+same kind as that of the weather.&nbsp; No man can say what may
+be the weather of to-morrow; but the quantity of rain which falls
+in any particular place in any five years, is precisely the same
+as the quantity which falls in any other five years at the same
+place.&nbsp; Thus, while it is absolutely impossible to predict
+of any one Frenchman that during next year he will commit a
+crime, it is quite certain that about one in every six hundred
+and fifty of the French people will do so, because in past years
+the proportion has generally been about that amount, the
+tendencies to crime in relation to the temptations being
+everywhere invariable over a sufficiently wide range of
+time.&nbsp; So also, the number of persons taken in charge by the
+police in London for being drunk and disorderly on the streets,
+is, week by week, a nearly uniform quantity, shewing that the
+inclination to drink to excess is always in the mass about the
+same, regard being had to the existing temptations or
+stimulations to this vice.&nbsp; Even mistakes and oversights are
+of regular recurrence, for it is found in the post-offices of
+large cities, that the number of letters put in without addresses
+is year by year the same.&nbsp; Statistics has made out an
+equally distinct regularity in a wide range, with regard to many
+other things concerning the mind, and the doctrine founded upon
+it has lately produced a scheme which may well strike the
+ignorant with surprise.&nbsp; It was proposed to establish in
+London a society for ensuring the integrity of clerks,
+secretaries, collectors, and all such functionaries as are
+usually obliged to find security for money passing through their
+hands in the course of business.&nbsp; A gentleman of the highest
+character as an actuary spoke of the plan in the following
+terms:&mdash;&ldquo;If a thousand bankers&rsquo; clerks were to
+club together to indemnify their securities, by the payment of
+one pound a year each, and if each had given security for
+500<i>l.</i>, it is obvious that two in each year might become
+defaulters to that amount, four to half the amount, and so on,
+without rendering the guarantee fund insolvent.&nbsp; If it be
+tolerably well ascertained that the instances of dishonesty
+(yearly) among such persons amount to one in five hundred, this
+club would continue to exist, subject to being in debt in a bad
+year, to an amount which it would be able to discharge in good
+ones.&nbsp; The only question necessary to be asked previous to
+the formation of such a club would be,&mdash;may it not be feared
+that the motive to resist dishonesty would be lessened by the
+existence of the club, or that ready-made rogues, by belonging to
+it, might find the means of obtaining situations which they would
+otherwise have been kept out of by the impossibility of obtaining
+security among those who know them?&nbsp; Suppose this be
+sufficiently answered by saying, that none but those who could
+bring satisfactory testimony to their previous good character
+should be allowed to join the club; that persons who may now hope
+that a deficiency on their parts will be made up and hushed up by
+the relative or friend who is security, will know very well that
+the club will have no motive to decline a prosecution, or to keep
+the secret, and so on.&nbsp; It then only remains to ask, whether
+the sum demanded for the guarantee is sufficient?&rdquo; <a
+name="citation331"></a><a href="#footnote331"
+class="citation">[331]</a>&nbsp; The philosophical principle on
+which the scheme proceeds, seems to be simply this, that, amongst
+a given (large) number of persons of good character, there will
+be, within a year or other considerable space of time, a
+determinate number of instances in which moral principle and the
+terror of the consequences of guilt will be overcome by
+temptations of a determinate kind and amount, and thus occasion a
+certain periodical amount of loss which the association must make
+up.</p>
+<p>This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully establishes
+their being under the presidency of law.&nbsp; Man is now seen to
+be an enigma only as an individual; in the mass he is a
+mathematical problem.&nbsp; It is hardly necessary to say, much
+less to argue, that mental action, being proved to be under law,
+passes at once into the category of natural things.&nbsp; Its old
+metaphysical character vanishes in a moment, and the distinction
+usually taken between physical and moral is annulled, as only an
+error in terms.&nbsp; This view agrees with what all observation
+teaches, that mental phenomena flow directly from the
+brain.&nbsp; They are seen to be dependent on naturally
+constituted and naturally conditioned organs, and thus obedient,
+like all other organic phenomena, to law.&nbsp; And how wondrous
+must the constitution of this apparatus be, which gives us
+consciousness of thought and of affection, which makes us
+familiar with the numberless things of earth, and enables us to
+rise in conception and communion to the councils of God
+himself!&nbsp; It is matter which forms the medium or
+instrument&mdash;a little mass which, decomposed, is but so much
+common dust; yet in its living constitution, designed, formed,
+and sustained by Almighty Wisdom, how admirable its character!
+how reflective of the unutterable depths of that Power by which
+it was so formed, and is so sustained!</p>
+<p>In the mundane economy, mental action takes its place as a
+means of providing for the independent existence and the various
+relations of animals, each species being furnished according to
+its special necessities and the demands of its various
+relations.&nbsp; The nervous system&mdash;the more comprehensive
+term for its organic apparatus&mdash;is variously developed in
+different classes and species, and also in different individuals,
+the volume or mass bearing a general relation to the amount of
+power.&nbsp; In the mollusca and crustacea we see simply a
+ganglionic cord pervading the extent of the body, and sending out
+lateral filaments.&nbsp; In the vertebrata, we find a brain with
+a spinal cord, and branching lines of nervous tissue. <a
+name="citation333"></a><a href="#footnote333"
+class="citation">[333]</a>&nbsp; But here, as in the general
+structure of animals, the great principle of unity is
+observed.&nbsp; The brain of the vertebrata is merely an
+expansion of one of the ganglions of the nervous cord of the
+mollusca and crustacea.&nbsp; Or the corresponding ganglion of
+the mollusca and crustacea may be regarded as the rudiment of a
+brain; the superior organ thus appearing as only a farther
+development of the inferior.&nbsp; There are many facts which
+tend to prove that the action of this apparatus is of an electric
+nature, a modification of that surprising agent, which takes
+magnetism, heat, and light, as other subordinate forms, and of
+whose general scope in this great system of things we are only
+beginning to have a right conception.&nbsp; It has been found
+that simple electricity, artificially produced, and sent along
+the nerves of a dead body, excites muscular action.&nbsp; The
+brain of a newly-killed animal being taken out, and replaced by a
+substance which produces electric action, the operation of
+digestion, which had been interrupted by the death of the animal,
+was resumed, shewing the absolute identity of the brain with a
+galvanic battery.&nbsp; Nor is this a very startling idea, when
+we reflect that electricity is almost as metaphysical as ever
+mind was supposed to be.&nbsp; It is a thing perfectly
+intangible, weightless.&nbsp; Metal may be magnetized, or heated
+to seven hundred of Fahrenheit, without becoming the hundredth
+part of a grain heavier.&nbsp; And yet electricity is a real
+thing, an actual existence in nature, as witness the effects of
+heat and light in vegetation&mdash;the power of the galvanic
+current to re-assemble the particles of copper from a solution,
+and make them again into a solid plate&mdash;the rending force of
+the thunderbolt as it strikes the oak; see also how both heat and
+light observe the angle of incidence in reflection, as exactly as
+does the grossest stone thrown obliquely against a wall.&nbsp; So
+mental action may be imponderable, intangible, and yet a real
+existence, and ruled by the Eternal through his laws. <a
+name="citation335"></a><a href="#footnote335"
+class="citation">[335]</a></p>
+<p>Common observation shews a great general superiority of the
+human mind over that of the inferior animals.&nbsp; Man&rsquo;s
+mind is almost infinite in device; it ranges over all the world;
+it forms the most wonderful combinations; it seeks back into the
+past, and stretches forward into the future; while the animals
+generally appear to have a narrow range of thought and
+action.&nbsp; But so also has an infant but a limited range, and
+yet it is mind which works there, as well as in the most
+accomplished adults.&nbsp; The difference between mind in the
+lower animals and in man is a difference in degree only; it is
+not a specific difference.&nbsp; All who have studied animals by
+actual observation, and even those who have given a candid
+attention to the subject in books, must attain more or less clear
+convictions of this truth, notwithstanding all the obscurity
+which prejudice may have engendered.&nbsp; We see animals capable
+of affection, jealousy, envy; we see them quarrel, and conduct
+quarrels, in the very manner pursued by the more impulsive of our
+own race.&nbsp; We see them liable to flattery, inflated with
+pride, and dejected by shame.&nbsp; We see them as tender to
+their young as human parents are, and as faithful to a trust as
+the most conscientious of human servants.&nbsp; The horse is
+startled by marvellous objects, as a man is.&nbsp; The dog and
+many others shew tenacious memory.&nbsp; The dog also proves
+himself possessed of imagination, by the act of dreaming.&nbsp;
+Horses, finding themselves in want of a shoe, have of their own
+accord gone to a farrier&rsquo;s shop where they were shod
+before.&nbsp; Cats, closed up in rooms, will endeavour to obtain
+their liberation by pulling a latch or ringing a bell.&nbsp; It
+has several times been observed that in a field of cattle, when
+one or two were mischievous, and persisted long in annoying or
+tyrannizing over the rest, the herd, to all appearance,
+consulted, and then, making a united effort, drove the troublers
+off the ground.&nbsp; The members of a rookery have also been
+observed to take turns in supplying the needs of a family reduced
+to orphanhood.&nbsp; All of these are acts of reason, in no
+respect different from similar acts of men.&nbsp; Moreover,
+although there is no heritage of accumulated knowledge amongst
+the lower animals, as there is amongst us, they are in some
+degree susceptible of those modifications of natural character,
+and capable of those accomplishments, which we call
+education.&nbsp; The taming and domestication of animals, and the
+changes thus produced upon their nature in the course of
+generations, are results identical with civilization amongst
+ourselves; and the quiet, servile steer is probably as unlike the
+original wild cattle of this country, as the English gentleman of
+the present day is unlike the rude baron of the age of King
+John.&nbsp; Between a young, unbroken horse, and a trained one,
+there is, again, all the difference which exists between a wild
+youth reared at his own discretion in the country, and the same
+person when he has been toned down by long exposure to the
+influences of refined society.&nbsp; On the accomplishments
+acquired by animals it were superfluous to enter at any length;
+but I may advert to the dogs of M. Leonard, as remarkable
+examples of what the animal intellect may be trained to.&nbsp;
+When four pieces of card are laid down before them, each having a
+number pronounced <i>once</i> in connexion with it, they will,
+after a re-arrangement of the pieces, select any one named by its
+number.&nbsp; They also play at dominoes, and with so much skill
+as to triumph over biped opponents, whining if the adversary
+place a wrong piece, or if they themselves be deficient in a
+right one.&nbsp; Of extensive combinations of thought we have no
+reason to believe that any animal is capable&mdash;and yet most
+of us must feel the force of Walter Scott&rsquo;s remark, that
+there was scarcely anything which he would not believe of a
+dog.&nbsp; There is a curious result of education in certain
+animals, namely, that habits to which they have been trained in
+some instances become hereditary.&nbsp; For example, the
+accomplishment of pointing at game, although a pure result of
+education, appears in the young pups brought up apart from their
+parents and kind.&nbsp; The peculiar leap of the Irish horse,
+acquired in the course of traversing a boggy country, is
+continued in the progeny brought up in England.&nbsp; This
+hereditariness of specific habits suggests a relation to that
+form of psychological demonstration usually called instinct; but
+instinct is only another term for mind, or is mind in a peculiar
+stage of development; and though the fact were otherwise, it
+could not affect the postulate, that demonstrations such as have
+been enumerated are mainly intellectual demonstrations, not to be
+distinguished as such from those of human beings.</p>
+<p>More than this, the lower animals manifested mental phenomena
+long before man existed.&nbsp; While as yet there was no brain
+capable of working out a mathematical problem, the economy of the
+six-sided figure was exemplified by the instinct of the
+bee.&nbsp; Ere human musician had whistled or piped, the owl
+hooted in B flat, the cuckoo had her song of a falling third, and
+the chirp of the cricket was in B.&nbsp; The dog and the elephant
+prefigured the sagacity of the human mind.&nbsp; The love of a
+human mother for her babe was anticipated by nearly every humbler
+mammal, the carnaria not excepted.&nbsp; The peacock strutted,
+the turkey blustered, and the cock fought for victory, just as
+human beings afterwards did, and still do.&nbsp; Our faculty of
+imitation, on which so much of our amusement depends, was
+exercised by the mocking-bird; and the whole tribe of monkeys
+must have walked about the pre-human world, playing off those
+tricks in which we see the comicality and mischief-making of our
+character so curiously exaggerated.</p>
+<p>The unity and simplicity which characterize nature give great
+antecedent probability to what observation seems about to
+establish, that, as the brain of the vertebrata generally is just
+an advanced condition of a particular ganglion in the mollusca
+and crustacea, so are the brains of the higher and more
+intelligent mammalia only farther developments of the brains of
+the inferior orders of the same class.&nbsp; Or, to the same
+purpose, it may be said, that each species has certain superior
+developments, according to its needs, while others are in a
+rudimental or repressed state.&nbsp; This will more clearly
+appear after some inquiry has been made into the various powers
+comprehended under the term mind.</p>
+<p>One of the first and simplest functions of mind is to give
+consciousness&mdash;consciousness of our identity and of our
+existence.&nbsp; This, apparently, is independent of the
+<i>senses</i>, which are simply media, and, as Locke has shewn,
+the only media, through which ideas respecting the external world
+reach the brain.&nbsp; The access of such ideas to the brain is
+the act to which the metaphysicians have given the name of
+perception.&nbsp; Gall, however, has shewn, by induction from a
+vast number of actual cases, that there is a part of the brain
+devoted to perception, and that even this is subdivided into
+portions which are respectively dedicated to the reception of
+different sets of ideas, as those of form, size, colour, weight,
+objects in their totality, events in their progress or
+occurrence, time, musical sounds, &amp;c.&nbsp; The system of
+mind invented by this philosopher&mdash;the only one founded upon
+nature, or which even pretends to or admits of that necessary
+basis&mdash;shews a portion of the brain acting as a faculty of
+comic ideas, another of imitation, another of wonder, one for
+discriminating or observing differences, and another in which
+resides the power of tracing effects to causes.&nbsp; There are
+also parts of the brain for the sentimental part of our nature,
+or the affections, at the head of which stand the moral feelings
+of benevolence, conscientiousness, and veneration.&nbsp; Through
+these, man stands in relation to himself, his fellow-men, the
+external world, and his God; and through these comes most of the
+happiness of man&rsquo;s life, as well as that which he derives
+from the contemplation of the world to come, and the cultivation
+of his relation to it, (pure religion.)&nbsp; The other
+sentiments may be briefly enumerated, their names being
+sufficient in general to denote their functions&mdash;firmness,
+hope, cautiousness, self-esteem, love of approbation,
+secretiveness, marvellousness, constructiveness, imitation,
+combativeness, destructiveness, concentrativeness, adhesiveness,
+love of the opposite sex, love of offspring, alimentiveness, and
+love of life.&nbsp; Through these faculties, man is connected
+with the external world, and supplied with active impulses to
+maintain his place in it as an individual and as a species.&nbsp;
+There is also a faculty, (language) for expressing, by whatever
+means, (signs, gestures, looks, conventional terms in speech,)
+the ideas which arise in the mind.&nbsp; There is a particular
+state of each of these faculties, when the ideas of objects once
+formed by it are revived or reproduced, a process which seems to
+be intimately allied with some of the phenomena of the new
+science of photography, when images impressed by reflection of
+the sun&rsquo;s rays upon sensitive paper are, after a temporary
+obliteration, resuscitated on the sheet being exposed to the
+fumes of mercury.&nbsp; Such are the phenomena of memory, that
+handmaid of intellect, without which there could be no
+accumulation of mental capital, but an universal and continual
+infancy.&nbsp; Conception and imagination appear to be only
+intensities, so to speak, of the state of brain in which memory
+is produced.&nbsp; On their promptness and power depend most of
+the exertions which distinguish the man of arts and letters, and
+even in no small measure the cultivator of science.</p>
+<p>The faculties above described&mdash;the actual elements of the
+mental constitution&mdash;are seen in mature man in an indefinite
+potentiality and range of action.&nbsp; It is different with the
+lower animals.&nbsp; They are there comparatively definite in
+their power and restricted in their application.&nbsp; The reader
+is familiar with what are called instincts in some of the humbler
+species, that is, an uniform and unprompted tendency towards
+certain particular acts, as the building of cells by the bee, the
+storing of provisions by that insect and several others, and the
+construction of nests for a coming progeny by birds.&nbsp; This
+quality is nothing more than a mode of operation peculiar to the
+faculties in a humble state of endowment, or early stage of
+development.&nbsp; The cell formation of the bee, the
+house-building of ants and beavers, the web-spinning of spiders,
+are but primitive 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 where our labours are in vain, or nearly so.&nbsp;
+The storing of provisions by the ants is an exercise of
+acquisitiveness,&mdash;the faculty which with us makes rich men
+and misers.&nbsp; A vast number of curious devices, by which
+insects provide for the protection and subsistence of their
+young, whom they are perhaps never to see, are most probably a
+peculiar restricted effort of philoprogenitiveness.&nbsp; The
+common source of this class of acts, and of common mental
+operations, is shewn very convincingly by the melting of the one
+set into the other.&nbsp; Thus, for example, the bee and bird
+will make modifications in the ordinary form of their cells and
+nests when necessity compels them.&nbsp; Thus, the alimentiveness
+of such animals as the dog, usually definite with regard to
+quantity and quality, can be pampered or educated up to a kind of
+epicurism, that is, an indefiniteness of object and action.&nbsp;
+The same faculty acts limitedly in ourselves at first, dictating
+the special act of sucking; afterwards it acquires
+indefiniteness.&nbsp; Such is the real nature of the distinction
+between what are called instincts and reason, upon which so many
+volumes have been written without profit to the world.&nbsp; All
+faculties are instinctive, that is, dependent on internal and
+inherent impulses.&nbsp; This term is therefore not specially
+applicable to either of the recognised modes of the operation of
+the faculties.&nbsp; We only, in the one case, see the faculty in
+an immature and slightly developed state; in the other, in its
+most advanced condition.&nbsp; In the one case it is
+<i>definite</i>, in the other <i>indefinite</i>, in its range of
+action.&nbsp; These terms would perhaps be the most suitable for
+expressing the distinction.</p>
+<p>In the humblest forms of being we can trace scarcely anything
+besides a definite action in a few of the faculties.&nbsp;
+Generally speaking, as we ascend in the scale, we see more and
+more of the faculties in exercise, and these tending more to the
+indefinite mode of manifestation.&nbsp; And for this there is the
+obvious reason in providence, that the lowest animals have all of
+them a very limited sphere of existence, born only to perform a
+few functions, and enjoy a brief term of life, and then give way
+to another generation, so that they do not need much mental
+guidance.&nbsp; At higher points in the scale, the sphere of
+existence is considerably extended, and the mental operations are
+less definite accordingly.&nbsp; The horse, dog, and a few other
+rasorial types, noted for their serviceableness to our race, have
+the indefinite powers in no small endowment.&nbsp; Man, again,
+shews very little of the definite mode of operation, and that
+little chiefly in childhood, or in barbarism or idiocy.&nbsp;
+Destined for a wide field of action, and to be applicable to
+infinitely varied contingencies, he has all the faculties
+developed to a high pitch of indefiniteness, that he may be ready
+to act well in all imaginable cases.&nbsp; His commission, it may
+be said, gives large discretionary powers, while that of the
+inferior animals is limited to a few precise directions.&nbsp;
+But when the human brain is congenitally imperfect or diseased,
+or when it is in the state of infancy, we see in it an approach
+towards the character of the brains of some of the inferior
+animals.&nbsp; Dr. G. J. Davey states that he has frequently
+witnessed, among his patients at the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum,
+indications of a particular abnormal cerebration which forcibly
+reminded him of the specific healthy characteristics of animals
+lower in the scale of organization; <a name="citation346"></a><a
+href="#footnote346" class="citation">[346]</a> and every one must
+have observed how often the actions of children, especially in
+their moments of play, and where their selfish feelings are
+concerned, bear a resemblance to those of certain familiar
+animals. <a name="citation347"></a><a href="#footnote347"
+class="citation">[347]</a>&nbsp; Behold, then, the wonderful
+unity of the whole system.&nbsp; The grades of mind, like the
+forms of being, are mere stages of development.&nbsp; In the
+humbler forms, but a few of the mental faculties are traceable,
+just as we see in them but a few of the lineaments of universal
+structure.&nbsp; In man the system has arrived at its highest
+condition.&nbsp; The few gleams of reason, then, which we see in
+the lower animals, are precisely analogous to such a development
+of the fore-arm as we find in the paddle of the whale.&nbsp;
+Causality, comparison, and other of the nobler faculties, are in
+them <i>rudimental</i>.</p>
+<p>Bound up as we thus are by an identity in the character of our
+mental organization with the lower animals, we are yet, it will
+be observed, strikingly distinguished from them by this great
+advance in development.&nbsp; We have faculties in full force and
+activity which the animals either possess not at all, or in so
+low and obscure a form as to be equivalent to
+non-existence.&nbsp; Now these parts of mind are those which
+connect us with the things that are not of this world.&nbsp; We
+have veneration, prompting us to the worship of the Deity, which
+the animals lack.&nbsp; We have hope, to carry us on in thought
+beyond the bounds of time.&nbsp; We have reason, to enable us to
+inquire into the character of the Great Father, and the relation
+of us, his humble creatures, towards him.&nbsp; We have
+conscientiousness and benevolence, by which we can in a faint and
+humble measure imitate, in our conduct, that which he exemplifies
+in the whole of his wondrous doings.&nbsp; Beyond this, mental
+science does not carry us in support of religion: the rest
+depends on evidence of a different kind.&nbsp; But it is surely
+much that we thus discover in nature a provision for things so
+important.&nbsp; The existence of faculties having a regard to
+such things is a good evidence that such things exist.&nbsp; The
+face of God is reflected in the organization of man, as a little
+pool reflects the glorious sun.</p>
+<p>The affective or sentimental faculties are all of them liable
+to operate whenever appropriate objects or stimuli are presented,
+and this they do as irresistibly and unerringly as the tree sucks
+up moisture which it requires, with only this exception, that one
+faculty often interferes with the action of another, and operates
+instead by force of superior inherent strength or temporary
+activity.&nbsp; For example, alimentiveness may be in powerful
+operation with regard to its appropriate object, producing a keen
+appetite, and yet it may not act, in consequence of the more
+powerful operation of cautiousness, warning against evil
+consequences likely to ensue from the desired indulgence.&nbsp;
+This liability to flit from under the control of one feeling to
+the control of another, constitutes what is recognised as free
+will in man, being nothing more than a vicissitude in the
+supremacy of the faculties over each other.</p>
+<p>It is a common mistake to suppose that the individuals of our
+own species are all of them formed with similar
+faculties&mdash;similar in power and tendency&mdash;and that
+education and the influence of circumstances produce all the
+differences which we observe.&nbsp; There is not, in the old
+systems of mental philosophy, any doctrine more opposite to the
+truth than this.&nbsp; It is refuted at once by the great
+differences of intellectual tendency and moral disposition to be
+observed amongst a group of young children who have been all
+brought up in circumstances perfectly identical&mdash;even in
+twins, who have never been but in one place, under the charge of
+one nurse, attended to alike in all respects.&nbsp; The mental
+characters of individuals are inherently various, as the forms of
+their persons and the features of their faces are; and education
+and circumstances, though their influence is not to be despised,
+are incapable of entirely altering these characters, where they
+are strongly developed.&nbsp; That the original characters of
+mind are dependent on the volume of particular parts of the brain
+and the general quality of that viscus, is proved by induction
+from an extensive range of observations, the force of which must
+have been long since universally acknowledged but for the
+unpreparedness of mankind to admit a functional connexion between
+mind and body.&nbsp; The different mental characters of
+individuals may be presumed from analogy to depend on the same
+law of development which we have seen determining forms of being
+and the mental characters of particular species.&nbsp; This we
+may conceive as carrying forward the intellectual powers and
+moral dispositions of some to a high pitch, repressing those of
+others at a moderate amount, and thus producing all the varieties
+which we see in our fellow-creatures.&nbsp; Thus a Cuvier and a
+Newton are but expansions of a clown, and the person emphatically
+called the wicked man, is one whose highest moral feelings are
+rudimental.&nbsp; Such differences are not confined to our
+species; they are only less strongly marked in many of the
+inferior animals.&nbsp; There are clever dogs and wicked horses,
+as well as clever men and wicked men, and education sharpens the
+talents, and in some degree regulates the dispositions of
+animals, as it does our own.&nbsp; Here I may advert to a very
+interesting analogy between the mental characters of the types in
+the quinary system of zoology and the characters of individual
+men.&nbsp; We have seen that the pre-eminent type is usually
+endowed with an harmonious assemblage of the mental qualities
+belonging to the whole group, while the sub-typical inclines to
+ferocity, the rasorial to gentleness, and so on.&nbsp; Now,
+amongst individuals, some appear to be almost exclusively of the
+sub-typical, and others of the rasorial characters, while to a
+limited number is given the finely assorted assemblage of
+qualities which places them on a parallel with the typical.&nbsp;
+To this may be attributed the universality which marks all the
+very highest brains, such as those of Shakespeare and Scott, men
+of whom it has been remarked that they must have possessed within
+themselves not only the poet, but the warrior, the statesman, and
+the philosopher; and who, moreover, appear to have had the mild
+and manly, the moral and the forcible parts of our nature, in the
+most perfect balance.</p>
+<p>There is, nevertheless, a general adaptation of the mental
+constitution of man to the circumstances in which he lives, as
+there is between all the parts of nature to each other.&nbsp; The
+goods of the physical world are only to be realized by ingenuity
+and industrious exertion; behold, accordingly, an intellect full
+of device, and a fabric of the faculties which would go to pieces
+or destroy itself if it were not kept in constant
+occupation.&nbsp; Nature presents to us much that is sublime and
+beautiful: behold faculties which delight in contemplating these
+properties of hers, and in rising upon them, as upon wings, to
+the presence of the Eternal.&nbsp; It is also a world of
+difficulties and perils, and see how a large portion of our
+species are endowed with vigorous powers which take a pleasure in
+meeting and overcoming difficulty and danger.&nbsp; Even that
+principle on which our faculties are constituted&mdash;a wide
+range of freedom in which to act for all various
+occasions&mdash;necessitates a resentful faculty, by which
+individuals may protect themselves from the undue and capricious
+exercise of each other&rsquo;s faculties, and thus preserve their
+individual rights.&nbsp; So also there is cautiousness, to give
+us a tendency 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,&mdash;a function which obviously has a certain
+legitimate range of action, however liable to be abused.&nbsp;
+The constitution of the mind generally points to a state of
+intimate relation of individuals towards society, towards the
+external world, and towards things above this world.&nbsp; No
+individual being is integral or independent; he is only part of
+an extensive piece of social mechanism.&nbsp; The inferior mind,
+full of rude energy and unregulated impulse, does not more
+require a superior nature to act as its master and its mentor,
+than does the superior nature require to be surrounded by such
+rough elements on which to exercise its high endowments as a
+ruling and tutelary power.&nbsp; This relation of each to each
+produces a vast portion of the active business of life.&nbsp; It
+is easy to see that, if we were all alike in our moral
+tendencies, and all placed on a medium of perfect moderation in
+this respect, the world would be a scene of everlasting dulness
+and apathy.&nbsp; It requires the variety of individual
+constitution to give moral life to the scene.</p>
+<p>The indefiniteness of the potentiality of the human faculties,
+and the complexity which thus attends their relations, lead
+unavoidably to occasional error.&nbsp; If we consider for a
+moment that there are not less than thirty such faculties, that
+they are each given in different proportions to different
+persons, that each is at the same time endowed with a wide
+discretion as to the force and frequency of its action, and that
+our neighbours, the world, and our connexions with something
+beyond it, are all exercising an ever-varying influence over us,
+we cannot be surprised at the irregularities attending human
+conduct.&nbsp; It is simply the penalty paid for the superior
+endowment.&nbsp; It is here that the imperfection of our nature
+resides.&nbsp; Causality and conscientiousness are, it is true,
+guides over all; but even these are only faculties of the same
+indeterminate constitution as the rest, and partake accordingly
+of the same inequality of action.&nbsp; Man is therefore a piece
+of mechanism, which never can act so as to satisfy his own ideas
+of what he might be&mdash;for he can imagine a state of moral
+perfection, (as he can imagine a globe formed of diamonds,
+pearls, and rubies,) though his constitution forbids him to
+realize it.&nbsp; There ever will, in the best disposed and most
+disciplined minds, be occasional discrepancies between the amount
+of temptation and the power summoned for regulation or
+resistance, or between the stimulus and the mobility of the
+faculty; and hence those errors, and shortcomings, and excesses,
+without end, with which the good are constantly finding cause to
+charge themselves.&nbsp; There is at the same time even here a
+possibility of improvement.&nbsp; 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 be habitually humane, frank, and
+truthful.&nbsp; So is human society, in its earliest stages,
+sanguinary, aggressive, and deceitful, but in time becomes just,
+faithful, and benevolent.&nbsp; To such improvements there is a
+natural tendency which will operate in all fair circumstances,
+though it is not to be expected that irregular and undue impulses
+will ever be altogether banished from the system.</p>
+<p>It may still be a puzzle to many, how beings should be born
+into the world whose organization is such that they unavoidably,
+even in a civilized country, become malefactors.&nbsp; Does God,
+it may be asked, make criminals?&nbsp; Does he fashion certain
+beings with a predestination to evil?&nbsp; He does not do so;
+and yet the criminal type of brain, as it is called, comes into
+existence in accordance with laws which the Deity has
+established.&nbsp; It is not, however, as the result of the first
+or general intention of those laws, but as an exception from
+their ordinary and proper action.&nbsp; The production of those
+evilly disposed beings is in this manner.&nbsp; The moral
+character of the progeny depends in a general way, (as does the
+physical character also,) upon conditions of the
+parents,&mdash;both general conditions, and conditions at the
+particular time of the commencement of the existence of the new
+being, and likewise external conditions affecting the f&oelig;tus
+through the mother.&nbsp; Now the amount of these conditions is
+indefinite.&nbsp; The faculties of the parents, as far as these
+are concerned, may have oscillated for the time towards the
+extreme of tensibility in one direction.&nbsp; The influences
+upon the f&oelig;tus may have also been of an extreme and unusual
+kind.&nbsp; Let us suppose that the conditions upon the whole
+have been favourable for the development, not of the higher, but
+of the lower sentiments, and of the propensities of the new
+being, the result will necessarily be a mean type of brain.&nbsp;
+Here, it will be observed, God no more decreed an immoral being,
+than he decreed an immoral paroxysm of the sentiments.&nbsp; Our
+perplexity is in considering the ill-disposed being by
+himself.&nbsp; He is only a part of a series of phenomena,
+traceable to a principle good in the main, but which admits of
+evil as an exception.&nbsp; We have seen that it is for wise ends
+that God leaves our moral faculties to an indefinite range of
+action; the general good results of this arrangement are obvious;
+but exceptions of evil are inseparable from such a system, and
+this is one of them.&nbsp; To come to particular
+illustration&mdash;when a people are oppressed, or kept in a
+state of slavery, they invariably contract habits of lying, for
+the purpose of deceiving and outwitting their superiors,
+falsehood being a refuge of the weak under difficulties.&nbsp;
+What is a habit in parents becomes an inherent quality in
+children.&nbsp; We are not, therefore, to be surprised when a
+traveller tells us that black children in the West Indies appear
+to lie by instinct, and never answer a white person truly even in
+the simplest matter.&nbsp; Here we have secretiveness roused in a
+people to a state of constant and exalted exercise; an over
+tendency of the nervous energy in that direction is the
+consequence, and a new organic condition is established.&nbsp;
+This tells upon the progeny, which comes into the world with
+secretiveness excessive in volume and activity.&nbsp; All other
+evil characteristics may be readily conceived as being implanted
+in a new generation in the same way.&nbsp; And sometimes not one,
+but several generations, may be concerned in bringing up the
+result to a pitch which produces crime.&nbsp; It is, however, to
+be observed, that the general tendency of things is to a
+limitation, not the extension of such abnormally constituted
+beings.&nbsp; The criminal brain finds itself in a social scene
+where all is against it.&nbsp; It may struggle on for a time, but
+the medium and superior natures are never long at a loss in
+getting the better of it.&nbsp; The disposal of such beings will
+always depend much on the moral state of a community, the degree
+in which just views prevail with regard to human nature, and the
+feelings which accident may have caused to predominate at a
+particular time.&nbsp; Where the mass was little enlightened or
+refined, and terrors for life or property were highly excited,
+malefactors have ever been treated severely.&nbsp; But when order
+is generally triumphant, and reason allowed sway, men begin to
+see the true case of criminals&mdash;namely, that while one large
+department are victims of erroneous social conditions, another
+are brought to error by tendencies which they are only
+unfortunate in having inherited from nature.&nbsp; Criminal
+jurisprudence then addresses itself less to the direct punishment
+than to the reformation and care-taking of those liable to its
+attention.&nbsp; And such a treatment of criminals, it may be
+farther remarked, so that it stop short of affording any
+encouragement to crime, (a point which experience will
+determine,) is evidently no more than justice, seeing how
+accidentally all forms of the moral constitution are distributed,
+and how thoroughly mutual obligation shines throughout the whole
+frame of society&mdash;the strong to help the weak, the good to
+redeem and restrain the bad.</p>
+<p>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 be developed from inherent qualities, and to have a mode
+of action depending solely on its own organization.&nbsp; Thus
+the whole is complete on one principle.&nbsp; The masses of space
+are formed by law; law makes them in due time theatres of
+existence for plants and animals; sensation, disposition,
+intellect, are all in like manner developed and sustained in
+action by law.&nbsp; It is most interesting to observe into how
+small a field the whole of the mysteries of nature thus
+ultimately resolve themselves.&nbsp; The inorganic has one final
+comprehensive law, <span
+class="GutSmall">GRAVITATION</span>.&nbsp; The organic, the other
+great department of mundane things, rests in like manner on one
+law, and that is,&mdash;<span
+class="GutSmall">DEVELOPMENT</span>.&nbsp; Nor may even these be
+after all twain, but only branches of one still more
+comprehensive law, the expression of that unity which man&rsquo;s
+wit can scarcely separate from Deity itself.</p>
+<h2><a name="page361"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+361</span>PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF THE ANIMATED
+CREATION.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">We</span> have now to inquire how this
+view of the constitution and origin of nature bears upon the
+condition of man upon the earth, and his relation to
+supra-mundane things.</p>
+<p>That enjoyment is the proper attendant of animal existence is
+pressed upon us by all that we see and all we experience.&nbsp;
+Everywhere we perceive in the lower creatures, in their ordinary
+condition, symptoms of enjoyment.&nbsp; Their whole being is a
+system of needs, the supplying of which is gratification, and of
+faculties, the exercise of which is pleasurable.&nbsp; When we
+consult our own sensations, we find that, even in a sense of a
+healthy performance of all the functions of the animal economy,
+God has furnished us with an innocent and very high
+enjoyment.&nbsp; The mere quiet consciousness of a healthy play
+of the mental functions&mdash;a mind at ease with itself and all
+around it&mdash;is in like manner extremely agreeable.&nbsp; This
+negative class of enjoyments, it may be remarked, is likely to be
+even more extensively experienced by the lower animals than by
+man, at least in the proportion of their absolute endowments, as
+their mental and bodily functions are much less liable to
+derangement than ours.&nbsp; To find the world constituted on
+this principle is only what in reason we would expect.&nbsp; We
+cannot conceive that so vast a system could have been created for
+a contrary purpose.&nbsp; No averagely constituted human being
+would, in his own limited sphere of action, think of producing a
+similar system upon an opposite principle.&nbsp; But to form so
+vast a range of being, and to make being everywhere a source of
+gratification, is conformable to our ideas of a Creator in whom
+we are constantly discovering traits of a nature, of which our
+own is but a faint and far-cast shadow at the best.</p>
+<p>It appears at first difficult to reconcile with this idea the
+many miseries which we see all sentient beings, ourselves
+included, occasionally enduring.&nbsp; How, the sage has asked in
+every age, should a Being so transcendently kind, have allowed of
+so large an admixture of evil in the condition of his
+creatures?&nbsp; Do we not at length find an answer to a certain
+extent satisfactory, in the view which has now been given of the
+constitution of nature?&nbsp; We there see the Deity operating in
+the most august of his works by fixed laws, an arrangement which,
+it is clear, only admits of the main and primary results being
+good, but disregards exceptions.&nbsp; Now the mechanical laws
+are so definite in their purposes, that no exceptions ever take
+place in that department; if there is a certain quantity of
+nebulous matter to be agglomerated and divided and set in motion
+as a planetary system, it will be so with hair&rsquo;s-breadth
+accuracy, and cannot be otherwise.&nbsp; But the laws presiding
+over meteorology, life, and mind, are necessarily less definite,
+as they have to produce a great variety of mutually related
+results.&nbsp; Left to act independently of each other, each
+according to its separate commission, and each with a wide range
+of potentiality to be modified by associated conditions, they can
+only have effects generally beneficial: often there must be an
+interference of one law with another, often a law will chance to
+operate in excess, or upon a wrong object, and thus evil will be
+produced.&nbsp; Thus, winds are generally useful in many ways,
+and the sea is useful as a means of communication between one
+country and another; but the natural laws which produce winds are
+of indefinite range of action, and sometimes are unusually
+concentrated in space or in time, so as to produce storms and
+hurricanes, by which much damage is done; the sea may be by these
+causes violently agitated, so that many barks and many lives
+perish.&nbsp; Here, it is evident, the evil is only
+exceptive.&nbsp; Suppose, again, that a boy, in the course of the
+lively sports proper to his age, suffers a fall which injures his
+spine, and renders him a cripple for life.&nbsp; Two things have
+been concerned in the case: first, the love of violent exercise,
+and second, the law of gravitation.&nbsp; Both of these things
+are good in the main.&nbsp; In the rash enterprises and rough
+sports in which boys engage, they prepare their bodies and minds
+for the hard tasks of life.&nbsp; By gravitation, all moveable
+things, our own bodies included, are kept stable on the surface
+of the earth.&nbsp; But when it chances that the playful boy
+loses his hold (we shall say) of the branch of a tree, and has no
+solid support immediately below, the law of gravitation
+unrelentingly pulls him to the ground, and thus he is hurt.&nbsp;
+Now it was not a primary object of gravitation to injure boys;
+but gravitation could not but operate in the circumstances, its
+nature being to be universal and invariable.&nbsp; The evil is,
+therefore, only a casual exception from something in the main
+good.</p>
+<p>The same explanation applies to even the most conspicuous of
+the evils which afflict society.&nbsp; War, it may be said, and
+said truly, is a tremendous example of evil, in the misery,
+hardship, waste of human life, and mis-spending of human
+energies, which it occasions.&nbsp; But what is it that produces
+war?&nbsp; Certain tendencies of human nature, as keen assertion
+of a supposed right, resentment of supposed injury,
+acquisitiveness, desire of admiration, combativeness, or mere
+love of excitement.&nbsp; All of these are tendencies which are
+every day, in a legitimate extent of action, producing great and
+indispensable benefits to us.&nbsp; Man would be a tame,
+indolent, unserviceable being without them, and his fate would be
+starvation.&nbsp; War, then, huge evil though it be, is, after
+all, but the exceptive case, a casual misdirection of properties
+and powers essentially good.&nbsp; God has given us the
+tendencies for a benevolent purpose.&nbsp; He has only not laid
+down any absolute obstruction to our misuse of them.&nbsp; That
+were an arrangement of a kind which he has nowhere made.&nbsp;
+But he has established many laws in our nature which tend to
+lessen the frequency and destructiveness of these abuses.&nbsp;
+Our reason comes to see that war is purely an evil, even to the
+conqueror.&nbsp; Benevolence interposes to make its ravages less
+mischievous to human comfort, and less destructive to human
+life.&nbsp; Men begin to find that their more active powers can
+be exercised with equal gratification on legitimate objects; for
+example, in overcoming the natural difficulties of their path
+through life, or in a generous spirit of emulation in a line of
+duty beneficial to themselves and their fellow-creatures.&nbsp;
+Thus, war at length shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass,
+though there certainly is no reason to suppose that it will be at
+any early period, if ever, altogether dispensed with, while
+man&rsquo;s constitution remains as it is.&nbsp; In considering
+an evil of this kind, we must not limit our view to our own or
+any past time.&nbsp; Placed upon the earth with faculties
+prepared to act, but inexperienced, and with the more active
+propensities necessarily in great force to suit the condition of
+the globe, man was apt to misuse his powers much in this way at
+first, compared with what he is likely to do when he advances
+into a condition of civilization.&nbsp; In the scheme of
+providence, thousands of years of frequent warfare, all the
+so-called glories which fill history, may be only an exception to
+the general rule.</p>
+<p>The sex passion in like manner leads to great evils; but the
+evils are only an exception from the vast mass of good connected
+with this affection.&nbsp; Providence has seen it necessary to
+make very ample provision for the preservation and utmost
+possible extension of all species.&nbsp; The aim seems to be to
+diffuse existence as widely as possible, to fill up every vacant
+piece of space with some sentient being to be a vehicle of
+enjoyment.&nbsp; Hence this passion is conferred in great
+force.&nbsp; But the relation between the number of beings, and
+the means of supporting them, is only on the footing of general
+law.&nbsp; There may be occasional discrepancies between the laws
+operating for the multiplication of individuals, and the laws
+operating to supply them with the means of subsistence, and evils
+will be endured in consequence, even in our own highly favoured
+species.&nbsp; But against all these evils, and against those
+numberless vexations which have arisen in all ages from the
+attachment of the sexes, place the vast amount of happiness which
+is derived from this source&mdash;the basis of the whole circle
+of the domestic affections, the sweetening principle of life, the
+prompter of all our most generous feelings, and even of our most
+virtuous resolves&mdash;and every ill that can be traced to it is
+but as dust in the balance.&nbsp; And here, also, we must be on
+our guard against judging from what we see in the world at a
+particular era.&nbsp; As reason and the higher sentiments of
+man&rsquo;s nature increase in force, this passion is put under
+better regulation, so as to lessen many of the evils connected
+with it.&nbsp; The civilized man is more able to give it due
+control; his attachments are less the result of impulse; he
+studies more the weal of his partner and offspring.&nbsp; There
+are even some of the resentful feelings connected in early
+society with love, such as hatred of successful rivalry, and
+jealousy, which almost disappear in an advanced stage of
+civilization.&nbsp; The evils springing, in our own species at
+least, from this passion, may therefore be an exception mainly
+peculiar to a particular term of the world&rsquo;s progress, and
+which may be expected to decrease greatly in amount.</p>
+<p>With respect, again, to disease, so prolific a cause of
+suffering to man, the human constitution is merely a complicated
+but regular process in electro-chemistry, which goes on well, and
+is a source of continual gratification, so long as nothing occurs
+to interfere with it injuriously, but which is liable every
+moment to be deranged by various external agencies, when it
+becomes a source of pain, and, if the injury be severe, ceases to
+be capable of retaining life.&nbsp; It may be readily admitted
+that the evils experienced in this way are very great; but, after
+all, such experiences are no more than occasional, and not
+necessarily frequent&mdash;exceptions from a general rule of
+which the direct action is to confer happiness.&nbsp; The human
+constitution might have been made of a more hardy character; but
+we always see hardiness and insensibility go together, and it may
+be of course presumed that we only could have purchased this
+immunity from suffering at the expense of a large portion of that
+delicacy in which lie some of our most agreeable
+sensations.&nbsp; Or man&rsquo;s faculties might have been
+restricted to definiteness of action, as is greatly the case with
+those of the lower animals, and thus we should have been equally
+safe from the aberrations which lead to disease; but in that
+event we should have been incapable of acting to so many
+different purposes as we are, and of the many high enjoyments
+which the varied action of our faculties places in our power: we
+should not, in short, have been human beings, but merely on a
+level with the inferior animals.&nbsp; Thus, it appears, that the
+very fineness of man&rsquo;s constitution, that which places him
+in such a high relation to the mundane economy, and makes him the
+vehicle of so many exquisitely delightful sensations&mdash;it is
+this which makes him liable to the sufferings of disease.&nbsp;
+It might be said, on the other hand, that the noxiousness of the
+agencies producing disease might have been diminished or
+extinguished; but the probability is, that this could not have
+been done without such a derangement of the whole economy of
+nature as would have been attended with more serious evils.&nbsp;
+For example&mdash;a large class of diseases are the result of
+effluvia from decaying organic matter.&nbsp; This kind of matter
+is known to be extremely useful, when mixed with earth, in
+favouring the process of vegetation.&nbsp; Supposing the
+noxiousness to the human constitution done away with, might we
+not also lose that important quality which tends so largely to
+increase the food raised from the ground?&nbsp; Perhaps (as has
+been suggested) the noxiousness is even a matter of special
+design, to induce us to put away decaying organic substances into
+the earth, where they are calculated to be so useful.&nbsp; Now
+man has reason to enable him to see that such substances are
+beneficial under one arrangement, and noxious in the other.&nbsp;
+He is, as it were, commanded to take the right method in dealing
+with it.&nbsp; In point of fact, men do not always take this
+method, but allow accumulations of noxious matter to gather close
+about their dwellings, where they generate fevers and
+agues.&nbsp; But their doing so may be regarded as only a
+temporary exception from the operation of mental laws, the
+general tendency of which is to make men adopt the proper
+measures.&nbsp; And these measures will probably be in time
+universally adopted, so that one extensive class of diseases will
+be altogether or nearly abolished.</p>
+<p>Another large class of diseases spring from mismanagement of
+our personal economy.&nbsp; Eating to excess, eating and drinking
+what is noxious, disregard to that cleanliness which is necessary
+for the right action of the functions of the skin, want of fresh
+air for the supply of the lungs, undue, excessive, and irregular
+indulgence of the mental affections, are all of them recognised
+modes of creating that derangement of the system in which disease
+consists.&nbsp; Here also it may be said that a limitation of the
+mental faculties to definite manifestations (<i>vulgo</i>,
+instincts) might have enabled us to avoid many of 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 lower animals
+are, wanting that transcendently higher character of sensation
+and power, by which our enjoyments are made so much
+greater.&nbsp; In making the desire of food, for example, with us
+an indefinite mental manifestation, instead of the definite one,
+which it is amongst the lower animals, the Creator has given us a
+means of deriving far greater gratifications from food
+(consistently with health) than the lower animals appear to be
+capable of.&nbsp; He has also given us reason to act as a guiding
+and controlling power over this and other propensities, so that
+they may be prevented from becoming causes of malady.&nbsp; We
+can see that excess is injurious, and are thus prompted to
+moderation.&nbsp; We can see that all the things which we feel
+inclined to take are not healthful, and are thus exhorted to
+avoid what are pernicious.&nbsp; We can also see that a cleanly
+skin and a constant supply of pure air are necessary to the
+proper performance of some of the most important of the organic
+functions, and thus are stimulated to frequent ablution, and to a
+right ventilation of our parlours and sleeping apartments.&nbsp;
+And so on with the other causes of disease.&nbsp; Reason may not
+operate very powerfully to these purposes in an early state of
+society, and prodigious evils may therefore have been endured
+from disease in past ages; but these are not necessarily to be
+endured always.&nbsp; As civilization advances, reason acquires a
+greater ascendancy; the causes of the evils are seen and avoided;
+and disease shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass.&nbsp;
+The experience of our own country places this in a striking
+light.&nbsp; In the middle ages, when large towns had no police
+regulations, society was every now and then scourged by
+pestilence.&nbsp; The third of the people of Europe are said to
+have been carried off by one epidemic.&nbsp; Even in London the
+annual mortality has greatly sunk within a century.&nbsp; The
+improvement in human life, which has taken place since the
+construction of the Northampton tables by Dr. Price, is equally
+remarkable.&nbsp; Modern tables still shew a prodigious mortality
+among the young in all civilized countries&mdash;evidently a
+result of some prevalent error in the usual modes of rearing
+them.&nbsp; But to remedy this evil there is the sagacity of the
+human mind, and the sense to adopt any reformed plans which may
+be shewn to be necessary.&nbsp; By a change in the management of
+an orphan institution in London, during the last fifty years, an
+immense reduction in the mortality took place.&nbsp; We may of
+course hope to see measures devised and adopted for producing a
+similar improvement of infant life throughout the world at
+large.</p>
+<p>In this part of our subject, the most difficult point
+certainly lies in those occurrences of disease where the
+afflicted individual has been in no degree concerned in bringing
+the visitation upon himself.&nbsp; Daily experience shews us
+infectious disease arising in a place where the natural laws in
+respect of cleanliness are neglected, and then spreading into
+regions where there is no blame of this kind.&nbsp; We then see
+the innocent suffering equally with those who may be called the
+guilty.&nbsp; Nay, the benevolent physician who comes to succour
+the miserable beings whose error may have caused the mischief, is
+sometimes seen to fall a victim to it, while many of his patients
+recover.&nbsp; We are also only too familiar with the
+transmission of diseases from erring parents to innocent
+children, who, accordingly suffer, and perhaps die prematurely,
+as it were for the sins of others.&nbsp; After all, however
+painful such cases may be in contemplation, they cannot be
+regarded in any other light than as exceptions from arrangements,
+the general working of which is beneficial.</p>
+<p>With regard to the innocence of the suffering parties, there
+is one important consideration which is pressed upon us from many
+quarters, namely&mdash;that moral conditions have not the least
+concern in the working of these simply physical laws.&nbsp; These
+laws proceed with an entire independence of all such conditions,
+and desirably so, for otherwise there could be no certain
+dependence placed upon them.&nbsp; Thus it may happen that two
+persons ascending a piece of scaffolding, the one a virtuous, the
+other a vicious man, the former, being the less cautious of the
+two, ventures upon an insecure place, falls, and is killed, while
+the other, choosing a better footing, remains uninjured.&nbsp; It
+is not in what we can conceive of the nature of things, that
+there should be a special exemption from the ordinary laws of
+matter, to save this virtuous man.&nbsp; So it might be that, of
+two physicians, attending fever cases, in a mean part of a large
+city, the one, an excellent citizen, may stand in such a position
+with 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 and father, and who, unlike the other, only attends such
+cases with selfish ends, takes care to be as much as possible out
+of the stream of infection, and accordingly escapes.&nbsp; In
+both of these cases man&rsquo;s sense of good and evil&mdash;his
+faculty of conscientiousness&mdash;would incline him to destine
+the vicious man to destruction and save the virtuous.&nbsp; But
+the Great Ruler of Nature does not act on such principles.&nbsp;
+He has established laws for the operation of inanimate matter,
+which are quite unswerving, so that when we know them, we have
+only to act in a certain way with respect to them, in order to
+obtain all the benefits and avoid all the evils connected with
+them.&nbsp; He has likewise established moral laws in our nature,
+which are equally unswerving, (allowing for their wider range of
+action,) and from obedience to which unfailing good is to be
+derived.&nbsp; But the two sets of laws are independent of each
+other.&nbsp; Obedience to each gives only its own proper
+advantage, not the advantage proper to the other.&nbsp; Hence it
+is that virtue forms no protection against the evils connected
+with the physical laws, while, on the other hand, a man skilled
+in and attentive to these, but unrighteous and disregardful of
+his neighbour, is in like manner not protected by his attention
+to physical circumstances from the proper consequences of neglect
+or breach of the moral laws.</p>
+<p>Thus it is that the innocence of the party suffering for the
+faults of a parent, or of any other person or set of persons, is
+evidently a consideration quite apart from that suffering.</p>
+<p>It is clear, moreover, from the whole scope of the natural
+laws, that the individual, as far as the present sphere of being
+is concerned, is to the Author of Nature a consideration of
+inferior moment.&nbsp; Everywhere we see the arrangements for the
+species perfect; the individual is left, as it were, to take his
+chance amidst the <i>m&ecirc;l&eacute;e</i> of the various laws
+affecting him.&nbsp; If he be found inferiorly endowed, or ill
+befalls him, there was at least no partiality against him.&nbsp;
+The system has the fairness of a lottery, in which every one has
+the like chance of drawing the prize.</p>
+<p>Yet it is also to be observed that few evils are altogether
+unmixed.&nbsp; God, contemplating apparently the unbending action
+of his great laws, has established others which appear to be
+designed to have a compensating, a repairing, and a consoling
+effect.&nbsp; Suppose, for instance, that, from a defect in the
+power of development in a mother, her offspring is ushered into
+the world destitute of some of the most useful members, or blind,
+or deaf, or of imperfect intellect, there is ever to be found in
+the parents and other relatives, and in the surrounding public, a
+sympathy with the sufferer, which tends to make up for the
+deficiency, so that he is in the long run not much a loser.&nbsp;
+Indeed, the benevolence implanted in our nature seems to be an
+arrangement having for one of its principal objects to cause us,
+by sympathy and active aid, to remedy the evils unavoidably
+suffered by our fellow-creatures in the course of the operation
+of the other natural laws.&nbsp; And even in the sufferer
+himself, it is often found that a defect in one point is made up
+for by an extra power in another.&nbsp; The blind come to have a
+sense of touch much more acute than those who see.&nbsp; Persons
+born without hands have been known to acquire a power of using
+their feet for a number of the principal offices usually served
+by that member.&nbsp; I need hardly say how remarkably fatuity is
+compensated by the more than usual regard paid to the children
+born with it by their parents, and the zeal which others usually
+feel to protect and succour such persons.&nbsp; In short, we
+never see evil of any kind take place where there is not some
+remedy or compensating principle ready to interfere for its
+alleviation.&nbsp; And there can be no doubt that in this manner
+suffering of all kinds is very much relieved.</p>
+<p>We may, then, regard the globes of space as theatres designed
+for the residence of animated sentient beings, placed there with
+this as their first and most obvious purpose&mdash;namely, to be
+sensible of enjoyments from the exercise of their faculties in
+relation to external things.&nbsp; The faculties of the various
+species are very different, but the happiness of each depends on
+the harmony there may be between its particular faculties and its
+particular circumstances.&nbsp; For instance, place the
+small-brained sheep or ox in a good pasture, and it fully enjoys
+this harmony of relation; but man, having many more faculties,
+cannot be thus contented.&nbsp; Besides having a sufficiency of
+food and bodily comfort, he must have entertainment for his
+intellect, whatever be its grade, objects for the domestic and
+social affections, objects for the sentiments.&nbsp; He is also a
+progressive being, and what pleases him to-day may not please him
+to-morrow; but, in each case he demands a sphere of appropriate
+conditions in order to be happy.&nbsp; By virtue of his superior
+organization, his enjoyments are much higher and more varied than
+those of any of the lower animals; but the very complexity of
+circumstances affecting him renders it at the same time
+unavoidable, that his nature should be often inharmoniously
+placed and disagreeably affected, and that he should therefore be
+unhappy.&nbsp; Still unhappiness amongst mankind is the exception
+from the rule of their condition, and an exception which is
+capable of almost infinite diminution, by virtue of the improving
+reason of man, and the experience which he acquires in working
+out the problems of society.</p>
+<p>To secure the immediate means of happiness it would seem to be
+necessary for men first to study with all care the constitution
+of nature, and, secondly, to accommodate themselves to that
+constitution, so as to obtain all the realizable advantages from
+acting conformably to it, and to avoid all likely evils from
+disregarding it.&nbsp; It will be of no use to sit down and
+expect that things are to operate of their own accord, or through
+the direction of a partial deity, for our benefit; equally so
+were it to expose ourselves to palpable dangers, under the notion
+that we shall, for some reason, have a dispensation or exemption
+from them: we must endeavour so to place ourselves, and so to
+act, that the arrangements which Providence has made impartially
+for all may be in our favour, and not against us; such are the
+only means by which we can obtain good and avoid evil here
+below.&nbsp; And, in doing this, it is especially necessary that
+care be taken to avoid interfering with the like efforts of other
+men, beyond what may have been agreed upon by the mass as
+necessary for the general good.&nbsp; Such interferences, tending
+in any way to injure the body, property, or peace of a neighbour,
+or to the injury of society in general, tend very much to reflect
+evil upon ourselves, through the re-action which they produce in
+the feelings of our neighbour and of society, and also the
+offence which they give to our own conscientiousness and
+benevolence.&nbsp; On the other hand, when we endeavour to
+promote the efforts of our fellow-creatures to attain happiness,
+we produce a re-action of the contrary kind, the tendency of
+which is towards our own benefit.&nbsp; The one course of action
+tends to the injury, the other to the benefit of ourselves and
+others.&nbsp; By the one course the general design of the Creator
+towards his creatures is thwarted; by the other it is
+favoured.&nbsp; And thus we can readily see the most substantial
+grounds for regarding all moral emotions and doings as divine in
+their nature, and as a means of rising to and communing with
+God.&nbsp; Obedience is not selfishness, which it would otherwise
+be&mdash;it is worship.&nbsp; The merest barbarians have a
+glimmering sense of this philosophy, and it continually shines
+out more and more clearly in the public mind, as a nation
+advances in intelligence.&nbsp; Nor are individuals alone
+concerned here.&nbsp; The same rule applies as between one great
+body or class of men and another, and also between nations.&nbsp;
+Thus if one set of men keep others in the condition of
+slaves&mdash;this being a gross injustice to the subjected party,
+the mental manifestations of that party to the masters will be
+such as to mar the comfort of their lives; the minds of the
+masters themselves will be degraded by the association with
+beings so degraded; and thus, with some immediate or apparent
+benefit from keeping slaves, there will be in a far greater
+degree an experience of evil.&nbsp; So also, if one portion of a
+nation, engaged in a particular department of industry, grasp at
+some advantages injurious to the other sections of the people,
+the first effect will be an injury to those other portions of the
+nation, and the second a re-active injury to the injurers, making
+their guilt their punishment.&nbsp; And so when one nation
+commits an aggression upon the property or rights of another, or
+even pursues towards it a sordid or ungracious policy, the
+effects are sure to be redoubled evil from the offended
+party.&nbsp; All of these things are under laws which make the
+effects, on a large range, absolutely certain; and an individual,
+a party, a people, can no more act unjustly with safety, than I
+could with safety place my leg in the track of a coming wain, or
+attempt to fast thirty days.&nbsp; We have been constituted on
+the principle of only being able to realize happiness for
+ourselves when our fellow-creatures are also happy; we must
+therefore both do to others only as we would have others to do to
+us, and endeavour to promote their happiness as well as our own,
+in order to find ourselves truly comfortable in this field of
+existence.&nbsp; These are words which God speaks to us as truly
+through his works, as if we heard them uttered in his own voice
+from heaven.</p>
+<p>It will occur to every one, that the system here unfolded does
+not imply the most perfect conceivable love or regard on the part
+of the Deity towards his creatures.&nbsp; Constituted as we are,
+feeling how vain our efforts often are to attain happiness or
+avoid calamity, and knowing that much evil does unavoidably
+befall us from no fault of ours, we are apt to feel that this is
+a dreary view of the Divine economy; and before we have looked
+farther, we might be tempted to say, Far rather let us cling to
+the idea, so long received, that the Deity acts continually for
+special occasions, and gives such directions to the fate of each
+individual as he thinks meet; so that, when sorrow comes to us,
+we shall have at least the consolation of believing that it is
+imposed by a Father who loves us, and who seeks by these means to
+accomplish our ultimate good.&nbsp; Now, in the first place, if
+this be an untrue notion of the Deity and his ways, it can be of
+no real benefit to us; and, in the second, it is proper to
+inquire if there be necessarily in the doctrine of natural law
+any peculiarity calculated materially to affect our hitherto
+supposed relation to the Deity.&nbsp; It may be that while we are
+committed to take our chance in a natural system of undeviating
+operation, and are left with apparent ruthlessness to endure the
+consequences of every collision into which we knowingly or
+unknowingly come with each law of the system, there is a system
+of Mercy and Grace behind the screen of nature, which is to make
+up for all casualties endured here, and the very largeness of
+which is what makes these casualties a matter of indifference to
+God.&nbsp; For the existence of such a system, the actual
+constitution of nature is itself an argument.&nbsp; The reasoning
+may proceed thus: The system of nature assures us that
+benevolence is a leading principle in the divine mind.&nbsp; But
+that system is at the same time deficient in a means of making
+this benevolence of invariable operation.&nbsp; To reconcile this
+to the recognised character of the Deity, it is necessary to
+suppose that the present system is but a part of a whole, a stage
+in a Great Progress, and that the Redress is in reserve.&nbsp;
+Another argument here occurs&mdash;the economy of nature,
+beautifully arranged and vast in its extent as it is, does not
+satisfy even man&rsquo;s idea of what might be; he feels that, if
+this multiplicity of theatres for the exemplification of such
+phenomena as we see on earth were to go on for ever unchanged, it
+would not be worthy of the Being capable of creating it.&nbsp; An
+endless monotony of human generations, with their humble
+thinkings and doings, seems an object beneath that august
+Being.&nbsp; But the mundane economy might be very well as a
+portion of some greater phenomenon, the rest of which was yet to
+be evolved.&nbsp; It therefore appears that our system, though it
+may at first appear at issue with other doctrines in esteem
+amongst mankind, tends to come into harmony with them, and even
+to give them support.&nbsp; I would say, in conclusion, that,
+even where the two above arguments may fail of effect, there may
+yet be a faith derived from this view of nature sufficient to
+sustain us under all sense of the imperfect happiness, the
+calamities, the woes, and pains of this sphere of being.&nbsp;
+For let us but fully and truly consider what a system is here
+laid open to view, and we cannot well doubt that we are in the
+hands of One who is both able and willing to do us the most
+entire justice.&nbsp; And in this faith we may well rest at ease,
+even though life should have been to us but a protracted disease,
+or though every hope we had built on the secular materials within
+our reach were felt to be melting from our grasp.&nbsp; Thinking
+of all the contingencies of this world as to be in time melted
+into or lost in the greater system, to which the present is only
+subsidiary, let us wait the end with patience, and be of good
+cheer.</p>
+<h2><a name="page387"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 387</span>NOTE
+CONCLUSORY.</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Thus</span> ends a book, composed in
+solitude, and almost without the cognizance of a single human
+being, for the sole purpose (or as nearly so as may be) of
+improving the knowledge of mankind, and through that medium their
+happiness.&nbsp; For reasons which need not be specified, the
+author&rsquo;s name is retained in its original obscurity, and,
+in all probability, will never be generally known.&nbsp; I do not
+expect that any word of praise which the work may elicit shall
+ever be responded to by me; or that any word of censure shall
+ever be parried or deprecated.&nbsp; It goes forth to take its
+chance of instant oblivion, or of a long and active course of
+usefulness in the world.&nbsp; Neither contingency can be of any
+importance to me, beyond the regret or the satisfaction which may
+be imparted by my sense of a lost or a realized benefit to my
+fellow-creatures.&nbsp; The book, as far as I am aware, is the
+first attempt to connect the natural sciences into a history of
+creation.&nbsp; The idea is a bold one, and there are many
+circumstances of time and place to render its boldness more than
+usually conspicuous.&nbsp; But I believe my doctrines to be in
+the main true; I believe all truth to be valuable, and its
+dissemination a blessing.&nbsp; At the same time, I hold myself
+duly sensible of the common liability to error, but am certain
+that no error in this line has the least chance of being allowed
+to injure the public mind.&nbsp; Therefore I publish.&nbsp; My
+views, if correct, will most assuredly stand, and may sooner or
+later prove beneficial; if otherwise, they will as surely pass
+out of notice without doing any harm.</p>
+<p>My sincere desire in the composition of the book was to give
+the true view of the history of nature, with as little
+disturbance as possible to existing beliefs, whether
+philosophical or religious.&nbsp; I have made little reference to
+any doctrines of the latter kind which may be thought
+inconsistent with mine, because to do so would have been to enter
+upon questions for the settlement of which our knowledge is not
+yet ripe.&nbsp; Let the reconciliation of whatever is true in my
+views with whatever is true in other systems come about in the
+fulness of calm and careful inquiry.&nbsp; I cannot but here
+remind the reader of what Dr. Wiseman has shewn so strikingly in
+his lectures, how different new philosophic doctrines are apt to
+appear after we have become somewhat familiar with them.&nbsp;
+Geology at first seems inconsistent with the authority of the
+Mosaic record.&nbsp; A storm of unreasoning indignation rises
+against its teachers.&nbsp; In time, its truths, being found
+quite irresistible, are admitted, and mankind continue to regard
+the Scriptures with the same respect as before.&nbsp; So also
+with several other sciences.&nbsp; Now the only objection that
+can be made on such ground to this book, is, that it brings
+forward some new hypotheses, at first sight, like geology, not in
+perfect harmony with that record, and arranges all the rest into
+a system which partakes of the same character.&nbsp; But may not
+the sacred text, on a liberal interpretation, or with the benefit
+of new light reflected from nature, or derived from learning, be
+shewn to be as much in harmony with the novelties of this volume
+as it has been with geology and natural philosophy?&nbsp; What is
+there in the laws of organic creation more startling to the
+candid theologian than in the Copernican system or the natural
+formation of strata?&nbsp; And if the whole series of facts is
+true, why should we shrink from inferences legitimately flowing
+from it?&nbsp; Is it not a wiser course, since reconciliation has
+come in so many instances, still to hope for it, still to go on
+with our new truths, trusting that they also will in time be
+found harmonious with all others?&nbsp; Thus we avoid the damage
+which the very appearance of an opposition to natural truth is
+calculated to inflict on any system presumed to require such
+support.&nbsp; Thus we give, as is meet, a respectful reception
+to what is revealed through the medium of nature, at the same
+time that we fully reserve our reverence for all we have been
+accustomed to hold sacred, not one tittle of which it may
+ultimately be found necessary to alter.</p>
+<h2>FOOTNOTES.</h2>
+<p><a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3"
+class="footnote">[3]</a>&nbsp; By Mr. Henderson, Professor of
+Astronomy in the Edinburgh University, and Lieutenant
+Meadows.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5"
+class="footnote">[5]</a>&nbsp; Made by M. Argelander, late
+director of the Observatory at Abo.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote6"></a><a href="#citation6"
+class="footnote">[6]</a>&nbsp; Professor Mossotti, on the
+Constitution of the Sidereal System, of which the Sun forms a
+part.&mdash;<i>London</i>, <i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>and Dublin
+Philosophical Magazine</i>, February, 1843.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote9"></a><a href="#citation9"
+class="footnote">[9]</a>&nbsp; The orbitual revolutions of the
+satellites of Uranus have not as yet been clearly scanned.&nbsp;
+It has been thought that their path is retrograde compared with
+the rest.&nbsp; Perhaps this may be owing to a
+<i>bouleversement</i> of the primary, for the inclination of its
+equator to the ecliptic is admitted to be unusually high; but the
+subject is altogether so obscure, that nothing can be founded on
+it.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote12"></a><a href="#citation12"
+class="footnote">[12]</a>&nbsp; Astronomy, Lardner&rsquo;s
+Cyclop&aelig;dia.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote17"></a><a href="#citation17"
+class="footnote">[17]</a>&nbsp; M. Compte combined
+Huygens&rsquo;s theorems for the measure of centrifugal force
+with the law of gravitation, and thus formed a simple fundamental
+equation between the duration of the rotation of what he calls
+the producing star, and the distance of the star produced.&nbsp;
+The constants of this equation were the radius of the central
+star, and the intensity of gravity at its surface, which is a
+direct consequence of its mass.&nbsp; It leads directly to the
+third law of Kepler, which thus becomes susceptible of being
+conceived <i>&agrave; priori</i> in a cosmogonical point of
+view.&nbsp; M. Compte first applied it to the moon, and found, to
+his great delight, that the periodic time of that satellite
+agrees within an hour or two with the duration which the
+revolution of the earth ought to have had at the time when the
+lunar distance formed the limit of the earth&rsquo;s
+atmosphere.&nbsp; He found the coincidence less exact, but still
+very striking in every other case.&nbsp; In those of the planets
+he obtained for the duration of the corresponding solar rotations
+a value always a little less than their actual periodic
+times.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is remarkable,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;that
+this difference, though increasing as the planet is more distant,
+preserves very nearly the same relation to the corresponding
+periodic time, of which it commonly forms the forty-fifth
+part,&rdquo;&mdash;shewing, we may suppose, that only some small
+elements of the question had been overlooked by the
+calculator.&nbsp; The defect changes to an excess in the
+different systems of the satellites, where it is proportionally
+greater than in the planets, and unequal in the different
+systems.&nbsp; &ldquo;From the whole of these comparisons,&rdquo;
+says he, &ldquo;I deduced the following general
+result:&mdash;Supposing the mathematical limit of the solar
+atmosphere successively extended to the regions where the
+different planets are now found, the duration of the sun&rsquo;s
+rotation was, at each of these epochs, sensibly equal to that of
+the actual sidereal revolution of the corresponding planet; and
+the same is true for each planetary atmosphere in relation to the
+different satellites.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Cours de Philosophie
+Positif</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote42"></a><a href="#citation42"
+class="footnote">[42]</a>&nbsp; The researches on this subject
+were conducted chiefly by the late Baron Fourier, perpetual
+secretary to the Academy of Sciences of Paris.&nbsp; See his
+<i>Th&eacute;orie Analytique de la Chaleur</i>.&nbsp; 1822.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote52"></a><a href="#citation52"
+class="footnote">[52]</a>&nbsp; Delabeche&rsquo;s Geological
+Researches.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote60"></a><a href="#citation60"
+class="footnote">[60]</a>&nbsp; In the Cumbrian limestone occur
+&ldquo;calamopor&aelig;, lithodendra, cyathophylla, and
+orbicula.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Philips</i>.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; That fragments of crinoidea, though of no
+determinate species, occur in this system, we have the authority
+of Mr. Murchison.&mdash;<i>Silurian System</i>, p. 710.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote62"></a><a href="#citation62"
+class="footnote">[62]</a>&nbsp; Such as amphioxus and myxene.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote64"></a><a href="#citation64"
+class="footnote">[64]</a>&nbsp; Miller&rsquo;s &ldquo;New Walks
+in an Old Field.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote68"></a><a href="#citation68"
+class="footnote">[68]</a>&nbsp; June, 1842.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote84a"></a><a href="#citation84a"
+class="footnote">[84a]</a>&nbsp; The principal families are named
+sphenopteris, neuropteris, and pecopteris.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote84b"></a><a href="#citation84b"
+class="footnote">[84b]</a>&nbsp; A specimen from Bengal, in the
+staircase of the British Museum, is forty-five feet high.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote93"></a><a href="#citation93"
+class="footnote">[93]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Some of the most
+considerable dislocations of the border of the coal fields of
+Coalbrookdale and Dudley happened after the deposition of a part
+of the new red sandstone; but it is certain that those of
+Somersetshire and Gloucestershire were completed before the date
+of that rock.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Philips</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote97"></a><a href="#citation97"
+class="footnote">[97]</a>&nbsp; The immediate effects of the slow
+respiration of the reptilia are, a low temperature in their
+bodies, and a slow consumption of food.&nbsp; Requiring little
+oxygen, they could have existed in an atmosphere containing a
+less proportion of that gas to carbonic acid gas than what now
+obtains.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote99"></a><a href="#citation99"
+class="footnote">[99]</a>&nbsp; The order to which frogs and
+toads belong.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote103"></a><a href="#citation103"
+class="footnote">[103]</a>&nbsp; Dr. Buckland, quoting an article
+by Professor Hitchcock, in the American Journal of Science and
+Arts, 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote108a"></a><a href="#citation108a"
+class="footnote">[108a]</a>&nbsp; Murchison&rsquo;s Silurian
+System, p. 583.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote108b"></a><a href="#citation108b"
+class="footnote">[108b]</a> Buckland.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote110"></a><a href="#citation110"
+class="footnote">[110]</a>&nbsp; In some instances, these fossils
+are found with the contents of the stomach faithfully preserved,
+and even with pieces of the external skin.&nbsp; The pellets
+ejected by them (<i>coprolites</i>) are found in vast numbers,
+each generally enclosed in a nodule of ironstone, and sometimes
+shewing remains of the fishes which had formed their food.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote114"></a><a href="#citation114"
+class="footnote">[114]</a>&nbsp; De la Beche&rsquo;s Geological
+Researches, p. 344.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote127"></a><a href="#citation127"
+class="footnote">[127]</a>&nbsp; Thick-skinned animals.&nbsp;
+This term has been given by Cuvier to an order in which the hog,
+elephant, horse, and rhinoceros are included.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote149"></a><a href="#citation149"
+class="footnote">[149]</a>&nbsp; Intervals in the series were
+numerous in the department of the pachydermata; many of these
+gaps are now filled up from the extinct genera found in the
+tertiary formation.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote151"></a><a href="#citation151"
+class="footnote">[151]</a>&nbsp; See paper by Professor Edward
+Forbes, read to the British Association, 1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote159"></a><a href="#citation159"
+class="footnote">[159]</a>&nbsp; Macculloch on the Attributes of
+the Deity, iii. 569.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote166"></a><a href="#citation166"
+class="footnote">[166]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;A glass tube is to be
+bent into a syphon, and placed with the curve downwards, and in
+the bend is to be placed a small portion of mercury, not
+sufficient to close the connexion between the two legs; a
+solution of nitrate of silver is then to be introduced until it
+rises in both limbs of the tube.&nbsp; The precipitation of the
+mercury, in the form of an Arbor Dian&aelig;, will then take
+place, slowly, only when the syphon is placed in a plane
+perpendicular to the magnetic meridian; but if it be placed in a
+plane coinciding with the magnetic meridian, the action is rapid,
+and the crystallization particularly beautiful, taking place
+principally in that branch of the syphon towards the north.&nbsp;
+If the syphon be placed in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic
+meridian, and a strong magnet brought near it, the precipitation
+will commence in a short time, and be most copious in the branch
+of the syphon nearest to the south pole of the magnet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote169a"></a><a href="#citation169a"
+class="footnote">[169a]</a>&nbsp; Fatty matter has also been
+formed in the laboratory.&nbsp; The process consisted in passing
+a mixture of carbonic acid, pure hydrogen, and carburetted
+hydrogen, in the proportion of one measure of the first, twenty
+of the second, and ten of the third, through a red-hot tube.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote169b"></a><a href="#citation169b"
+class="footnote">[169b]</a>&nbsp; Supplement to the Atomic
+Theory.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote170"></a><a href="#citation170"
+class="footnote">[170]</a>&nbsp; Carpenter on Life; Todd&rsquo;s
+Cyclop&aelig;dia of Physiology.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote171"></a><a href="#citation171"
+class="footnote">[171]</a>&nbsp; Carpenter&rsquo;s Report on the
+results obtained by the Microscope in the Study of Anatomy and
+Physiology, 1843.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote172"></a><a href="#citation172"
+class="footnote">[172]</a>&nbsp; See Dr. Martin Barry on
+Fissiparous Generation; Jameson&rsquo;s Journal, Oct. 1843.&nbsp;
+Appearances precisely similar have been detected in the germs of
+the crustacea.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote175"></a><a href="#citation175"
+class="footnote">[175]</a>&nbsp; Mr. Leonard Horner and Sir David
+Brewster, on a substance resembling shell.&mdash;<i>Philosophical
+Transactions</i>, 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote179a"></a><a href="#citation179a"
+class="footnote">[179a]</a>&nbsp; Dr. Allen Thomson, in the
+article <i>Generation</i>, in Todd&rsquo;s Cyclop&aelig;dia of
+Anatomy and Physiology.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote179b"></a><a href="#citation179b"
+class="footnote">[179b]</a>&nbsp; The term aboriginal is here
+suggested, as more correct than spontaneous, the one hitherto
+generally used.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote182"></a><a href="#citation182"
+class="footnote">[182]</a>&nbsp; Article &ldquo;Zoophytes,&rdquo;
+Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica, 7th edition.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote187"></a><a href="#citation187"
+class="footnote">[187]</a>&nbsp; See a pamphlet circulated by Mr.
+Weekes, in 1842.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote195"></a><a href="#citation195"
+class="footnote">[195]</a>&nbsp; Daubenton established the rule,
+that all the viviparous quadrupeds have seven vertebr&aelig; in
+the neck.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote201"></a><a href="#citation201"
+class="footnote">[201]</a>&nbsp; Lord&rsquo;s Popular
+Physiology.&nbsp; It is to Tiedemann that we chiefly owe these
+curious observations; but ground was first broken in this branch
+of physiological science by Dr. John Hunter.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote204"></a><a href="#citation204"
+class="footnote">[204]</a>&nbsp; When I formed this idea, I was
+not aware of one which seems faintly to foreshadow
+it&mdash;namely, Socrates&rsquo;s doctrine, afterwards dilated on
+by Plato, that &ldquo;previous to the existence of the world, and
+beyond its present limits, there existed certain archetypes, the
+embodiment (if we may use such a word) of general ideas; and that
+these archetypes were models, in imitation of which all
+particular beings were created.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote208"></a><a href="#citation208"
+class="footnote">[208]</a>&nbsp; The numbers 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21,
+28, &amp;c. are formed by adding the successive terms of the
+series of natural numbers thus:</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>1</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>= 1</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>1+2</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>= 3</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>1+2+3</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>= 6</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>l+2+3+4</p>
+</td>
+<td><p>= 10, &amp;c.</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p>They are called triangular numbers, because a number of points
+corresponding to any term can always be placed in the form of a
+triangle; for instance&mdash;</p>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">.<br />
+..</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">.<br />
+..<br />
+...</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">.<br />
+..<br />
+...<br />
+....</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">1</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">3</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">6</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: center">10</p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p><a name="footnote215"></a><a href="#citation215"
+class="footnote">[215]</a>&nbsp; Kirby and Spence.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote221"></a><a href="#citation221"
+class="footnote">[221]</a>&nbsp; See an article by Dr.
+Weissenborn, in the New Series of &ldquo;Magazine of Natural
+History,&rdquo; vol. i. p. 574.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote224"></a><a href="#citation224"
+class="footnote">[224]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;It is a fact of the
+highest interest and moment that as the brain of every tribe of
+animals appears to pass, during its development, in succession
+through the types of all those below it, so the brain of man
+passes through the types of those of every tribe in the
+creation.&nbsp; It represents, accordingly, before the second
+month of utero-gestation, that of an avertebrated animal; at the
+second month, that of an osseous fish; at the third, that of a
+turtle; at the fourth, that of a bird; at the fifth, that of one
+of the rodentia; at the sixth, that of one of the ruminantia; at
+the seventh, that of one of the digitigrada; at the eighth, that
+of one of the quadrumana; till at length, at the ninth, it
+compasses the brain of Man!&nbsp; It is hardly necessary to say,
+that all this is only an approximation to the truth; since
+neither is the brain of all osseous fishes, of all turtles, of
+all birds, nor of all the species of any one of the above order
+of mammals, by any means precisely the same, nor does the brain
+of the human f&oelig;tus at any time precisely resemble, perhaps,
+that of any individual whatever among the lower animals.&nbsp;
+Nevertheless, it may be said to represent, at each of the
+above-mentioned periods, the aggregate, as it were, of the brains
+of each of the tribes stated; consisting as it does, about the
+second month, chiefly of the mesial parts of the cerebellum, the
+corpora quadrigemina, thalami optici, rudiments of the
+hemispheres of the cerebrum and corpora striata; and receiving in
+succession, at the third, the rudiments of the lobes of the
+cerebrum; at the fourth, those of the fornix, corpus callosum,
+and septum lucidum; at the fifth, the tubor annulare, and so
+forth; the posterior lobes of the cerebrum increasing from before
+to behind, so as to cover the thalami optici about the fourth
+month, the corpora quadrigemina about the sixth, and the
+cerebellum about the seventh.&nbsp; This, then, is another
+example of an increase in the complexity of an organ succeeding
+its centralization; as if Nature, having first piled up her
+materials in one spot, delighted afterwards to employ her
+abundance, not so much in enlarging old parts as in forming new
+ones upon the old foundations, and thus adding to the complexity
+of a fabric, the rudimental structure of which is in all animals
+equally simple.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Fletcher&rsquo;s Rudiments of
+Physiology</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote226"></a><a href="#citation226"
+class="footnote">[226]</a>&nbsp; Project Gutenberg note: the
+table in the book is very wide.&nbsp; Since it won&rsquo;t fit
+within the normal Gutenberg margins, and cannot be reproduced
+typographically, the rows of the table have been broken out as
+follows.&mdash;DP.</p>
+<p>Table shows: scale of animal kingdom (the numbers indicate
+orders); order of animals in; ascending series of rocks;
+f&oelig;tal human brain resembles, in</p>
+<p>(The numbers indicate orders)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 1. Gneiss and Mica Slate system</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Radiata</span> (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)</p>
+<p>Order: Zoophyta, Polypiaria</p>
+<p>Rocks: 2. Clay Slate and Grawacke system</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Mollusca</span> (6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
+11)</p>
+<p>Order: Conchifera, Double-shelled Mollusks</p>
+<p>Rocks: 3. Silurian system</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Articulata</span> <i>Annelida</i>
+(12, 13, 14)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 3. Silurian system</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Articulata</span> <i>Crustacea</i>
+(15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)</p>
+<p>Order: Crustacea, Annelida, Crustaceous Fishes</p>
+<p>Rocks: 3. Silurian system</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Articulata</span> <i>Arachnida
+&amp; Insecta</i> (21&ndash;31)</p>
+<p>Order: Crustaceous Fishes</p>
+<p>Rocks: 4. Old Red Sandstone</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Pisces</i>
+(32, 33, 34, 35, 36)</p>
+<p>Order: True Fishes</p>
+<p>Rocks: 5. Carboniferous formation</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 2nd month, that of a fish;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Reptilia</i>
+(37, 38, 39, 40)</p>
+<p>Order: Piscine Saurians (ichthyosaurus, &amp;c.),
+Pterodactyles, Crocodiles, Tortoises, Batrachians</p>
+<p>Rocks: 6. New Red Sandstone</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 3rd month, that of a turtle;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Aves</i> (41,
+42, 43, 44, 45, 46)</p>
+<p>Order: Birds</p>
+<p>Rocks: 6. New Red Sandstone</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 4th month, that of a bird;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+47 Cetacea</p>
+<p>Order: (Bone of a marsupial animal)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 7. Oolite</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+48 Ruminantia</p>
+<p>Order: (Bone of a marsupial animal)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 8. Cretaceous formation</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+49 Pachydermata</p>
+<p>Order: Pachydermata (tapirs, horses, &amp;c.)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+50 Edentata</p>
+<p>Order: Pachydermata (tapirs, horses, &amp;c.)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+51 Rodentia</p>
+<p>Order: Rodentia (dormouse, squirrel, &amp;c.)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 5th month, that of a rodent;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+52 Marsupialia</p>
+<p>Order: Marsupialia (racoon, opossum, &amp;c.)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 6th month, that of a ruminant;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+53 Amphibia</p>
+<p>Order: Marsupialia (racoon, opossum, &amp;c.)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 6th month, that of a ruminant;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+54 Digitigrada</p>
+<p>Order: Digitigrada (genette, fox, wolf, &amp;c.)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 10. Miocene</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 7th month, that of a digitigrade animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+55 Plantigrada</p>
+<p>Order: Plantigrada (bear)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 10. Miocene</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+55 Plantigrada</p>
+<p>Order: Cetacea (lamantins, seals, whales)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 10. Miocene</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+56 Insectivora</p>
+<p>Order: Edentata (sloths, &amp;c.)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 11. Pliocene</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+56 Insectivora</p>
+<p>Order: Ruminantia (oxen, deer, &amp;c.)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 11. Pliocene</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+57 Cheiroptera</p>
+<p>Rocks: 11. Pliocene</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+58 Quadrumana</p>
+<p>Order: Quadrumana (monkeys)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 11. Pliocene</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 8th month, that of the quadrumana;</p>
+<p>Scale: <span class="smcap">Vertebrata</span> <i>Mammalia</i>:
+59 Bimana</p>
+<p>Order: Bimana (man)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 12. Superficial deposits</p>
+<p>F&oelig;tal: 9th month, attains full human character;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote229"></a><a href="#citation229"
+class="footnote">[229]</a>&nbsp; Some poor people having taken up
+their abode in the cells under the fortifications of Lisle, the
+proportion of defective infants produced by them became so great,
+that it was deemed necessary to issue an order commanding these
+cells to be shut up.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote232"></a><a href="#citation232"
+class="footnote">[232]</a>&nbsp; These affinities and analogies
+are explained in the next chapter.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote239a"></a><a href="#citation239a"
+class="footnote">[239a]</a>&nbsp; Corresponding to the articulata
+of Cuvier.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote239b"></a><a href="#citation239b"
+class="footnote">[239b]</a>&nbsp; A new sub-kingdom, made out of
+part of the radiata of Cuvier.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote239c"></a><a href="#citation239c"
+class="footnote">[239c]</a>&nbsp; This is a newly applied term,
+the reasons for which will be explained in the sequel.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote242"></a><a href="#citation242"
+class="footnote">[242]</a>&nbsp; This is preferred to
+grallatorial, as more comprehensively descriptive.&nbsp; There is
+the same need for a substitute for rasorial, which is only
+applicable to birds.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote246"></a><a href="#citation246"
+class="footnote">[246]</a>&nbsp; Distribution and Classification
+of Animals, p. 248.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote255"></a><a href="#citation255"
+class="footnote">[255]</a>&nbsp; Researches, 4th edition, i.
+95.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote257"></a><a href="#citation257"
+class="footnote">[257]</a>&nbsp; Prichard.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote266"></a><a href="#citation266"
+class="footnote">[266]</a>&nbsp; Mr. Swainson&rsquo;s arguments
+about the entireness of the circle simiad&aelig; are only too
+rigid, for fossil geology has since added new genera to this
+group and the cebid&aelig;, and there may be still farther
+additions.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote270"></a><a href="#citation270"
+class="footnote">[270]</a>&nbsp; See Wilson&rsquo;s American
+Ornithology; article, <i>Fishing Crow</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote274"></a><a href="#citation274"
+class="footnote">[274]</a>&nbsp; Project Gutenberg note: in the
+diagram the triangles extending from the 1,2,3,4 and the a,b,c,d
+meet at the same point&mdash;the line from the 1,2,3,4 being at
+around 45&deg; and the line from the a,b,c,d being at around
+60&deg;.&nbsp; Despite what the text says there is no line
+labelled 5 in the diagram.&mdash;DP.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote278"></a><a href="#citation278"
+class="footnote">[278]</a>&nbsp; See Dr. Prichard&rsquo;s
+Researches into the Physical History of Man.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote280"></a><a href="#citation280"
+class="footnote">[280]</a>&nbsp; Buckingham&rsquo;s Travels among
+the Arabs.&nbsp; This fact is the more valuable to the argument,
+as having been set down with no regard to any kind of
+hypothesis.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote287"></a><a href="#citation287"
+class="footnote">[287]</a>&nbsp; Wiseman&rsquo;s Lectures on the
+Connexion between Science and Revealed Religion, i. 44.&nbsp; The
+Celtic has been established as a member or group of the
+Indo-European family, by the work of Dr. Prichard, <i>on the
+Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations</i>.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;First,&rdquo; says Dr. Wiseman, &ldquo;he has examined the
+lexical resemblances, and shewn that the primary and most simple
+words are the same in both, as well as the numerals and
+elementary verbal roots.&nbsp; Then follows a minute analysis of
+the verb, directed to shew its analogies with other languages,
+and they are such as manifest no casual coincidence, but an
+internal structure radically the same.&nbsp; The verb
+substantive, which is minutely analysed, presents more striking
+analogies to the Persian verb than perhaps any other language of
+the family.&nbsp; But Celtic is not thus become a mere member of
+this confederacy, but has brought to it most important aid; for,
+from it alone can be satisfactorily explained some of the
+conjugational endings in the other languages.&nbsp; For instance,
+the third person plural of the Latin, Persian, Greek, and
+Sanscrit ends in nt, nd, &nu;&tau;&iota;, &nu;&tau;&omicron;,
+nti, or nt.&nbsp; Now, supposing, with most grammarians, that the
+inflexions arose from the pronouns of the respective persons, it
+is only in Celtic that we find a pronoun that can explain this
+termination; for there, too, the same person ends in nt, and thus
+corresponds exactly, as do the others, with its pronoun,
+<i>hwynt</i>, or <i>ynt</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote291"></a><a href="#citation291"
+class="footnote">[291]</a>&nbsp; Schoolcraft.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote293"></a><a href="#citation293"
+class="footnote">[293]</a>&nbsp; Views of the Cordilleras.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote302"></a><a href="#citation302"
+class="footnote">[302]</a>&nbsp; The problem of Chinese
+civilization, such as it is&mdash;so puzzling when we consider
+that they are only, as will be presently seen, the child race of
+mankind&mdash;is solved when we look to geographical position
+producing fixity of residence and density of population.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote307a"></a><a href="#citation307a"
+class="footnote">[307a]</a>&nbsp; Lord&rsquo;s Popular
+Physiology, explaining observations by M. Serres.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote307b"></a><a href="#citation307b"
+class="footnote">[307b]</a>&nbsp; Conformably to this view, the
+beard, that peculiar attribute of maturity, is scanty in the
+Mongolian, and scarcely exists in the Americans and Negroes.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote309"></a><a href="#citation309"
+class="footnote">[309]</a>&nbsp; Of this we have perhaps an
+illustration in the peculiarities which distinguish the Arabs
+residing in the valley of the Jordan.&nbsp; They have flatter
+features, darker skins, and coarser hair than other tribes of
+their nation; and we have seen one instance of a thoroughly Negro
+family being born to an ordinary couple.&nbsp; It may be presumed
+that the conditions of the life of these people tend to arrest
+development.&nbsp; We thus see how an offshoot of the human
+family migrating at an early period into Africa, might in time,
+from subjection to similar influences, become Negroes.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote317"></a><a href="#citation317"
+class="footnote">[317]</a>&nbsp; Missionary Scenes and Labours in
+South Africa.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote326"></a><a href="#citation326"
+class="footnote">[326]</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Is not God the first
+cause of matter as well as of mind?&nbsp; Do not the first
+attributes of matter lie as inscrutable in the bosom of
+God&mdash;of its first author&mdash;as those of mind?&nbsp; Has
+not even matter confessedly received from God the power of
+experiencing, in consequence of impressions from the earlier
+modifications of matter, certain consciousnesses called
+sensations of the same?&nbsp; Is not, therefore, the wonder of
+matter also receiving the consciousnesses of other matter called
+ideas of the mind a wonder more flowing out of and in analogy
+with all former wonders, than would be, on the contrary, the
+wonder of this faculty of the mind not flowing out of any
+faculties of matter?&nbsp; Is it not a wonder which, so far from
+destroying our hopes of immortality, can establish that doctrine
+on a train of inferences and inductions more firmly established
+and more connected with each other than the former belief can be,
+as soon as we have proved that matter is not perishable, but is
+only liable to successive combinations and decombinations.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can we look farther back one way into the first origin
+of matter than we can look forward the other way into the last
+developments of mind?&nbsp; Can we say that God has not in matter
+itself laid the seeds of every faculty of mind, rather than that
+he has made the first principle of mind entirely distinct from
+that of matter?&nbsp; Cannot the first cause of all we see and
+know have <i>fraught matter itself</i>, <i>from its very
+beginning</i>, <i>with all the attributes necessary to develop
+into mind</i>, as well as he can have from the first made the
+attributes of mind wholly different from those of matter, only in
+order afterwards, by an imperceptible and incomprehensible link,
+to join the two together?</p>
+<p>&ldquo; * * [The decombination of the matter on which mind
+rests] is this a reason why mind must be annihilated?&nbsp; Is
+the temporary reverting of the mind, and of the sense out of
+which that mind developes, to their original component elements,
+a reason for thinking that they cannot again at another later
+period, and in another higher globe, be again recombined, and
+with more splendour than before? * * The New Testament does not
+after death here promise us a soul hereafter unconnected with
+matter, and which has no connexion with our present mind&mdash;a
+soul independent of time and space.&nbsp; That is a fanciful
+idea, not founded on its expressions, when taken in their just
+and real meaning.&nbsp; On the contrary, it promises us a mind
+like the present, founded on time and space; since it is, like
+the present, to hold a certain situation in time, and a certain
+locality in space.&nbsp; But it promises a mind situated in
+portions of time and of space different from the present; a mind
+composed of elements of matter more extended, more perfect, and
+more glorious: a mind which, formed of materials supplied by
+different globes, is consequently able to see farther into the
+past, and to think farther into the future, than any mind here
+existing: a mind which, freed from the partial and uneven
+combination incidental to it on this globe, will be exempt from
+the changes for evil to which, on the present globe, mind as well
+as matter is liable, and will only thenceforth experience the
+changes for the better which matter, more justly poised, will
+alone continue to experience: a mind which, no longer fearing the
+death, the total decomposition, to which it is subject on this
+globe, will thenceforth continue last and
+immortal.&rdquo;&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hope</span>, <i>on the
+Origin and Prospects of Man</i>, 1831.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote331"></a><a href="#citation331"
+class="footnote">[331]</a>&nbsp; Dublin Review, Aug. 1840.&nbsp;
+The Guarantee Society has since been established, and is likely
+to become a useful and prosperous institution.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote333"></a><a href="#citation333"
+class="footnote">[333]</a>&nbsp; The ray, which is considered the
+lowest in the scale of fishes, or next to the crustaceans, gives
+the first faint representation of a brain in certain scanty and
+medullary masses, which appear as merely composed of enlarged
+origins of the nerves.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote335"></a><a href="#citation335"
+class="footnote">[335]</a>&nbsp; If mental action is electric,
+the proverbial quickness of thought&mdash;that is, the quickness
+of the transmission of sensation and will&mdash;may be presumed
+to have been brought to an exact measurement.&nbsp; The speed of
+light has long been known to be about 192,000 miles per second,
+and the experiments of Wheatstone have shewn that the electric
+agent travels (if I may so speak) at the same rate, thus shewing
+a likelihood that one law rules the movements of all the
+&ldquo;imponderable bodies.&rdquo;&nbsp; Mental action may
+accordingly be presumed to have a rapidity equal to one hundred
+and ninety-two thousand miles in the second&mdash;a rate
+evidently far beyond what is necessary to make the design and
+execution of any of our ordinary muscular movements apparently
+identical in point of time, which they are.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote346"></a><a href="#citation346"
+class="footnote">[346]</a>&nbsp; Phrenological Journal, xv.
+338.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote347"></a><a href="#citation347"
+class="footnote">[347]</a>&nbsp; A pampered lap-dog, living where
+there is another of its own species, will hide any nice morsel
+which it cannot eat, under a rug, or in some other by-place,
+designing to enjoy it afterwards.&nbsp; I have seen children do
+the same thing.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF
+CREATION***</p>
+<pre>
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
+by Robert Chambers
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
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+Title: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
+
+Author: Robert Chambers
+
+Release Date: December, 2004  [EBook #7116]
+[This file was first posted on March 11, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, VESTIGES OF CREATION ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the
+1844 John Churchill edition.
+
+
+
+
+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 globe
+of somewhat less than 8000 miles in diameter, being one of a series
+of eleven which revolve at different distances around the sun, and
+some of which have satellites in like manner revolving around them.
+The sun, planets, and satellites, with the less intelligible orbs
+termed comets, are comprehensively called the solar system, and if we
+take as the uttermost bounds of this system the orbit of Uranus
+(though the comets actually have a wider range), we shall find that
+it occupies a portion of space not less than three thousand six
+hundred millions of miles in extent.  The mind fails to form an exact
+notion of a portion of space so immense; but some faint idea of it
+may be obtained from the fact, that, if the swiftest race-horse ever
+known had begun to traverse it, at full speed, at the time of the
+birth of Moses, he would only as yet have accomplished half his
+journey.
+
+It has long been concluded amongst astronomers, that the stars,
+though they only appear to our eyes as brilliant points, are all to
+be considered as suns, representing so many solar systems, each
+bearing a general resemblance to our own.  The stars have a
+brilliancy and apparent magnitude which we may safely presume to be
+in proportion to their actual size and the distance at which they are
+placed from us.  Attempts have been made to ascertain the distance of
+some of the stars by calculations founded on parallax, it being
+previously 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 than
+19,200 millions of miles!  In the case of the most brilliant star,
+Sirius, even this minute parallax could not be found; from which of
+course it was to be inferred that the distance of that star is
+something beyond the vast distance which has been stated.  In some
+others, on which the experiment has been tried, no sensible parallax
+could be detected; from which the same inference was to be made in
+their case.  But a sensible parallax of about one second has been
+ascertained in the case of the double star, alpha alpha, of the
+constellation of the Centaur, {3} and one of the third of that amount
+for the double star, 61 Cygni; which gave reason to presume that the
+distance of the former might be about twenty thousand millions of
+miles, and the latter of much greater amount.  If we suppose that
+similar intervals exist between all the stars, we shall readily see
+that the space occupied by even the comparatively small number
+visible to the naked eye, must be vast beyond all powers of
+conception.
+
+The number visible to the eye is about three thousand; but when a
+telescope of small power is directed to the heavens, a great number
+more come into view, and the number is ever increased in proportion
+to the increased power of the instrument.  In one place, where they
+are more thickly sown than elsewhere, Sir William Herschel reckoned
+that fifty thousand passed over a field of view two degrees in
+breadth in a single hour.  It was first surmised by the ancient
+philosopher, Democritus, that the faintly white zone which spans the
+sky under the name of the Milky Way, might be only a dense collection
+of stars too remote to be distinguished.  This conjecture has been
+verified by the instruments of modern astronomers, and some
+speculations of a most remarkable kind have been formed in connexion
+with it.  By the joint labours of the two Herschels, the sky has been
+"gauged" in all directions by the telescope, so as to ascertain the
+conditions of different parts with respect to the frequency of the
+stars.  The result has been a conviction that, as the planets are
+parts of solar systems, so are solar systems parts of what may be
+called astral systems--that is, systems composed of a multitude of
+stars, bearing a certain relation to each other.  The astral system
+to which we belong, is conceived to be of an oblong, flattish form,
+with a space wholly or comparatively vacant in the centre, while the
+extremity in one direction parts into two.  The stars are most
+thickly sown in the outer parts of this vast ring, and these
+constitute the Milky Way.  Our sun is believed to be placed in the
+southern portion of the ring, near its inner edge, so that we are
+presented with many more stars, and see the Milky Way much more
+clearly, in that direction, than towards the north, in which line our
+eye has to traverse the vacant central space.  Nor is this all.  Sir
+William Herschel, so early as 1783, detected a motion in our solar
+system with respect to the stars, and announced that it was tending
+towards the star ?, in the constellation Hercules.  This has been
+generally verified by recent and more exact calculations, {5} which
+fix on a point in Hercules, near the star 143 of the 17th hour,
+according to Piozzi's catalogue, as that towards which our sun is
+proceeding.  It is, therefore, receding from the inner edge of the
+ring.  Motions of this kind, through such vast regions of space, must
+be long in producing any change sensible to the inhabitants of our
+planet, and it is not easy to grasp their general character; but
+grounds have nevertheless been found for supposing that not only our
+sun, but the other suns of the system pursue a wavy course round the
+ring FROM WEST TO EAST, crossing and recrossing the middle of the
+annular circle.  "Some stars will depart more, others less, from
+either side of the circumference of equilibrium, according to the
+places in which they are situated, and according to the direction and
+the velocity with which they are put in motion.  Our sun is probably
+one of those which depart furthest from it, and descend furthest into
+the empty space within the ring." {6}  According to this view, a time
+may come when we shall be much more in the thick of the stars of our
+astral system than we are now, and have of course much more brilliant
+nocturnal skies; but it may be countless ages before the eyes which
+are to see this added resplendence shall exist.
+
+The evidence of the existence of other astral systems besides our own
+is much more decided than might be expected, when we consider that
+the nearest of them must needs be placed at a mighty interval beyond
+our own.  The elder Herschel, directing his wonderful tube towards
+the SIDES of our system, where stars are planted most rarely, and
+raising the powers of the instrument to the required pitch, was
+enabled with awe-struck mind to see suspended in the vast empyrean
+astral systems, or, as he called them, firmaments, resembling our
+own.  Like light cloudlets to a certain power of the telescope, they
+resolved themselves, under a greater power, into stars, though these
+generally seemed no larger than the finest particles of diamond dust.
+The general forms of these systems are various; but one at least has
+been detected as bearing a striking resemblance to the supposed form
+of our own.  The distances are also various, as proved by the
+different degrees of telescopic power necessary to bring them into
+view.  The farthest observed by the astronomer were estimated by him
+as thirty-five thousand times more remote than Sirius, supposing its
+distance to be about twenty thousand millions of miles.  It would
+thus appear, that not only does gravitation keep our earth in its
+place in the solar system, and the solar system in its place in our
+astral system, but it also may be presumed to have the mightier duty
+of preserving a local arrangement between that astral system and an
+immensity of others, through which the imagination is left to wander
+on and on without limit or stay, save that which is given by its
+inability to grasp the unbounded.
+
+The two Herschels have in succession made some other most remarkable
+observations on the regions of space.  They have found within the
+limits of our astral system, and generally in its outer fields, a
+great number of objects which, from their foggy appearance, are
+called nebulae; some of vast extent and irregular figure, as that in
+the sword of Orion, which is visible to the naked eye; others of
+shape more defined; others, again, in which small bright nuclei
+appear here and there over the surface.  Between this last form and
+another class of objects, which appear as clusters of nuclei with
+nebulous matter around each nucleus, there is but a step in what
+appears a chain of related things.  Then, again, our astral space
+shews what are called nebulous stars,--namely, luminous spherical
+objects, bright in the centre and dull towards the extremities.
+These appear to be only an advanced condition of the class of objects
+above described.  Finally, nebulous stars exist in every stage of
+concentration, down to that state in which we see only a common star
+with a slight BUR around it.  It may be presumed that all these are
+but 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 the
+whole were only variations of one being.  Are we to suppose that we
+have got a glimpse of the process through which a sun goes between
+its original condition, as a mass of diffused nebulous matter, and
+its full-formed state as a compact body?  We shall see how far such
+an idea is supported by other things known with regard to the
+occupants of space, and the laws of matter.
+
+A superficial view of the astronomy of the solar system gives us only
+the idea of a vast luminous body (the sun) in the centre, and a few
+smaller, though various sized bodies, revolving at different
+distances around it; some of these, again, having smaller planets
+(satellites) revolving around them.  There are, however, some general
+features of the solar system, which, when a profounder attention
+makes us acquainted with them, strike the mind very forcibly.
+
+It is, in the first place, remarkable, that the planets all move
+nearly 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 its
+axis, those of the planets around the sun, and the satellites around
+their primaries, {9} and the motions of all on their axes, are IN ONE
+DIRECTION--namely, from west to east.  Had all these matters been
+left to accident, the chances against the uniformity which we find
+would have been, though calculable, inconceivably great.  Laplace
+states them at four millions of millions to one.  It is thus
+powerfully impressed on us, that the uniformity of the motions, as
+well as their general adjustment to one plane, must have been a
+consequence 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 and
+diminution of density, from the one nearest to the sun to that which
+is most distant.  With respect to density alone, we find, taking
+water as a measure and counting it as one, that Saturn is 13/32, or
+less than half; Jupiter, 1 1/24; Mars, 3 2/7; Earth, 4 1/2; Venus, 5
+11/15; Mercury 9 9/10, or about the weight of lead.  Then the
+distances are curiously relative.  It has been found that if we place
+the following line of numbers, -
+
+0 3 6 12 24 48 96 192,
+
+and add 4 to each, we shall have a series denoting the respective
+distances of the planets from the sun.  It will stand thus -
+
+4     7       10      16     28 52        100      196
+Merc. Venus.  Earth.  Mars.     Jupiter.  Saturn.  Uranus.
+
+It will be observed that the first row of figures goes on from the
+second on the left hand in a succession of duplications, or
+multiplications by 2.  Surely there is here a most surprising proof
+of the unity which I am claiming for the solar system.  It was
+remarked when this curious relation was first detected, that there
+was a want of a planet corresponding to 28; the difficulty was
+afterwards considered as in a great measure overcome, by the
+discovery of four small planets revolving at nearly one mean distance
+from the sun, between Mars and Jupiter.  The distances bear an
+equally interesting mathematical relation to the times of the
+revolutions round the sun.  It has been found that, with respect to
+any two planets, the squares of the times of revolution are to each
+other in the same proportion as the cubes of their mean distances,--a
+most surprising result, for the discovery of which the world was
+indebted to the illustrious Kepler.  Sir John Herschel truly
+observes--"When we contemplate the constituents of the planetary
+system from the point of view which this relation affords us, it is
+no longer mere analogy which strikes us, no longer a general
+resemblance among them, as individuals independent of each other, and
+circulating about the sun, each according to its own peculiar nature,
+and connected with it by its own peculiar tie.  The resemblance is
+now perceived to be a true FAMILY LIKENESS; they are bound up in one
+chain--interwoven in one web of mutual relation and harmonious
+agreement, subjected to one pervading influence which extends from
+the centre to the farthest limits of that great system, of which all
+of them, the Earth included, must henceforth be regarded as members."
+{12}
+
+Connecting what has been observed of the series of nebulous stars
+with this wonderful relationship seen to exist among the constituents
+of our system, and further taking advantage of the light afforded by
+the ascertained laws of matter, modern astronomers have suggested the
+following hypothesis of the formation of that system.
+
+Of nebulous matter in its original state we know too little to enable
+us to suggest how nuclei should be established in it.  But, supposing
+that, from a peculiarity in its constitution, nuclei are formed, we
+know very well how, by virtue of the law of gravitation, the process
+of an aggregation of the neighbouring matter to those nuclei should
+proceed, until masses more or less solid should become detached from
+the rest.  It is a well-known law in physics that, when fluid matter
+collects towards or meets in a centre, it establishes a rotatory
+motion.  See minor results of this law in the whirlwind and the
+whirlpool--nay, on so humble a scale as the water sinking through the
+aperture of a funnel.  It thus becomes certain that when we arrive at
+the stage of a nebulous star, we have a rotation on an axis
+commenced.
+
+Now, mechanical philosophy informs us that, the instant a mass begins
+to rotate, there is generated a tendency to fling off its outer
+portions--in other words, the law of centrifugal force begins to
+operate.  There are, then, two forces acting in opposition to each
+other, the one attracting TO, the other throwing FROM, the centre.
+While these remain exactly counterpoised, the mass necessarily
+continues entire; but the least excess of the centrifugal over the
+attractive force would be attended with the effect of separating the
+mass and its outer parts.  These outer parts would, then, be left as
+a ring round the central body, which ring would continue to revolve
+with the velocity possessed by the central mass at the moment of
+separation, but not necessarily participating in any changes
+afterwards undergone by that body.  This is a process which might be
+repeated as soon as a new excess arose in the centrifugal over the
+attractive forces working in the parent mass.  It might, indeed,
+continue to be repeated, until the mass attained the ultimate limits
+of the condensation which its constitution imposed upon it.  From
+what cause might arise the periodical occurrence of an excess of the
+centrifugal force?  If we suppose the agglomeration of a nebulous
+mass to be a process attended by refrigeration or cooling, which many
+facts render likely, we can easily understand why the outer parts,
+hardening under this process, might, by virtue of the greater
+solidity thence acquired, begin to present some resistance to the
+attractive force.  As the solidification proceeded, this resistance
+would become greater, though there would still be a tendency to
+adhere.  Meanwhile, the condensation of the central mass would be
+going on, tending to produce a separation from what may now be termed
+the SOLIDIFYING CRUST.  During the contention between the attractions
+of these two bodies, or parts of one body, there would probably be a
+ring of attenuation between the mass and its crust.  At length, when
+the central mass had reached a certain stage in its advance towards
+solidification, a separation would take place, and the crust would
+become a detached ring.  It is clear, of course, that some law
+presiding over the refrigeration of heated gaseous bodies would
+determine 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 is
+one observing and reducible to mathematical formulae.
+
+If these rings consisted of matter nearly uniform throughout, they
+would probably continue each in its original form; but there are many
+chances against their being uniform in constitution.  The unavoidable
+effects of irregularity in their constitution would be to cause them
+to gather towards centres of superior solidity, by which the annular
+form would, of course, be destroyed.  The ring would, in short, break
+into several masses, the largest of which would be likely to attract
+the lesser into itself.  The whole mass would then necessarily settle
+into a spherical form by virtue of the law of gravitation; in short,
+would then become a planet revolving round the sun.  Its rotatory
+motion would, of course, continue, and satellites might then be
+thrown off in turn from its body in exactly the same way as the
+primary planets had been thrown off from the sun.  The rule, if I can
+be allowed so to call it, receives a striking support from what
+appear to be its exceptions.  While there are many chances against
+the matter of the rings being sufficiently equable to remain in the
+annular form till they were consolidated, it might nevertheless be
+otherwise in some instances; that is to say, the equableness might,
+in those instances, be sufficiently great.  Such was probably the
+case with the two rings around the body of Saturn, which remain a
+living picture of the arrangement, if not the condition, in which all
+the planetary masses at one time stood.  It may also be admitted
+that, when a ring broke up, it was possible that the fragments might
+spherify separately.  Such seems to be the actual history of the ring
+between Jupiter and Mars, in whose place we now find four planets
+much beneath the smallest of the rest in size, and moving nearly at
+the same distance from the sun, though in orbits so elliptical, and
+of such different planes, that they keep apart.
+
+It has been seen that there are mathematical proportions in the
+relative distances and revolutions of the planets of our system.  It
+has also been suggested that the periods in the condensation of the
+nebulous mass, at which rings were disengaged, must have depended on
+some particular crises in the condition of that mass, in connexion
+with the laws of centrifugal force and attraction.  M. Compte, of
+Paris, has made some approach to the verification of the hypothesis,
+by calculating what ought to have been the rotation of the solar mass
+at the successive times when its surface extended to the various
+planetary orbits.  He ascertained that THAT ROTATION CORRESPONDED IN
+EVERY CASE WITH THE ACTUAL SIDEREAL REVOLUTION OF THE PLANETS, AND
+THAT THE ROTATION OF THE PRIMARY PLANETS IN LIKE MANNER CORRESPONDED
+WITH THE ORBITUAL PERIODS OF THE SECONDARIES.  The process by which
+he arrived at this conclusion is not to be readily comprehended by
+the unlearned; but those who are otherwise, allow that it is a
+powerful support to the present hypothesis of the formation of the
+globes of space. {17}
+
+The nebular hypothesis, as it has been called, obtains a remarkable
+support in what would at first seem to militate against it--the
+existence in our firmament of several thousands of solar systems, in
+which there are more than one sun.  These are called double and
+triple stars.  Some double stars, upon which careful observations
+have been made, are found to have a regular revolutionary motion
+round each other in ellipses.  This kind of solar system has also
+been observed in what appears to be its rudimental state, for there
+are examples of nebulous stars containing two and three nuclei in
+near association.  At a certain point in the confluence of the matter
+of these nebulous stars, they would all become involved in a common
+revolutionary motion, linked inextricably with each other, though it
+might be at sufficient distances to allow of each distinct centre
+having afterwards its attendant planets.  We have seen that the law
+which causes rotation in the single solar masses, is exactly the same
+which produces the familiar phenomenon of a small whirlpool or dimple
+in 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 near
+each 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 an
+illustration of the wonders of binary and ternary solar systems.
+
+The nebular hypothesis is, indeed, supported by so many ascertained
+features of the celestial scenery, and by so many calculations of
+exact science, that it is impossible for a candid mind to refrain
+from giving it a cordial reception, if not to repose full reliance
+upon it, even without seeking for it support of any other kind.  Some
+other support I trust yet to bring to it; but in the meantime,
+assuming its truth, let us see what idea it gives of the constitution
+of what we term the universe, of the development of its various
+parts, and of its original condition.
+
+Reverting to a former illustration--if we could suppose a number of
+persons of various ages presented to the inspection of an intelligent
+being newly introduced into the world, we cannot doubt that he would
+soon become convinced that men had once been boys, that boys had once
+been infants, and, finally, that all had been brought into the world
+in exactly the same circumstances.  Precisely thus, seeing in our
+astral system many thousands of worlds in all stages of formation,
+from the most rudimental to that immediately preceding the present
+condition of those we deem perfect, it is unavoidable to conclude
+that all the perfect have gone through the various stages which we
+see in the rudimental.  This leads us at once to the conclusion that
+the whole of our firmament was at one time a diffused mass of
+nebulous 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 connected
+mass, 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 the
+formation of bodies in space is STILL AND AT PRESENT IN PROGRESS.  We
+live at a time when many have been formed, and many are still
+forming.  Our own solar system is to be regarded as completed,
+supposing its perfection to consist in the formation of a series of
+planets, for there are mathematical reasons for concluding that
+Mercury is the nearest planet to the sun, which can, according to the
+laws of the system, exist.  But there are other solar systems within
+our astral system, which are as yet in a less advanced state, and
+even some quantities of nebulous matter which have scarcely begun to
+advance towards the stellar form.  On the other hand, there are vast
+numbers of stars which have all the appearance of being fully formed
+systems, if we are to judge from the complete and definite appearance
+which they present to our vision through the telescope.  We have no
+means of judging of the seniority of systems; but it is reasonable to
+suppose that, among the many, some are older than ours.  There is,
+indeed, one piece of evidence for the probability of the comparative
+youth of our system, altogether apart from human traditions and the
+geognostic appearances of the surface of our planet.  This consists
+in a thin nebulous matter, which is diffused around the sun to nearly
+the orbit of Mercury, of a very oblately spheroidal shape.  This
+matter, which sometimes appears to our naked eyes, at sunset, in the
+form of a cone projecting upwards in the line of the sun's path, and
+which bears the name of the Zodiacal Light, has been thought a
+residuum or last remnant of the concentrating matter of our system,
+and thus may be supposed to indicate the comparative recentness of
+the principal events of our cosmogony.  Supposing the surmise and
+inference to be correct, and they may be held as so far supported by
+more familiar evidence, we might with the more confidence speak of
+our system as not amongst the elder born of Heaven, but one whose
+various phenomena, physical and moral, as yet lay undeveloped, while
+myriads of others were fully fashioned and in complete arrangement.
+Thus, in the sublime chronology to which we are directing our
+inquiries, we first find ourselves called upon to consider the globe
+which we inhabit as a child of the sun, elder than Venus and her
+younger brother Mercury, but posterior in date of birth to Mars,
+Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; next to regard our whole system as
+probably of recent formation in comparison with many of the stars of
+our firmament.  We must, however, be on our guard against supposing
+the earth as a recent globe in our ordinary conceptions of time.
+From evidence afterwards to be adduced, it will be seen that it
+cannot 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 aged
+may be many of the stars of our firmament, or the stars of other
+firmaments than ours.
+
+Another and more important consideration arises from the hypothesis;
+namely, as to the means by which the grand process is conducted.  The
+nebulous matter collects around nuclei by virtue of the law of
+attraction.  The agglomeration brings into operation another physical
+law, by force of which the separate masses of matter are either made
+to rotate singly, or, in addition to that single motion, are set into
+a coupled revolution in ellipses.  Next centrifugal force comes into
+play, flinging off portions of the rotating masses, which become
+spheres by virtue of the same law of attraction, and are held in
+orbits of revolution round the central body by means of a composition
+between the centrifugal and gravitating forces.  All, we see, is done
+by certain laws of matter, so that it becomes a question of extreme
+interest, what are such laws?  All that can yet be said, in answer,
+is, that we see certain natural events proceeding in an invariable
+order under certain conditions, and thence infer the existence of
+some fundamental arrangement which, for the bringing about of these
+events, has a force and certainty of action similar to, but more
+precise and unerring than those arrangements which human society
+makes for its own benefit, and calls laws.  It is remarkable of
+physical laws, that we see them operating on every kind of scale as
+to magnitude, with the same regularity and perseverance.  The tear
+that falls from childhood's cheek is globular, through the efficacy
+of that same law of mutual attraction of particles which made the sun
+and planets round.  The rapidity of Mercury is quicker than that of
+Saturn, for the same reason that, when we wheel a ball round by a
+string and make the string wind up round our fingers, the ball always
+flies quicker and quicker as the string is shortened.  Two eddies in
+a stream, as has been stated, fall into a mutual revolution at the
+distance of a couple of inches, through the same cause which makes a
+pair of suns link in mutual revolution at the distance of millions of
+miles.  There is, we might say, a sublime simplicity in this
+indifference of the grand regulations to the vastness or minuteness
+of the field of their operation.  Their being uniform, too,
+throughout space, as far as we can scan it, and their being so
+unfailing in their tendency to operate, so that only the proper
+conditions are presented, afford to our minds matter for the gravest
+consideration.  Nor should it escape our careful notice that the
+regulations on which all the laws of matter operate, are established
+on a rigidly accurate mathematical basis.  Proportions of numbers and
+geometrical figures rest at the bottom of the whole.  All these
+considerations, when the mind is thoroughly prepared for them, tend
+to 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.  We
+advance from law to the cause of law, and ask, What is that?  Whence
+have come all these beautiful regulations?  Here science leaves us,
+but only to conclude, from other grounds, that there is a First Cause
+to which all others are secondary and ministrative, a primitive
+almighty will, of which these laws are merely the mandates.  That
+great Being, who shall say where is his dwelling-place, or what his
+history!  Man pauses breathless at the contemplation of a subject so
+much 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 have
+originally formed one mass.  We have seen that the same physical laws
+preside over the whole.  Are we also to presume that the constitution
+of the whole was uniform?--that is to say, that the whole consisted
+of similar elements.  It seems difficult to avoid coming to this
+conclusion, at least under the qualification that, possibly, various
+bodies, under peculiar circumstances attending their formation, may
+contain elements which are wanting, and lack some which are present
+in others, or that some may entirely consist of elements in which
+others are entirely deficient.
+
+What are elements?  This is a term applied by the chemist to a
+certain limited number of substances, (fifty-four or fifty-five are
+ascertained,) which, in their combinations, form all the matters of
+every kind present in and about our globe.  They are called elements,
+or simple substances, because it has hitherto been found impossible
+to reduce them into others, wherefore they are presumed to be the
+primary bases of all matters.  It has, indeed, been surmised that
+these so-called elements are only modifications of a primordial form
+of matter, brought about under certain conditions; but if this should
+prove to be the case, it would little affect the view which we are
+taking of cosmical arrangements.  Analogy would lead us to conclude
+that the combinations of the primordial matter, forming our so-called
+elements, are as universal or as liable to take place everywhere as
+are the laws of gravitation and centrifugal force.  We must therefore
+presume that the gases, the metals, the earths, and other simple
+substances, (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 times
+more distant than Sirius, as within the bounds of our own solar
+system or our own globe.
+
+Matter, whether it consist of about fifty-five ingredients, or only
+one, is liable to infinite varieties of condition under different
+circumstances, or, to speak more philosophically, under different
+laws.  As a familiar illustration, water, when subjected to a
+temperature under 32 degrees Fahrenheit, becomes ice; raise the
+temperature to 212 degrees, and it becomes steam, occupying a vast
+deal more space than it formerly did.  The gases, when subjected to
+pressure, become liquids; for example, carbonic acid gas, when
+subjected to a weight equal to a column of water 1230 feet high, at a
+temperature of 32 degrees, takes this form:  the other gases require
+various amounts of pressure for this transformation, but all appear
+to be liable to it when the pressure proper in each case is
+administered.  Heat is a power greatly concerned in regulating the
+volume and other conditions of matter.  A chemist can reckon with
+considerable precision what additional amount of heat would be
+required to vaporise all the water of our globe; how much more to
+disengage the oxygen which is diffused in nearly a proportion of one-
+half throughout its solids; and, finally, how much more would be
+required to cause the whole to become vaporiform, which we may
+consider as equivalent to its being restored to its original nebulous
+state.  He can calculate with equal certainty what would be the
+effect of a considerable diminution of the earth's temperature--what
+changes would take place in each of its component substances, and how
+much the whole would shrink in bulk.
+
+The earth and all its various substances have at present a certain
+volume in consequence of the temperature which actually exists.
+When, then, we find that its matter and that of the associate planets
+was at one time diffused throughout the whole space, now
+circumscribed by the orbit of Uranus, we cannot doubt, after what we
+know of the power of heat, that the nebulous form of matter was
+attended by the condition of a very high temperature.  The nebulous
+matter of space, previously to the formation of stellar and planetary
+bodies, must have been a universal Fire Mist, an idea which we can
+scarcely comprehend, though the reasons for arriving at it seem
+irresistible.  The formation of systems out of this matter implies a
+change of some kind with regard to the condition of the heat.  Had
+this 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 how
+the necessary change in this respect was brought about, but we can
+trace some of the steps and consequences of the process.  Uranus
+would be formed at the time when the heat of our system's matter was
+at the greatest, Saturn at the next, and so on.  Now this tallies
+perfectly with the exceeding diffuseness of the matter of those elder
+planets, Saturn being not more dense or heavy than the substance
+cork.  It may be that a sufficiency of heat still remains in those
+planets to make up for their distance from the sun, and the
+consequent smallness of the heat which they derive from his rays.
+And it may equally be, since Mercury is twice the density of the
+earth, that its matter exists under a degree of cold for which that
+planet's large enjoyment of the sun's rays is no more than a
+compensation.  Thus there may be upon the whole a nearly equal
+experience of heat amongst all these children of the sun.  Where,
+meanwhile, is the heat once diffused through the system over and
+above what remains in the planets?  May we not rationally presume it
+to have gone to constitute that luminous envelope of the sun, in
+which his warmth-giving power is now held to reside?  It could not be
+destroyed--it cannot be supposed to have gone off into space--it must
+have simply been reserved to constitute, at the last, a means of
+sustaining the many operations of which the planets were destined to
+be the theatre.
+
+The tendency of the whole of the preceding considerations is to bring
+the conviction that our globe is a specimen of all the similarly-
+placed bodies of space, as respects its constituent matter and the
+physical and chemical laws governing it, with only this
+qualification, that there are POSSIBLY shades of variation with
+respect to the component materials, and UNDOUBTEDLY with respect to
+the conditions under which the laws operate, and consequently the
+effects which they produce.  Thus, there may be substances here which
+are not in some other bodies, and substances here solid may be
+elsewhere liquid or vaporiform.  We are the more entitled to draw
+such conclusions, seeing that there is nothing at all singular or
+special in the astronomical situation of the earth.  It takes its
+place third in a series of planets, which series is only one of
+numberless other systems forming one group.  It is strikingly--if I
+may use such an expression--a member of a democracy.  Hence, we
+cannot suppose that there is any peculiarity about it which does not
+probably attach to multitudes of other bodies--in fact, to all that
+are analogous to it in respect of cosmical arrangements.
+
+It therefore becomes a point of great interest--what are the
+materials of this specimen?  What is the constitutional character of
+this object, which may be said to be a sample, presented to our
+immediate observation, of those crowds of worlds which seem to us as
+the particles of the desert sand-cloud in number, and to whose
+profusion there are no conceivable local limits?
+
+The solids, liquids, and aeriform fluids of our globe are all, as has
+been stated, reducible into fifty-five substances hitherto called
+elementary.  Six are gases; oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen being the
+chief.  Forty-two are metals, of which eleven are remarkable as
+composing, 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 in
+our globe.  It constitutes a fifth part of our atmosphere, a third
+part of water, and a large proportion of every kind of rock in the
+crust of the earth.  Hydrogen, which forms two-thirds of water, and
+enters into some mineral substances, is perhaps next.  Nitrogen, of
+which the atmosphere is four-fifths composed, must be considered as
+an abundant substance.  The metal silicium, which unites with oxygen
+in nearly equal parts to form silica, the basis of nearly a half of
+the rocks in the earth's crust, is, of course, an important
+ingredient.  Aluminium, the metallic basis of alumin, a large
+material in many rocks, is another abundant elementary substance.
+So, also, is carbon a small ingredient in the atmosphere, but the
+chief constituent of animal and vegetable substances, and of all
+fossils which ever were in the latter condition, amongst which coal
+takes a conspicuous place.  The familiarly-known metals, as iron,
+tin, lead, silver, gold, are elements of comparatively small
+magnitude in that exterior part of the earth's body which we are able
+to investigate.
+
+It is remarkable of the simple substances that they are generally in
+some compound form.  Thus, oxygen and nitrogen, though in union they
+form the aerial envelope of the globe, are never found separate in
+nature.  Carbon is pure only in the diamond.  And the metallic bases
+of the earths, though the chemist can disengage them, may well be
+supposed unlikely to remain long uncombined, seeing that contact with
+moisture makes them burn.  Combination and re-combination are
+principles largely pervading nature.  There are few rocks, for
+example, that are not composed of at least two varieties of matter,
+each of which is again a compound of elementary substances.  What is
+still more wonderful with respect to this principle of combination,
+all the elementary substances observe certain mathematical
+proportions in their unions.  One volume of them unites with one,
+two, three, or more volumes of another, any extra quantity being sure
+to be left over, if such there should be.  It is hence supposed that
+matter is composed of infinitely minute particles or atoms, each of
+which belonging to any one substance, can only (through the operation
+of some as yet hidden law) associate with a certain number of the
+atoms of any other.  There are also strange predilections amongst
+substances for each other's company.  One will remain combined in
+solution with another, till a third is added, when it will abandon
+the 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 us
+regarding the constituent materials of our globe.  How infinitely is
+the knowledge increased in interest, when we consider the probability
+of such being the materials of the whole of the bodies of space, and
+the laws under which these everywhere combine, subject only to local
+and accidental variations!
+
+In considering the cosmogenic arrangements of our globe, our
+attention is called in a special degree to the moon.
+
+In the nebular hypothesis, satellites are considered as masses thrown
+off from their primaries, exactly as the primaries had previously
+been from the sun.  The orbit of any satellite is also to be regarded
+as marking the bounds of the mass of the primary at the time when
+that satellite was thrown off; its speed likewise denotes the
+rapidity of the rotatory motion of the primary at that particular
+juncture.  For example, the outermost of the four satellites of
+Jupiter 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 large
+mass took rather more than sixteen days six hours and a half (the
+present revolutionary period of the outermost satellite) to rotate on
+its axis.  The innermost satellite must have been formed when the
+planet was reduced to a circumference of 309,075 miles, and rotated
+in about forty-two hours and a half.
+
+From similar inferences, we find that the mass of the earth, at a
+certain point of time after it was thrown off from the sun, was no
+less than 482,000 miles in diameter, being sixty times what it has
+since shrunk to.  At that time, the mass must have taken rather more
+than twenty-nine and a half days to rotate, (being the revolutionary
+period of the moon,) instead of as now, rather less than twenty-four
+hours.
+
+The time intervening between the formation of the moon and the
+earth's diminution to its present size, was probably one of those
+vast sums in which astronomy deals so largely, but which the mind
+altogether 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 space
+being composed of similar matters, subject to certain variations.  It
+does not appear that our satellite is provided with that gaseous
+envelope which, on earth, performs so many important functions.
+Neither is there any appearance of water upon the surface; yet that
+surface is, like that of our globe, marked by inequalities and the
+appearance of volcanic operations.  These inequalities and volcanic
+operations are upon a scale far greater than any which now exist upon
+the earth's surface.  Although, from the greater force of gravitation
+upon its exterior, the mountains, other circumstances being equal,
+might have been expected to be much smaller than ours, they are, in
+many instances, equal in height to nearly the highest of our Andes.
+They are generally of extreme steepness, and sharp of outline, a
+peculiarity which might be looked for in a planet deficient in water
+and atmosphere, seeing that these are the agents which wear down
+ruggedness on the surface of our earth.  The volcanic operations are
+on a stupendous scale.  They are the cause of the bright spots of the
+moon, while the want of them is what distinguishes the duller
+portions, usually but erroneously called SEAS.  In some parts, bright
+volcanic matter, besides covering one large patch, radiates out in
+long streams, which appear studded with subordinate foci of the same
+kind of energy.  Other objects of a most remarkable character are
+ring mountains, mounts like those of the craters of earthly
+volcanoes, surrounded immediately by vast and profound circular pits,
+hollowed under the general surface, these again being surrounded by a
+circular wall of mountain, rising far above the central one, and in
+the inside of which are terraces about the same height as the inner
+eminence.  The well-known bright spot in the south-east quarter,
+called by astronomers Tycho, and which can be readily distinguished
+by the naked eye, is one of these ring-mountains.  There is one of
+200 miles in diameter, with a pit 22,000 feet deep; that is, twice
+the height of AEtna.  It is remarkable, that the maps given by
+Humboldt of a volcanic district in South America, and one
+illustrative of the formerly volcanic district of Auvergne, in
+France, present features strikingly like many parts of the moon's
+surface, as seen through a good glass.
+
+These characteristics of the moon forbid the idea that it can be at
+present a theatre of life like the earth, and almost seem to declare
+that it never can become so.  But we must not rashly draw any such
+conclusions.  The moon may be only in an earlier stage of the
+progress through which the earth has already gone.  The elements
+which seem wanting may be only in combinations different in those
+which exist here, and may yet be developed as we here find them.
+Seas may yet fill the profound hollows of the surface; an atmosphere
+may spread over the whole.  Should these events take place,
+meteorological phenomena, and all the phenomena of organic life, will
+commence, and the moon, like the earth, will become a green and
+inhabited 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 is
+eminently the case with the nebulous hypothesis, for here the
+associated facts cannot be explained on any other supposition.  We
+have seen reason to conclude that the primary condition of matter was
+that of a diffused mass, in which the component molecules were
+probably kept apart through the efficacy of heat; that portions of
+this agglomerated into suns, which threw off planets; that these
+planets were at first very much diffused, but gradually contracted by
+cooling to their present dimensions.  Now, as to our own globe, there
+is a remarkable proof of its having been in a fluid state at the time
+when it was finally solidifying, in the fact of its being bulged at
+the equator, the very form which a soft revolving body takes, and
+must inevitably take, under the influence of centrifugal force.  This
+bulging makes the equatorial exceed the polar diameter as 230 to 229,
+which has been demonstrated to be precisely the departure from a
+correct sphere which might be predicated from a knowledge of the
+amount of the mass and the rate of rotation.  There is an almost
+equally distinct memorial of the original high temperature of the
+materials, in the store of heat which still exists in the interior.
+The immediate surface of the earth, be it observed, exhibits only the
+temperature which might be expected to be imparted to such materials,
+by the heat of the sun.  There is a point, very short way down, but
+varying in different climes, where all effect from the sun's rays
+ceases.  Then, however, commences a temperature from an entirely
+different cause, one which evidently has its source in the interior
+of the earth, and which regularly increases as we descend to greater
+and greater depths, the rate of increment being about one degree
+Fahrenheit for every sixty feet; and of this high temperature there
+are other evidences, in the phenomena of volcanoes and thermal
+springs, as well as in what is ascertained with regard to the density
+of the entire mass of the earth.  This, it will be remembered, is
+four and a half times the weight of water; but the actual weight of
+the principal solid substances composing the outer crust is as two
+and a half times the weight of water; and this, we know, if the globe
+were solid and cold, should increase vastly towards the centre, water
+acquiring the density of quicksilver at 362 miles below the surface,
+and other things in proportion, and these densities becoming much
+greater at greater depths; so that the entire mass of a cool globe
+should be of a gravity infinitely exceeding four and a half times the
+weight of water.  The only alternative supposition is, that the
+central materials are greatly expanded or diffused by some means; and
+by what means could they be so expanded but by heat?  Indeed, the
+existence of this central heat, a residuum of that which kept all
+matter in a vaporiform chaos at first, is amongst the most solid
+discoveries of modern science, {42} and the support which it gives to
+Herschel's explanation of the formation of worlds is most important.
+We shall hereafter see what appear to be traces of an operation of
+this heat upon the surface of the earth in very remote times; an
+effect, however, which has long passed entirely away.  The central
+heat has, for ages, reached a fixed point, at which it will probably
+remain for ever, as the non-conducting quality of the cool crust
+absolutely prevents it from suffering any diminution.
+
+
+
+THE EARTH FORMED--ERA OF THE PRIMARY ROCKS.
+
+
+
+Although the earth has not been actually penetrated to a greater
+depth than three thousand feet, the nature of its substance can, in
+many instances, be inferred for the depth of many miles by other
+means of observation.  We see a mountain composed of a particular
+substance, with strata, or beds of other rock, lying against its
+sloped sides; we, of course, infer that the substance of the mountain
+dips away under the strata which we see lying against it.  Suppose
+that we walk away from the mountain across the turned up edges of the
+stratified rocks, and that for many miles we continue to pass over
+other stratified rocks, all disposed in the same way, till by and bye
+we come to a place where we begin to cross the opposite edges of the
+same beds; after which we pass over these rocks all in reverse order
+till we come to another extensive mountain composed of similar
+material to the first, and shelving away under the strata in the same
+way.  We should then infer that the stratified rocks occupied a basin
+formed by the rock of these two mountains, and by calculating the
+thickness right through these strata, could be able to say to what
+depth the rock of the mountain extended below.  By such means, the
+kind of rock existing many miles below the surface can often be
+inferred with considerable confidence.
+
+The interior of the globe has now been inspected in this way in many
+places, and a tolerably distinct notion of its general arrangements
+has consequently been arrived at.  It appears that the basis rock of
+the earth, as it may be called, is of hard texture, and crystalline
+in its constitution.  Of this rock, granite may be said to be the
+type, though it runs into many varieties.  Over this, except in the
+comparatively few places where it projects above the general level in
+mountains, other rocks are disposed in sheets or strata, with the
+appearance of having been deposited originally from water; but these
+last rocks have nowhere been allowed to rest in their original
+arrangement.  Uneasy movements from below have broken them up in
+great inclined masses, while in many cases there has been projected
+through the rents rocky matter more or less resembling the great
+inferior crystalline mass.  This rocky matter must have been in a
+state of fusion from heat at the time of its projection, for it is
+often found to have run into and filled up lateral chinks in these
+rents.  There are even instances where it has been rent again, and a
+newer 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 great
+inferior mass, composed of crystalline rock, and probably resting
+immediately on the fused and expanded matter of the interior:  next,
+layers or strata of aqueous origin; next, irregular masses of melted
+inferior rock that have been sent up volcanically and confusedly at
+various times amongst the aqueous rocks, breaking up these into
+masses, and tossing them out of their original levels.  This is an
+outline of the arrangements of the crust of the earth, as far as we
+can observe it.  It is, at first sight, a most confused scene; but
+after some careful observation, we readily detect in it a regularity
+and order from which much instruction in the history of our globe is
+to be derived.
+
+The deposition of the aqueous rocks, and the projection of the
+volcanic, have unquestionably taken place since the settlement of the
+earth in its present form.  They are indeed of an order of events
+which we see going on, under the agency of more or less intelligible
+causes, even down to the present day.  We may therefore consider them
+generally as comparatively recent transactions.  Abstracting them
+from the investigations before us, we arrive at the idea of the earth
+in its first condition as a globe of its present size--namely, as a
+mass, externally at least, consisting of the crystalline kind of
+rock, with the waters of the present seas and the present atmosphere
+around it, though these were probably in considerably different
+conditions, both as to temperature and their constituent materials,
+from what they now are.  We are thus to presume that that crystalline
+texture of rock which we see exemplified in granite is the condition
+into which the great bulk of the solids of our earth were
+agglomerated directly from the nebulous or vaporiform state.  It is a
+condition eminently of combination, for such rock is invariably
+composed of two or more of four substances--silica, mica, quartz, and
+hornblende--which associate in it in the form of grains or crystals,
+and which are themselves each composed of a group of the simple or
+elementary substances.
+
+Judging from the results and from still remaining conditions, we must
+suppose that the heat retained in the interior of the globe was more
+intense, or had greater freedom to act, in some places than in
+others.  These became the scenes of volcanic operations, and in time
+marked their situations by the extrusion of traps and basalts from
+below--namely, rocks composed of the crystalline matter fused by
+intense 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 open
+air, which conditions are found to have made considerable difference
+in its texture and appearance.  The great stores of subterranean heat
+also served an important purpose in the formation of the aqueous
+rocks.  These rocks might, according to Sir John Herschel, become
+subject to heat in the following manner:- While the surface of a
+particular mass of rock forms the bed of the sea, the heat is kept at
+a 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 when
+new sediment settles at the bottom of that sea, the heat rises up to
+what was formerly the surface; and when a second quantity of sediment
+is laid down, it continues to rise through the first of the deposits,
+which then becomes subjected to those changes which heat is
+calculated to produce.  This process is precisely the same as that of
+putting additional coats upon our own bodies; when, of course, the
+internal heat rises through each coat in succession, and the third
+(supposing there is a fourth above it) becomes as warm as perhaps the
+first 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 how
+stratification commenced.
+
+Geology tells us as plainly as possible, that the original
+crystalline mass was not a perfectly smooth ball, with air and water
+playing round it.  There were vast irregularities in the surface,--
+irregularities trifling, perhaps, compared with the whole bulk of the
+globe, but assuredly vast in comparison with any which now exist upon
+it.  These irregularities might be occasioned by inequalities in the
+cooling of the substance, or by accidental and local sluggishness of
+the materials, or by local effects of the concentrated internal heat.
+From whatever cause they arose, there they were--enormous granitic
+mountains, interspersed with seas which sunk to a depth equally
+profound, and by which, perhaps, the mountains were wholly or
+partially covered.  Now, it is a fact of which the very first
+principles of geology assure us, that the solids of the globe cannot
+for a moment be exposed to water, or to the atmosphere, without
+becoming liable to change.  They instantly begin to wear down.  This
+operation, we may be assured, proceeded with as much certainty in the
+earliest ages of our earth's history, as it does now, but upon a much
+more magnificent scale.  There is the clearest evidence that the seas
+of those days were not in some instances less than a hundred miles in
+depth, however much more.  The sub-aqueous mountains must necessarily
+have been of at least equal magnitude.  The system of disintegration
+consequent upon such conditions would be enormous.  The matters worn
+off, being carried into the neighbouring depths, and there deposited,
+became the components of the earliest stratified rocks, the first
+series of which is the Gneiss and Mica Slate System, or series,
+examples of which are exposed to view in the Highlands of Scotland
+and in the West of England.  The vast thickness of these beds, in
+some instances, is what attests the profoundness of the primeval
+oceans in which they were formed; the Pensylvanian grawacke, a member
+of the next highest series, is not less than a hundred miles in
+direct thickness.  We have also evidence that the earliest strata
+were formed in the presence of a stronger degree of heat than what
+operated in subsequent stages of the world, for the laminae of the
+gneiss and of the mica and chlorite schists are contorted in a way
+which could only be the result of a very high temperature.  It
+appears as if the seas in which these deposits were formed, had been
+in the troubled state of a caldron of water nearly at boiling heat.
+Such a condition would probably add not a little to the
+disintegrating power of the ocean.
+
+The earliest stratified rocks contain no matters which are not to be
+found in the primitive granite.  They are the same in material, but
+only changed into new forms and combinations; hence they have been
+called by Mr. Lyell, metamorphic rocks.  But how comes it that some
+of them are composed almost exclusively of one of the materials of
+granite; the mica schists, for example, of mica--the quartz rocks, of
+quartz, &c.?  For this there are both chemical and mechanical causes.
+Suppose that a river has a certain quantity of material to carry
+down, it is evident that it will soonest drop the larger particles,
+and carry the lightest farthest on.  To such a cause is it owing that
+some of the materials of the worn-down granite have settled in one
+place and some in another. {52}  Again, some of these materials must
+be presumed to have been in a state of chemical solution in the
+primeval seas.  It would be, of course, in conformity with chemical
+laws, that certain of these materials would be precipitated singly,
+or in modified combinations, to the bottom, so as to form rocks by
+themselves.
+
+The rocks hitherto spoken of contain none of those petrified remains
+of vegetables and animals which abound so much in subsequently formed
+rocks, and tell so wondrous a tale of the past history of our globe.
+They simply contain, as has been said, mineral materials derived from
+the primitive mass, and which appear to have been formed into strata
+in seas of vast depth.  The absence from these rocks of all traces of
+vegetable and animal life, joined to a consideration of the excessive
+temperature which seems to have prevailed in their epoch, has led to
+the inference that no plants or animals of any kind then existed.  A
+few geologists have indeed endeavoured to shew that the absence of
+organic remains is no proof of the globe having been then unfruitful
+or uninhabited, as the heat to which these rocks have been subjected
+at the time of their solidification, might have obliterated any
+remains of either plants or animals which were included in them.  But
+this is only an hypothesis of negation; and it certainly seems very
+unlikely that a degree of heat sufficient to obliterate the remains
+of plants or animals when dead, would ever allow of their coming into
+or continuing in existence.
+
+
+
+COMMENCEMENT OF ORGANIC LIFE--SEA PLANTS, CORALS, ETC.
+
+
+
+We can scarcely be said to have passed out of these rocks, when we
+begin to find new conditions in the earth.  It is here to be observed
+that the subsequent rocks are formed, in a great measure, of matters
+derived from the substance of those which went before, but contain
+also beds of limestone, which is to no small extent composed of an
+ingredient which has not hitherto appeared.  Limestone is a carbonate
+of lime, a secondary compound, of which one of the ingredients,
+carbonic acid gas, presents the element CARBON, a perfect novelty in
+our progress.  Whence this substance?  The question is the more
+interesting, from our knowing that carbon is the main ingredient in
+organic things.  There is reason to believe that its primeval
+condition was that of a gas, confined in the interior of the earth,
+and diffused in the atmosphere.  The atmosphere still contains about
+a two-thousandth part of carbonic acid gas, forming the grand store
+from which the substance of each year's crop of herbage and grain is
+derived, passing from herbage and grain into animal substance, and
+from animals again rendered back to the atmosphere in their expired
+breath, so that its amount is never impaired.  Knowing this, when we
+hear of carbon beginning to appear in the ascending series of rocks,
+we are unavoidably led to consider it as marking a time of some
+importance 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 adopted
+directly in its gaseous form into rocks; for, if so, why should it
+not have been taken into earlier ones also?  But we know that plants
+take it in, and transform it into substance; and we also know that
+there are classes of animals (marine polypes) which are capable of
+appropriating it, in connexion with lime, (carbonate of lime,) from
+the waters of the ocean, provided it be there in solution; and this
+substance do these animals deposit in masses (coral reefs) equal in
+extent to many strata.  It has even been suggested, on strong grounds
+of probability, that a class of limestone beds are simply these reefs
+subjected to subsequent heat and pressure.
+
+The appearance, then, of limestone beds in the early part of the
+stratified series, may be presumed to be connected with the fact of
+the commencement of organic life upon our planet, and, indeed, a
+consequent and a symptom of it.
+
+It may not be out of place here to remark, that carbon is presumed to
+exist largely in the interior of the earth, from the fact of such
+considerable quantities of it issuing at this day, in the form of
+carbonic acid gas, from fissures and springs.  The primeval and
+subsequent history of this element is worthy of much attention, and
+we shall have to revert to it as a matter greatly concerning our
+subject.  Delabeche estimates the quantity of carbonic acid gas
+locked 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 per
+cent., must also be enormous.  If all this were disengaged in a
+gaseous form, the constitution of the atmosphere would undergo a
+change, of which the first effect would be the extinction of life in
+all land animals.  But a large proportion of it must have at one time
+been in the atmosphere.  The atmosphere would then, of course, be
+incapable of supporting life in land animals.  It is important,
+however, to observe that such an atmosphere would not be inconsistent
+with a luxuriant land vegetation; for experiment has proved that
+plants will flourish in air containing ONE-TWELFTH of this gas, or
+166 times more than the present charge of our atmosphere.  The
+results which we observe are perfectly consistent with, and may be
+said to presuppose an atmosphere highly charged with this gas, from
+about the close of the primary non-fossiliferous rocks to the
+termination of the carboniferous series, for there we see vast
+deposits (coal) containing carbon as a large ingredient, while at the
+same time the leaves of the Stone Book present no record of the
+contemporaneous existence of land animals.
+
+The hypothesis of the connexion of the first limestone beds with the
+commencement of organic life upon our planet is supported by the
+fact, that in these beds we find the first remains of the bodies of
+animated creatures.  My hypothesis may indeed be unsound; but,
+whether or not, it is clear, taking organic remains as upon the whole
+a faithful chronicle, that the deposition of these limestone beds was
+coeval 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 awe
+that the uninstructed inquirer would wait for an answer to this
+question.  But nature is simpler than man's wit would make her, and
+behold, the interrogation only brings before us the unpretending
+forms of various zoophytes and polypes, together with a few single
+and double-valved shell-fish (mollusks), all of them creatures of the
+sea.  It is rather surprising to find these before any vegetable
+forms, considering that vegetables appear to us as forming the
+necessary first link in the chain of nutrition; but it is probable
+that there were sea plants, and also some simpler forms of animal
+life, before this period, although of too slight a substance to leave
+any fossil trace of their existence.
+
+The exact point in the ascending stratified series at which the first
+traces of organic life are to be found is not clearly determined.
+Dr. M'Culloch states that he found fossil orthocerata (a kind of
+shell-fish) so early as the gneiss tract of Loch Eribol, in
+Sutherland; but Messrs. Sedgwick and Murchison, on a subsequent
+search, could not verify the discovery.  It has also been stated,
+that the gneiss and mica tract of Bohemia contains some seams of
+grawacke, in which are organic remains; but British geologists have
+not as yet attached much importance to this statement.  We have to
+look a little higher in the series for indubitable traces of organic
+life.
+
+Above the gneiss and mica slate system, or group of strata, is the
+Clay Slate and Grawacke Slate System; that is to say, it is higher in
+the ORDER OF SUPRAPOSITION, though very often it rests immediately on
+the primitive granite.  The sub-groups of this system are in the
+following succession upwards:- 1, hornblende slate; 2, chiastolite
+slate; 3, clay slate; 4, Snowdon rocks, (grawacke and conglomerates;)
+5, Bala limestone; 6, Plynlymmon rocks, (grawacke and grawacke
+slates, with beds of conglomerates.)  This system is largely
+developed in the west and north of England, and it has been well
+examined, partly because some of the slate beds are extensively
+quarried for domestic purposes.  If we overlook the dubious
+statements respecting Sutherland and Bohemia, we have in this
+"system" the first appearances of life upon our planet.  The animal
+remains are chiefly confined to the slate beds, those named from
+Bala, in Wales, being the most prolific.  Zoophyta, polyparia,
+crinoidea, conchifera, and crustacea, {60} are the orders of the
+animal kingdom thus found in the earliest of earth's sepulchres.  The
+ORDERS are distinguished without difficulty, from the general
+characters of the creatures whose remains are found; but it is only
+in this general character that they bear a general resemblance to any
+creatures now existing.  When we come to consider specific
+characters, we see that a difference exists--that, in short, the
+species and even genera are no longer represented upon earth.  More
+than this, it will be found that the earliest species comparatively
+soon gave place to others, and that they are not represented even in
+the next higher group of rocks.  One important remark has been made,
+that a comparatively small variety of species is found in the older
+rocks, although of some particular ones the remains are very
+abundant; as, for instance, of a species of asaphus, which is found
+between the laminae of some of the slate rocks of Wales, and the
+corresponding rocks of Normandy and Germany in enormous quantities.
+
+Ascending to the next group of rocks, we find the traces of life
+become more abundant, the number of species extended, and important
+additions made in certain vestiges of fuci, or sea-plants, and of
+fishes.  This group of rocks has been called by English geologists,
+the Silurian System, because largely developed at the surface of a
+district of western England, formerly occupied by a people whom the
+Roman historians call Silures.  It is a series of sandstones,
+limestones, and beds of shale (hardened mud), which are classed in
+the following sub-groups, beginning with the undermost: --1,
+Llandillo rocks, (darkish calcareous flagstones;) 2 and 3, two groups
+called 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 most
+prevalent in the Wenlock limestone; conchifera, a vast number of
+genera, but all of the order brachiopoda, (including terebratula,
+pentamerus, spirifer, orthis, leptaena;) mollusca, of several orders
+and many genera, (including turritella, orthoceras, nautilus,
+bellerophon;) crustacea, all of them trilobites, (including
+trinucleus, asaphus, calamene.)  A little above the Llandillo rocks,
+there have been discovered certain convoluted forms, which are now
+established as annelids, or sea-worms, a tribe of creatures still
+existing, (nereidina and serpulina,) and which may often be found
+beneath 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, on
+account of their character and status in the animal kingdom.  They
+are red-blooded and hermaphrodite, and form a link of connexion
+between the annulosa (white-blooded worms) and a humble class of the
+vertebrata. {62}  The Wenlock limestone is most remarkable amongst
+all the rocks of the Silurian system, for organic remains.  Many
+slabs of it are wholly composed of corals, shells, and trilobites,
+held together by shale.  It contains many genera of crinoidea and
+polypiaria, and it is thought that some beds of it are wholly the
+production of the latter creatures, or are, in other words, coral
+reefs transformed by heat and pressure into rocks.  Remains of
+fishes, of a very minute size, have been detected by Mr. Philips in
+the Aymestry limestone, being apparently the first examples of
+vertebrated animals which breathed upon our planet.  In the upper
+Ludlow rocks, remains of six genera of fish have been for a longer
+period known; they belong to the order of cartilaginous fishes, an
+order of mean organization and ferocious habits, of which the shark
+and sturgeon are living specimens.  "Some were furnished with long
+palates, and squat, firmly-based teeth, well adapted for crushing the
+strong-cased zoophytes and shells of the period, fragments of which
+occur in the foecal remains; some with teeth that, like the fossil
+sharks of the later formations, resemble lines of miniature pyramids,
+larger and smaller alternating; some with teeth sharp, thin, and so
+deeply serrated, that every individual tooth resembles a row of
+poniards set up against the walls of an armory; and these last, says
+Agassiz, furnished with weapons so murderous, must have been the
+pirates of the period.  Some had their fins guarded with long spines,
+hooked like the beak of an eagle; some with spines of straighter and
+more slender form, and ribbed and furrowed longitudinally like
+columns; some were shielded by an armour of bony points, and some
+thickly covered with glistening scales." {64}
+
+The traces of fuci in this system are all but sufficient to allow of
+a distinction of genera.  In some parts of North America, extensive
+though thin beds of them have been found.  A distinguished French
+geologist, M. Brogniart, has shewn that all existing marine plants
+are classifiable with regard to the zones of climate; some being
+fitted for the torrid zone, some for the temperate, some for the
+frigid.  And he establishes that the fuci of these early rocks speak
+of a torrid climate, although they may be found in what are now
+temperate regions; he also states that those of the higher rocks
+betoken, as we ascend, a gradually diminishing temperature.
+
+We thus early begin to find proofs of the general uniformity of
+organic life over the surface of the earth, at the time when each
+particular system of rocks was formed.  Species identical with the
+remains in the Wenlock limestone occur in the corresponding class of
+rocks in the Eifel, and partially in the Harz, Norway, Russia, and
+Brittany.  The situations of the remains in Russia are fifteen
+hundred miles from the Wenlock beds; but at the distance of between
+six and seven thousand from those,--namely, in the vale of
+Mississippi, the same species are discovered.  Uniformity in animal
+life over large geographical areas argues uniformity in the
+conditions 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, and
+shell-fish, from the Mediterranean.  It is the opinion of M.
+Brogniart, that the uniformity which existed in the primeval times
+can only be attributed to the temperature arising from the internal
+heat, which had yet, as he supposes, been sufficiently great to
+overpower the ordinary meteorological influences, and spread a
+tropical 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 of
+the Old Red Sandstone System.  This term has been recently applied to
+a series of strata, of enormous thickness in the whole mass, largely
+developed in Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, and South
+Wales; also in the counties of Fife, Forfar, Moray, Cromarty, and
+Caithness; and in Russia and North America, if not in many other
+parts of the world.  The particular strata forming the system are
+somewhat different in different countries; but there is a general
+character to the extent of these being a mixture of flagstones, marly
+rocks, and sandstones, usually of a laminous structure, with
+conglomerates.  There is also a schist shewing the presence of
+bitumen; a remarkable new ingredient, since it is a vegetable
+production.  In the conglomerates, of great extent and thickness,
+which form, in at least one district, the basis or leading feature of
+the system, inclosing water-worn fragments of quartz and other rocks,
+we have evidence of the seas of that period having been subjected to
+a violent and long-continued agitation, probably from volcanic
+causes.  The upper members of the series bear the appearance of
+having been deposited in comparatively tranquil seas.  The English
+specimens of this system shew a remarkable freedom from those
+disturbances which result in the interjection of trap; and they are
+thus defective in mineral ores.  In some parts of England the old red
+sandstone system has been stated as 10,000 feet in thickness.
+
+In this era, the forms of life which existed in the Silurian are
+continued:  we have the same orders of marine creatures, zoophyta,
+polypiaria, conchifera, crustacea; but to these are added numerous
+fishes, some of which are of most extraordinary and surprising forms.
+Several of the strata are crowded with remains of fish, shewing that
+the seas in which those beds were deposited had swarmed with that
+class of inhabitants.  The investigation of this system is recent;
+but already {68} M. Agassiz has ascertained about twenty genera, and
+thrice the number of species.  And it is remarkable that the Silurian
+fishes are here only represented in genera; the whole of the SPECIES
+of that era had already passed away.  Even throughout the sub-groups
+of the system itself, the species are changed; and these are
+phenomena observed throughout all the subsequent systems or
+geological eras; apparently arguing that, during the deposition of
+all the rocks, a gradual change of physical conditions was constantly
+going on.  A varying temperature, or even a varying depth of sea,
+would at present be attended with similar changes in marine life; and
+by analogy we are entitled to assume that such variations in the
+ancient seas might be amongst the causes of that constant change of
+genera and species in the inhabitants of those seas to which the
+organic contents of the rocks bear witness.
+
+Some of the fossils of this system,--the cephalaspis, coccosteus,
+pterichthys, holoptychius--are, in form and structure, entirely
+different from any fishes now existing, only the sturgeon family
+having any trace of affinity to them in any respect.  They seem to
+form a sort of connecting link between the crustacea and true fishes.
+
+The cephalaspis may be considered as making the smallest advance from
+the crustacean character; it very much resembles in form the asaphus
+of lower formations, having a longish tail-like body inserted within
+the cusp of a large crescent-shaped head, somewhat like a saddler's
+cutting-knife.  The body is covered with strong plates of bone,
+enamelled, and the head was protected on the upper side with one
+large plate, as with a buckler--hence the name, implying buckler-
+head.  A range of small fins conveys the idea of its having been as
+weak in motion as it is strong in structure.  The coccosteus may be
+said to mark the next advance to fish creation.  The outline of its
+body is of the form of a short thick coffin, rounded, covered with
+strong bony plates, and terminating in a long tail, which seems to
+have been the sole organ of motion.  It is very remarkable, that,
+while the tail establishes this creature among the vertebrata and the
+fishes, its mouth has been opened vertically, like those of the
+crustaceans, but which is contrary to the mode of vertebrata
+generally.  This seems a pretty strong mark of the link character of
+the coccosteus between these two great departments of the animal
+kingdom.  The pterichthys has also strong bony plates over its body,
+arranged much like those of a tortoise, and has a long tail; but its
+most remarkable feature, and that which has suggested its name, is a
+pair of long and narrow wing-like appendages attached to the
+shoulders, which the creature is supposed to have erected for its
+defence when attacked by an enemy.
+
+The holoptychius is of a flat oval form, furnished with fins, and
+ending in a long tail; the whole body covered with strong plates
+which overlap each other, and the head forming only a slight rounded
+projection from the general figure.  The specimens in the lower beds
+are not above the size of a flounder; but in the higher strata, to
+judge by the size of the scales or plates which have been found, the
+creature attained a comparatively monstrous size.
+
+The other fishes of the system,--the osteolepis, glyptolepis,
+dipterus, &c., are, in general outline, much like fishes still
+existing, but their organization has, nevertheless, some striking
+peculiarities.  They have been entirely covered with bony scales or
+plates, enamelled externally; their spines are tipped with bone, and,
+as one striking and unvarying feature, the tail is only finned on the
+lower side.  The internal skeleton, of which no traces have been
+preserved, is presumed to have been cartilaginous.  They therefore
+unite the character of cartilaginous fishes with a character peculiar
+to 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 curious
+facts are mentioned.  It appears that in the imperfect condition of
+the vertebral column, and the inferior situation of the mouth in the
+pterichthys, coccosteus, &c., there is an analogy to the form of the
+dorsal cord and position of the mouth in the embryo of perfect
+fishes.  The one-sided form of the tail in the osteolepis &c. finds a
+similar 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 at
+a parity of law affecting the progress of general creation, and the
+progress of an individual foetus of one of the more perfect animals.
+
+It is equally ascertained of the types of being prevalent in the old
+red, as of those of the preceding system, that they are uniform in
+the 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 traces
+are observable in the Silurians, continue to appear.  It would seem
+as if less change took place in the vegetation than in the animals of
+those early seas; and for this, as Mr. Miller has remarked, it is
+easy to imagine reasons.  For example, an infusion of lime into the
+sea would destroy animal life, but be favourable to vegetation.
+
+As yet there were no land animals or plants, and for this the
+presumable reason is, that no dry land as yet existed.  We are not
+left to make this inference solely from the absence of land animals
+and plants; in the arrangement of the primary (stratified) rocks, we
+have further evidence of it.  That these rocks were formed in a
+generally horizontal position, we are as well assured as that they
+were formed at the bottom of seas.  But they are always found greatly
+inclined in position, tilted up against the slopes of the granitic
+masses which are beneath them in geological order, though often
+shooting up to a higher point in the atmosphere.  No doubt can be
+entertained that these granitic masses, forming our principal
+mountain ranges, have been protruded from below, or, at least, thrust
+much further up, SINCE the deposition of the primary rocks.  The
+protrusion was what tilted up the primary rocks; and the inference
+is, of course, unavoidable, that these mountains have risen chiefly,
+at least, since the primary rocks were laid down.  It is remarkable
+that, while the primary rocks thus incline towards granitic nuclei or
+axes, the strata higher in the series rest against these again,
+generally at a less inclination, or none at all, shewing that these
+strata were laid down after the swelling mountain eminences had, by
+their protrusion, tilted up the primary strata.  And thus it may be
+said an era of local upthrowing of the primitive and (perhaps)
+central matter of our planet, is established as happening about the
+close of the primary strata, and beginning of the next ensuing
+system.  It may be called the Era of the Oldest Mountains, or, more
+boldly, of the formation of the detached portions of dry land over
+the hitherto watery surface of the globe--an important part of the
+designs of Providence, for which the time was now apparently come.
+It may be remarked, that volcanic disturbances and protrusions of
+trap took place throughout the whole period of the deposition of the
+primary rocks; but they were upon a comparatively limited scale, and
+probably all took place under water.  It was only now that the
+central granitic masses of the great mountain ranges were thrown up,
+carrying up with them broken edges of the primary strata; a process
+which seems to have had this difference from the other, that it was
+the effect of a more tremendous force exerted at a lower depth in the
+earth, and generally acting in lines pervading a considerable portion
+of the earth's surface.  We shall by-and-by see that the protrusion
+of some of the mountain ranges was not completed, or did not stop, at
+that period.  There is no part of geological science more clear than
+that which refers to the ages of mountains.  It is as certain that
+the Grampian mountains of Scotland are older than the Alps and
+Apennines, as it is that civilization had visited Italy, and had
+enabled her to subdue the world, while Scotland was the residence of
+"roving barbarians."  The Pyrenees, Carpathians, and other ranges of
+continental Europe, are all younger than the Grampians, or even the
+insignificant Mendip Hills of southern England.  Stratification tells
+this 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 time
+when the Grampians sent streams and detritus to straits where now the
+valleys of the Forth and Clyde meet, the greater part of Europe was a
+wide ocean.
+
+The last three systems--called, in England, the Cumbrian, Silurian,
+and Devonian, and collectively the palaeozoic rocks, from their
+containing the remains of the earliest inhabitants of the globe--are
+of vast thickness; in England, not much less than 30,000 feet, or
+nearly six miles.  In other parts of the world, as we have seen, the
+earliest of these systems alone is of much greater depth--arguing an
+enormous 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 was
+fresh water, for rain, instead of immediately returning to the sea,
+as formerly, was now gathered in channels of the earth, and became
+springs, rivers, and lakes.  There was now a theatre for the
+existence of land plants and animals, and it remains to be inquired
+if these accordingly were produced.
+
+The Secondary Rocks, in which our further researches are to be
+prosecuted, consist of a great and varied series, resting, generally
+unconformably, against flanks of the upturned primary rocks,
+sometimes themselves considerably inclined, at others, forming
+extensive basin-like beds, nearly horizontal; in many places, much
+broken up and shifted by disturbances from below.  They have all been
+formed out of the materials of the older rocks, by virtue of the
+wearing power of air and water, which is still every day carrying
+down vast quantities of the elevated matter of the globe into the
+sea.  But the separate strata are each much more distinct in the
+matter of its composition than might be expected.  Some are siliceous
+or arenaceous (sandstones), composed mainly of fine grains from the
+quartz rocks--the most abundant of the primary strata.  Others are
+argillaceous--clays, shales, &c., chiefly derived, probably, from the
+slate beds of the primary series.  Others are calcareous, derived
+from the early limestone.  As a general feature, they are softer and
+less crystalline than the primary rocks, as if they had endured less
+of both heat and pressure than the senior formation.  There are beds
+(coal) formed solely of vegetable matter, and some others in which
+the main ingredient is particles of iron, (the iron black band.)  The
+secondary rocks are quite as communicative with regard to their
+portion of the earth's history as the primitive were.
+
+The first, or lowest, group of the secondary rocks is called the
+Carboniferous Formation, from the remarkable feature of its numerous
+interspersed beds of coal.  It commences with the beds of the
+MOUNTAIN LIMESTONE, which, in some situations, as in Derbyshire and
+Ireland, are of great thickness, being alternated with chert (a
+siliceous sandstone), sandstones, shales, and beds of coal, generally
+of the harder and less bituminous kind (anthracite), the whole being
+covered in some places by the millstone grit, a siliceous
+conglomerate composed of the detritus of the primary rocks.  The
+mountain limestone, attaining in England to a depth of eight hundred
+yards, greatly exceeds in volume any of the primary limestone beds,
+and shews an enormous addition of power to the causes formerly
+suggested as having produced this substance.  In fact, remains of
+corals, crinoidea, and shells, are so abundant in it, as to compose
+three-fourths of the mass in some parts.  Above the mountain
+limestone commence the more conspicuous COAL BEDS, alternating with
+sandstones, shales, beds of limestone, and ironstone.  Coal is
+altogether composed of the matter of a terrestrial vegetation,
+transmuted by pressure.  Some fresh-water shells have been found in
+it, but few of marine origin, and no remains of those zoophytes and
+crinoidea so abundant in the mountain limestone and other rocks.
+Coal beds exist in Europe, Asia, and America, and have hitherto been
+esteemed as the most valuable of mineral productions, from the
+important services which the substance renders in manufactures and in
+domestic economy.  It is to be remarked, that there are some local
+variations in the arrangement of coal beds.  In France, they rest
+immediately on the granite and other primary rocks, the intermediate
+strata not having been found at those places.  In America, the kind
+called anthracite occurs among the slate beds, and this species also
+abounds more in the mountain limestone than with us.  These last
+circumstances only shew that different parts of the earth's surface
+did not all witness the same events of a certain fixed series exactly
+at the same time.  There had been an exhibition of dry land about the
+site of America, a little earlier than in Europe.
+
+Some features of the condition of the earth during the deposition of
+the carboniferous group, are made out with a clearness which must
+satisfy most minds.  First we are told of a time when carbonate of
+lime was formed in vast abundance at the bottoms of profound seas,
+accompanied by an unusually large population of corals and
+encrinites; while in some parts of the earth there were patches of
+dry land, covered with a luxuriant vegetation.  Next we have a
+comparatively brief period of volcanic disturbance, (when the
+conglomerate was formed.)  Then the causes favourable to the so
+abundant production of limestone, and the large population of marine
+acrita, decline, and we find the masses of dry land increase in
+number and extent, and begin to bear an amount of forest vegetation,
+far exceeding that of the most sheltered tropical spots of the
+present surface.  The climate, even in the latitude of Baffin's Bay,
+was torrid, and perhaps the atmosphere contained a larger charge of
+carbonic acid gas (the material of vegetation) than it now does.  The
+forests or thickets of the period, included no species of plants now
+known upon earth.  They mainly consisted of gigantic shrubs, which
+are either not represented by any existing types, or are akin to
+kinds which are now only found in small and lowly forms.  That these
+forests grew upon a Polynesia, or multitude of small islands, is
+considered probable, from similar vegetation being now found in such
+situations within the tropics.  With regard to the circumstances
+under which the masses of vegetable matter were transformed into
+successive coal strata, geologists are divided.  From examples seen
+at the present day, at the mouths of such rivers as the Mississippi,
+which traverse extensive sylvan regions, and from other circumstances
+to be adverted to, it is held likely by some that the vegetable
+matter, the rubbish of decayed forests, was carried by rivers into
+estuaries, and there accumulated in vast natural rafts, until it sunk
+to the bottom, where an overlayer of sand or mud would prepare it for
+becoming a stratum of coal.  Others conceive that the vegetation
+first went into the condition of a peat moss, that a sink in the
+level then exposed it to be overrun by the sea, and covered with a
+layer of sand or mud; that a subsequent uprise made the mud dry land,
+and fitted it to bear a new forest, which afterwards, like its
+predecessor, became a bed of peat; that, in short, by repetitions of
+this process, the alternate layers of coal, sandstone, and shale,
+constituting the carboniferous group, were formed.  It is favourable
+to this last view that marine fossils are scarcely found in the body
+of the coal itself, though abundant in the shale layers above and
+below it; also that in several places erect stems of trees are found
+with their roots still fixed in the shale beds, and crossing the
+sandstone beds at almost right angles, shewing that these, at least,
+had not been drifted from their original situations.  On the other
+hand, it is not easy to admit such repeated risings and sinkings of
+surface as would be required, on this hypothesis, to form a series of
+coal strata.  Perhaps we may most safely rest at present with the
+supposition that coal has been formed under both classes of
+circumstances, though in the latter only as an exception to the
+former.
+
+Upwards of three hundred species of plants have been ascertained to
+exist in the coal formation; but it is not necessary to suppose that
+the whole contained in that system are now, or ever will be
+distinguished.  Experiments shew that some great classes of plants
+become decomposed in water in a much less space of time than others,
+and it is remarkable that those which decompose soonest, are of the
+classes found most rare, or not at all, in the coal strata.  It is
+consequently to be inferred that there may have been grasses and
+mosses at this era, and many species of trees, the remains of which
+had lost all trace of organic form before their substance sunk into
+the mass of which coal was formed.  In speaking, therefore, of the
+vegetation of this period, we must bear in mind that it may have
+comprehended forms of which we have no memorial.
+
+Supposing, nevertheless, that, in the main, the ascertained
+vegetation of the coal system is that which grew at the time of its
+formation, it is interesting to find that the terrestrial botany of
+our globe begins with classes of comparatively simple forms and
+structure.  In the ranks of the vegetable kingdom, the lowest place
+is taken by plants of cellular tissue, and which have no flowers,
+(cryptogamia,) as lichens, mosses, fungi, ferns, sea-weeds.  Above
+these stand plants of vascular tissue, and bearing flowers, in which
+again there are two great subdivisions; first, plants having one
+seed-lobe, (monocotyledons,) and in which the new matter is added
+within, (endogenous,) of which the cane and palm are examples;
+second, plants having two seed-lobes, (dicotyledons,) and in which
+the new matter is added on the outside under the bark, (exogenous,)
+of which the pine, elm, oak, and most of the British forest-trees are
+examples; these subdivisions also ranking in the order in which they
+are here stated.  Now it is clear that a predominance of these forms
+in succession marked the successive epochs developed by fossil
+geology; the simple abounding first, and the complex afterwards.
+
+Two-thirds of the plants of the carboniferous era are of the cellular
+or cryptogamic kind, a proportion which would probably be much
+increased if we knew the whole Flora of that era.  The ascertained
+dicotyledons, or higher-class plants, are comparatively few in this
+formation; but it will be found that they constantly increased as the
+globe grew older.
+
+The master-form or type of the era was the fern, or breckan, of which
+about one hundred and thirty species have already been ascertained as
+entering into the composition of coal. {84a}  The fern is a plant
+which thrives best in warm, shaded, and moist situations.  In
+tropical countries, where these conditions abound, there are many
+more species than in temperate climes, and some of these are
+arborescent, or of a tree-like size and luxuriance. {84b}  The ferns
+of the coal strata have been of this magnitude, and that without
+regard to the parts of the earth where they are found.  In the coal
+of Baffin's Bay, of Newcastle, and of the torrid zone alike, are the
+fossil ferns arborescent, shewing clearly that, in that era, the
+present tropical temperature, or one even higher, existed in very
+high latitudes.
+
+In the swamps and ditches of England there grows a plant called the
+horse-tail (equisetum), having a succulent, erect, jointed stem, with
+slender leaves, and a scaly catkin at the top.  A second large
+section 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 the
+stems are generally under half an inch in diameter, their kindred,
+entombed in the coal beds, seem to have been generally fourteen or
+fifteen feet high, with stems from six inches to a foot in thickness.
+Arborescent plants of this family, like the arborescent ferns, now
+grow only in tropical countries, and their being found in the coal
+beds in all latitudes is consequently held as an additional proof,
+that at this era a warm climate was extended much farther to the
+north than at present.  It is to be remarked that plants of this kind
+(forming two genera, the most abundant of which is the calamites) are
+only represented on the present surface by plants of the same FAMILY:
+the SPECIES which flourished at this era gradually lessen in number
+as we advance upwards in the series of rocks, and disappear before we
+arrive at the tertiary formation.
+
+The club-moss family (lycopodiaceae) are other plants of the present
+surface, usually seen in a lowly and creeping form in temperate
+latitudes, but presenting species which rise to a greater magnitude
+within the tropics.  Many specimens of this family are found in the
+coal beds; it is thought they have contributed more to the substance
+of the coal than any other family.  But, like the ferns and
+equisetaceae, they rise to a prodigious magnitude.  The lepidodendra
+(so the fossil genus is called) have probably been from sixty-five to
+eighty feet in height, having at their base a diameter of about three
+feet, while their leaves measured twenty inches in length.  In the
+forests of the coal era, the lepidodendra would enjoy the rank of
+firs in our forests, affording shade to the only less stately ferns
+and calamites.  The internal structure of the stem, and the character
+of the seed-vessels, shew them to have been a link between single-
+lobed and double-lobed plants, a fact worthy of note, as it favours
+the idea that, in vegetable, as well as animal creation, a progress
+has been observed, in conformity with advancing conditions.  It is
+also curious to find a missing link of so much importance in a genus
+of plants which has long ceased to have a living place upon earth.
+
+The other leading plants of the coal era are without representatives
+on the present surface, and their characters are in general less
+clearly ascertained.  Amongst the most remarkable are--the
+sigillaria, of which large stems are very abundant, shewing that the
+interior has been soft, and the exterior fluted with separate leaves
+inserted in vertical rows along the flutings--and the stigmaria,
+plants apparently calculated to flourish in marshes or pools, having
+a short, thick, fleshy stem, with a dome-shaped top, from which
+sprung branches of from twenty to thirty feet long.  Amongst
+monocotyledons 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 the
+present surface they are the most numerous sub-class.  Besides some
+of doubtful affinity, (annularia, asterophyllites, &c.,) there were a
+few of the pine family, which seem to have been the highest class of
+trees of this era, and are only as yet found in isolated cases, and
+in sandstone beds.  The first discovered lay in the Craigleith
+quarry, near Edinburgh, and consisted of a stem about two feet thick,
+and forty-seven feet in length.  Others have since been found, both
+in the same situation, and at Newcastle.  Leaves and fruit being
+wanting, an ingenious mode of detecting the nature of these trees was
+hit upon by Mr. Witham of Lartington.  Taking thin polished cross
+slices of the stem, and subjecting them to the microscope, he
+detected the structure of the wood to be that of a cone-bearing tree,
+by the presence of certain "reticulations" which distinguish that
+family, in addition to the usual radiating and concentric lines.
+That particular tree was concluded to be an araucaria, a species now
+found in Norfolk Island, in the South Sea, and in a few other remote
+situations.  The coniferae of this era form the dawn of
+dicotyledenous trees, of which they may be said to be the simplest
+type, and to which, it has already been noticed, the lepidodendra are
+a link from the monocotyledons.  The concentric rings of the
+Craigleith and other coniferae of this era have been mentioned.  It
+is interesting to find in these a record of the changing seasons of
+those early ages, when as yet there were no human beings to observe
+time or tide.  They are clearly traced; but it is observed that they
+are more slightly marked than is the case with their family at the
+present day, as if the changes of temperature had been within a
+narrower range.
+
+Such was the vegetation of the carbonigenous era, composed of forms
+at the bottom of the botanical scale, flowerless, fruitless, but
+luxuriant and abundant beyond what the most favoured spots on earth
+can now shew.  The rigidity of the leaves of its plants, and the
+absence of fleshy fruits and farinaceous seeds, unfitted it to afford
+nutriment to animals; and, monotonous in its forms, and destitute of
+brilliant colouring, its sward probably unenlivened by any of the
+smaller flowering herbs, its shades uncheered by the hum of insects,
+or the music of birds, it must have been but a sombre scene to a
+human visitant.  But neither man nor any other animals were then in
+existence 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 up
+mineral masses which were in long subsequent ages to prove of the
+greatest service to the human race, even to the extent of favouring
+the progress of its civilization.
+
+The animal remains of this era are not numerous, in comparison with
+those which go before, or those which come after.  The mountain
+limestone, indeed, deposited at the commencement of it, abounds
+unusually in polypiaria and crinoidea; but when we ascend to the
+coal-beds themselves, the case is altered, and these marine remains
+altogether disappear.  We have then only a limited variety of
+conchifers and shell mollusks, with fragments of a few species of
+fishes, and these are rarely or never found in the coal seams, but in
+the shales alternating with them.  Some of the fishes are of a
+sauroid character, that is, partake of the nature of the lizard, a
+genus of the reptilia, a land class of animals, so that we may be
+said here to have the first approach to a kind of animals calculated
+to breathe the atmosphere.  Such is the Megalichthys Hibbertii, found
+by Dr. Hibbert Ware, in a limestone bed of fresh-water origin,
+underneath the coal at Burdiehouse, near Edinburgh.  Others of the
+same kind have been found in the coal measures in Yorkshire, and in
+the low coal shales at Manchester.  This is no more than might be
+expected, as collections of fresh water now existed, and it is
+presumable that they would be peopled.  The chief other fishes of the
+coal era are named palaeothrissum, palaeoniscus, diperdus.
+
+Coal strata are nearly confined to the group termed the carboniferous
+formation.  Thin beds are not unknown afterwards, but they occur only
+as a rare exception.  It is therefore thought that the most important
+of the conditions which allowed of so abundant a terrestrial
+vegetation, 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 the
+superabundance of carbonic acid gas supposed to have existed during
+this era was expended before its close.  There can be little doubt
+that the infusion of a large dose of this gas into the atmosphere at
+the present day would be attended by precisely the same circumstances
+as in the time of the carboniferous formation.  Land animal life
+would not have a place on earth; vegetation would be enormous; and
+coal strata would be formed from the vast accumulations of woody
+matter, which would gather in every sea, near the mouths of great
+rivers.  On the exhaustion of the superabundance of carbonic acid
+gas, the coal formation would cease, and the earth might again become
+a suitable theatre of being for land animals.
+
+The termination of the carboniferous formation is marked by symptoms
+of volcanic violence, which some geologists have considered to denote
+the close of one system of things and the beginning of another.  Coal
+beds generally lie in basins, as if following the curve of the bottom
+of seas.  But there is no such basin which is not broken up into
+pieces, some of which have been tossed up on edge, others allowed to
+sink, causing the ends of strata to be in some instances many yards,
+and in a few several hundred feet, removed from the corresponding
+ends of neighbouring fragments.  These are held to be results of
+volcanic movements below, the operation of which is further seen in
+numerous upbursts and intrusions of volcanic rock (trap).  That these
+disturbances took place about the close of the formation, and not
+later, is shewn in the fact of the next higher group of strata being
+comparatively undisturbed.  Other symptoms of this time of violence
+are seen in the beds of conglomerate which occur amongst the first
+strata above the coal.  These, as usual, consist of fragments of the
+elder rocks, more or less worn from being tumbled about in agitated
+water, and laid down in a mud paste, afterwards hardened.  Volcanic
+disturbances break up the rocks; the pieces are worn in seas; and a
+deposit of conglomerate is the consequence.  Of porphyry, there are
+some such pieces in the conglomerate of Devonshire, three or four
+tons in weight.  It is to be admitted for strict truth that, in some
+parts of Europe, the carboniferous formation is followed by superior
+deposits, without the appearance of such disturbances between their
+respective periods; but apparently this case belongs to the class of
+exceptions already noticed. {93}  That disturbance was general, is
+supported by the further and important fact of the destruction of
+many forms of organic being previously flourishing, particularly of
+the vegetable kingdom.
+
+
+
+ERA OF THE NEW RED SANDSTONE.  TERRESTRIAL ZOOLOGY COMMENCES WITH
+REPTILES.  FIRST TRACES OF BIRDS.
+
+
+
+The next volume of the rock series refers to an era distinguished by
+an event of no less importance than the commencement of land animals.
+The New Red Sandstone System is subdivided into groups, some of which
+are wanting in some places; they are pretty fully developed in the
+north of England, in the following ascending order:- 1.  Lower red
+sandstone; 2.  Magnesian limestone; 3.  Red and white sandstones and
+conglomerate; 4.  Variegated marls.  Between the third and fourth
+there is, in Germany, another group, called the Muschelkalk, a word
+expressing a limestone full of shells.
+
+The first group, containing the conglomerates already adverted to,
+seems to have been produced during the time of disturbance which
+occurred so generally after the carbonigenous era.  This new era is
+distinguished by a paucity of organic remains, as might partly be
+expected from the appearances of disturbance, and the red tint of the
+rocks, 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 is
+developed less generally than some others, but occurs conspicuously
+in England and Germany.  Its place, above the red sandstone, shews
+the recurrence of circumstances favourable to animal life, and we
+accordingly find in it not only zoophytes, conchifera, and a few
+tribes of fish, but some faint traces of land plants, and a new and
+startling appearance--a reptile of saurian (lizard) character,
+analogous to the now existing family called monitors.  Remains of
+this creature are found in cupriferous (copper-bearing) slate
+connected with the mountain limestone, at Mansfield and Glucksbrunn,
+in Germany, which may be taken as evidence that dry land existed in
+that age near those places.  The magnesia limestone is also
+remarkable as the last rock in which appears the leptaena, or
+producta, a conchifer of numerous species which makes a conspicuous
+appearance in all previous seas.  It is likewise to be observed, that
+the fishes of this age, to the genera of which the names
+palaeoniscus, catopterus, platysomus, &c., have been applied, vanish,
+and henceforth appear no more.
+
+The third group, chiefly sandstones, variously coloured according to
+the amount and nature of the metallic oxide infused into them, shews
+a recurrence of agitation, and a consequent diminution of the amount
+of animal life.  In the upper part, however, of this group, there are
+abundant symptoms of a revival of proper conditions for such life.
+There are marl beds, the origin of which substance in decomposed
+shells is obvious; and in Germany, though not in England, here occurs
+the muschelkalk, containing numerous organic remains, (generally
+different from those of the magnesian limestone,) and noted for the
+specimens of land animals, which it is the first to present in any
+considerable abundance to our notice.
+
+These animals are of the vertebrate sub-kingdom, but of its lowest
+class next after fishes,--namely, reptiles,--a portion of the
+terrestrial tribes whose imperfect respiratory system perhaps fitted
+them for enduring an atmosphere not yet quite suitable for birds or
+mammifers. {97}  The specimens found in the muschelkalk are allied to
+the crocodile and lizard tribes of the present day, but in the latter
+instance are upon a scale of magnitude as much superior to present
+forms as the lepidodendron of the coal era was superior to the dwarf
+club-mosses of our time.  These saurians also combine some
+peculiarities of structure of a most extraordinary character.
+
+The animal to which the name ichthyosaurus has been given, was as
+long as a young whale, and it was fitted for living in the water,
+though breathing the atmosphere.  It had the vertebral column and
+general bodily form of a fish, but to that were added the head and
+breast-bone of a lizard, and the paddles of the whale tribes.  The
+beak, moreover, was that of a porpoise, and the teeth were those of a
+crocodile.  It must have been a most destructive creature to the fish
+of those early seas.
+
+The plesiosaurus was of similar bulk, with a turtle-like body and
+paddles, shewing that the sea was its element, but with a long
+serpent-like neck, terminating in a saurian head, calculated to reach
+prey at a considerable distance.  These two animals, of which many
+varieties have been discovered, constituting distinct species, are
+supposed to have lived in the shallow borders of the seas of this and
+subsequent formations, devouring immense quantities of the finny
+tribes.  It was at first thought that no creatures approaching them
+in character now inhabit the earth; but latterly Mr. Darwin has
+discovered, in the reptile-peopled Galapagos Islands, in the South
+Sea, a marine saurian from three to four feet long.
+
+The megalosaurus was an enormous lizard--a land creature, also
+carnivorous.  The pterodactyle was another lizard, but furnished with
+wings to pursue its prey in the air, and varying in size between a
+cormorant and a snipe.  Crocodiles abounded, and some of these were
+herbivorous.  Such was the iguanodon, a creature of the character of
+the iguana of the Ganges, but reaching a hundred feet in length, or
+twenty times that of its modern representative.
+
+There were also numerous tortoises, some of them reaching a great
+size; and Professor Owen has found in Warwickshire some remains of an
+animal of the batrachian order, {99} to which, from the peculiar form
+of the teeth, he has given the name of labyrinthidon.  Thus, three of
+Cuvier's four orders of reptilia (sauria, chelonia, and batrachia)
+are represented in this formation, the serpent order (ophidia) being
+alone wanting.
+
+The variegated marl beds which constitute the uppermost group of the
+formation, present two additional genera of huge saurians,--the
+phytosaurus and mastodonsaurus.
+
+It is in the upper beds of the red sandstone that beds of salt first
+occur.  These are sometimes of such thickness, that the mine from
+which the material has been excavated looks like a lofty church.  We
+see in the present world no circumstances calculated to produce the
+formation of a bed of rock salt; yet it is not difficult to
+understand how such strata were formed in an age marked by ultra-
+tropical heat and frequent volcanic disturbances.  An estuary, cut
+off by an upthrow of trap, or a change of level, and left to dry up
+under the heat of the sun, would quickly become the bed of a dense
+layer of rock salt.  A second shift of level, or some other volcanic
+disturbance, connecting it again with the sea, would expose this
+stratum to being covered over with a layer of sand or mud, destined
+in 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 abundantly
+in the preceding formation, here present themselves, but in
+diminished size and quantity.
+
+This seems to be the proper place to advert to certain memorials of a
+peculiar and unexpected character respecting these early ages in the
+sandstones.  So low as the bottom of the carboniferous system, slabs
+are found marked over a great extent of surface with that peculiar
+corrugation or wrinkling which the receding tide leaves upon a sandy
+beach when the sea is but slightly agitated; and not only are these
+ripple-marks, as they are called, found on the surfaces, but casts of
+them are found on the under sides of slabs lying above.  The
+phenomena suggests the time when the sand ultimately formed into
+these stone slabs, was part of the beach of a sea of the
+carbonigenous era; when, left wavy by one tide, it was covered over
+with a thin layer of fresh sand by the next, and so on, precisely as
+such circumstances might be expected to take place at the present
+day.  Sandstone surfaces, ripple-marked, are found throughout the
+subsequent formations:  in those of the new red, at more than one
+place in England, they further bear impressions of rain-drops which
+have fallen upon them--the rain, of course, of the inconceivably
+remote age in which the sandstones were formed.  In the Greensill
+sandstone, near Shrewsbury, it has even been possible to tell from
+what direction the shower came which impressed the sandy surface, the
+rims of the marks being somewhat raised on one side, exactly as might
+be expected from a slanting shower falling at this day upon one of
+our beaches.  These facts have the same sort of interest as the
+season rings of the Craigleith conifers, as speaking of a parity
+between some of the familiar processes of nature in those early ages
+and our own.
+
+In the new red sandstone, impressions still more important in the
+inferences to which they tend, have been observed,--namely, the
+footmarks of various animals.  In a quarry of this formation, at
+Corncockle Muir, in Dumfriesshire, where the slabs incline at an
+angle of thirty-eight degrees, the vestiges of an animal supposed to
+have been a tortoise are distinctly traced up and down the slope, as
+if the creature had had occasion to pass backwards and forwards in
+that direction only, possibly in its daily visits to the sea.  Some
+slabs similarly impressed, in the Stourton quarries in Cheshire, are
+further marked with a shower of rain which we know must have fallen
+AFTERWARDS, for its little hollows are impressed in the footmarks
+also, though more slightly than on the rest of the surface, the
+comparative hardness of a trodden place having apparently prevented
+so deep an impression being made.  At Hessberg, in Saxony, the
+vestiges of four distinct animals have been traced, one of them a
+web-footed animal of small size, considered as a congener of the
+crocodile; another, whose footsteps having a resemblance to an
+impression of a swelled human hand, has caused it to be named the
+cheirotherium.  The footsteps of the cheirotherium have been found
+also in the Stourton quarries above mentioned.  Professor Owen, who
+stands at the head of comparative anatomy in the present day, has
+expressed his belief that this last animal was the same batrachian of
+which he has found fragments in the new red sandstone of
+Warwickshire.  At Runcorn, near Manchester, and elsewhere, have been
+discovered the tracks of an animal which Mr. Owen calls the
+rynchosaurus, uniting with the body of a reptile the beak and feet of
+a bird, and which clearly had been a LINK between these two classes.
+
+If geologists shall ultimately give their approbation to the
+inferences made from a recent discovery in America, we shall have the
+addition of perfect birds, though probably of a low type, to the
+animal forms of this era.  It is stated to be in quarries of this
+rock, in the valley of Connecticut, that footprints have been found,
+apparently produced by birds of the order grallae, or waders.  "The
+footsteps appear in regular succession on the continuous track of an
+animal, in the act of walking or running, with the right and left
+foot always in their relative places.  The distance of the intervals
+between each footstep on the same track is occasionally varied, but
+to no greater amount than may be explained by the bird having altered
+its pace.  Many tracks of different individuals and different species
+are often found crossing each other, and crowded, like impressions of
+feet upon the shores of a muddy stream, where ducks and geese
+resort." {103}  Some of these prints indicate small animals, but
+others denote birds of what would now be an unusually large size.
+One animal, having a foot fifteen inches in length, (one-half more
+than that of the ostrich,) and a stride of from four to six feet, has
+been appropriately entitled, ornithichnites giganteus.
+
+
+
+ERA OF THE OOLITE.  COMMENCEMENT OF MAMMALIA.
+
+
+
+The chronicles of this period consist of a series of beds, mostly
+calcareous, taking their general name (Oolite System) from a
+conspicuous member of them--the oolite--a limestone composed of an
+aggregation of small round grains or spherules, and so called from
+its 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 of
+chemical origin, each spherule being an aggregation of particles
+round a central nucleus.  The oolite system is largely developed in
+England, France, Westphalia, and Northern Italy; it appears in
+Northern India and Africa, and patches of it exist in Scotland, and
+in the vale of the Mississippi.  It may of course be yet discovered
+in many other parts of the world.
+
+The series, as shewn in the neighbourhood of Bath, is (beginning with
+the lowest) as follows:- 1.  Lias, a set of strata variously composed
+of limestone, clay, marl, and shale, clay being predominant; 2.
+Lower oolitic formation, including, besides the great oolite bed of
+central England, fullers' earth beds, forest marble, and cornbrash;
+3.  Middle oolitic formation, composed of two sub-groups, the Oxford
+clay and coral rag, the latter being a mere layer of the works of the
+coral polype; 4.  Upper oolitic formation, including what are called
+Kimmeridge clay and Portland oolite.  In Yorkshire there is an
+additional group above the lias, and in Sutherlandshire there is
+another group above that again.  In the wealds (moorlands) of Kent
+and Sussex, there is, in like manner, above the fourth of the Bath
+series, another additional group, to which the name of the Wealden
+has been given, from its situation, and which, composed of sandstones
+and clays, is subdivided into Purbeck beds, Hastings sand, and Weald
+clay.
+
+There are no particular appearances of disturbance between the close
+of the new red sandstone and the beginning of the oolite system, as
+far as has been observed in England.  Yet there is a great change in
+the materials of the rocks of the two formations, shewing that while
+the bottoms of the seas of the one period had been chiefly
+arenaceous, those of the other were chiefly clayey and limy.  And
+there is an equal difference between the two periods in respect of
+both botany and zoology.  While the new red sandstone shews
+comparatively scanty traces of organic creation, those in the oolite
+are extremely abundant, particularly in the department of animals,
+and more particularly still of sea mollusca, which, it has been
+observed, are always the more conspicuous in proportion to the
+predominance of calcareous rocks.  It is also remarkable that the
+animals of the oolitic system are entirely different in species from
+those of the preceding age, and that these species cease before the
+next.  In this system we likewise find that uniformity over great
+space which has been remarked of the Faunas of earlier formations.
+"In the equivalent deposits in the Himalaya Mountains, at Fernando
+Po, in the region north of the Cape of Good Hope, and in the Run of
+Cutch, and other parts of Hindostan, fossils have been discovered,
+which, as far as English naturalists who have seen them can
+determine, are undistinguishable from certain oolite and lias fossils
+of Europe." {108a}
+
+The dry land of this age presented cycadeae, "a beautiful class of
+plants between the palms and conifers, having a tall, straight trunk,
+terminating in a magnificent crown of foliage." {108b}  There were
+tree ferns, but in smaller proportion than in former ages; also
+equisetaceae, lilia, and conifers.  The vegetation was generally
+analogous to that of the Cape of Good Hope and Australia, which seems
+to argue a climate (we must remember, a universal climate) between
+the tropical and temperate.  It was, however, sufficiently luxuriant
+in some instances to produce thin seams of coal, for such are found
+in the oolite formation of both Yorkshire and Sutherland.  The sea,
+as for ages before, contained algae, of which, however, only a few
+species have been preserved to our day.  The lower classes of the
+inhabitants of the ocean were unprecedentedly abundant.  The
+polypiaria were in such abundance as to form whole strata of
+themselves.  The crinoidea and echinites were also extremely
+numerous.  Shell mollusks, in hundreds of new species, occupied the
+bottoms 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 in
+the oolite, and terminates in the next formation.  It is an
+elongated, conical shell, terminating in a point, and having, at the
+larger end, a cavity for the residence of the animal, with a series
+of air-chambers below.  The animal, placed in the upper cavity, could
+raise or depress itself in the water at pleasure by a pneumatic
+operation upon the entral air tube pervading its shell.  Its
+tentacula, sent abroad over the summit of the shell, searched the sea
+for prey.  The creature had an ink-bag, with which it could muddle
+the water around it, to protect itself from more powerful animals,
+and, strange to say, this has been found so well preserved that an
+artist has used it in one instance as a paint, wherewith to delineate
+the belemnite itself.
+
+The crustacea discovered in this formation are less numerous.  There
+are many fishes, some of which (acrodus, psammodus, &c.,) are
+presumed from remains of their palatal bones, to have been of the
+gigantic cartilaginous class, now represented by such as the
+cestraceon.  It has been considered by Professor Owen as worthy of
+notice, that, the cestraceon being an inhabitant of the Australian
+seas, we have, in both the botany and ichthyology of this period, an
+analogy to that continent.  The pycnodontes, (thick-toothed,) and
+lepidoides, (having thick scales,) are other families described by M.
+Agassiz as extensively prevalent.  In the shallow waters of the
+oolitic formation, the ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, and other huge
+saurian carnivora of the preceding age, plied, in increased numbers,
+their destructive vocation. {110}  To them were added new genera, the
+cetiosaurus, mososaurus, and some others, all of similar character
+and habits.
+
+Land reptiles abounded, including species of the pterodactyle of the
+preceding age--tortoises, trionyces, crocodilians--and the
+pliosaurus, a creature which appears to have formed a link between
+the plesiosaurus and the crocodile.  We know of at least six species
+of the flying saurian, the pterodactyle, in this formation.
+
+Now, for the first time, we find remains of insects, an order of
+animals not well calculated for fossil preservation, and which are
+therefore amongst the rarest of the animal tribes found in rocks,
+though they are the most numerous of all living families.  A single
+libellula (dragon-fly) was found in the Stonesfield slate, a member
+of the lower oolitic group quarried near Oxford; and this was for
+several years the only specimen known to exist so early; but now many
+species have been found in a corresponding rock at Solenhofen, in
+Germany.  It is remarkable that the remains of insects are found most
+plentifully near the remains of pterodactyles, to which undoubtedly
+they served as prey.
+
+The first glimpse of the highest class of the vertebrate sub-kingdom-
+-mammalia--is obtained from the Stonesfield slate, where there has
+been found the jaw-bone of a quadruped evidently insectivorous, and
+inferred, from peculiarities in the structure of that small fragment,
+to have belonged to the marsupial family, (pouched animals).  It may
+be observed, although no specimens of so high a class of animals as
+mammalia are found earlier, such may nevertheless have existed:  the
+defect may be in our not having found them; but, other things
+considered, the probability is that heretofore there were no
+mammifers.  It is an interesting circumstance that the first
+mammifers found should have belonged to the marsupialia, when the
+place of that order in the scale of creation is considered.  In the
+imperfect structure of their brain, deficient in the organs
+connecting the two hemispheres--and in the mode of gestation, which
+is only in small part uterine--this family is clearly a link between
+the oviparous vertebrata (birds, reptiles, and fishes) and the higher
+mammifers.  This is further established by their possessing a faint
+development of two canals passing from near the anus to the external
+surface of the viscera, which are fully possessed in reptiles and
+fishes, for the purpose of supplying aerated water to the blood
+circulating in particular vessels, but which are unneeded by
+mammifers.  Such rudiments of organs in certain species which do not
+require them in any degree, are common in both the animal and
+vegetable kingdoms, but are always most conspicuous in families
+approaching in character to those classes to which the full organs
+are proper.  This subject will be more particularly adverted to in
+the sequel.
+
+The highest part of the oolitic formation presents some phenomena of
+an unusual and interesting character, which demand special notice.
+Immediately above the upper oolitic group in Buckinghamshire, in the
+vicinity of Weymouth, and other situations, there is a thin stratum,
+usually called by workmen the DIRT-BED, which appears, from
+incontestable evidence, to have been a soil, formed, like soils of
+the present day, in the course of time, upon a surface which had
+previously been the bottom of the sea.  The dirt-bed contains exuviae
+of tropical trees, accumulated through time, as the forest shed its
+honours on the spot where it grew, and became itself decayed.  Near
+Weymouth there is a piece of this stratum, in which stumps of trees
+remain rooted, mostly erect or slightly inclined, and from one to
+three 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, from
+their full development in the Weald of Sussex; and these as
+incontestably argue that the dry land forming the dirt-bed had next
+afterwards become the area of brackish estuaries, or lakes partially
+connected with the sea; for the Wealden strata contain exuviae of
+fresh-water tribes, besides those of the great saurians and chelonia.
+The area of this estuary comprehends the whole south-east province of
+England.  A geologist thus confidently narrates the subsequent
+events:  "Much calcareous matter was first deposited [in this
+estuary], and in it were entombed myriads of shells, apparently
+analogous to those of the vivipara.  Then came a thick envelope of
+sand, sometimes interstratified with mud; and, finally, muddy matter
+prevailed.  The solid surface beneath the waters would appear to have
+suffered a long continued and gradual depression, which was as
+gradually filled, or nearly so, with transported matter; in the end,
+however, after a depression of several hundred feet, the sea again
+entered upon the area, not suddenly or violently--for the Wealden
+rocks pass gradually into the superincumbent cretaceous series--but
+so quietly, that the mud containing the remains of terrestrial and
+fresh-water creatures was tranquilly covered up by sands replete with
+marine exuviae." {114}  A subsequent depression of the same area, to
+the depth of at least three hundred fathoms, is believed to have
+taken place, to admit of the deposition of the cretaceous beds lying
+above.
+
+From the scattered way in which remains of the larger terrestrial
+animals occur in the Wealden, and the intermixture of pebbles of the
+special appearance of those worn in rivers, it is also inferred that
+the estuary which once covered the south-east part of England was the
+mouth of a river of that far-descending class of which the
+Mississippi and Amazon are examples.  What part of the earth's
+surface presented the dry land through which that and other similar
+rivers flowed, no one can tell for certain.  It has been surmised,
+that the particular one here spoken of may have flowed from a point
+not nearer than the site of the present Newfoundland.  Professor
+Philips has suggested, from the analogy of the mineral composition,
+that anciently elevated coal strata may have composed the dry land
+from which the sandy matters of these strata were washed.  Such a
+deposit as the Wealden almost necessarily implies a local, not a
+general condition; yet it has been thought that similar strata and
+remains exist in the Pays de Bray, near Beauvais.  This leads to the
+supposition that there may have been, in that age, a series of river-
+receiving estuaries along the border of some such great ocean as the
+Atlantic, 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 which
+chalk beds make a conspicuous appearance, and which is therefore
+called the cretaceous system or formation.  In England, a long
+stripe, extending from Yorkshire to Kent, presents the cretaceous
+beds 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 extends
+into northern France, and thence north-westward into Germany, whence
+it is traced into Scandinavia and Russia.  The same system exists in
+North America, and probably in other parts of the earth not yet
+geologically investigated.  Being a marine deposit, it establishes
+that seas existed at the time of its formation on the tracts occupied
+by it, while some of its organic remains prove that, in the
+neighbourhood of those seas, there were tracts of dry land.
+
+The cretaceous formation in England presents beds chiefly sandy in
+the lowest part, chiefly clayey in the middle, and chiefly of chalk
+in the upper part, the chalk beds being never absent, which some of
+the lower are in several places.  In the vale of the Mississippi,
+again, the true chalk is wholly, or all but wholly absent.  In the
+south of England, the lower beds are, (reckoning from the lowest
+upwards), 1.  Shankland or greensand, "a triple alternation of sands
+and 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 generally
+white, but in some districts red, and in others yellow.  The whole
+are, in England, about 1200 feet thick, shewing the considerable
+depths of the ocean in which the deposits were made.
+
+Chalk is a carbonate of lime, and the manner of its production in
+such vast quantities was long a subject of speculation among
+geologists.  Some light seemed to be thrown upon the subject a few
+years ago, when it was observed, that the detritus of coral reefs in
+the present tropical seas gave a powder, undistinguishable, when
+dried, from ordinary chalk.  It then appeared likely that the chalk
+beds were the detritus of the corals which were in the oceans of that
+era.  Mr. Darwin, who made some curious inquiries on this point,
+further suggested, that the matter might have intermediately passed
+through the bodies of worms and fish, such as feed on the corals of
+the present day, and in whose stomachs he has found impure chalk.
+This, however, cannot be a full explanation of the production of
+chalk, if we admit some more recent discoveries of Professor
+Ehrenberg.  That master of microscopic investigation announces, that
+chalk is composed partly of "inorganic particles of irregular
+elliptical structure and granular slaty disposition," and partly of
+shells of inconceivable minuteness, "varying from the one-twelfth to
+the two hundred and eighty-eighth part of a line"--a cubic inch of
+the substance containing above ten millions of them!  The chalk of
+the north of Europe contains, he says, a larger proportion of the
+inorganic matter; that of the south, a larger proportion of the
+organic matter, being in some instances almost entirely composed of
+it.  He has been able to classify many of these creatures, some of
+them being allied to the nautili, nummuli, cyprides, &c.  The shells
+of some are calcareous, of others siliceous.  M. Ehrenberg has
+likewise detected microscopic sea-plants in the chalk.
+
+The distinctive feature of the uppermost chalk beds in England, is
+the presence of flint nodules.  These are generally disposed in
+layers parallel to each other.  It was readily presumed by geologists
+that these masses were formed by a chemical aggregation of particles
+of silica, originally held in solution in the mass of the chalk.  But
+whence the silica in a substance so different from it?  Ehrenberg
+suggests that it is composed of the siliceous coverings of a portion
+of the microscopic creatures, whose shells he has in other instances
+detected in their original condition.  It is remarkable that the
+chalk WITH flint abounds in the north of Europe; that WITHOUT flints
+in the south; while in the northern chalk siliceous animalcules are
+wanting, and in the southern present in great quantities.  The
+conclusion seems but natural, that in the one case the siliceous
+exuviae have been left in their original form; in the other dissolved
+chemically, and aggregated on the common principle of chemical
+affinity into nodules of flint, probably concentrating, in every
+instance, upon a piece of decaying organic matter, as has been the
+case with the nodules of ironstone in the earlier rocks, and the
+spherules of the oolite.
+
+What is more remarkable, M. Ehrenberg has ascertained that at least
+fifty-seven species of the microscopic animals of the chalk, being
+infusoria and calcareous-shelled polythalamia, are still found living
+in various parts of the earth.  These species are the most abundant
+in the rock.  Singly they are the most unimportant of all animals,
+but in the mass, forming as they do such enormous strata over a large
+part of the earth's surface, they have an importance greatly
+exceeding that of the largest and noblest of the beasts of the field.
+Moreover, these species have a peculiar interest, as the only
+specific types of that early age which are reproduced in the present
+day.  Species of sea mollusks, of reptiles, and of mammifers, have
+been changed again and again, since the cretaceous era; and it is not
+till a long subsequent age that we find the first traces of any other
+of even the humblest species which now exist; but here have these
+humble infusoria and polythalamia kept their place on earth through
+all its revolutions since that time,--are we to say, safe in their
+very humility, which might adapt them to a greater variety of
+circumstances than most other animals, or are we required to look for
+some other explanation of the phenomenon?
+
+All the ordinary and more observable orders of the inhabitants of the
+sea, except the cetacea, have been found in the cretaceous formation-
+-zoophytes, radiaria, mollusks, crustacea, (in great variety of
+species,) and fishes in smaller variety.  In Europe, remains of the
+marine saurians have been found; they may be presumed to have become
+extinct in that part of the globe before this time, their place and
+destructive office being perhaps supplied by cartilaginous fishes, of
+which the teeth are found in great quantities.  In America, however,
+remains of the plesiosaurus have been discovered in this part of the
+stratified series.  The reptiles, too, so numerous in the two
+preceding periods, appear to have now much diminished in numbers.
+One, entitled the mosaesaurus, seems to have held an intermediate
+place between the monitor and iguana, and to have been about twenty-
+five feet long, with a tail calculated to assist it powerfully in
+swimming.  Crocodiles and turtles existed, and amongst the fishes
+were some of a saurian character.
+
+Fuci abounded in the seas of this era.  Confervae are found enclosed
+in flints.  Of terrestrial vegetation, as of terrestrial animals, the
+specimens in the European area are comparatively rare, rendering it
+probable that there was no dry land near.  The remains are chiefly of
+ferns, conifers, and cycadeae, but in the two former cases we have
+only cones and leaves.  There have been discovered many pieces of
+wood, containing holes drilled by the teredo, and thus shewing that
+they had been long drifted about in the ocean before being entombed
+at the bottom.
+
+The series in America corresponding to this, entitled the ferruginous
+sand formation, presents fossils generally identical with those of
+Europe, not excepting the fragments of drilled wood; shewing that, in
+this, as in earlier ages, there was a parity of conditions for animal
+life over a vast tract of the earth's surface.  To European reptiles,
+the American formation adds a gigantic one, styled the saurodon, from
+the lizard-like character of its teeth.
+
+We have seen that footsteps of birds are considered to have been
+discovered in America, in the new red sandstone.  Some similar
+isolated phenomena occur in the subsequent formations.  Mr. Mantell
+discovered 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, which
+the marine beds above and below did not possess.  In the slate of
+Glarus, in Switzerland, corresponding to the English galt, in the
+chalk formation, the remains of a bird have been found.  From a chalk
+bed near Maidstone, have likewise been extracted some remains of a
+bird, supposed to have been of the long-winged swimmer family, and
+equal in size to the albatross.  These, it must be owned, are less
+strong traces of the birds than we possess of the reptiles and other
+tribes; but it must be remembered, that the evidence of fossils, as
+to the absence of any class of animals from a certain period of the
+earth'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 from
+unfavourable circumstances that their remains have not been preserved
+for our inspection.  The single circumstance of their being little
+liable 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 to
+uncertainty on this point.  We see, from what remains have been found
+in the whole series, a clear progress throughout, from humble to
+superior types of being.  Hence we derive a light as to what animals
+may have existed at particular times, which is in some measure
+independent of the specialties of fossilology.  The birds are below
+the mammalia in the animal scale; and therefore they may be supposed
+to 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 considerable
+space; 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 been
+applied.  London and Paris alike rest on basins of this formation,
+and another such basin extends from near Winchester, under
+Southampton, 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 it
+extends along the east coast of North America, from Massachusetts to
+Florida.  It is also found in Sicily and Italy, insensibly blended
+with formations still in progress.  Though comparatively a local
+formation, it is not of the less importance as a record of the
+condition of the earth during a certain period.  As in other
+formations, it is marked, in the most distant localities, by identity
+of organic remains.
+
+The hollows filled by the tertiary formation must be considered as
+the beds of estuaries left at the conclusion of the cretaceous
+period.  We have seen that an estuary, either by the drifting up of
+its mouth, or a change of level in that quarter, may be supposed to
+have become an inland sheet of water, and that, by another change, of
+the reverse kind, it may be supposed to have become an estuary again.
+Such changes the Paris basin appears to have undergone oftener than
+once, for, first, we have there a fresh-water formation of clay and
+limestone beds; then, a marine-limestone formation; next, a second
+fresh water formation, in which the material of the celebrated
+plaster of Paris (gypsum) is included; then, a second marine
+formation of sandy and limy beds; and finally, a third series of
+fresh-water strata.  Such alternations occur in other examples of the
+tertiary formation likewise.
+
+The tertiary beds present all but an entirely new set of animals, and
+as we ascend in the series, we find more and more of these identical
+with species still existing upon earth, as if we had now reached the
+dawn of the present state of the zoology of our planet.  By the study
+of the shells alone, Mr. Lyell has been enabled to divide the whole
+term into four sub-periods, to which he has given names with
+reference to the proportions which they respectively present of
+surviving species--first, the eocene, (from [Greek], the dawn;
+[Greek], recent;) second, the miocene, ([Greek], less;) third, older
+pliocene, ([Greek], more;) fourth, newer pliocene.
+
+
+EOCENE SUB-PERIOD.
+
+
+The eocene period presents, in three continental groups, 1238 species
+of shells, of which forty-two, or 3.5 per cent, yet flourish.  Some
+of these are remarkable enough; but they all sink into insignificance
+beside the mammalian remains which the lower eocene deposits of the
+Paris basin present to us, shewing that the land had now become the
+theatre of an extensive creation of the highest class of animals.
+Cuvier ascertained about fifty species of these, all of them long
+since extinct.  A considerable number are pachydermata, {127} of a
+character approximating to the South American tapir:  the names,
+palaeotherium, anthracotherium, anoplotherium, lophiodon, &c., have
+been applied to them with a consideration of more or less conspicuous
+peculiarities; but a description of the first may give some general
+idea of the whole.  It was about the size of a horse, but more squat
+and clumsy, and with a heavier head, and a lower jaw shorter than the
+upper; the feet, also, instead of hooves, presented three large toes,
+rounded, and unprovided with claws.  These animals were all
+herbivorous.  Amongst an immense number of others are found many new
+reptiles, some of them adapted for fresh water; species of birds
+allied to the sea-lark, curlew, quail, buzzard, owl, and pelican;
+species allied to the dormouse and squirrel; also the opossum and
+racoon; and species allied to the genette, fox, and wolf.
+
+
+MIOCENE SUB-PERIOD.
+
+
+In the miocene sub-period, the shells give eighteen per cent. of
+existing species, shewing a considerable advance from the preceding
+era, with respect to the inhabitants of the sea.  The advance in the
+land animals is less marked, but yet considerable.  The predominating
+forms are still pachydermatous, and the tapir type continues to be
+conspicuous.  One animal of this kind, called the dinotherium, is
+supposed to have been not less than eighteen feet long; it had a
+mole-like form of the shoulder-blade, conferring the power of digging
+for food, and a couple of tusks turning down from the lower jaw, by
+which it could have attached itself, like the walrus, to a shore or
+bank, while its body floated in the water.  Dr. Buckland considers
+this and some similar miocene animals, as adapted for a semi-aquatic
+life, in a region where lakes abounded.  Besides the tapirs, we have
+in this era animals allied to the glutton, the bear, the dog, the
+horse, the hog, and lastly, several felinae, (creatures of which the
+lion 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 previously
+appeared.
+
+
+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 existing
+species.  The pachydermata of the preceding era now disappear, and
+are 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.  The
+great mastodon, whose remains are found in abundance in America, was
+a species of elephant, judged, from peculiarities of its teeth, to
+have lived on aquatic plants, and reaching the height of twelve feet.
+The mammoth was another elephant, but supposed to have survived till
+comparatively recent times, as a specimen, in all respects entire,
+was found in 1801, preserved in ice, in Siberia.  We are more
+surprised by finding such gigantic proportions in an animal called
+the megatherium, which ranks in an order now assuming much humbler
+forms--the edentata--to which the sloth, ant-eater, and armadillo
+belong.  The megatherium had a skeleton of enormous solidity, with an
+armour-clad body, and five toes, terminating in huge claws, wherewith
+to grasp the branches, from which, like its existing congener, the
+sloth, it derived its food.  The megalonyx was a similar animal, only
+somewhat less than the preceding.  Finally, the pliocene gives us for
+the first time, oxen, deer, camels, and other specimens of the
+ruminantia.
+
+Such is an outline of the fauna of the tertiary era, as ascertained
+by the illustrious naturalists who first devoted their attention to
+it.  It will be observed that it brings us up to the felinae, or
+carnivora, a considerably elevated point in the animal scale, but
+still leaving a blank for the quadrumana (monkeys) and for man, who
+collectively form, as will be afterwards seen, the first group in
+that scale.  It sometimes happens, however, as we have seen, that a
+few rare traces of a particular class of animals are in time found in
+formations originally thought to be destitute of them, displaying as
+it were a dawn of that department of creation.  Such seems to be the
+case with at least the quadrumana.  A jaw-bone and tooth of an animal
+of this order, and belonging to the genus macacus, were found in the
+London clay, (eocene,) at Kyson, near Woodbridge, in 1839.  Another
+jaw-bone, containing several teeth, supposed to have belonged to a
+species of monkey about three feet high, was discovered about the
+same time in a stratum of marl surmounted by compact limestone, in
+the department of Gers, at the foot of the Pyrenees.  Associated with
+this last were remains of not less than thirty mammiferous
+quadrupeds, including three species of rhinoceros, a large
+anoplotherium, three species of deer, two antelopes, a true dog, a
+large cat, an animal like a weasel, a small hare, and a huge species
+of the edentata.  Both of these places are considerably to the north
+of any region now inhabited by the monkey tribes.  Fossil remains of
+quadrumana 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 of
+semnopithecus, and the second, a still larger animal belonging to the
+American group of monkeys, but a new genus, and denominated by its
+discoverer, Dr. Lund, protopithecus.  The latter would be four feet
+in height.
+
+One remarkable circumstance connected with the tertiary formation
+remains to be noticed,--namely, the prevalence of volcanic action at
+that era.  In Auvergne, in Catalonia, near Venice, and in the
+vicinity of Rome and Naples, lavas exactly resembling the produce of
+existing volcanoes, are associated and intermixed with the lacustrine
+as well as marine tertiaries.  The superficies of tertiaries in
+England is disturbed by two great swells, forming what are called
+anticlinal axes, one of which divides the London from the Hampshire
+basin, while the other passes through the Isle of Wight, both
+throwing the strata down at violent inclination towards the north, as
+if the subterranean disturbing force had WAVED forward in that
+direction.  The Pyrenees, too, and Alps, have both undergone
+elevation since the deposition of the tertiaries; and in Sicily there
+are mountains which have risen three thousand feet since the
+deposition of some of the most recent of these rocks.  The general
+effect of these operations was of course to extend the land surface,
+and to increase the variety of its features, thus improving the
+natural drainage, and generally adapting the earth for the reception
+of 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 to
+a time which seems not long antecedent to the appearance of man.
+There are, nevertheless, monuments of still another era or space of
+time 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 a
+layer of stiff clay, mostly of a blue colour, mingled with fragments
+of rock of all sizes, travel-worn, and otherwise, and to which
+geologists give the name of diluvium, as being apparently the produce
+of 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 of
+the present dry land was under the ocean, a supposition which we
+shall see supported by other evidence.  The included masses of rock
+have been carefully inspected in many places, and traced to
+particular parent beds at considerable distances.  Connected with
+these phenomena are certain rock surfaces on the slopes of hills and
+elsewhere, which exhibit groovings and scratchings, such as we might
+suppose would be produced by a quantity of loose blocks hurried along
+over them by a flood.  Another associated phenomenon is that called
+crag and tail, which exists in many places,--namely, a rocky
+mountain, or lesser elevation, presenting on one side the naked rock
+in a more or less abrupt form, and on the other a gentle slope; the
+sites of Windsor, Edinburgh, and Stirling, with their respective
+castles, are specimens of crag and tail.  Finally, we may advert to
+certain long ridges of clay and gravel which arrest the attention of
+travellers on the surface of Sweden and Finland, and which are also
+found in the United States, where, indeed, the whole of these
+phenomena have been observed over a large surface, as well as in
+Europe.  It is very remarkable that the direction from which the
+diluvial blocks have generally come, the lines of the grooved rock
+surfaces, the direction of the crag and tail eminences, and that of
+the clay and gravel ridges--phenomena, be it observed, extending over
+the northern parts of both Europe and America--are ALL FROM THE NORTH
+AND NORTH-WEST TOWARDS THE SOUTH-EAST.  We thus acquire the idea of a
+powerful current moving in a direction from north-west to south-east,
+carrying, besides mud, masses of rock which furrowed the solid
+surfaces as they passed along, abrading the north-west faces of many
+hills, but leaving the slopes in the opposite direction uninjured,
+and in some instances forming long ridges of detritus along the
+surface.  These are curious considerations, and it has become a
+question of much interest, by what means, and under what
+circumstances, was such a current produced.  One hypothetical answer
+has some plausibility about it.  From an investigation of the nature
+of glaciers, and some observations which seem to indicate that these
+have at one time extended to lower levels, and existed in regions
+(the Scottish Highlands an example) where there is now no perennial
+snow, it has been surmised that there was a time, subsequent to the
+tertiary era, when the circumpolar ice extended far into the
+temperate zone, and formed a lofty, as well as extensive
+accumulation.  A change to a higher temperature, producing a sudden
+thaw of this mass, might set free such a quantity of water as would
+form a large flood, and the southward flow of this deluge, joined to
+the direction which it would obtain from the rotatory motion of the
+globe, would of course produce that compound or south-easterly
+direction which the phenomena require.  All of these speculations are
+as yet far too deficient in facts to be of much value; and I must
+freely own that, for one, I attach little importance to them.  All
+that we can legitimately infer from the diluvium is, that the
+northern parts of Europe and America were then under the sea, and
+that a strong current set over them.
+
+Connected with the diluvium is the history of ossiferous caverns, of
+which specimens singly exist at Kirkdale in Yorkshire, Gailenreuth in
+Franconia, and other places.  They occur in the calcareous strata, as
+the great caverns generally do, but have in all instances been
+naturally closed up till the recent period of their discovery.  The
+floors are covered with what appears to be a bed of the diluvial
+clay, over which rests a crust of stalagmite, the result of the
+droppings from the roof since the time when the clay-bed was laid
+down.  In the instances above specified, and several others, there
+have been found, under the clay bed, assemblages of the bones of
+animals, of many various kinds.  At Kirkdale, for example, the
+remains 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 the
+gentler of these animals being found in a broken state, it is
+supposed that the cave was a haunt of hyenas and other predaceous
+animals, by which the smaller ones were here consumed.  This must
+have been at a time antecedent to the submersion which produced the
+diluvium, since the bones are covered by a bed of that formation.  It
+is impossible not to see here a very natural series of incidents.
+First, the cave is frequented by wild beasts, who make it a kind of
+charnel-house.  Then, submerged in the current which has been spoken
+of, it receives a clay flooring from the waters containing that
+matter in suspension.  Finally, raised from the water, but with no
+mouth to the open air, it remains unintruded on for a long series of
+ages, during which the clay flooring receives a new calcareous
+covering, from the droppings of the roof.  Dr. Buckland, who examined
+and described the Kirkdale cave, was at first of opinion that it
+presented a physical evidence of the Noachian deluge; but he
+afterwards saw reason to consider its phenomena as of a time far
+apart from that event, which rests on evidence of an entirely
+different kind.
+
+Our attention is next drawn to the erratic blocks or boulders, which
+in many parts of the earth are thickly strewn over the surface,
+particularly in the north of Europe.  Some of these blocks are many
+tons in weight, yet are clearly ascertained to have belonged
+originally to situations at a great distance.  Fragments, for
+example, of the granite of Shap Fell are found in every direction
+around to the distance of fifty miles, one piece being placed high
+upon Criffel Mountain, on the opposite side of the Solway estuary; so
+also 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 have
+travelled from Norway.  The only rational conjecture which can be
+formed as to the transport of such masses from so great a distance,
+is one which presumes them to have been carried and dropped by
+icebergs, while the space between their original and final sites was
+under ocean.  Icebergs do even now carry off such masses from the
+polar coasts, which, falling when the retaining ice melts, must take
+up situations at the bottom of the sea analogous to those in which we
+find the erratic blocks of the present day.
+
+As the diluvium and erratic blocks clearly suppose one last long
+submersion of the surface, (LAST, geologically speaking,) there is
+another set of appearances which as manifestly shew the steps by
+which the land was made afterwards to reappear.  These consist of
+terraces, which have been detected near, and at some distance inland
+from, the coast lines of Scandinavia, Britain, America, and other
+regions; being evidently ancient beaches, or platforms, on which the
+margin of the sea at one time rested.  They have been observed at
+different heights above the present sea-level, from twenty to above
+twelve hundred feet; and in many places they are seen rising above
+each other in succession, to the number of three, four, and even
+more.  The smooth flatness of these terraces, with generally a slight
+inclination towards the sea, the sandy composition of many of them,
+and, in some instances, the preservation of marine shells in the
+ground, identify them perfectly with existing sea-beaches,
+notwithstanding the cuts and scoopings which have every here and
+there been effected in them by water-courses.  The irresistible
+inference from the phenomena is, that the highest was first the coast
+line; 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 of
+contact with the land, the third highest beach, and so on down to the
+platform nearest to the present sea-beach.  Phenomena of this kind
+become comparatively familiar to us, when we hear of evidence that
+the last sixty feet of the elevation of Sweden, and the last eighty-
+five of that of Chili, have taken place since man first dwelt in
+those countries; nay, that the elevation of the former country goes
+on 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 one
+night, under the influence of a powerful earthquake, so lately as
+1822.  Subterranean forces, of the kind then exemplified in Chili,
+supply a ready explanation of the whole phenomena, though some other
+operating causes have been suggested.  In an inquiry on this point,
+it becomes of consequence to learn some particulars respecting the
+levels.  Taking a particular beach, it is generally observed that the
+level continues the same along a considerable number of miles, and
+nothing like breaks or hitches has as yet been detected in any case.
+A second and a third beach are also observed to be exactly parallel
+to the first.  These facts would seem to indicate quiet elevating
+movements, uniform over a large tract.  It must, however, be remarked
+that the raised beaches at one part of a coast rarely coincide with
+those at another part forty or fifty miles off.  We might suppose
+this to indicate a limit in that extent of the uniformity of the
+elevating cause, but it would be rash to conclude positively that
+such is the case.  In the present sea, as is well known, there are
+different levels at different places, owing to the operation of
+peculiar local causes, as currents, evaporation, and the influx of
+large rivers into narrow-mouthed estuaries.  The differences of level
+in the ancient beaches might be occasioned by some such causes.  But,
+whatever doubt may rest on this minor point, enough has been
+ascertained to settle the main one, that we have in these platforms
+indubitable monuments of the last rise of the land from the sea, and
+the concluding great event of the geological history.
+
+The idea of such a wide-spread and possibly universal submersion
+unavoidably suggests some considerations as to the effect which it
+might have upon terrestrial animal life.  It seems likely that this
+would be, on such an occasion, extensively, if not universally
+destroyed.  Nor does the idea of its universal destruction seem the
+less plausible, when we remark, that none of the species of land
+animals heretofore discovered can be detected at a subsequent period.
+The whole seem to have been now changed.  Some geologists appear much
+inclined to think that there was at this time a new development of
+terrestrial animal life upon the globe, and M. Agassiz, whose opinion
+on such a subject must always be worthy of attention, speaks all but
+decidedly for such a conclusion.  It must, however, be owned, that
+proofs for it are still scanty, beyond the bare fact of a submersion
+which appears to have had a very wide range.  I must therefore be
+content to leave this point, as far as geological evidence is
+concerned, for future affirmation.
+
+There are some other superficial deposits, of less consequence on the
+present occasion than the diluvium--namely, lacustrine deposits, or
+filled-up lakes; alluvium, or the deposits of rivers beside their
+margins; deltas, the deposits made by great ones at their efflux into
+the sea; peat mosses; and the vegetable soil.  The animal remains
+found in these generally testify to a zoology on the verge of that
+which still exists, or melting into it, there being included many
+species which still exist.  In a lacustrine deposit at Market-
+Weighton, in the Vale of York, there have been found bones of the
+elephant, rhinoceros, bison, wolf, horse, felis, deer, birds, all or
+nearly all extinct species; associated with thirteen species of land
+and fresh water shells, "exactly identical with types now living in
+the vicinity."  In similar deposits in North America, are remains of
+the mammoth, mastodon, buffalo, and other animals of extinct and
+living types.  In short, these superficial deposits shew precisely
+such remains as might be expected from a time at which the present
+system of things (to use a vague but not unexpressive phrase)
+obtained, but yet so far remote in chronology as to allow of the
+dropping of many species, through familiar causes, in the interval.
+Still, however, there is no authentic or satisfactory instance of
+human remains being found, except in deposits obviously of very
+modern date; a tolerably strong proof that the creation of our own
+species is a comparatively recent event, and one posterior (generally
+speaking) to all the great natural transactions chronicled by
+geology.
+
+
+
+GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES.
+
+
+
+Thus concludes the wondrous chapter of the earth's history which is
+told by geology.  It takes up our globe at the period when its
+original incandescent state had nearly ceased; conducts it through
+what we have every reason to believe were vast, or at least very
+considerable, spaces of time, in the course of which many superficial
+changes took place, and vegetable and animal life was gradually
+developed; and drops it just at the point when man was apparently
+about to enter on the scene.  The compilation of such a history, from
+materials of so extraordinary a character, and the powerful nature of
+the evidence which these materials afford, are calculated to excite
+our admiration, and the result must be allowed to exalt the dignity
+of science, as a product of man's industry and his reason.
+
+If there is any thing more than another impressed on our minds by the
+course of the geological history, it is, that the same laws and
+conditions of nature now apparent to us have existed throughout the
+whole time, though the operation of some of these laws may now be
+less conspicuous than in the early ages, from some of the conditions
+having come to a settlement and a close.  That seas have flowed and
+ebbed, and winds disturbed their surfaces, in the time of the
+secondary rocks, we have proof on the yet preserved surfaces of the
+sands which constituted margins of the seas in those days.  Even the
+fall of wind-slanted rain is evidenced on the same tablets.  The
+washing down of detached matter from elevated grounds, which we see
+rivers constantly engaged in at the present time, and which is daily
+shallowing the seas adjacent to their mouths, only appears to have
+proceeded on a greater scale in earlier epochs.  The volcanic
+subterranean force, which we see belching forth lavas on the sides of
+mountains, and throwing up new elevations by land and sea, was only
+more powerfully operative in distant ages.  To turn to organic
+nature, vegetation seems to have proceeded then exactly as now.  The
+very alternations of the seasons has been read in unmistakable
+characters in sections of the trees of those days, precisely as it
+might be read in a section of a tree cut down yesterday.  The system
+of prey amongst animals flourished throughout the whole of the pre-
+human period; and the adaptation of all plants and animals to their
+respective spheres of existence was as perfect in those early ages as
+it is still.
+
+But, as has been observed, the operation of the laws may be modified
+by conditions.  At one early age, if there was any dry land at all,
+it was perhaps enveloped in an atmosphere unfit for the existence of
+terrestrial animals, and which had to go though some changes before
+that condition was altered.  In the carbonigenous era, dry land seems
+to have consisted only of clusters of islands, and the temperature
+was much above what now obtains at the same places.  Volcanic forces,
+and perhaps also the disintegrating power, seem to have been on the
+decrease since the first, or we have at least long enjoyed an
+exemption from such paroxysms of the former, as appear to have
+prevailed at the close of the coal formation in England and
+throughout the tertiary era.  The surface has also undergone a
+gradual progress by which it has become always more and more
+variegated, and thereby fitted for the residence of a higher class of
+animals.
+
+In pursuing the progress of the development of both plants and
+animals upon the globe, we have seen an advance in both cases, along
+the line leading to the higher forms of organization.  Amongst
+plants, we have first sea-weeds, afterwards land plants; and amongst
+these 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 the
+vertebrata; and, moreover, the earliest fishes partake of the
+character of the next lowest sub-kingdom, the articulata.  Afterwards
+come land animals, of which the first are reptiles, universally
+allowed to be the type next in advance from fishes, and to be
+connected with these by the links of an insensible gradation.  From
+reptiles we advance to birds, and thence to mammalia, which are
+commenced by marsupialia, acknowledgedly low forms in their class.
+That there is thus a progress of some kind, the most superficial
+glance at the geological history is sufficient to convince us.
+Indeed the doctrine of the gradation of animal forms has received a
+remarkable support from the discoveries of this science, as several
+types formerly wanting to a completion of the series have been found
+in a fossil state. {149}
+
+It is scarcely less evident, from the geological record, that the
+progress of organic life has observed some correspondence with the
+progress of physical conditions on the surface.  We do not know for
+certain that the sea, at the time when it supported radiated,
+molluscous, and articulated families, was incapable of supporting
+fishes; but causes for such a limitation are far from inconceivable.
+The huge saurians appear to have been precisely adapted to the low
+muddy coasts and sea margins of the time when they flourished.
+Marsupials appear at the time when the surface was generally in that
+flat, imperfectly variegated state in which we find Australia, the
+region where they now live in the greatest abundance, and one which
+has no higher native mammalian type.  Finally, it was not till the
+land and sea had come into their present relations, and the former,
+in its principal continents, had acquired the irregularity of surface
+necessary for man, that man appeared.  We have likewise seen reason
+for supposing that land animals could not have lived before the
+carbonigenous era, owing to the great charge of carbonic acid gas
+presumed to have been contained in the atmosphere down to that time.
+The surplus of this having gone, as M. Brogniart suggests, to form
+the vegetation, whose ruins became coal, and the air being thus
+brought to its present state, land animals immediately appeared.  So
+also, sea-plants were at first the only specimens of vegetation,
+because there appears to have been no place where other plants could
+be produced or supported.  Land vegetation followed, at first simple,
+afterwards complex, probably in conformity with an advance of the
+conditions required by the higher class of plants.  In short, we see
+everywhere throughout the geological history, strong traces of a
+parallel advance of the physical conditions and the organic forms.
+
+In examining the fossils of the lower marine creation, with a
+reference to the kind of rock in connexion, with which they are
+found, it is observed that some strata are attended by a much greater
+abundance of both species and individuals than others.  They abound
+most in calcareous rocks, which is precisely what might be expected,
+since lime is necessary for the formation of the shells of the
+mollusks and articulata, and the hard substance of the crinoidea and
+corals; next in the carboniferous series; next in the tertiary; next
+in the new red sandstone; next in slates; and lastly, least of all,
+in the primary rocks. {151}  This may have been the case without
+regard to the origination of new species, but more probably it was
+otherwise; or why, for instance, should the polypiferous zoophyta be
+found almost exclusively in the limestones?  There are, indeed,
+abundant appearances as if, throughout all the changes of the
+surface, the various kinds of organic life invariably PRESSED IN,
+immediately on the specially suitable conditions arising, so that no
+place which could support any form of organic being might be left for
+any length of time unoccupied.  Nor is it less remarkable how various
+species are withdrawn from the earth, when the proper conditions for
+their particular existence are changed.  The trilobite, of which
+fifty species existed during the earlier formations, was extirpated
+before the secondary had commenced, and appeared no more.  The
+ammonite does not appear above the chalk.  The species, and even
+genera of all the early radiata and mollusks were exchanged for
+others long ago.  Not one species of any creature which flourished
+before the tertiary (Ehrenberg's infusoria excepted) now exists; and
+of the mammalia which arose during that series, many forms are
+altogether gone, while of others we have now only kindred species.
+Thus to find not only frequent additions to the previously existing
+forms, but frequent withdrawals of forms which had apparently become
+inappropriate--a constant shifting as well as advance--is a fact
+calculated very forcibly to arrest attention.
+
+A candid consideration of all these circumstances can scarcely fail
+to introduce into our minds a somewhat different idea of organic
+creation from what has hitherto been generally entertained.  That God
+created animated beings, as well as the terraqueous theatre of their
+being, is a fact so powerfully evidenced, and so universally
+received, that I at once take it for granted.  But in the particulars
+of this so highly supported idea, we surely here see cause for some
+re-consideration.  It may now be inquired,--In what way was the
+creation of animated beings effected?  The ordinary notion may, I
+think, be not unjustly described as this,--that the Almighty author
+produced the progenitors of all existing species by some sort of
+personal or immediate exertion.  But how does this notion comport
+with what we have seen of the gradual advance of species, from the
+humblest to the highest?  How can we suppose an immediate exertion of
+this creative power at one time to produce zoophytes, another time to
+add a few marine mollusks, another to bring in one or two conchifers,
+again to produce crustaceous fishes, again perfect fishes, and so on
+to the end?  This would surely be to take a very mean view of the
+Creative Power--to, in short, anthropomorphize it, or reduce it to
+some such character as that borne by the ordinary proceedings of
+mankind.  And yet this would be unavoidable; for that the organic
+creation was thus progressive through a long space of time, rests on
+evidence which nothing can overturn or gainsay.  Some other idea must
+then be come to with regard to THE MODE in which the Divine Author
+proceeded in the organic creation.  Let us seek in the history of the
+earth's formation for a new suggestion on this point.  We have seen
+powerful evidence, that the construction of this globe and its
+associates, and inferentially that of all the other globes of space,
+was the result, not of any immediate or personal exertion on the part
+of the Deity, but of natural laws which are expressions of his will.
+What is to hinder our supposing that the organic creation is also a
+result of natural laws, which are in like manner an expression of his
+will?  More than this, the fact of the cosmical arrangements being an
+effect of natural laws is a powerful argument for the organic
+arrangements being so likewise, for how can we suppose that the
+august Being who brought all these countless worlds into form by the
+simple establishment of a natural principle flowing from his mind,
+was to interfere personally and specially on every occasion when a
+new shell-fish or reptile was to be ushered into existence on ONE of
+these worlds?  Surely this idea is too ridiculous to be for a moment
+entertained.
+
+It will be objected that the ordinary conceptions of Christian
+nations on this subject are directly derived from Scripture, or, at
+least, are in conformity with it.  If they were clearly and
+unequivocally supported by Scripture, it may readily be allowed that
+there would be a strong objection to the reception of any opposite
+hypothesis.  But the fact is, however startling the present
+announcement of it may be, that the first chapter of the Mosaic
+record is not only not in harmony with the ordinary ideas of mankind
+respecting cosmical and organic creation, but is opposed to them, and
+only in accordance with the views here taken.  When we carefully
+peruse it with awakened minds, we find that all the procedure is
+represented primarily and pre-eminently as flowing FROM COMMANDS AND
+EXPRESSIONS OF WILL, NOT FROM DIRECT ACTS.  Let there be light--let
+there be a firmament--let the dry land appear--let the earth bring
+forth grass, the herb, the tree--let the waters bring forth the
+moving creature that hath life--let the earth bring forth the living
+creature after his kind--these are the terms in which the principal
+acts are described.  The additional expressions,--God made the
+firmament--God made the beast of the earth, &c., occur subordinately,
+and only in a few instances; they do not necessarily convey a
+different idea of the mode of creation, and indeed only appear as
+alternative phrases, in the usual duplicative manner of Eastern
+narrative.  Keeping this in view, the words used in a subsequent
+place, "God FORMED man in his own image," cannot well be understood
+as implying any more than what was implied before,--namely, that man
+was produced in consequence of an expression of the Divine will to
+that effect.  Thus, the scriptural objection quickly vanishes, and
+the prevalent ideas about the organic creation appear only as a
+mistaken inference from the text, formed at a time when man's
+ignorance prevented him from drawing therefrom a just conclusion.  At
+the same time, I freely own that I do not think it right to adduce
+the Mosaic record, either in objection to, or support of any natural
+hypothesis, and this for many reasons, but particularly for this,
+that there is not the least appearance of an intention in that book
+to give philosophically exact views of nature.
+
+To a reasonable mind the Divine attributes must appear, not
+diminished or reduced in any way, by supposing a creation by law, but
+infinitely exalted.  It is the narrowest of all views of the Deity,
+and characteristic of a humble class of intellects, to suppose him
+acting constantly in particular ways for particular occasions.  It,
+for one thing, greatly detracts from his foresight, the most
+undeniable of all the attributes of Omnipotence.  It lowers him
+towards the level of our own humble intellects.  Much more worthy of
+him it surely is, to suppose that all things have been commissioned
+by him from the first, though neither is he absent from a particle of
+the current of natural affairs in one sense, seeing that the whole
+system is continually supported by his providence.  Even in human
+affairs, if I may be allowed to adopt a familiar illustration, there
+is a constant progress from specific action for particular occasions,
+to arrangements which, once established, shall continue to answer for
+a great multitude of occasions.  Such plans the enlightened readily
+form for themselves, and conceive as being adopted by all who have to
+attend to a multitude of affairs, while the ignorant suppose every
+act of the greatest public functionary to be the result of some
+special consideration and care on his part alone.  Are we to suppose
+the Deity adopting plans which harmonize only with the modes of
+procedure of the less enlightened of our race?  Those who would
+object to the hypothesis of a creation by the intervention of law, do
+not perhaps consider how powerful an argument in favour of the
+existence of God is lost by rejecting this doctrine.  When all is
+seen to be the result of law, the idea of an Almighty Author becomes
+irresistible, for the creation of a law for an endless series of
+phenomena--an act of intelligence above all else that we can
+conceive--could have no other imaginable source, and tells, moreover,
+as powerfully for a sustaining as for an originating power.  On this
+point a remark of Dr. Buckland seems applicable:  "If the properties
+adopted by the elements at the moment of their creation adapted them
+beforehand to the infinity of complicated useful purposes which they
+have already answered, and may have still farther to answer, under
+many dispensations of the material world, such an aboriginal
+constitution, so far from superseding an intelligent agent, would
+only exalt our conceptions of the consummate skill and power that
+could comprehend such an infinity of future uses under future
+systems, in the original groundwork of his creation."
+
+A late writer, in a work embracing a vast amount of miscellaneous
+knowledge, but written in a dogmatic style, argues at great length
+for the doctrine of more immediate exertions on the part of the Deity
+in the works of his creation.  One of the most striking of his
+illustrations is as follows:- "The coral polypi, united by a common
+animal bond, construct a defined form in stone; many kinds construct
+many forms.  An allotted instinct may permit each polypus to
+construct its own cell, but there is no superintending one to direct
+the pattern, nor can the workers unite by consultation for such an
+end.  There is no recipient for an instinct by which the pattern
+might be constructed.  It is God alone, therefore, who is the
+architect; and for this end, consequently, he must dispose of every
+new polypus required to continue the pattern, in a new and peculiar
+position, which the animal could not have discovered by itself.  Yet
+more, millions of these blind workers unite their works to form an
+island, which is also wrought out according to a constant general
+pattern, and of a very peculiar nature, though the separate coral
+works are numerously diverse.  Still less, then, here is an instinct
+possible.  The Great Architect himself must execute what he planned,
+in each case equally.  He uses these little and senseless animals as
+hands; but they are hands which himself must direct.  He must direct
+each one everywhere, and therefore he is ever acting." {159}  This is
+a most notable example of a dangerous kind of reasoning.  It is now
+believed that corals have a general life and sensation throughout the
+whole mass, residing in the nervous tissue which envelops them;
+consequently, there is nothing more wonderful in their determinate
+general forms than in those of other animals.
+
+It may here be remarked that there is in our doctrine that harmony in
+all the associated phenomena which generally marks great truths.
+First, it agrees, as we have seen, with the idea of planet-creation
+by natural law.  Secondly, upon this supposition, all that geology
+tells us of the succession of species appears natural and
+intelligible.  Organic life PRESSES IN, as has been remarked,
+wherever there was room and encouragement for it, the forms being
+always such as suited the circumstances, and in a certain relation to
+them, as, for example, where the limestone-forming seas produced an
+abundance of corals, crinoidea, and shell-fish.  Admitting for a
+moment a re-origination of species after a cataclysm, as has been
+surmised by some geologists, though the hypothesis is always becoming
+less and less tenable, it harmonizes with nothing so well as the idea
+of a creation by law.  The more solitary commencements of species,
+which would have been the most inconceivably paltry exercise for an
+immediately creative power, are sufficiently worthy of one operating
+by laws.
+
+It is also to be observed, that the thing to be accounted for is not
+merely the origination of organic being upon this little planet,
+third of a series which is but one of hundreds of thousands of
+series, the whole of which again form but one portion of an
+apparently infinite globe-peopled space, where all seems analogous.
+We have to suppose, that every one of these numberless globes is
+either a theatre of organic being, or in the way of becoming so.
+This is a conclusion which every addition to our knowledge makes only
+the more irresistible.  Is it conceivable, as a fitting mode of
+exercise for creative intelligence, that it should be constantly
+moving from one sphere to another, to form and plant the various
+species 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 the
+notion which we must form, if we adhere to the doctrine of special
+exercise.  Let us see, on the other hand, how the doctrine of a
+creation by law agrees with this expanded view of the organic world.
+
+Unprepared as most men may be for such an announcement, there can be
+no doubt that we are able, in this limited sphere, to form some
+satisfactory conclusions as to the plants and animals of those other
+spheres which move at such immense distances from us.  Suppose that
+the first persons of an early nation who made a ship and ventured to
+sea in it, observed, as they sailed along, a set of objects which
+they had never before seen--namely, a fleet of other ships--would
+they not have been justified in supposing that those ships were
+occupied, like their own, by human beings possessing hands to row and
+steer, eyes to watch the signs of the weather, intelligence to guide
+them from one place to another--in short, beings in all respects like
+themselves, or only shewing such differences as they knew to be
+producible by difference of climate and habits of life.  Precisely in
+this manner we can speculate on the inhabitants of remote spheres.
+We see that matter has originally been diffused in one mass, of which
+the spheres are portions.  Consequently, inorganic matter must be
+presumed to be everywhere the same, although probably with
+differences in the proportions of ingredients in different globes,
+and also some difference of conditions.  Out of a certain number of
+the elements of inorganic matter are composed organic bodies, both
+vegetable and animal; such must be the rule in Jupiter and in Sirius,
+as it is here.  We, therefore, are all but certain that herbaceous
+and ligneous fibre, that flesh and blood, are the constituents of the
+organic beings of all those spheres which are as yet seats of life.
+Gravitation we see to be an all-pervading principle:  therefore there
+must be a relation between the spheres and their respective organic
+occupants, by virtue of which they are fixed, as far as necessary, on
+the surface.  Such a relation, of course, involves details as to the
+density and elasticity of structure, as well as size, of the organic
+tenants, in proportion to the gravity of the respective planets--
+peculiarities, however, which may quite well consist with the idea of
+a universality of general types, to which we are about to come.
+Electricity we also see to be universal; if, therefore, it be a
+principle concerned in life and in mental action, as science strongly
+suggests, life and mental action must everywhere be of one general
+character.  We come to comparatively a matter of detail, when we
+advert to heat and light; yet it is important to consider that these
+are universal agents, and that, as they bear marked relations to
+organic life and structure on earth, they may be presumed to do so in
+other spheres also.  The considerations as to light are particularly
+interesting, for, on our globe, the structure of one important organ,
+almost universally distributed in the animal kingdom, is in direct
+and 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 the
+eyes of tellurian animals, with only such differences as may be
+necessary to accord with minor peculiarities of condition and of
+situation.  It is but a small stretch of the argument to suppose
+that, one conspicuous organ of a large portion of our animal kingdom
+being thus universal, a parity in all the other organs--species for
+species, class for class, kingdom for kingdom--is highly likely, and
+that thus the inhabitants of all the other globes of space bear not
+only a general, but a particular resemblance to those of our own.
+
+Assuming that organic beings are thus spread over all space, the idea
+of their having all come into existence by the operation of laws
+everywhere 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 of
+means.  Thus, as one set of laws produced all orbs and their motions
+and geognostic arrangements, so one set of laws overspread them all
+with life.  The whole productive or creative arrangements are
+therefore in perfect unity.
+
+
+
+PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED
+TRIBES.
+
+
+
+The general likelihood of an organic creation by law having been
+shewn, we are next to inquire if science has any facts tending to
+bring the assumption more nearly home to nature.  Such facts there
+certainly are; but it cannot be surprising that they are
+comparatively few and scattered, when we consider that the inquiry is
+into one of nature's profoundest mysteries, and one which has
+hitherto engaged no direct attention in almost any quarter.
+
+Crystallization is confessedly a phenomenon of inorganic matter; yet
+the simplest rustic observer is struck by the resemblance which the
+examples of it left upon a window by frost bear to vegetable forms.
+In some crystallizations the mimicry is beautiful and complete; for
+example, in the well-known one called the Arbor Dianae.  An amalgam
+of four parts of silver and two of mercury being dissolved in nitric
+acid, and water equal to thirty weights of the metals being added, a
+small 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 detect
+the influence of electricity in such operations, as noted below.
+{166}  Vegetable figures are also presented in some of the most
+ordinary appearances of the electric fluid.  In the marks caused by
+positive electricity, or which it leaves in its passage, we see the
+ramifications of a tree, as well as of its individual leaves; those
+of the negative, recal the bulbous or the spreading root, according
+as they are clumped or divergent.  These phenomena seem to say that
+the electric energies have had something to do in determining the
+forms of plants.  That they are intimately connected with vegetable
+life is indubitable, for germination will not proceed in water
+charged with negative electricity, while water charged positively
+greatly favours it; and a garden sensibly increases in luxuriance,
+when a number of conducting rods are made to terminate in branches
+over its beds.  With regard to the resemblance of the ramifications
+of the branches and leaves of plants to the traces of the positive
+electricity, and that of the roots to the negative, it is a
+circumstance calling for especial remark, that the atmosphere,
+particularly its lower strata, is generally charged positively, while
+the earth is always charged negatively.  The correspondence here is
+curious.  A plant thus appears as a thing formed on the basis of a
+natural electrical operation--the BRUSH realized.  We can thus
+suppose the various forms of plants as, immediately, the result of a
+law in electricity variously affecting them according to their
+organic character, or respective germinal constituents.  In the
+poplar, the brush is unusually vertical, and little divergent; the
+reverse in the beech:  in the palm, a pencil has proceeded straight
+up for a certain distance, radiates there, and turns outwards and
+downwards; and so on.  We can here see at least traces of secondary
+means by which the Almighty Deviser might establish all the vegetable
+forms with which the earth is overspread.
+
+Vegetable and animal bodies are mainly composed of the same four
+simple substances or elements--carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and
+nitrogen.  The first combinations of these in animals are into what
+are called proximate principles, as albumen, fibrin, urea, alantoin,
+&c., out of which the structure of the animal body is composed.  Now
+the chemist, by the association of two parts oxygen, four hydrogen,
+two carbon, and two nitrogen, can MAKE UREA.  Alantoin has also been
+produced artificially.  Two of the proximate principles being
+realizable by human care, the possibility of realizing or forming all
+is established.  Thus the chemist may be said to have it in his power
+to realize the first step in organization. {169a}  Indeed, it is
+fully acknowledged by Dr. Daubeny, that in the combinations forming
+the proximate principles there is no chemical peculiarity.  "It is
+now certain," he says, "that the same simple laws of composition
+pervade the whole creation; and that, if the organic chemist only
+takes the requisite precautions to avoid resolving into their
+ultimate elements the proximate principles upon which he operates,
+the results of his analysis will shew that they are combined
+precisely according to the same plan as the elements of mineral
+bodies are known to be." {169b}  A particular fact is here worthy of
+attention.  "The conversion of fecula into sugar, as one of the
+ordinary processes of vegetable economy, is effected by the
+production of a secretion termed diastose, which occasions both the
+rupture of the starch vesicles, and the change of their contained gum
+into sugar.  This diastose may be separately obtained by the chemist,
+and it acts as effectually in his laboratory as in the vegetable
+organization.  He can also imitate its effects by other chemical
+agents." {170}  The writer quoted below adds, "No reasonable ground
+has yet been adduced for supposing that, if we had the power of
+bringing together the elements of any organic compound, in their
+requisite states and proportions, the result would be any other than
+that which is found in the living body."
+
+It is much to know the elements out of which organic bodies are
+composed.  It is something more to know their first combinations, and
+that these are simply chemical.  How these combinations are
+associated in the structure of living bodies is the next inquiry, but
+it is one to which as yet no satisfactory answer can be given.  The
+investigation of the minutiae of organic structure by the microscope
+is of such recent origin, that its results cannot be expected to be
+very clear.  Some facts, however, are worthy of attention with regard
+to the present inquiry.  It is ascertained that the basis of all
+vegetable and animal substances consists of nucleated cells; that is,
+cells having granules within them.  Nutriment is converted into these
+before being assimilated by the system.  The tissues are formed from
+them.  The ovum destined to become a new creature, is originally only
+a cell with a contained granule.  We see it acting this reproductive
+part in the simplest manner in the cryptogamic plants.  "The parent
+cell, arrived at maturity by the exercise of its organic functions,
+bursts, and liberates its contained granules.  These, at once thrown
+upon their own resources, and entirely dependent for their nutrition
+on the surrounding elements, develop themselves into new cells, which
+repeat the life of their original.  Amongst the higher tribes of the
+cryptogamia, the reproductive cell does not burst, but the first
+cells of the new structure are developed within it, and these
+gradually extend, by a similar process of multiplication, into that
+primary leaf-like expansion which is the first formed structure in
+all plants."  {171}  HERE THE LITTLE CELL BECOMES DIRECTLY A PLANT,
+THE FULL FORMED LIVING BEING.  It is also worthy of remark that, in
+the sponges, (an animal form,) a gemmule detached from the body of
+the parent, and trusting for sustentation only to the fluid into
+which it has been cast, becomes, without further process, the new
+creature.  Further, it has been recently discovered by means of the
+microscope, that there is, as far as can be judged, a perfect
+resemblance between the ovum of the mammal tribes, during that early
+stage when it is passing through the oviduct, and the young of the
+infusory animalcules.  One of the most remarkable of these, the
+volvox globator, has exactly the form of the germ which, after
+passing through a long foetal progress, becomes a complete mammifer,
+an animal of the highest class.  It has even been found that both are
+alike provided with those cilia, which, producing a revolving motion,
+or its appearance, is partly the cause of the name given to this
+animalcule.  These resemblances are the more entitled to notice, that
+they were made by various observers, distant from each other at the
+time. {172}  It has likewise been noted that the globules of the
+blood are reproduced by the expansion of contained granules; they
+are, in short, DISTINCT ORGANISMS MULTIPLIED BY THE SAME FISSIPAROUS
+GENERATION.  So that all animated nature may be said to be based on
+this mode of origin; THE FUNDAMENTAL FORM OF ORGANIC BEING IS A
+GLOBULE, HAVING A NEW GLOBULE FORMING WITHIN ITSELF, by which it is
+in time discharged, and which is again followed by another and
+another, in endless succession.  It is of course obvious that, if
+these globules could be produced by any process from inorganic
+elements, we should be entitled to say that the fact of a transit
+from the inorganic into the organic had been witnessed in that
+instance; the possibility of the commencement of animated creation by
+the ordinary laws of nature might be considered as established.  Now
+it was given out some years ago by a French physiologist, that
+GLOBULES COULD BE PRODUCED IN ALBUMEN BY ELECTRICITY.  If, therefore,
+these globules be identical with the cells which are now held to be
+reproductive, it might be said that the production of albumen by
+artificial means is the only step in the process wanting.  This has
+not 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, and
+two compounds perfectly co-ordinate, urea and alantoin, have actually
+been produced.
+
+In such an investigation as the present, it is not unworthy of notice
+that the production of shell is a natural operation which can be
+precisely imitated artificially.  Such an incrustation takes place on
+both the outside and inside of the wheel in a bleaching
+establishment, in which cotton cloth is rinsed free of the lime
+employed in its purification.  From the DRESSING employed by the
+weaver, the cloth obtains the animal matter, gelatin; this and the
+lime form the constituents of the incrustation, exactly as in natural
+shell.  In the wheel employed at Catrine, in Ayrshire, where the
+phenomenon was first observed by the eye of science, it had required
+ten years to produce a coating the tenth of an inch in thickness.
+This incrustation has all the characters of shell, displaying a
+highly polished surface, beautifully iridescent, and, when broken, a
+foliated texture.  The examination of it has even thrown some light
+on the character and mode of formation of natural shell.  "The plates
+into 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 thin
+iridescent film, varying from the three to the fifty millionth part
+of an inch in thickness, and producing all the various colours of
+thin plates which correspond to intermediate thicknesses:  between
+some of the laminae no such film exists, probably in consequence of
+the interval of time between their formation being too short; and
+between others the film has been formed of unequal thickness.  There
+can be no doubt that these iridescent films are formed when the dash-
+wheel is at rest during the night, and that when no film exists
+between two laminae, an interval too short for its formation,
+(arising, perhaps, from the stopping of the work during the day,) has
+elapsed during the drying or induration of one lamina and the
+deposition of another." {175}  From this it has been deduced, by a
+patient investigation, that those colours of mother-of-pearl, which
+are incommunicable to wax, arise from iridescent films deposited
+between the laminae of its structure, and it is hence inferred that
+THE ANIMAL, like the wheel, RESTS PERIODICALLY FROM ITS LABOURS IN
+FORMING THE NATURAL SUBSTANCE.
+
+These, it will be owned, are curious and not irrelevant facts; but it
+will be asked what actual experience says respecting the origination
+of life.  Are there, it will be said, any authentic instances of
+either plants or animals, of however humble and simple a kind, having
+come into existence otherwise than in the ordinary way of generation,
+since the time of which geology forms the record?  It may be
+answered, that the negative of this question could not be by any
+means formidable to the doctrine of law-creation, seeing that the
+conditions necessary for the operation of the supposed life-creating
+laws may not have existed within record to any great extent.  On the
+other hand, as we see the physical laws of early times still acting
+with more or less force, it might not be unreasonable to expect that
+we should still see some remnants, or partial and occasional workings
+of the life-creating energy amidst a system of things generally
+stable and at rest.  Are there, then, any such remnants to be traced
+in 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, as
+what now takes place upon a confined scale and in a comparatively
+casual manner may have formerly taken place on a great scale, and as
+the proper and eternity-destined means of supplying a vacant globe
+with suitable tenants.  It will at the same time be observed that,
+the earth being now supplied with both kinds of tenants in great
+abundance, we only could expect to find the life-originating power at
+work in some very special and extraordinary circumstances, and
+probably only in the inferior and obscurer departments of the
+vegetable and animal kingdoms.
+
+Perhaps, if the question were asked of ten men of approved reputation
+in science, nine out of the number would answer in the negative.
+This is because, in a great number of instances where the superficial
+observers of former times assumed a non-generative origin for life,
+(as in the celebrated case in Virgil's fourth Georgic,) either the
+direct contrary has been ascertained, or exhaustive experiments have
+left no alternative from the conclusion that ordinary generation did
+take place, albeit in a manner which escapes observation.  Finding
+that an erroneous assumption has been formed in many cases, modern
+inquirers have not hesitated to assume that there can be no case in
+which generation is not concerned; an assumption not only unwarranted
+by, but directly opposed to, the principles of philosophical
+investigation.  Yet this is truly the point at which the question now
+rests in the scientific world.
+
+I have no wish here to enter largely into a subject so wide and so
+full of difficulties; but I may remark, that the explanations usually
+suggested where life takes its rise without apparent generative
+means, always appear to me to partake much of the fallacy of the
+petitio principii.  When, for instance, lime is laid down upon a
+piece of waste moss ground, and a crop of white clover for which no
+seeds were sown is the consequence, the explanation that the seeds
+have been dormant there for an unknown time, and were stimulated into
+germination when the lime produced the appropriate circumstances,
+appears extremely unsatisfactory, especially when we know that (as in
+an authentic case under my notice) the spot is many miles from where
+clover is cultivated, and that there is nothing for six feet below
+but pure peat moss, clover seeds being, moreover, known to be too
+heavy to be transported, as many other seeds are, by the winds.
+Mushrooms, we know, can be propagated by their seed; but another mode
+of raising them, well known to the gardener, is to mix cow and horse
+dung together, and thus form a bed in which they are expected to grow
+without any seed being planted.  It is assumed that the seeds are
+carried by the atmosphere, unperceived by us, and, finding here an
+appropriate field for germination, germinate accordingly; but this is
+only assumption, and though designed to be on the side of a severe
+philosophy, in reality makes a pretty large demand on credulity.
+There are several persons eminent in science who profess at least to
+find great difficulties in accepting the doctrine of invariable
+generation.  One of these, in the work noted below, {179a} has stated
+several considerations arising from analogical reasoning, which
+appear to him to throw the balance of evidence in favour of the
+aboriginal production of infusoria, {179b} the vegetation called
+mould, and the like.  One seems to be of great force; namely, that
+the animalcules, which are supposed (altogether hypothetically) to be
+produced by ova, are afterwards found increasing their numbers, not
+by that mode at all, but by division of their bodies.  If it be the
+nature of these creatures to propagate in this splitting or
+fissiparous manner, how could they be communicated to a vegetable
+infusion?  Another fact of very high importance is presented in the
+following terms:- "The nature of the animalcule, or vegetable
+production, bears a constant relation to the state of the infusion,
+so that, in similar circumstances, the same are always produced
+without this being influenced by the atmosphere.  There seems to be a
+certain PROGRESSIVE ADVANCE IN THE PRODUCTIVE POWERS OF THE INFUSION,
+for at the first the animalcules are only of the smaller kinds, or
+monades, and afterwards THEY BECOME GRADUALLY LARGER AND MORE
+COMPLICATED IN THEIR STRUCTURE; AFTER A TIME, THE PRODUCTION CEASES,
+ALTHOUGH THE MATERIALS ARE BY NO MEANS EXHAUSTED.  When the quantity
+of water is very small, and the organic matter abundant, the
+production is usually of a vegetable nature; when there is much
+water, animalcules are more frequently produced."  It has been shewn
+by the opponents of this theory, that when a vegetable infusion is
+debarred from the contact of the atmosphere, by being closely sealed
+up or covered with a layer of oil, no animalcules are produced; but
+it has been said, on the other hand, that the exclusion of the air
+may prevent some simple condition necessary for the aboriginal
+development of life--and nothing is more likely.  Perhaps the
+prevailing doctrine is in nothing placed in greater difficulties than
+it is with regard to the entozoa, or creatures which live within the
+bodies of others.  These creatures do, and apparently can, live
+nowhere else than in the interior of other living bodies, where they
+generally take up their abode in the viscera, but also sometimes in
+the chambers of the eye, the interior of the brain, the serous sacs,
+and other places having no communication from without.  Some are
+viviparous, others oviparous.  Of the latter it cannot reasonably be
+supposed that the ova ever pass through the medium of the air, or
+through the blood-vessels, for they are too heavy for the one
+transit, and too large for the other.  Of the former, it cannot be
+conceived how they pass into young animals--certainly not by
+communication from the parent, for it has often been found that
+entozoa do not appear in certain generations, and some of peculiar
+and noted character have only appeared at rare intervals, and in very
+extraordinary circumstances.  A candid view of the less popular
+doctrine, as to the origin of this humble form of life, is taken by a
+distinguished living naturalist.  "To explain the beginning of these
+worms within the human body, on the common doctrine that all created
+beings proceed from their likes, or a primordial egg, is so
+difficult, that the moderns have been driven to speculate, as our
+fathers did, on their spontaneous birth; but they have received the
+hypothesis with some modification.  Thus it is not from putrefaction
+or fermentation that the entozoa are born, for both of these
+processes are rather fatal to their existence, but from the
+aggregation and fit apposition of matter which is already organized,
+or has been thrown from organized surfaces.  Their origin in this
+manner is not more wonderful or more inexplicable than that of many
+of the inferior animals from sections of themselves. * * Particles of
+matter fitted by digestion, and their transmission through a living
+body, for immediate assimilation with it, or flakes of lymph detached
+from surfaces already organized, seem neither to exceed nor fall
+below that simplicity of structure which favours this wonderful
+development; and the supposition that, like morsels of a planaria,
+they may also, when retained in contact with living parts, and in
+other favourable circumstances, continue to live and be gradually
+changed into creatures of analogous conformation, is surely not so
+absurd as to be brought into comparison with the Metamorphoses of
+Ovid. * * We think the hypothesis is also supported in some degree by
+the fact, that the origin of the entozoa is favoured by all causes
+which tend to disturb the equality between the secerning and
+absorbent systems." {182}  Here particles of organized matter are
+suggested as the germinal origin of distinct and fully organized
+animals, many of which have a highly developed reproductive system.
+How near such particles must be to the inorganic form of matter may
+be judged from what has been said within the last few pages.  If,
+then, this view of the production of entozoa be received, it must be
+held as in no small degree favourable to the general doctrine of an
+organic creation by law.
+
+There is another series of facts, akin to the above, and which
+deserve not less attention.  The pig, in its domestic state, is
+subject to the attacks of a hydatid, from which the wild animal is
+free; hence the disease called measles in pork.  The domestication of
+the pig is of course an event subsequent to the origin of man;
+indeed, comparatively speaking, a recent event.  Whence, then, the
+first progenitor of this hydatid?  So also there is a tinea which
+attacks dressed wool, but never touches it in its unwashed state.  A
+particular insect disdains all food but chocolate, and the larva of
+the OINOPOTA CELLARIS lives nowhere but in wine and beer, all of
+these being articles manufactured by man.  There is likewise a
+creature called the PIMELODES CYCLOPUM, which is only found in
+subterranean cavities connected with certain specimens of the
+volcanic formation in South America, dating from a time posterior to
+the arrangements of the earth for our species.  Whence the first
+pymelodes cyclopum?  Will it, to a geologist, appear irrational to
+suppose that, just as the pterodactyle was added in the era of the
+new red sandstone, when the earth had become suited for such a
+creature, so may these creatures have been added when media suitable
+for their existence arose, and that such phenomena may take place any
+day, the only cause for their taking place seldom being the rarity of
+the rise of new physical conditions on a globe which seems to have
+already undergone the principal part of its destined mutations?
+
+Between such isolated facts and the greater changes which attended
+various geological eras, it is not easy to see any difference,
+besides simply that of the scale on which the respective phenomena
+took place, as the throwing off of one copy from an engraved plate is
+exactly 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 circumstances
+under which they take place, are indifferent matters.  The Eternal
+One has arranged for everything beforehand, and trusted all to the
+operation of the laws of his appointment, himself being ever present
+in all things.  We can even conceive that man, in his many doings
+upon the surface of the earth, may occasionally, without his being
+aware of it, or otherwise, act as an instrument in preparing the
+association of conditions under which the creative laws work; and
+perhaps some instances of his having acted as such an instrument have
+actually occurred in our own time.
+
+I allude, of course, to the experiments conducted a few years ago by
+Mr. Crosse, which seemed to result in the production of a heretofore
+unknown species of insect in considerable numbers.  Various causes
+have prevented these experiments and their results from receiving
+candid treatment, but they may perhaps be yet found to have opened up
+a new and most interesting chapter of nature's mysteries.  Mr. Crosse
+was pursuing some experiments in crystallization, causing a powerful
+voltaic battery to operate upon a saturated solution of silicate of
+potash, when the insects unexpectedly made their appearance.  He
+afterwards tried nitrate of copper, which is a deadly poison, and
+from that fluid also did live insects emerge.  Discouraged by the
+reception of his experiments, Mr. Crosse soon discontinued them; but
+they were some years after pursued by Mr. Weekes, of Sandwich, with
+precisely the same results.  This gentleman, besides trying the first
+of the above substances, employed ferro-cyanet of potash, on account
+of its containing a larger proportion of carbon, the principal
+element of organic bodies; and from this substance the insects were
+produced IN INCREASED NUMBERS.  A few weeks sufficed for this
+experiment, with the powerful battery of Mr. Crosse; but the first
+attempts of Mr. Weekes required about eleven months, a ground of
+presumption in itself that the electricity was chiefly concerned in
+the 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 a
+milky appearance; round the negative wire of the battery, dipped into
+the fluid, there gathered a quantity of GELATINOUS MATTER, a part of
+the process of considerable importance, considering that gelatin is
+one of the proximate principles, or first compounds, of which animal
+bodies are formed.  From this matter Mr. Weekes observed one of the
+insects in the very act of emerging, immediately after which, it
+ascended to the surface of the fluid, and sought concealment in an
+obscure corner of the apparatus.  The insects produced by both
+experimentalists seem to have been the same, a species of acarus,
+minute and semi-transparent, and furnished with long bristles, which
+can only be seen by the aid of the microscope.  It is worthy of
+remark, that some of these insects, soon after their existence had
+commenced, were found to be likely to extend their species.  They
+were sometimes observed to go back to the fluid to feed, and
+occasionally they devoured each other. {187}
+
+The reception of novelties in science must ever be regulated very
+much by the amount of kindred or relative phenomena which the public
+mind already possesses and acknowledges, to which the new can be
+assimilated.  A novelty, however true, if there be no received truths
+with which it can be shewn in harmonious relation, has little chance
+of a favourable hearing.  In fact, as has been often observed, there
+is a measure of incredulity from our ignorance as well as from our
+knowledge, and if the most distinguished philosopher three hundred
+years ago had ventured to develop any striking new fact which only
+could harmonize with the as yet unknown Copernican solar system, we
+cannot doubt that it would have been universally scoffed at in the
+scientific world, such as it then was, or at the best interpreted in
+a thousand wrong ways in conformity with ideas already familiar.  The
+experiments above described, finding a public mind which had never
+discovered a fact or conceived an idea at all analogous, were of
+course ungraciously received.  It was held to be impious, even to
+surmise that animals could have been formed through any
+instrumentality of an apparatus devised by human skill.  The more
+likely account of the phenomena was said to be, that the insects were
+only developed from ova, resting either in the fluid, or in the
+wooden frame on which the experiments took place.  On these
+objections the following remarks may be made.  The supposition of
+impiety arises from an entire misconception of what is implied by an
+aboriginal creation of insects.  The experimentalist could never be
+considered as the author of the existence of these creatures, except
+by the most unreasoning ignorance.  The utmost that can be claimed
+for, or imputed to him is that he arranged the natural conditions
+under which the true creative energy--that of the Divine Author of
+all things--was pleased to work in that instance.  On the hypothesis
+here brought forward, the acarus Crossii was a type of being ordained
+from the beginning, and destined to be realized under certain
+physical conditions.  When a human hand brought these conditions into
+the proper arrangement, it did an act akin to hundreds of familiar
+ones which we execute every day, and which are followed by natural
+results; but it did nothing more.  The production of the insect, if
+it did take place as assumed, was as clearly an act of the Almighty
+himself, as if he had fashioned it with hands.  For the presumption
+that an act of aboriginal creation did take place, there is this to
+be said, that, in Mr. Weekes's experiment, every care that ingenuity
+could devise was taken to exclude the possibility of a development of
+the insects from ova.  The wood of the frame was baked in a powerful
+heat; a bell-shaped glass covered the apparatus, and from this the
+atmosphere was excluded by the constantly rising fumes from the
+liquid, for the emission of which there was an aperture so arranged
+at the top of the glass, that only these fumes could pass.  The water
+was distilled, and the substance of the silicate had been subjected
+to white heat.  Thus every source of fallacy seemed to be shut up.
+In such circumstances, a candid mind, which sees nothing either
+impious or unphilosophical in the idea of a new creation, will be
+disposed to think that there is less difficulty in believing in such
+a creation having actually taken place, than in believing that, in
+two instances, separated in place and time, exactly the same insects
+should have chanced to arise from concealed ova, and these a species
+heretofore unknown.
+
+
+
+HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS.
+
+
+
+It has been already intimated, as a general fact, that there is an
+obvious gradation amongst the families of both the vegetable and
+animal kingdoms, from the simple lichen and animalcule respectively
+up to the highest order of dicotyledonous trees and the mammalia.
+Confining our attention, in the meantime, to the animal kingdom--it
+does not appear that this gradation passes along one line, on which
+every form of animal life can be, as it were, strung; there may be
+branching or double lines at some places; or the whole may be in a
+circle composed of minor circles, as has been recently suggested.
+But still it is incontestable that there are general appearances of a
+scale beginning with the simple and advancing to the complicated.
+The animal kingdom was divided by Cuvier into four sub-kingdoms, or
+divisions, and these exhibit an unequivocal gradation in the order in
+which they are here enumerated:- Radiata, (polypes, &c.;) mollusca,
+(pulpy animals;) articulata, (jointed animals;) vertebrata, (animals
+with internal skeleton.)  The gradation can, in like manner, be
+clearly traced in the CLASSES into which the sub-kingdoms are
+subdivided, as, for instance, when we take those of the vertebrata in
+this order--reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals.
+
+While the external forms of all these various animals are so
+different, it is very remarkable that the whole are, after all,
+variations of a fundamental plan, which can be traced as a basis
+throughout the whole, the variations being merely modifications of
+that plan to suit the particular conditions in which each particular
+animal has been designed to live.  Starting from the primeval germ,
+which, as we have seen, is the representative of a particular order
+of full-grown animals, we find all others to be merely advances from
+that type, with the extension of endowments and modification of forms
+which are required in each particular case; each form, also,
+retaining a strong affinity to that which precedes it, and tending to
+impress its own features on that which succeeds.  This unity of
+structure, as it is called, becomes the more remarkable, when we
+observe that the organs, while preserving a resemblance, are often
+put to different uses.  For example:  the ribs become, in the
+serpent, organs of locomotion, and the snout is extended, in the
+elephant, into a prehensile instrument.
+
+It is equally remarkable that analogous purposes are served in
+different animals by organs essentially different.  Thus, the
+mammalia breathe by lungs; the fishes, by gills.  These are not
+modifications of one organ, but distinct organs.  In mammifers, the
+gills exist and act at an early stage of the foetal state, but
+afterwards go back and appear no more; while the lungs are developed.
+In fishes, again, the gills only are fully developed; while the lung
+structure either makes no advance at all, or only appears in the
+rudimentary form of an air-bladder.  So, also, the baleen of the
+whale and the teeth of the land mammalia are different organs.  The
+whale, in embryo, shews the rudiments of teeth; but these, not being
+wanted, are not developed, and the baleen is brought forward instead.
+The land animals, we may also be sure, have the rudiments of baleen
+in their organization.  In many instances, a particular structure is
+found advanced to a certain point in a particular set of animals,
+(for instance, feet in the serpent tribe,) although it is not there
+required in any degree; but the peculiarity, being carried a little
+farther forward, is perhaps useful in the next set of animals in the
+scale.  Such are called rudimentary organs.  With this class of
+phenomena are to be ranked the useless mammae of the male human
+being, and the unrequired process of bone in the male opossum, which
+is needed in the female for supporting her pouch.  Such curious
+features are most conspicuous in animals which form links between
+various classes.
+
+As formerly stated, the marsupials, standing at the bottom of the
+mammalia, shew their affinity to the oviparous vertebrata, by the
+rudiments of two canals passing from near the anus to the external
+surfaces of the viscera, which are fully developed in fishes, being
+required by them for the respiration of aerated waters, but which are
+not needed by the atmosphere-breathing marsupials.  We have also the
+peculiar form of the sternum and rib-bones of the lizards REPRESENTED
+in the mammalia in certain white cartilaginous lines traceable among
+their abdominal muscles.  The struphionidae (birds of the ostrich
+type) form a link between birds and mammalia, and in them we find the
+wings imperfectly or not at all developed, a diaphragm and urinary
+sac, (organs wanting in other birds,) and feathers approaching the
+nature of hair.  Again, the ornithorynchus belongs to a class at the
+bottom of the mammalia, and approximating to birds, and in it behold
+the bill and web-feet of that order!
+
+For further illustration, it is obvious that, various as may be the
+lengths of the upper part of the vertebral column in the mammalia, it
+always consists of the same parts.  The giraffe has in its tall neck
+the same number of bones with the pig, which scarcely appears to have
+a neck at all. {195}  Man, again, has no tail; but the notion of a
+much-ridiculed philosopher of the last century is not altogether, as
+it happens, without foundation, for the bones of a caudal extremity
+exist in an undeveloped state in the os coccygis of the human
+subject.  The limbs of all the vertebrate animals are, in like
+manner, on one plan, however various they may appear.  In the hind-
+leg of a horse, for example, the angle called the hock is the same
+part which in us forms the heel; and the horse, and all other
+quadrupeds, with almost the solitary exception of the bear, walk, in
+reality, upon what answers to the toes of a human being.  In this and
+many other quadrupeds the fore part of the extremities is shrunk up
+in a hoof, as the tail of the human being is shrunk up in the bony
+mass at the bottom of the back.  The bat, on the other hand, has
+these parts largely developed.  The membrane, commonly called its
+wing, is framed chiefly upon bones answering precisely to those of
+the human hand; its extinct congener, the pterodactyle, had the same
+membrane extended upon the fore-finger only, which in that animal was
+prolonged to an extraordinary extent.  In the paddles of the whale
+and other animals of its order, we see the same bones as in the more
+highly developed extremities of the land mammifers; and even the
+serpent tribes, which present no external appearance of such
+extremities, possess them in reality, but in an undeveloped or
+rudimental state.
+
+The same law of development presides over the vegetable kingdom.
+Amongst phanerogamous plants, a certain number of organs appear to be
+always present, either in a developed or rudimentary state; and those
+which are rudimentary can be developed by cultivation.  The flowers
+which bear stamens on one stalk and pistils on another, can be caused
+to produce both, or to become perfect flowers, by having a
+sufficiency of nourishment supplied to them.  So also, where a
+special function is required for particular circumstances, nature has
+provided for it, not by a new organ, but by a modification of a
+common one, which she has effected in development.  Thus, for
+instance, some plants destined to live in arid situations, require to
+have a store of water which they may slowly absorb.  The need is
+arranged for by a cup-like expansion round the stalk, in which water
+remains after a shower.  Now the pitcher, as this is called, is not a
+new organ, but simply a metamorphose of a leaf.
+
+These facts clearly shew how all the various organic forms of our
+world are bound up in one--how a fundamental unity pervades and
+embraces them all, collecting them, from the humblest lichen up to
+the highest mammifer, in one system, the whole creation of which must
+have depended upon one law or decree of the Almighty, though it did
+not all come forth at one time.  After what we have seen, the idea of
+a separate exertion for each must appear totally inadmissible.  The
+single fact of abortive or rudimentary organs condemns it; for these,
+on such a supposition, could be regarded in no other light than as
+blemishes or blunders--the thing of all others most irreconcilable
+with that idea of Almighty Perfection which a general view of nature
+so irresistibly conveys.  On the other hand, when the organic
+creation is admitted to have been effected by a general law, we see
+nothing in these abortive parts but harmless peculiarities of
+development, and interesting evidences of the manner in which the
+Divine Author has been pleased to work.
+
+We have yet to advert to the most interesting class of facts
+connected with the laws of organic development.  It is only in recent
+times that physiologists have observed that each animal passes, in
+the course of its germinal history, through a series of changes
+resembling the PERMANENT FORMS of the various orders of animals
+inferior to it in the scale.  Thus, for instance, an insect, standing
+at the head of the articulated animals, is, in the larva state, a
+true annelid, or worm, the annelida being the lowest in the same
+class.  The embryo of a crab resembles the perfect animal of the
+inferior order myriapoda, and passes through all the forms of
+transition which characterize the intermediate tribes of crustacea.
+The frog, for some time after its birth, is a fish with external
+gills, and other organs fitting it for an aquatic life, all of which
+are changed as it advances to maturity, and becomes a land animal.
+The mammifer only passes through still more stages, according to its
+higher place in the scale.  Nor is man himself exempt from this law.
+His first form is that which is permanent in the animalcule.  His
+organization gradually passes through conditions generally resembling
+a fish, a reptile, a bird, and the lower mammalia, before it attains
+its specific maturity.  At one of the last stages of his foetal
+career, he exhibits an intermaxillary bone, which is characteristic
+of the perfect ape; this is suppressed, and he may then be said to
+take leave of the simial type, and become a true human creature.
+Even, as we shall see, the varieties of his race are represented in
+the progressive development of an individual of the highest, before
+we see the adult Caucasian, the highest point yet attained in the
+animal scale.
+
+To come to particular points of the organization.  The brain of man,
+which exceeds that of all other animals in complexity of organization
+and fulness of development, is, at one early period, only "a simple
+fold of nervous matter, with difficulty distinguishable into three
+parts, while a little tail-like prolongation towards the hinder
+parts, and which had been the first to appear, is the only
+representation of a spinal marrow.  Now, in this state it perfectly
+resembles the brain of an adult fish, thus assuming in transitu the
+form that in the fish is permanent.  In a short time, however, the
+structure is become more complex, the parts more distinct, the spinal
+marrow better marked; it is now the brain of a reptile.  The change
+continues; by a singular motion, certain parts (corpora quadragemina)
+which had hitherto appeared on the upper surface, now pass towards
+the lower; the former is their permanent situation in fishes and
+reptiles, the latter in birds and mammalia.  This is another advance
+in the scale, but more remains yet to be done.  The complication of
+the organ increases; cavities termed ventricles are formed, which do
+not exist in fishes, reptiles, or birds; curiously organized parts,
+such as the corpora striata, are added; it is now the brain of the
+mammalia.  Its last and final change alone seems wanting, that which
+shall render it the brain of MAN." {201}  And this change in time
+takes place.
+
+So also with the heart.  This organ, in the mammalia, consists of
+four cavities, but in the reptiles of only three, and in fishes of
+two only, while in the articulated animals it is merely a prolonged
+tube.  Now in the mammal foetus, at a certain early stage, the organ
+has the form of a prolonged tube; and a human being may be said to
+have then the heart of an insect.  Subsequently it is shortened and
+widened, and becomes divided by a contraction into two parts, a
+ventricle and an auricle; it is now the heart of a fish.  A
+subdivision of the auricle afterwards makes a triple-chambered form,
+as in the heart of the reptile tribes; lastly, the ventricle being
+also subdivided, it becomes a full mammal heart.
+
+Another illustration here presents itself with the force of the most
+powerful and interesting analogy.  Some of the earliest fishes of our
+globe, those of the Old Red Sandstone, present, as we have seen,
+certain peculiarities, as the one-sided tail and an inferior position
+of the mouth.  No fishes of the present day, in a mature state, are
+so characterized; but some, at a certain stage of their existence,
+have such peculiarities.  It occurred to a geologist to inquire if
+the fish which existed before the Old Red Sandstone had any
+peculiarities assimilating them to the foetal condition of existing
+fish, and particularly if they were small.  The first which occur
+before the time of the Old Red Sandstone, are those described by Mr.
+Murchison, as belonging to the Upper Ludlow Rocks; THEY ARE ALL
+RATHER SMALL.  Still older are those detected by Mr. Philips, in the
+Aymestry Limestone, being the most ancient of the class which have as
+yet been discovered; THESE ARE SO EXTREMELY MINUTE AS ONLY TO BE
+DISTINGUISHABLE BY THE MICROSCOPE.  Here we apparently have very
+clear demonstrations of a parity, or rather identity, of laws
+presiding over the development of the animated tribes on the face of
+the earth, and that of the individual in embryo.
+
+The tendency of all these illustrations is to make us look to
+DEVELOPMENT as the principle which has been immediately concerned in
+the peopling of this globe, a process extending over a vast space of
+time, but which is nevertheless connected in character with the
+briefer process by which an individual being is evoked from a simple
+germ.  What mystery is there here--and how shall I proceed to
+enunciate the conception which I have ventured to form of what may
+prove to be its proper solution!  It is an idea by no means
+calculated to impress by its greatness, or to puzzle by its
+profoundness.  It is an idea more marked by simplicity than perhaps
+any other of those which have explained the great secrets of nature.
+But in this lies, perhaps, one of its strongest claims to the faith
+of mankind.
+
+The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up
+to the highest and most recent, are, then, to be regarded as a series
+of ADVANCES OF THE PRINCIPLE OF DEVELOPMENT, which have depended upon
+external physical circumstances, to which the resulting animals are
+appropriate.  I contemplate the whole phenomena as having been in the
+first place arranged in the counsels of Divine Wisdom, to take place,
+not only upon this sphere, but upon all the others in space, under
+necessary modifications, and as being carried on, from first to last,
+here and elsewhere, under immediate favour of the creative will or
+energy. {204}  The nucleated vesicle, the fundamental form of all
+organization, we must regard as the meeting-point between the
+inorganic and the organic--the end of the mineral and beginning of
+the vegetable and animal kingdoms, which thence start in different
+directions, but in perfect parallelism and analogy.  We have already
+seen that this nucleated vesicle is itself a type of mature and
+independent being in the infusory animalcules, as well as the
+starting point of the foetal progress of every higher individual in
+creation, both animal and vegetable.  We have seen that it is a form
+of being which electric agency will produce--though not perhaps usher
+into full life--in albumen, one of those compound elements of animal
+bodies, of which another (urea) has been made by artificial means.
+Remembering these things, we are drawn on to the supposition, that
+the first step in the creation of life upon this planet was A
+CHEMICO-ELECTRIC OPERATION, BY WHICH SIMPLE GERMINAL VESICLES WERE
+PRODUCED.  This is so much, but what were the next steps?  Let a
+common vegetable infusion help us to an answer.  There, as we have
+seen, simple forms are produced at first, but afterwards they become
+more complicated, until at length the life-producing powers of the
+infusion are exhausted.  Are we to presume that, in this case, the
+simple engender the complicated?  Undoubtedly, this would not be more
+wonderful as a natural process than one which we never think of
+wondering at, because familiar to us--namely, that in the gestation
+of 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 all
+the subsequent stages--fish, reptile, &c.--the one may, with scarcely
+a metaphor, be said to be the progenitor of the other.  I suggest,
+then, as an hypothesis already countenanced by much that is
+ascertained, and likely to be further sanctioned by much that remains
+to be known, that the first step was AN ADVANCE UNDER FAVOUR OF
+PECULIAR CONDITIONS, FROM THE SIMPLEST FORMS OF BEING, TO THE NEXT
+MORE COMPLICATED, AND THIS THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF THE ORDINARY PROCESS
+OF GENERATION.
+
+Unquestionably, what we ordinarily see of nature is calculated to
+impress a conviction that each species invariably produces its like.
+But I would here call attention to a remarkable illustration of
+natural law which has been brought forward by Mr. Babbage, in his
+Ninth Bridgewater Treatise.  The reader is requested to suppose
+himself seated before the calculating machine, and observing it.  It
+is moved by a weight, and there is a wheel which revolves through a
+small angle round its axis, at short intervals, presenting to his eye
+successively, a series of numbers engraved on its divided
+circumference.
+
+Let the figures thus seen be the series, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c., of
+natural numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate antecedent by
+unity.
+
+"Now, reader," says Mr. Babbage, "let me ask you how long you will
+have counted before you are firmly convinced that the engine has been
+so adjusted, that it will continue, while its motion is maintained,
+to produce the same series of natural numbers?  Some minds are so
+constituted, that, after passing the first hundred terms, they will
+be satisfied that they are acquainted with the law.  After seeing
+five hundred terms few will doubt, and after the fifty thousandth
+term the propensity to believe that the succeeding term will be fifty
+thousand and one, will be almost irresistible.  That term WILL be
+fifty thousand and one; and the same regular succession will
+continue; the five millionth and the fifty millionth term will still
+appear in their expected order, and one unbroken chain of natural
+numbers will pass before your eyes, from ONE up to ONE HUNDRED
+MILLION.
+
+"True to the vast induction which has been made, the next succeeding
+term will be one hundred million and one; but the next number
+presented by the rim of the wheel, instead of being one hundred
+million and two, is one hundred million TEN THOUSAND and two.  The
+whole series from the commencement being thus, -
+
+1
+2
+3
+4
+5
+.
+. .
+. . .
+99,999,999
+100,000,000
+regularly as far as 100,000,001
+100,010,002 the law changes.
+100,030,003
+100,060,004
+100,100,005
+100,150,006
+100,210,007
+100,280,008
+. . .
+. . .
+. . .
+
+"The law which seemed at first to govern this series failed at the
+hundred million and second term.  This term is larger than we
+expected by 10,000.  The next term is larger than was anticipated by
+30,000, and the excess of each term above what we had expected forms
+the following table:-
+
+10,000
+30,000
+60,000
+100,000
+150,000
+. . .
+. . .
+
+being, in fact, the series of TRIANGULAR NUMBERS, {208} each
+multiplied by 10,000.
+
+"If we now continue to observe the numbers presented by the wheel, we
+shall find, that for a hundred, or even for a thousand terms, they
+continue to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers;
+but after watching them for 2761 terms, we find that this law fails
+in the case of the 2762d term.
+
+"If we continue to observe, we shall discover another law then coming
+into action, which also is dependent, but in a different manner, on
+triangular numbers.  This will continue through about 1430 terms,
+when a new law is again introduced which extends over about 950
+terms, and this, too, like all its predecessors, fails, and gives
+place to other laws, which appear at different intervals.
+
+"Now it must be observed that THE LAW THAT EACH NUMBER PRESENTED BY
+THE ENGINE IS GREATER BY UNITY THAN THE PRECEDING NUMBER, which law
+the observer had deduced from an induction of a hundred million
+instances, WAS NOT THE TRUE LAW THAT REGULATED ITS ACTION, and that
+the occurrence of the number 100,010,002 at the 100,000,002nd term
+was AS NECESSARY A CONSEQUENCE OF THE ORIGINAL ADJUSTMENT, AND MIGHT
+HAVE BEEN AS FULLY FOREKNOWN AT THE COMMENCEMENT, AS WAS THE REGULAR
+SUCCESSION OF ANY ONE OF THE INTERMEDIATE NUMBERS TO ITS IMMEDIATE
+ANTECEDENT.  The same remark applies to the next apparent deviation
+from 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 periods
+themselves at which the more distant laws will be introduced."
+
+It is not difficult to apply the philosophy of this passage to the
+question under consideration.  It must be borne in mind that the
+gestation 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 a
+matter probably involving enormous spaces of time.  Suppose that an
+ephemeron, hovering over a pool for its one April day of life, were
+capable of observing the fry of the frog in the water below.  In its
+aged afternoon, having seen no change upon them for such a long time,
+it would be little qualified to conceive that the external branchiae
+of these creatures were to decay, and be replaced by internal lungs,
+that feet were to be developed, the tail erased, and the animal then
+to become a denizen of the land.  Precisely such may be our
+difficulty in conceiving that any of the species which people our
+earth is capable of advancing by generation to a higher type of
+being.  During the whole time which we call the historical era, the
+limits of species have been, to ordinary observation, rigidly adhered
+to.  But the historical era is, we know, only a small portion of the
+entire age of our globe.  We do not know what may have happened
+during the ages which preceded its commencement, as we do not know
+what may happen in ages yet in the distant future.  All, therefore,
+that we can properly infer from the apparently invariable production
+of like by like is, that such is the ordinary procedure of nature in
+the time immediately passing before our eyes.  Mr. Babbage's
+illustration powerfully suggests that this ordinary procedure may be
+subordinate to a higher law which only PERMITS it for a time, and in
+proper season interrupts and changes it.  We shall soon see some
+philosophical evidence for this very conclusion.
+
+It has been seen that, in the reproduction of the higher animals, the
+new being passes through stages in which it is successively fish-like
+and reptile-like.  But the resemblance is not to the adult fish or
+the adult reptile, but to the fish and reptile at a certain point in
+their foetal progress; this holds true with regard to the vascular,
+nervous, and other systems alike.  It may be illustrated by a simple
+diagram.  The foetus of all the four classes may be supposed to
+advance 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 peculiar
+to A itself, to its mature state at F.  The reptile, bird, and
+mammal, go on together to C, where the reptile diverges in like
+manner, and advances by itself to R.  The bird diverges at D, and
+goes on to B.  The mammal then goes forward in a straight line to the
+highest point of organization at M.  This diagram shews only the main
+ramifications; but the reader must suppose minor ones, representing
+the subordinate differences of orders, tribes, families, genera, &c.,
+if he wishes to extend his views to the whole varieties of being in
+the animal kingdom.  Limiting ourselves at present to the outline
+afforded by this diagram, it is apparent that the only thing required
+for an advance from one type to another in the generative process is
+that, for example, the fish embryo should not diverge at A, but go on
+to C before it diverges, in which case the progeny will be, not a
+fish, but a reptile.  To protract the STRAIGHTFORWARD PART OF THE
+GESTATION OVER A SMALL SPACE--and from species to species the space
+would be small indeed--is all that is necessary.
+
+This might be done by the force of certain external conditions
+operating upon the parturient system.  The nature of these conditions
+we can only conjecture, for their operation, which in the geological
+eras was so powerful, has in its main strength been long interrupted,
+and is now perhaps only allowed to work in some of the lowest
+departments of the organic world, or under extraordinary casualties
+in some of the higher, and to these points the attention of science
+has as yet been little directed.  But though this knowledge were
+never to be clearly attained, it need not much affect the present
+argument, provided it be satisfactorily shewn that there must be some
+such influence within the range of natural things.
+
+To this conclusion it must be greatly conducive that the law of
+organic development is still daily seen at work to certain effects,
+only somewhat short of a transition from species to species.  Sex we
+have seen to be a matter of development.  There is an instance, in a
+humble department of the animal world, of arrangements being made by
+the animals themselves for adjusting this law to the production of a
+particular sex.  Amongst bees, as amongst several other insect
+tribes, there is in each community but one true female, the queen
+bee, the workers being false females or neuters; that is to say, sex
+is carried on in them to a point where it is attended by sterility.
+The preparatory states of the queen bee occupy sixteen days; those of
+the neuters, twenty; and those of males, twenty-four.  Now it is a
+fact, settled by innumerable observations and experiments, that the
+bees can so modify a worker in the larva state, that, when it emerges
+from the pupa, it is found to be a queen or true female.  For this
+purpose they enlarge its cell, make a pyramidal hollow to allow of
+its assuming a vertical instead of a horizontal position, keep it
+warmer than other larvae are kept, and feed it with a peculiar kind
+of food.  From these simple circumstances, leading to a shortening of
+the embryotic condition, results a creature different in form, and
+also in dispositions, from what would have otherwise been produced.
+Some of the organs possessed by the worker are here altogether
+wanting.  We have a creature "destined to enjoy love, to burn with
+jealousy and anger, to be incited to vengeance, and to pass her time
+without labour," instead of one "zealous for the good of the
+community, a defender of the public rights, enjoying an immunity from
+the stimulus of sexual appetite and the pains of parturition;
+laborious, industrious, patient, ingenious, skilful; incessantly
+engaged in the nurture of the young, in collecting honey and pollen,
+in elaborating wax, in constructing cells and the like!--paying the
+most respectful and assiduous attention to objects which, had its
+ovaries been developed, it would have hated and pursued with the most
+vindictive fury till it had destroyed them!" {215}  All these changes
+may be produced by a mere modification of the embryotic progress,
+which it is within the power of the adult animals to effect.  But it
+is important to observe that this modification is different from
+working a direct change upon the embryo.  It is not the different
+food which effects a metamorphosis.  All that is done is merely to
+accelerate the period of the insect's perfection.  By the
+arrangements made and the food given, the embryo becomes sooner fit
+for being ushered forth in its imago or perfect state.  Development
+may be said to be thus arrested at a particular stage--that early one
+at which the female sex is complete.  In the other circumstances, it
+is allowed to go on four days longer, and a stage is then reached
+between the two sexes, which in this species is designed to be the
+perfect condition of a large portion of the community.  Four days
+more make it a perfect male.  It is at the same time to be observed
+that there is, from the period of oviposition, a destined distinction
+between the sexes of the young bees.  The queen lays the whole of the
+eggs which are designed to become workers, before she begins to lay
+those which become males.  But probably the condition of her
+reproductive system governs the matter of sex, for it is remarked
+that when her impregnation is delayed beyond the twenty-eighth day of
+her entire existence, she lays only eggs which become males.
+
+We have here, it will be admitted, a most remarkable illustration of
+the principle of development, although in an operation limited to the
+production of sex only.  Let it not be said that the phenomena
+concerned in the generation of bees may be very different from those
+concerned in the reproduction of the higher animals.  There is a
+unity throughout nature which makes the one case an instructive
+reflection of the other.
+
+We shall now see an instance of development operating within the
+production of what approaches to the character of variety of species.
+It is fully established that a human family, tribe, or nation, is
+liable, in the course of generations, to be either advanced from a
+mean form to a higher one, or degraded from a higher to a lower, by
+the influence of the physical conditions in which it lives.  The
+coarse features, and other structural peculiarities of the negro race
+only continue while these people live amidst the circumstances
+usually associated with barbarism.  In a more temperate clime, and
+higher social state, the face and figure become greatly refined.  The
+few African nations which possess any civilization also exhibit forms
+approaching the European; and when the same people in the United
+States of America have enjoyed a within-door life for several
+generations, they assimilate to the whites amongst whom they live.
+On the other hand, there are authentic instances of a people
+originally well-formed and good-looking, being brought, by imperfect
+diet and a variety of physical hardships, to a meaner form.  It is
+remarkable that prominence of the jaws, a recession and diminution of
+the cranium, and an elongation and attenuation of the limbs, are
+peculiarities always produced by these miserable conditions, for they
+indicate an unequivocal retrogression towards the type of the lower
+animals.  Thus we see nature alike willing to go back and to go
+forward.  Both effects are simply the result of the operation of the
+law of development in the generative system.  Give good conditions,
+it advances; bad ones, it recedes.  Now, perhaps, it is only because
+there is no longer a possibility, in the higher types of being, of
+giving sufficiently favourable conditions to carry on species to
+species, that we see the operation of the law so far limited.
+
+Let us trace this law also in the production of certain classes of
+monstrosities.  A human foetus is often left with one of the most
+important parts of its frame imperfectly developed:  the heart, for
+instance, goes no farther than the three-chambered form, so that it
+is the heart of a reptile.  There are even instances of this organ
+being left in the two-chambered or fish form.  Such defects are the
+result of nothing more than a failure of the power of development in
+the system of the mother, occasioned by weak health or misery.  Here
+we have apparently a realization of the converse of those conditions
+which carry on species to species, so far, at least, as one organ is
+concerned.  Seeing a complete specific retrogression in this one
+point, how easy it is to imagine an access of favourable conditions
+sufficient to reverse the phenomenon, and make a fish mother develop
+a reptile heart, or a reptile mother develop a mammal one.  It is no
+great boldness to surmise that a super-adequacy in the measure of
+this under-adequacy (and the one thing seems as natural an occurrence
+as the other) would suffice in a goose to give its progeny the body
+of a rat, and produce the ornithorynchus, or might give the progeny
+of an ornithorynchus the mouth and feet of a true rodent, and thus
+complete at two stages the passage from the aves to the mammalia.
+
+Perhaps even the transition from species to species does still take
+place in some of the obscurer fields of creation, or under
+extraordinary casualties, though science professes to have no such
+facts on record.  It is here to be remarked, that such facts might
+often happen, and yet no record be taken of them, for so strong is
+the prepossession for the doctrine of invariable like-production,
+that such circumstances, on occurring, would be almost sure to be
+explained away on some other supposition, or, if presented, would be
+disbelieved and neglected.  Science, therefore, has no such facts,
+for the very same reason that some small sects are said to have no
+discreditable 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 without
+any reference to this hypothesis, and which it seems extremely
+difficult to explain satisfactorily upon any other.  One of these has
+already been mentioned--a progression in the forms of the animalcules
+in a vegetable infusion from the simpler to the more complicated, a
+sort of microcosm, representing the whole history of the progress of
+animal creation as displayed by geology.  Another is given in the
+history of the Acarus Crossii, which may be only the ultimate stage
+of a series of similar transformations effected by electric agency in
+the solution subjected to it.  There is, however, one direct case of
+a translation of species, which has been presented with a respectable
+amount of authority. {221}  It appears that, whenever oats sown at
+the usual time are kept cropped down during summer and autumn, and
+allowed to remain over the winter, a thin crop of rye is the harvest
+presented at the close of the ensuing summer.  This experiment has
+been tried repeatedly, with but one result; invariably the secale
+cereale is the crop reaped where the avena sativa, a recognised
+different species, was sown.  Now it will not satisfy a strict
+inquirer to be told that the seeds of the rye were latent in the
+ground and only superseded the dead product of the oats; for if any
+such fact were in the case, why should the usurping grain be always
+rye?  Perhaps those curious facts which have been stated with regard
+to 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 which
+takes place under certain favouring conditions, now apparently of
+comparatively rare occurrence.  The case of the oats is the more
+valuable, as bearing upon the suggestion as to a protraction of the
+gestation at a particular part of its course.  Here, the generative
+process is, by the simple mode of cropping down, kept up for a whole
+year beyond its usual term.  The type is thus allowed to advance, and
+what was oats becomes rye.
+
+The idea, then, which I form of the progress of organic life upon the
+globe--and the hypothesis is applicable to all similar theatres of
+vital being--is, THAT THE SIMPLEST AND MOST PRIMITIVE TYPE, UNDER A
+LAW TO WHICH THAT OF LIKE-PRODUCTION IS SUBORDINATE, GAVE BIRTH TO
+THE TYPE NEXT ABOVE IT, THAT THIS AGAIN PRODUCED THE NEXT HIGHER, AND
+SO ON TO THE VERY HIGHEST, the stages of advance being in all cases
+very small--namely, from one species only to another; so that the
+phenomenon has always been of a simple and modest character.  Whether
+the whole of any species was at once translated forward, or only a
+few parents were employed to give birth to the new type, must remain
+undetermined; but, supposing that the former was the case, we must
+presume that the moves along the line or lines were simultaneous, so
+that the place vacated by one species was immediately taken by the
+next in succession, and so on back to the first, for the supply of
+which the formation of a new germinal vesicle out of inorganic matter
+was alone necessary.  Thus, the production of new forms, as shewn in
+the pages of the geological record, has never been anything more than
+a new stage of progress in gestation, an event as simply natural, and
+attended as little by any circumstances of a wonderful or startling
+kind, as the silent advance of an ordinary mother from one week to
+another of her pregnancy.  Yet, be it remembered, the whole phenomena
+are, in another point of view, wonders of the highest kind, for in
+each of them we have to trace the effect of an Almighty Will which
+had arranged the whole in such harmony with external physical
+circumstances, that both were developed in parallel steps--and
+probably this development upon our planet is but a sample of what has
+taken place, through the same cause, in all the other countless
+theatres of being which are suspended in space.
+
+This may be the proper place at which to introduce the preceding
+illustrations in a form calculated to bring them more forcibly before
+the mind of the reader.  The following table was suggested to me, in
+consequence 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, and
+also 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 to
+support such an hypothesis as the present, nor with any apparent
+regard to the history of fossils, but merely to express the
+appearance of advancement in the orders of the Cuvierian system,
+assuming, as the criterion of that advancement, "an increase in the
+number and extent of the manifestations of life, or of the relations
+which an organized being bears to the external world."  Excepting in
+the relative situation of the annelida and a few of the mammal
+orders, the parity is perfect; nor may even these small discrepancies
+appear when the order of fossils shall have been further
+investigated, 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 nearness
+with our present knowledge of the succession of animal forms upon
+earth, and also that both of these series should harmonize so well
+with the view given by modern physiologists of the embryotic progress
+of 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 brain
+resembles, in
+
+(The numbers indicate orders)
+
+Rocks:  1. Gneiss and Mica Slate system
+Foetal:  1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;
+
+Scale:  RADIATA (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
+Order:  Zoophyta, Polypiaria
+Rocks:  2. Clay Slate and Grawacke system
+Foetal:  1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;
+
+Scale:  MOLLUSCA (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
+Order:  Conchifera, Double-shelled Mollusks
+Rocks:  3. Silurian system
+Foetal:  1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;
+
+Scale:  ARTICULATA Annelida (12, 13, 14)
+Rocks:  3. Silurian system
+Foetal:  1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;
+
+Scale:  ARTICULATA Crustacea (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
+Order:  Crustacea, Annelida, Crustaceous Fishes
+Rocks:  3. Silurian system
+Foetal:  1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;
+
+Scale:  ARTICULATA Arachnida & Insecta (21-31)
+Order:  Crustaceous Fishes
+Rocks:  4. Old Red Sandstone
+Foetal:  1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Pisces (32, 33, 34, 35, 36)
+Order:  True Fishes
+Rocks:  5. Carboniferous formation
+Foetal:  2nd month, that of a fish;
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Reptilia (37, 38, 39, 40)
+Order:  Piscine Saurians (ichthyosaurus, &c.), Pterodactyles,
+Crocodiles, Tortoises, Batrachians
+Rocks:  6. New Red Sandstone
+Foetal:  3rd month, that of a turtle;
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Aves (41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46)
+Order:  Birds
+Rocks:  6. New Red Sandstone
+Foetal:  4th month, that of a bird;
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  47 Cetacea
+Order:  (Bone of a marsupial animal)
+Rocks:  7. Oolite
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  48 Ruminantia
+Order:  (Bone of a marsupial animal)
+Rocks:  8. Cretaceous formation
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  49 Pachydermata
+Order:  Pachydermata (tapirs, horses, &c.)
+Rocks:  9. Lower Eocene
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  50 Edentata
+Order:  Pachydermata (tapirs, horses, &c.)
+Rocks:  9. Lower Eocene
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  51 Rodentia
+Order:  Rodentia (dormouse, squirrel, &c.)
+Rocks:  9. Lower Eocene
+Foetal:  5th month, that of a rodent;
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  52 Marsupialia
+Order:  Marsupialia (racoon, opossum, &c.)
+Rocks:  9. Lower Eocene
+Foetal:  6th month, that of a ruminant;
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  53 Amphibia
+Order:  Marsupialia (racoon, opossum, &c.)
+Rocks:  9. Lower Eocene
+Foetal:  6th month, that of a ruminant;
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  54 Digitigrada
+Order:  Digitigrada (genette, fox, wolf, &c.)
+Rocks:  10. Miocene
+Foetal:  7th month, that of a digitigrade animal;
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  55 Plantigrada
+Order:  Plantigrada (bear)
+Rocks:  10. Miocene
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  55 Plantigrada
+Order:  Cetacea (lamantins, seals, whales)
+Rocks:  10. Miocene
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  56 Insectivora
+Order:  Edentata (sloths, &c.)
+Rocks:  11. Pliocene
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  56 Insectivora
+Order:  Ruminantia (oxen, deer, &c.)
+Rocks:  11. Pliocene
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  57 Cheiroptera
+Rocks:  11. Pliocene
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  58 Quadrumana
+Order:  Quadrumana (monkeys)
+Rocks:  11. Pliocene
+Foetal:  8th month, that of the quadrumana;
+
+Scale:  VERTEBRATA Mammalia:  59 Bimana
+Order:  Bimana (man)
+Rocks:  12. Superficial deposits
+Foetal:  9th month, attains full human character;
+
+
+The reader has seen physical conditions several times referred to, as
+to be presumed to have in some way governed the progress of the
+development of the zoological circle.  This language may seem vague,
+and, it may be asked,--can any particular physical condition be
+adduced as likely to have affected development?  To this it may be
+answered, that air and light are probably amongst the principal
+agencies of this kind which operated in educing the various forms of
+being.  Light is found to be essential to the development of the
+individual embryo.  When tadpoles were placed in a perforated box,
+and that box sunk in the Seine, light being the only condition thus
+abstracted, they grew to a great size in their original form, but did
+not pass through the usual metamorphose which brings them to their
+mature state as frogs.  The proteus, an animal of the frog kind,
+inhabiting the subterraneous waters of Carniola, and which never
+acquires perfect lungs so as to become a land animal, is presumed to
+be an example of arrested development, from the same cause.  When, in
+connexion with these facts, we learn that human mothers living in
+dark and close cells under ground,--that is to say, with an
+inadequate provision of air and light,--are found to produce an
+unusual proportion of defective children, {229} we can appreciate the
+important effects of both these physical conditions in ordinary
+reproduction.  Now there is nothing to forbid the supposition that
+the earth has been at different stages of its career under different
+conditions, as to both air and light.  On the contrary, we have seen
+reason for supposing that the proportion of carbonic acid gas (the
+element fatal to animal life) was larger at the time of the
+carboniferous formation than it afterwards became.  We have also seen
+that astronomers regard the zodiacal light as a residuum of matter
+enveloping the sun, and which was probably at one time denser than it
+is now.  Here we have the indications of causes for a progress in the
+purification of the atmosphere and in the diffusion of light during
+the earlier ages of the earth's history, with which the progress of
+organic life may have been conformable.  An accession to the
+proportion of oxygen, and the effulgence of the central luminary, may
+have been the immediate prompting cause of all those advances from
+species to species which we have seen, upon other grounds, to be
+necessarily supposed as having taken place.  And causes of the like
+nature may well be supposed to operate on other spheres of being, as
+well as on this.  I do not indeed present these ideas as furnishing
+the true explanation of the progress of organic creation; they are
+merely thrown out as hints towards the formation of a just
+hypothesis, the completion of which is only to be looked for when
+some considerable advances shall have been made in the amount and
+character of our stock of knowledge.
+
+Early in this century, M. Lamarck, a naturalist of the highest
+character, suggested an hypothesis of organic progress which
+deservedly incurred much ridicule, although it contained a glimmer of
+the truth.  He surmised, and endeavoured, with a great deal of
+ingenuity, to prove, that one being advanced in the course of
+generations to another, in consequence merely of its experience of
+wants calling for the exercise of its faculties in a particular
+direction, by which exercise new developments of organs took place,
+ending in variations sufficient to constitute a new species.  Thus he
+thought that a bird would be driven by necessity to seek its food in
+the water, and that, in its efforts to swim, the outstretching of its
+claws would lead to the expansion of the intermediate membranes, and
+it would thus become web-footed.  Now it is possible that wants and
+the exercise of faculties have entered in some manner into the
+production of the phenomena which we have been considering; but
+certainly not in the way suggested by Lamarck, whose whole notion is
+obviously so inadequate to account for the rise of the organic
+kingdoms, that we only can place it with pity among the follies of
+the wise.  Had the laws of organic development been known in his
+time, his theory might have been of a more imposing kind.  It is upon
+these that the present hypothesis is mainly founded.  I take existing
+natural means, and shew them to have been capable of producing all
+the existing organisms, with the simple and easily conceivable aid of
+a higher generative law, which we perhaps still see operating upon a
+limited scale.  I also go beyond the French philosopher to a very
+important point, the original Divine conception of all the forms of
+being which these natural laws were only instruments in working out
+and realizing.  The actuality of such a conception I hold to be
+strikingly demonstrated by the discoveries of Macleay, Vigors, and
+Swainson, with respect to the affinities and analogies of animal (and
+by implication vegetable) organisms. {232}  Such a regularity in the
+STRUCTURE, as we may call it, of the CLASSIFICATION OF ANIMALS, as is
+shewn in their systems, is totally irreconcilable with the idea of
+form going on to form merely as needs and wishes in the animals
+themselves dictated.  Had such been the case, all would have been
+irregular, as things arbitrary necessarily are.  But, lo, the whole
+plan of being is as symmetrical as the plan of a house, or the laying
+out of an old-fashioned garden!  This must needs have been devised
+and arranged for beforehand.  And what a preconception or forethought
+have we here!  Let us only for a moment consider how various are the
+external physical conditions in which animals live--climate, soil,
+temperature, land, water, air--the peculiarities of food, and the
+various ways in which it is to be sought; the peculiar circumstances
+in which the business of reproduction and the care-taking of the
+young are to be attended to--all these required to be taken into
+account, and thousands of animals were to be formed suitable in
+organization and mental character for the concerns they were to have
+with these various conditions and circumstances--here a tooth fitted
+for crushing nuts; there a claw fitted to serve as a hook for
+suspension; here to repress teeth and develop a bony net-work
+instead; there to arrange for a bronchial apparatus, to last only for
+a 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 rigidly
+regular:  let us, I say, only consider these things, and we shall see
+that the decreeing of laws to bring the whole about was an act
+involving such a degree of wisdom and device as we only can
+attribute, adoringly, to the one Eternal and Unchangeable.  It may be
+asked, how does this reflection comport with that timid philosophy
+which would have us to draw back from the investigation of God's
+works, lest the knowledge of them should make us undervalue his
+greatness and forget his paternal character?  Does it not rather
+appear that our ideas of the Deity can only be worthy of him in the
+ratio in which we advance in a knowledge of his works and ways; and
+that the acquisition of this knowledge is consequently an available
+means of our growing in a genuine reverence for him!
+
+But the idea that any of the lower animals have been concerned in any
+way with the origin of man--is not this degrading?  Degrading is a
+term, expressive of a notion of the human mind, and the human mind is
+liable to prejudices which prevent its notions from being invariably
+correct.  Were we acquainted for the first time with the
+circumstances attending the production of an individual of our race,
+we might equally think them degrading, and be eager to deny them, and
+exclude them from the admitted truths of nature.  Knowing this fact
+familiarly and beyond contradiction, a healthy and natural mind finds
+no difficulty in regarding it complacently.  Creative Providence has
+been pleased to order that it should be so, and it must therefore be
+submitted to.  Now the idea as to the progress of organic creation,
+if we become satisfied of its truth, ought to be received precisely
+in this spirit.  It has pleased Providence to arrange that one
+species should give birth to another, until the second highest gave
+birth to man, who is the very highest:  be it so, it is our part to
+admire and to submit.  The very faintest notion of there being
+anything ridiculous or degrading in the theory--how absurd does it
+appear, when we remember that every individual amongst us actually
+passes through the characters of the insect, the fish, and reptile,
+(to speak nothing of others,) before he is permitted to breathe the
+breath of life!  But such notions are mere emanations of false pride
+and ignorant prejudice.  He who conceives them little reflects that
+they, in reality, involve the principle of a contempt for the works
+and ways of God.  For it may be asked, if He, as appears, has chosen
+to employ inferior organisms as a generative medium for the
+production of higher ones, even including ourselves, what right have
+we, his humble creatures, to find fault?  There is, also, in this
+prejudice, an element of unkindliness towards the lower animals,
+which is utterly out of place.  These creatures are all of them part
+products of the Almighty Conception, as well as ourselves.  All of
+them display wondrous evidences of his wisdom and benevolence.  All
+of them have had assigned to them by their Great Father a part in the
+drama of the organic world, as well as ourselves.  Why should they be
+held in such contempt?  Let us regard them in a proper spirit, as
+parts of the grand plan, instead of contemplating them in the light
+of frivolous prejudices, and we shall be altogether at a loss to see
+how there should be any degradation in the idea of our race having
+been genealogically connected with them.
+
+
+
+MACLEAY SYSTEM OF ANIMATED NATURE.  THIS SYSTEM CONSIDERED IN
+CONNEXION WITH THE PROGRESS OF ORGANIC CREATION, AND AS INDICATING
+THE NATURAL STATUS OF MAN.
+
+
+
+It is now high time to advert to the system formed by the animated
+tribes, both with a view to the possible illustration of the
+preceding argument, and for the light which it throws upon that
+general system of nature which it is the more comprehensive object of
+this book to ascertain.
+
+The vegetable and animal kingdoms are arranged upon a scale, starting
+from simply organized forms, and going on to the more complex, each
+of these forms being but slightly different from those next to it on
+both sides.  The lowest and most slightly developed forms in the two
+kingdoms are so closely connected, that it is impossible to say where
+vegetable ends and animal begins.  United at what may be called their
+bases, they start away in different directions, but not altogether to
+lose sight of each other.  On the contrary, they maintain a strict
+analogy throughout the whole of their subsequent courses, sub-kingdom
+for sub-kingdom, class for class; shewing a beautiful, though as yet
+obscure relation between the two grand forms of being, and
+consequently a unity in the laws which brought them both into
+existence.  So complete does this analogy appear, even in the present
+imperfect state of science, that I fully expect in a few years to see
+the animal and vegetable kingdoms duly ranked up against each other
+in a system of parallels, which will admit of our assigning to each
+species in the former the particular shrub or tree corresponding to
+it in the latter, all marked by unmistakable analogies of the most
+interesting kind.
+
+It is as yet but a few years since a system of subordinate analogies
+not less remarkable began to be speculated upon as within the range
+of the animal kingdom.  Probably it also exists in the vegetable
+kingdom; but to this point no direct attention has been given; so we
+are left to infer that such is the case from theoretical
+considerations only.  We are indebted for what we know of these
+beautiful analogies to three naturalists--Macleay, Vigors, and
+Swainson, whose labours tempt us to dismiss in a great measure the
+artificial classifications hitherto used, and make an entirely new
+conspectus of the animal kingdom, not to speak of the corresponding
+reform which will be required in our systems of botany also.
+
+The Macleay system, as it may be called in honour of its principal
+author, announces that, whether we take the whole animal kingdom, or
+any definite division of it, we shall find that we are examining a
+group of beings which is capable of being arranged along a series of
+close affinities, IN A CIRCULAR FORM,--that is to say, starting from
+any one portion of the group, when it is properly arranged, we can
+proceed from one to another by minute gradations, till at length,
+having run through the whole, we return to the point whence we set
+out.  All natural groups of animals are, therefore, in the language
+of Mr. Macleay, CIRCULAR; and the possibility of throwing any
+supposed group into a circular arrangement is held as a decisive test
+of its being a real or natural one.  It is of course to be understood
+that each circle is composed of a set of inferior circles:  for
+example, a set of TRIBE circles composes an ORDER; a set of ORDER
+circles, again, forms a CLASS; and so on.  Of each group, the
+component circles are INVARIABLY FIVE IN NUMBER:  thus, in the animal
+kingdom, there are five sub-kingdoms,--the vertebrata, annulosa,
+{239a} radiata, acrita, {239b} mollusca.  Take, again, one of these
+sub-kingdoms, the vertebrata, and we find it composed of five
+classes,--the mammalia, reptilia, pisces, amphibia, and aves, each of
+the other sub-kingdoms being similarly divisible.  Take the mammalia,
+and it is in like manner found to be composed of five orders,--the
+cheirotheria, {239c} ferae, cetacea, glires, ungulata.  Even in this
+numerical uniformity, which goes down to the lowest ramifications of
+the system, there would be something very remarkable, as arguing a
+definite and preconceived arrangement; but this is only the least
+curious part of the Macleay theory.
+
+We shall best understand the wonderfully complex system of analogies
+developed by that theory, if we start from the part of the kingdom in
+which 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 naturalists
+discerned distinct organic characters, of different degrees of
+perfectness, the first being the most perfect with regard to the
+general character of the class, and therefore the best representative
+of that class; whence it was called the TYPICAL order.  The second
+was found to be inferior, or rather to have a less perfect balance of
+qualities; hence it was designated the SUB-TYPICAL.  In this are
+comprehended the chief noxious and destructive animals of the circle
+to which it belongs.  The other three groups were called aberrant, as
+exhibiting a much wider departure from the typical standard, although
+the last of the three is observed to make a certain recovery, and
+join on to the typical group, so as to complete the circle.  The
+first of the aberrant groups (natatores) is remarkable for making the
+water the theatre of its existence, and the birds composing it are in
+general of comparatively large bulk.  The second (grallatores) are
+long-limbed and long-billed, that they may wade and pick up their
+subsistence in the shallows and marshes in which they chiefly live.
+The third (rasores) are distinguished by strong feet, for walking or
+running on the ground, and for scraping in it for their food; also by
+wings designed to scarcely raise them off the earth and, farther, by
+a general domesticity of character and usefulness to man.
+
+Now the most remarkable circumstance is, that these organic
+characters, habits, and moral properties, were found to be traceable
+more or less distinctly in the corresponding portions of every other
+group, even of those belonging to distant subdivisions of the animal
+kingdom, as, for instance, the insects.  The incessores (typical
+order of aves) being reduced to its constituent circles or tribes, it
+was found that these strictly represented the five orders.  In the
+conirostres are the perfections which belong to the incessores as an
+order, with the conspicuous external feature of a comparatively small
+notch in their bills; in the dentirostres, the notch is strong and
+toothlike, (hence the name of the tribe) assimilating them to the
+raptores; the fissirostres come into analogy with the natatores in
+the slight development of their feet and their great powers of
+flight; the tenuirostres have the small mouths and long soft bills of
+the grallatores.  Finally, the scansores resemble the rasores in
+their superior intelligence and docility, and in their having strong
+limbs and a bill entire at the tip.  This parity of qualities becomes
+clearer when placed in a tabular form:-
+
+
+Orders of Birds.      Characters.       Tribes of Incessores.
+
+Incessores --Most perfect of their circle;      Conirostres.
+              notch of bill small
+Raptores   --Notch of bill like a tooth         Dentirostres.
+Natatores  --Slightly developed feet;           Fissirostres.
+              strong flight
+Grallatores--Small mouths; long soft bills      Tenuirostres.
+Rasores    --Strong feet, short wings;          Scansores.
+              docile and domestic
+
+
+Some comprehensive terms are much wanted to describe these five
+characters, so curiously repeated throughout the whole of the animal,
+and probably also the vegetable kingdom.  Meanwhile, Mr. Swainson
+calls them typical, sub-typical, natatorial, suctorial, {242} and
+rasorial.  Some of his illustrations of the principle are exceedingly
+interesting.  He shews that the leading animal of a typical circle
+usually 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 in
+bulk, but always those which are the most powerfully armed, either
+for inflicting injury on their own class, for exciting terror,
+producing injury, or creating annoyance to man.  Their dispositions
+are often sanguinary, since the forms most conspicuous among them
+live by rapine, and subsist on the blood of other animals.  They are,
+in short, symbolically types of EVIL."  This symbolical character is
+most 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 remember
+that insects do produce enormous ravages and annoyance in many parts
+of the earth.  In the reptilia it is more distinct, since to this
+class belong the ophidia, (serpents,) an order peculiarly noxious.
+It comes to a kind of climax in the ferae and raptores, which fulfil
+the function of butchers among land animals.  As we descend through
+tribes, families, genera, species, it becomes fainter and fainter,
+but never altogether vanishes.  In the dentirostres, for instance, we
+have in a subdued form the hooked bill and predaceous character of
+the raptores; to this tribe belongs the family of the shrikes, so
+deadly to all the lesser field birds.  In the genus bos, we have, in
+the sub-typical group, the bison, "wild, revengeful, and shewing an
+innate detestation of man."  In equus, we have, in the same
+situation, the zebra, which actually shews the stripes of the tiger,
+and is as remarkable for its wildness as its congeners, the horse and
+ass, are for their docility and usefulness.  To quote again from Mr.
+Swainson, "the singular threatening aspect which the caterpillars of
+the sphinx moth assume on being disturbed, is a remarkable
+modification of the terrific or evil nature which is impressed in one
+form or another, palpable or remote, upon all sub-typical groups; for
+this division of the lepidopterous order is precisely of this
+denomination.  In the pre-eminent type of this order of insects, the
+butterflies, (papilionides,) our associations little prepare us for
+expecting any trace of the evil principle; but here, too, there is a
+sub-typical division.  These," says our naturalist, "are
+distinguished by their caterpillars being armed with formidable
+spines or prickles, which in general are possessed of some highly
+acrimonious or poisonous quality, capable of injuring those who touch
+them.  It is only," continues Mr. Swainson, "when extensive
+researches bring to light a uniformity of results, that we can
+venture to believe they are so universal as to deserve being ranked
+as primary laws.  Thus, when a celebrated entomologist denounced as
+impure the black and lurid beetles forming the saprophagous
+petalocera of Mr. Macleay, a tribe living only upon putrid vegetable
+matter, and hiding themselves in their disgusting food, or in dark
+hollows of the earth, neither of these celebrated men suspected the
+absolute fact, elicited from our analogies of this group, that this
+very tribe constituted the sub-typical group of one of the primary
+divisions of coleopterous insects:  nor had they any suspicion that,
+by the filthy habits and repulsive forms of these beetles, nature had
+intended that they should be types or emblems of hundreds of other
+groups, distinguished by peculiarities equally indicative of evil.
+On the other hand, the thalerophagous petalocera, forming the typical
+group of the same division, present us with all the perfections and
+habits belonging to their kind.  These families of beetles live only
+upon fresh vegetables; they are diurnal, and sport in the glare of
+day, pure in their food, elegant in their shapes, and beautiful in
+their colours." {246}
+
+The third type, (first of the three aberrant,) called by Mr.
+Swainson, the natatorial, or aquatic, are chiefly remarkable for
+their bulk, the disproportionate size of the head, and the absence,
+or slight development of the feet.  They partake of the predaceous
+and destructive character of the adjoining sub-typical group, and the
+means of their predacity are generally found in the mouth alone.  In
+the primary division of the animal kingdom, we find the type in the
+radiata, not one of which lives out of water.  In the vertebrata, it
+is 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 the
+aves, as we have seen, the type is presented in the natatores, whose
+name has been adopted as an appropriate term for all the
+corresponding groups.  An enumeration of some other examples of the
+natatorial type, as the cephalopoda (instanced in the cuttle-fish) in
+the 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 general
+character, and its pervasion of the whole animal world, forcibly
+before the mind of the reader.
+
+The next type is that of meanest and most imperfect organization, the
+lower termination of all groups, as the typical is the upper.  It is
+called by Mr. Swainson the suctorial, from a very generally prevalent
+peculiarity, that of drawing sustenance by suction.  The acrita, or
+polypes, 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 and
+tenuirostres, among birds; the coleoptera, (bug, louse, flea, &c.)
+among insects; the gastrobranchus, among fishes; are examples which
+will illustrate the special characters of this type.  These are
+smallness, particularly in the head and mouth, feebleness, and want
+of offensive protection, defect of organs of mastication,
+considerable powers of swift movement, and (often) a parasitic mode
+of living; while of negative qualities, there are, besides,
+indisposition to domestication, and an unsuitableness to serve as
+human food.
+
+The rasorial type comprehends most of the animals which become
+domesticated and useful to man, as, first, the fowls which give a
+name 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 and
+feet for locomotion on land, (to which the rasorial type is
+confined,) abundant tail and ornaments for the head, whether in the
+form of tufts, crests, horns, or bony excrescences.  In the animal
+kingdom, the mollusca are the rasorial type, which, however, only
+shews itself there in their soft and sluggish character, and their
+being very generally edible.  In the ptilota, or winged insects, the
+hymenopterous are the rasorial type, and it is not therefore
+surprising to find amongst them the ants and bees, "the most social,
+intelligent, and in the latter case, most useful to man, of all the
+annulose animals."
+
+As yet the speculations on representation are imperfect, in
+consequence of the novelty of the doctrine, and the defective state
+of our knowledge of animated nature.  It has, however, been so fully
+proved in the aves, and traced so clearly in other parts of the
+animal kingdom, and as a general feature of that part of nature, that
+hardly a doubt can exist of its being universally applicable.  Even
+in the lowly forms of the acrita, (polypes,) the suctorial type of
+the animal kingdom, representation has been discerned, and with some
+remarkable results as to the history of our world.  The acrita were
+the first forms of animal life upon earth, the starting point of that
+great branch of organization.  Now, this sub-kingdom consists, like
+the rest, of five groups, (classes,) and these are respectively
+representations of the acrita itself, and the other four sub-
+kingdoms, which had not come into existence when the acrita were
+formed.  The polypi vaginati, in the crustaceous covering of the
+living mass, and their more or less articulated structure, represent
+the annulosa.  In the radiated forms of the rotifera, and the simple
+structure of the polypi rudes, we are reminded of the radiata.  The
+mollusca are typified in the soft, mucous, sluggish intestina.  And,
+finally, in the fleshy living mass which surrounds the bony and
+hollow axis of the polypi natantes, we have a sketch of the
+vertebrata.  The acrita thus appear as a prophecy of the higher
+events of animal development.  They shew that the nobler orders of
+being, including man himself, were contemplated from the first, and
+came into existence by virtue of a law, the operation of which had
+commenced ages before their forms were realized.
+
+The system of representation is therefore to be regarded as A
+POWERFUL ADDITIONAL PROOF OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF ORGANIC PROGRESS BY
+VIRTUE OF LAW.  It establishes the unity of animated nature and the
+definite character of its entire constitution.  It enables us to see
+how, under the flowing robes of nature, where all looks arbitrary and
+accidental, there is an artificiality of the most rigid kind.  The
+natural, we now perceive, sinks into and merges in a Higher
+Artificial.  To adopt a comparison more apt than dignified, we may be
+said to be placed here as insects are in a garden of the old style.
+Our first unassisted view is limited, and we perceive only the
+irregularities of the minute surface, and single shrubs which appear
+arbitrarily scattered.  But our view at length extending and becoming
+more comprehensive, we begin to see parterres balancing each other,
+trees, statues, and arbours placed symmetrically, and that the whole
+is an assemblage of parts mutually reflective.  It can scarcely be
+necessary to point to the inference hence arising with regard to the
+origination of nature in some Power, of which man's mind is a faint
+and humble representation.  The insects of the garden, supposing them
+to be invested with reasoning power, and aware how artificial are
+their own works, might of course very reasonably conclude that, being
+in its totality an artificial object, the garden was the work of some
+maker or artificer.  And so also must we conclude, when we attain a
+knowledge of the artificiality which is at the basis of nature, that
+nature is wholly the production of a Being resembling, but infinitely
+greater than ourselves.
+
+Organic beings are, then, bound together in development, and in a
+system of both affinities and analogies.  Now, it will be asked, does
+this agree with what we know of the geographical distribution of
+organic beings, and of the history of organic progress as delineated
+by geology?  Let us first advert to the geographical question.
+
+Plants, as is well known, require various kinds of soil, forms of
+geographical surface, climate, and other conditions, for their
+existence.  And it is everywhere found that, however isolated a
+particular spot may be with regard to these conditions,--as a
+mountain top in a torrid country, the marsh round a salt spring far
+inland, or an island placed far apart in the ocean,--appropriate
+plants have there taken up their abode.  But the torrid zone divides
+the two temperate regions from each other by the space of more than
+forty-six degrees, and the torrid and temperate zones together form a
+much broader line of division between the two arctic regions.  The
+Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Persian Gulf, also divide the
+various portions of continent in the torrid and temperate zones from
+each other.  Australia is also divided by a broad sea from the
+continent of Asia.  Thus there are various portions of the earth
+separated from each other in such a way as to preclude anything like
+a general communication of the seeds of their respective plants
+towards each other.  Hence arises an interesting question--Are the
+plants of the various isolated regions which enjoy a parity of
+climate and other conditions, identical or the reverse?  The answer
+is--that in such regions the vegetation bears a general resemblance,
+but the SPECIES are nearly all different, and there is even, in a
+considerable measure, a diversity of families.
+
+The general facts have been thus stated:  in the arctic and antarctic
+regions, and in those parts of lower latitudes, which, from their
+elevation, possess the same cold climate, there is always a similar
+or analogous vegetation, but few species are common to the various
+situations.  In like manner, the intertropical vegetation of Asia,
+Africa, and America, are specifically different, though generally
+similar.  The southern region of America is equally diverse from that
+of Africa, a country similar in clime, but separated by a vast extent
+of ocean.  The vegetation of Australia, another region similarly
+placed in respect of clime, is even more peculiar.  These facts are
+the more remarkable when we discover that, in most instances, the
+plants of one region have thriven when transplanted to another of
+parallel clime.  This would shew that parity of conditions does not
+lead to a parity of productions so exact as to include identity of
+species, or even genera.  Besides the various isolated regions here
+enumerated, there are some others indicated by naturalists as
+exhibiting a vegetation equally peculiar.  Some of these are isolated
+by mountains, or the interposition of sandy wastes.  For example, the
+temperate region of the elder continent is divided about the centre
+of Asia, and the east of that line is different from the west.  So
+also is the same region divided in North America by the Rocky
+Mountains.  Abyssinia and Nubia constitute another distinct botanical
+region.  De Candolle enumerates in all twenty well-marked portions of
+the earth's surface which are peculiar with respect to vegetation; a
+number which would be greatly increased if remote islands and
+isolated 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 forms
+of being) is universal, and that several tribes, as the bear and dog,
+appear to have passed by the land connexion from the arctic regions
+of the eastern to those of the western hemisphere.  "With these
+exceptions," says Dr. Prichard, "and without any others, as far as
+zoological researches have yet gone, it may be asserted that no
+individual species are common to distant regions.  In parallel
+climates, analogous species replace each other; sometimes, but not
+frequently, the same genus is found in two separate continents; but
+the species which are natives of one region are not identical with
+corresponding races indigenous in the opposite hemisphere.
+
+"A similar result arises when we compare the three great
+intertropical regions, as well as the extreme spaces of the three
+great continents, which advance into the temperate climates of the
+southern hemisphere.
+
+"Thus, the tribes of simiae, (monkeys,) of the dog and cat kinds, of
+pachyderms, including elephants, tapirs, rhinoceroses, hogs, of bats,
+of saurian and ophidian reptiles, as well of birds and other terrene
+animals, are all different in the three great continents.  In the
+lower departments of the mammiferous family, we find that the bruta,
+or edendata, (sloths, armadillos, &c.,) of Africa, are differently
+organized from those of America, and these again from the tribes
+found in the Malayan archipelago and Terra Australis." {255}
+
+It does not appear that the diversity between the similar regions of
+Africa, Asia, and America, is occasioned in all instances by any
+disqualification of these countries to support precisely the same
+genera or species.  The ox, horse, goat, &c., of the elder continent
+have thriven and extended themselves in the new, and many of the
+indigenous tribes of America would no doubt flourish in corresponding
+climates in Europe, Asia, and Africa.  It has, however, been remarked
+by naturalists unacquainted with the Macleay system, that the larger
+and more powerful animals of their respective orders belong to the
+elder continent, and that thus the animals of America, unlike the
+features of inanimate nature, appear to be upon a small scale.  The
+swiftest and most agile animals, and a large proportion of those most
+useful to man, are also natives of the elder continent.  On the other
+hand, the bulk of the edentata, a group remarkable for defects and
+meanness of organization, are American.  The zoology of America may
+be said, upon the whole, to recede from that of Asia, "and perhaps in
+a greater degree," adds Dr. Prichard, "from that of Africa."  A much
+greater recession is, however, observed in both the botany and
+zoology of Australia.
+
+There "we do not find, in the great masses of vegetation, either the
+majesty of the virgin forests of America, or the variety and elegance
+of those of Asia, or the delicacy and freshness of the woods of our
+temperate countries of Europe.  The vegetation is generally gloomy
+and sad; it has the aspect of our evergreens or heaths; the plants
+are for the most part woody; the leaves of nearly all the plants are
+linear, lanceolated, small, coriaceous, and spinescent.  The grasses,
+which elsewhere are generally soft and flexible, participate in the
+stiffness of the other vegetables.  The greater part of the plants of
+New Holland belong to new genera; and those included in the genera
+already known are of new species.  The natural families which prevail
+are those of the heaths, the proteae, compositae, leguminosae, and
+myrthoideae; the larger trees all belong to the last family." {257}
+
+The prevalent animals of Australia are not less peculiar.  It is well
+known that none above the marsupialia, or pouched animals, are native
+to it.  The most conspicuous are these marsupials, which exist in
+great varieties here, though unknown in the elder continent, and only
+found in a few mean forms in America.  Next to them are the
+monotremata, which are entirely peculiar to this portion of the
+earth.  Now these are animals at the bottom of the mammiferous class,
+adjoining to that of birds, of whose character and organization the
+monotremata largely partake, the ornithorynchus presenting the bill
+and feet of a duck, producing its young in eggs, and having, like
+birds, a clavicle between the two shoulders.  The birds of Australia
+vary in structure and plumage, but all have some singularity about
+them--the swan, for instance, is black.  The country abounds in
+reptiles, and the prevalent fishes are of the early kinds, having a
+cartilaginous structure.
+
+Altogether, the plants and animals of this minor continent convey the
+impression of an early system of things, such as might be displayed
+in other parts of the earth about the time of the oolite.  In
+connexion with this circumstance, it is a fact of some importance,
+that the geognostic character of Australia, its vast arid plains, its
+little diversified surface and consequent paucity of streams, and the
+very slight development of volcanic rock on its surface, seem to
+indicate a system of physical conditions, such as we may suppose to
+have existed elsewhere in the oolitic era:  perhaps we see the chalk
+formation preparing there in the vast coral beds frontiering the
+coast.  Australia thus appears as a portion of the earth which has,
+from some unknown causes, been belated in its physical and organic
+development.  And certainly the greater part of its surface is not
+fitted to be an advantageous place of residence for beings above the
+marsupialia, and judging from analogy, it may yet be subjected to a
+series of changes in the highest degree inconvenient to any human
+beings 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 organic
+production throughout the earth.  (2.) These have everywhere advanced
+in accordance with the local conditions of climate &c., as far as at
+least the class and order are concerned, a diversity taking place in
+the lower gradations.  No physical or geographical reason appearing
+for this diversity, we are led to infer that, (3,) it is the result
+of minute and inappreciable causes giving the law of organic
+development a particular direction in the lower subdivisions of the
+two kingdoms.  (4.) Development has not gone on to equal results in
+the various continents, being most advanced in the eastern continent,
+next in the western, and least in Australia, this inequality being
+perhaps the result of the comparative antiquity of the various
+regions, geologically and geographically.
+
+It must at the same time be admitted that the line of organic
+development has nowhere required for its advance the whole of the
+families comprehended in the two kingdoms, seeing that some of these
+are confined to one continent, and some to another, without a
+conceivable possibility of one having been connected with the other
+in the way of ancestry.  The two great families of quadrumana,
+cebidae and simiadae, are a noted instance, the one being exclusively
+American, while the other belongs entirely to the old world.  There
+are many other cases in which the full circular group can only be
+completed by taking subdivisions from various continents.  This would
+seem to imply that, while the entire system is so remarkable for its
+unity, it has nevertheless been produced in lines geographically
+detached, these lines perhaps consisting of particular typical groups
+placed in an independent succession, or of two or more of these
+groups.  And for this idea there is, even in the present imperfect
+state of our knowledge of animated nature, some countenance in
+ascertained facts, the birds of Australia, for example, being chiefly
+of the suctorial type, while it may be presumed that the observation
+as to the predominance of the useful animals in the Old World, is not
+much different from saying that the rasorial type is there peculiarly
+abundant.  It does not appear that the idea of independent lines,
+consisting of particular types, or sets of types, is necessarily
+inconsistent with the general hypothesis, as nothing yet ascertained
+of the Macleay system forbids their having an independent set of
+affinities.  On this subject, however, there is as yet much
+obscurity, and it must be left to future inquirers to clear it up.
+
+We must now call to mind that the geographical distribution of plants
+and animals was very different in the geological ages from what it is
+now.  Down to a time not long antecedent to man, the same vegetation
+overspread every clime, and a similar uniformity marked the zoology.
+This is conceived by M. Brogniart, with great plausibility, to have
+been the result of a uniformity of climate, produced by the as yet
+unexhausted effect of the internal heat of the earth upon its
+surface; whereas climate has since depended chiefly on external
+sources of heat, as modified by the various meteorological
+influences.  However the early uniform climate was produced, certain
+it is that, from about the close of the geological epoch, plants and
+animals have been dispersed over the globe with a regard to their
+particular characters, and specimens of both are found so isolated in
+particular situations, as utterly to exclude the idea that they came
+thither from any common centre.  It may be asked,--Considering that,
+in the geological epoch, species are not limited to particular
+regions, and that since the close of that epoch, they are very
+peculiarly limited, are we to presume the present organisms of the
+world to have been created ab initio after that time?  To this it may
+be answered,--Not necessarily, as it so happens that animals begin to
+be much varied, or to appear in a considerable variety of species,
+towards the close of the geological history.  It may have been that
+the multitudes of locally peculiar species only came into being after
+the uniform climate had passed away.  It may have only been when a
+varied climate arose, that the originally few species branched off
+into the present extensive variety.
+
+A question of a very interesting kind will now probably arise in the
+reader's mind--WHAT PLACE OR STATUS IS ASSIGNED TO MAN IN THE NEW
+NATURAL SYSTEM.  Before going into this inquiry, it is necessary to
+advert to several particulars of the natural system not yet noticed.
+
+It is necessary, in particular, to ascertain the grades which exist
+in the classification of animals.  In the line of the aves, Mr.
+Swainson finds these to be nine, the species pica, for example, being
+thus 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 intermarriage
+or breeding is usually considered as natural to animals, and where a
+resemblance of offspring to parents is generally persevered in.  The
+dog, for instance, is a species, because all dogs can breed together,
+and the progeny partakes of the appearances of the parents.  The
+human race is held as a species, primarily for the same reasons.
+Species, however, is liable to another subdivision, which naturalists
+call variety; and variety appears to be subject to exactly the same
+system of REPRESENTATION which have been traced in species and higher
+denominations.  In canis, for instance, the bull-dog and mastiff
+represent the ferocious sub-typical group; the waterdog is
+natatorial; we see the speed and length of muzzle of the suctorial
+group in the greyhound; and the bushy tail and gentle and serviceable
+character of the rasorial in the shepherd's dog and spaniel.  Even
+the striped and spotted skin of the tiger and panther is reproduced
+in the more ferocious kind of dogs--an indication of a fundamental
+connexion between physical and mental qualities which we have also
+seen in the zebra, and which is likewise displayed in the
+predominance of a yellow colour in the vultures and owls in common
+with the lion and his congeners.
+
+It is by no means clearly made out that this system of nine
+gradations over and above that of variety applies in all departments
+of nature.  On the contrary, even Mr. Swainson gives series in which
+several of them are omitted.  It may be that, in some departments of
+nature, variation from the class or order has gone down into fewer
+shades than in others; or it may be, that many of the variations have
+not survived till our era, or have not been as yet detected by
+naturalists; in either of which cases there may be a necessity for
+shortening the series by the omission of one or two grades, as for
+instance TRIBE or SUB-FAMILY.  This, however, is much to be
+regretted, as it introduces an irregularity into the natural system,
+and consequently throws a difficulty and doubt in the way of our
+investigating it.  With these preliminary remarks, I shall proceed to
+inquire 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 the
+characters on which these divisions are founded.  When we descend,
+however, below the CLASS, we find no settled views on the subject
+amongst naturalists.  Mr. Swainson, who alone has given a review of
+the animal kingdom on the Macleay system, unfortunately writes on
+this subject in a manner which excites a suspicion as to his
+judgment.  His arrangement of the first or typical order of the
+mammalia is therefore to be received with great hesitation.  It is as
+follows:-
+
+
+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 following
+arrangement:-
+
+
+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 thence
+that 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 he
+were, there ought to be other animals on each hand having affinity to
+him, whereas there are none, the resemblance of the orangs being one
+of mere analogy.  Mr. Swainson therefore considers our race as
+standing apart, and forming a link between the unintelligent order of
+beings and the angels!  And this in spite of the glaring fact that,
+in our teeth, hands, and other features grounded on by naturalists as
+characteristic, we do not differ more from the simiadae than the bats
+do from the lemurs--in spite also of that resemblance of analogy to
+the orangs which he himself admits, and which, at the least, must be
+held to imply a certain relation.  He also overlooks that, though
+there 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 actually
+leaves a place entirely blank, or only to be filled up, as he
+suggests, by mermen! {266}  Another argument in his arrangement is,
+that it leaves the grades of classification very much abridged, there
+being at the most seven instead of nine.  But serious argument on a
+theory so preposterous may be considered as nearly thrown away.  I
+shall therefore at once proceed to suggest a new arrangement of this
+portion of the animal kingdom, in which man is allowed the place to
+which he is zoologically entitled.
+
+I propose that the typical order of the mammalia should be designated
+cheirotheria, from the sole character which is universal amongst
+them, their possessing hands, and with a regard to that pre-eminent
+qualification for grasping which has been ascribed to them--an
+analogy to the perching habit of the typical order of birds, which is
+worthy of particular notice.  The tribes of the cheirotheria I
+arrange 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 only
+of this order, but of the whole animal world.  The double affinity
+which is requisite is obtained, for here he has the simiadae on one
+hand, and the cebidae on the other.  The five tribes of the order are
+completed, the vespertilionidae being shifted (provisionally) into
+the natatorial place, for which their appropriateness is so far
+evidenced by the aquatic habits of several of the tribe, and the
+lemuridae into the suctorial, to which their length of muzzle and
+remarkable saltatory power are highly suitable.  At the same time,
+the simiadae are degraded from the typical place, to which they have
+no sort of pretension, and placed where their mean and mischievous
+character seem to require; the cebidae again being assigned that
+situation which their comparatively inoffensive dispositions, their
+arboreal 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 precisely
+what might be expected.  In order to understand its full value, it is
+necessary to observe how the various type peculiarities operate in
+fixing the character of the animals ranked in them.  It is easy to
+conceive that they must be, in some instances, much mixed up with
+each other, and consequently obscured.  If an animal, for example, is
+the suctorial member of a circle of species, forming the natatorial
+type of genera, forming a family or sub-family which in its turn is
+rasorial, its qualities must evidently be greatly mingled and ill to
+define.  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 again
+the rapacious or sub-typical group of its order, we may expect to
+find the qualities of that group exalted or intensified, and
+accordingly made the more conspicuous.  Such is really the case with
+the vultures, in the rapacious birds, a family remarkable above all
+of their order for their carnivorous and foul habits.  So, also, if
+we take the typical group of the birds, the incessores or perchers,
+and look in it for its typical group, the conirostres, and seek there
+again for the typical family of that group, the corvidae, we may
+expect to find a very marked superiority in organization and
+character.  Such is really the case.  "The crow," says Mr. Swainson,
+"unites in itself a greater number of properties than are to be found
+individually in any other genus of birds; as if in fact it had taken
+from all the other orders a portion of their peculiar qualities, for
+the purpose of exhibiting in what manner they could be combined.
+From the rapacious birds this "type of types," as the crow has been
+justly called, takes the power of soaring in the air, and of seizing
+upon living birds, like the hawks, while its habit of devouring
+putrid substances, and picking out the eyes of young animals, is
+borrowed from the vultures.  From the scansorial or climbing order it
+takes the faculty of picking the ground, and discovering its food
+when hidden from the eye, while the parrot family gives it the taste
+for 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 the
+perfection of the crow by giving it great powers of flight, and
+perfect facility in walking, such being among the chief attributes of
+the suctorial order.  Lastly, the aquatic birds contribute their
+portion, by giving this terrestrial bird the power of feeding not
+only on fish, which are their peculiar food, but actually of
+occasionally catching it. {270}  In this wonderful manner do we find
+the crow partially invested with the united properties of all other
+birds, while in its own order, that of the incessores or perchers, it
+stands the pre-eminent type.  We cannot also fail to regard it as a
+remarkable proof of the superior organization and character of the
+corvidae, that they are adapted for all climates, and accordingly
+found 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 of
+man, evidently does so in a remarkable degree.  It prepares us to
+expect in the place among the mammalia, corresponding to that of the
+corvidae in the aves, a being or set of beings possessing a
+remarkable concentration of qualities from all the other groups of
+their order, but in general character as far above the corvidae as a
+typical group is above an aberrant one, the mammalia above the aves.
+Can any of the simiadae pretend to such a place, narrowly and
+imperfectly endowed as these creatures are--a mean reflection
+apparently of something higher?  Assuredly not, and in this
+consideration alone Mr. Swainson's arrangement must fall to the
+ground.  To fill worthily so lofty a station in the animated families
+man alone is competent.  In him only is to be found that
+concentration of qualities from all the other groups of his order
+which has been described as marking the corvidae.  That grasping
+power, which has been selected as the leading physical quality of his
+order, is nowhere so beautifully or so powerfully developed as in his
+hand.  The intelligence and teachableness of the simiadae rise to a
+climax in his pre-eminent mental nature.  His sub-analogy to the
+ferae is marked by his canine teeth, and the universality of his
+rapacity, for where is the department of animated nature which he
+does not without scruple sacrifice to his convenience?  With
+sanguinary, he has also gentle and domesticable dispositions, thus
+reflecting the characters of the ungulata, (the rasorial type of the
+class,) to which we perhaps see a further analogy in the use which he
+makes of the surface of the earth as a source of food.  To the
+aquatic type his love of maritime adventure very readily assimilates
+him; and how far the suctorial is represented in his nature it is
+hardly necessary to say.  As the corvidae, too, are found in every
+part of the earth--almost the only one of the inferior animals which
+has been acknowledged as universal--so do we find man.  He thrives in
+all climates, and with regard to style of living, can adapt himself
+to an infinitely greater diversity of circumstances than any other
+animated creature.
+
+Man, then, considered zoologically, and without regard to the
+distinct character assigned to him by theology, simply takes his
+place as the type of all types of the animal kingdom, the true and
+unmistakable head of animated nature upon this earth.  It will
+readily occur that some more particular investigations into the ranks
+of types might throw additional light on man's status, and perhaps
+his nature; and such light we may hope to obtain when the philosophy
+of zoology shall have been studied as it deserves.  Perhaps some such
+diagram as the one given on the next page will be found to be an
+approximation to the expression of the merely natural or secular
+grade 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 comparative
+height and grade of organization of both the five sub-kingdoms, and
+the five classes of each of these; 5 being the vertebrata in the one
+case, and the mammalia in the other.  The difference between the
+height of the line 1 and the line 5 gives an idea of the difference
+of being the head type of the aves, (corvidae,) and the head type of
+the mammalia, (bimana;) a. b. c. d.  5, again, represent the five
+groups of the first order of the mammalia; a, being the organic
+structure of the highest simia, and 5, that of man.  A set of tangent
+lines of this kind may yet prove one of the most satisfactory means
+of ascertaining the height and breadth of the psychology of our
+species.
+
+It may be asked,--Is the existing human race the only species
+designed to occupy the grade to which it is here referred?  Such a
+question evidently ought not to be answered rashly; and I shall
+therefore confine myself to the admission that, judging by analogy,
+we might expect to see several varieties of the being, homo.  There
+is no other family approaching to this in importance, which presents
+but one species.  The corvidae, our parallel in aves, consist of
+several distinct genera and sub-genera.  It is startling to find such
+an appearance of imperfection in the circle to which man belongs, and
+the ideas which rise in consequence are not less startling.  Is our
+race but the initial of the grand crowning type?  Are there yet to be
+species superior to us in organization, purer in feeling, more
+powerful in device and act, and who shall take a rule over us!  There
+is in this nothing improbable on other grounds.  The present race,
+rude and impulsive as it is, is perhaps the best adapted to the
+present state of things in the world; but the external world goes
+through slow and gradual changes, which may leave it in time a much
+serener field of existence.  There may then be occasion for a nobler
+type of humanity, which shall complete the zoological circle on this
+planet, and realize some of the dreams of the purest spirits of the
+present race.
+
+
+
+EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND.
+
+
+
+The human race is known to consist of numerous nations, displaying
+considerable differences of external form and colour, and speaking in
+general different languages.  This has been the case since the
+commencement of written record.  It is also ascertained that the
+external peculiarities of particular nations do not rapidly change.
+There is rather a tendency to a persistency of type in all lines of
+descent, insomuch that a subordinate admixture of various type is
+usually obliterated in a few generations.  Numerous as the varieties
+are, they have all been found classifiable under five leading ones:-
+1.  The Caucasian or Indo-European, which extends from India into
+Europe and Northern Africa; 2.  The Mongolian, which occupies
+Northern and Eastern Asia; 3.  The Malayan, which extends from the
+Ultra-Gangetic Peninsula into the numerous islands of the South Sea
+and Pacific; 4.  The Negro, chiefly confined to Africa; 5.  The
+aboriginal American.  Each of these is distinguished by certain
+general features of so marked a kind, as to give rise to a
+supposition that they have had distinct or independent origins.  Of
+these peculiarities, colour is the most conspicuous:  the Caucasians
+are generally white, the Mongolians yellow, the Negroes black, and
+the Americans red.  The opposition of two of these in particular,
+white and black, is so striking, that of them, at least, it seems
+almost necessary to suppose separate origins.  Of late years,
+however, the whole of this question has been subjected to a rigorous
+investigation, and it has been successfully shewn that the human race
+might have had one origin, for anything that can be inferred from
+external peculiarities.
+
+It appears from this inquiry, {278} that colour and other
+physiological characters are of a more superficial and accidental
+nature than was at one time supposed.  One fact is at the very first
+extremely startling, that there are nations, such as the inhabitants
+of Hindostan, known to be one in descent, which nevertheless contain
+groups of people of almost all shades of colour, and likewise
+discrepant in other of those important features on which much stress
+has 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 as
+those of the best European nations.  While we have no proof of Negro
+races becoming white in the course of generations, the converse may
+be held as established, for there are Arab and Jewish families of
+ancient settlement in Northern Africa, who have become as black as
+the other inhabitants.  There are also facts which seem to shew the
+possibility of a natural transition by generation from the black to
+the 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 perfectly
+black children being born to an Arab couple, in whose ancestry no
+such blood had intermingled.  This occurred in the valley of the
+Jordan, where it is remarkable that the Arab population in general
+have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair, than any other
+tribes of the same nation. {280}
+
+The style of living is ascertained to have a powerful effect in
+modifying the human figure in the course of generations, and this
+even in its osseous structure.  About two hundred years ago, a number
+of people were driven by a barbarous policy from the counties of
+Antrim and Down, in Ireland, towards the sea-coast, where they have
+ever since been settled, but in unusually miserable circumstances,
+even for Ireland; and the consequence is, that they exhibit peculiar
+features of the most repulsive kind, projecting jaws with large open
+mouths, depressed noses, high cheek bones, and bow legs, together
+with an extremely diminutive stature.  These, with an abnormal
+slenderness of the limbs, are the outward marks of a low and
+barbarous condition all over the world; it is particularly seen in
+the Australian aborigines.  On the other hand, the beauty of the
+higher ranks in England is very remarkable, being, in the main, as
+clearly a result of good external conditions.  "Coarse, unwholesome,
+and ill-prepared food," says Buffon, "makes the human race
+degenerate.  All those people who live miserably are ugly and ill-
+made.  Even in France, the country people are not so beautiful as
+those who live in towns; and I have often remarked that in those
+villages 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, cleanly
+habits, comfortable clothing, and being exposed to the open air only
+as much as health requires, cooperate with food in increasing the
+elegance 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, insomuch
+that a single individual thrown into a family different from himself
+is absorbed in it, and all trace of him lost after a few generations.
+But while there is such a persistency to ordinary observation, it
+would also appear that nature has a power of producing new varieties,
+though this is only done rarely.  Such novelties of type abound in
+the vegetable world, are seen more rarely in the animal circle, and
+perhaps are least frequent of occurrence in our own race.  There is a
+noted instance in the production, on a New England farm, of a variety
+of sheep with unusually short legs, which was kept up by breeding, on
+account of the convenience in that country of having sheep which are
+unable to jump over low fences.  The starting and main taming a BREED
+of 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 place
+between individuals similarly characterized, in order to establish
+it.  Early in the last century, a man named Lambert, was born in
+Suffolk, with semi-horny excrescences of about half an inch long,
+thickly growing all over his body.  The peculiarity was transmitted
+to his children, and was last heard of in a third generation.  The
+peculiarity of six fingers on the hand and six toes on the feet,
+appears in like manner in families which have no record or tradition
+of such a peculiarity having affected them at any former period, and
+it is then sometimes seen to descend through several generations.  It
+was Mr. Lawrence's opinion, that a pair, in which both parties were
+so distinguished, might be the progenitors of a new variety of the
+race who would be thus marked in all future time.  It is not easy to
+surmise the causes which operate in producing such varieties.
+Perhaps they are simply types in nature, POSSIBLE TO BE REALIZED
+UNDER CERTAIN APPROPRIATE CONDITIONS, but which conditions are such
+as altogether to elude notice.  I might cite as examples of such
+possible types, the rise of whites amongst the Negroes, the
+occurrence of the family of black children in the valley of the
+Jordan, and the comparatively frequent birth of red-haired children
+amongst not only the Mongolian and Malayan families, but amongst the
+Negroes.  We are ignorant of the laws of variety-production; but we
+see it going on as a principle in nature, and it is obviously
+favourable to the supposition that all the great families of men are
+of one stock.
+
+The tendency of the modern study of the languages of nations is to
+the same point.  The last fifty years have seen this study elevated
+to the character of a science, and the light which it throws upon the
+history of mankind is of a most remarkable nature.
+
+Following a natural analogy, philologists have thrown the earth's
+languages into a kind of classification:  a number bearing a
+considerable resemblance to each other, and in general geographically
+near, are styled a GROUP or SUB-FAMILY; several groups, again, are
+associated as a FAMILY, with regard to more general features of
+resemblance.  Six families are spoken of.
+
+The Indo-European family nearly coincides in geographical limits with
+those which have been assigned to that variety of mankind which
+generally shews a fair complexion, called the Caucasian variety.  It
+may be said to commence in India, and thence to stretch through
+Persia into Europe, the whole of which it occupies, excepting
+Hungary, 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 includes
+the 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 our
+own Anglo-Saxon.  I give the name of Pelasgian to the group scattered
+along 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; but
+these have since been driven before superior nations into a few
+corners, and are now only to be found in the highlands of Scotland,
+Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and certain parts of France.  The Gaelic of
+Scotland, Erse of Ireland, and the Welsh, are the only living
+branches of this sub-family of languages.
+
+The resemblances amongst languages are of two kinds,--identity of
+words, and identity of grammatical forms; the latter being now
+generally considered as the most important towards the argument.
+When we inquire into the first kind of affinity among the languages
+of the Indo-European family, we are surprised at the great number of
+common terms which exist amongst them, and these referring to such
+primary ideas, as to leave no doubt of their having all been derived
+from a common source.  Colonel Vans Kennedy presents nine hundred
+words common to the Sanskrit and other languages of the same family.
+In the Sanskrit and Persian, we find several which require no sort of
+translation 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, the
+eye-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, a
+star; 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 a
+striking manner when Bopp and others investigated the grammatical
+structure of this family of languages.  Dr. Wiseman pronounces that
+the great philologist just named, "by a minute and sagacious analysis
+of the Sanskrit verb, compared with the conjugational system of the
+other members of this family, left no doubt of their intimate and
+positive affinity."  It was now discovered that the peculiar
+terminations or inflections by which persons are expressed throughout
+the verbs of nearly the whole of these languages, have their
+foundations in pronouns; the pronoun was simply placed at the end,
+and thus became an inflexion.  "By an analysis of the Sanskrit
+pronouns, the elements of those existing in all the other languages
+were cleared of their anomalies; the verb substantive, which in Latin
+is composed of fragments referable to two distinct roots, here found
+both existing in regular form; the Greek conjugations, with all their
+complicated machinery of middle voice, augments, and reduplications,
+were here found and illustrated in a variety of ways, which a few
+years ago would have appeared chimerical.  Even our own language may
+sometimes receive light from the study of distant members of our
+family.  Where, for instance, are we to seek for the root of our
+comparative BETTER?  Certainly not in its positive, good, nor in the
+Teutonic dialects in which the same anomaly exists.  But in the
+Persian we have precisely the same comparative, BEHTER, with exactly
+the same signification, regularly formed from its positive beh,
+good." {287}
+
+The second great family is the Syro-Phoenician, comprising the
+Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic, Arabic, and Gheez or Abyssinian, being
+localized principally in the countries to the west and south of the
+Mediterranean.  Beyond them, again, is the African family, which, as
+far as research has gone, seems to be in like manner marked by common
+features, both verbal and grammatical.  The fourth is the Polynesian
+family, extending from Madagascar on the west through all the Indian
+Archipelago, besides taking in the Malayan dialect from the continent
+of India, and comprehending Australia and the islands of the western
+portion of the Pacific.  This family, however, bears such an affinity
+to that next to be described, that Dr. Leyden and some others do not
+give it a distinct place as a family of languages.
+
+The fifth family is the Chinese, embracing a large part of China, and
+most of the regions of Central and Northern Asia.  The leading
+features of the Chinese are, its consisting altogether of
+monosyllables, and being destitute of all grammatical forms, except
+certain arrangements and accentuations, which vary the sense of
+particular words.  It is also deficient in some of the consonants
+most conspicuous in other languages, b, d, r, v, and z; so that this
+people can scarcely pronounce our speech in such a way as to be
+intelligible:  for example, the word Christus they call Kuliss-ut-oo-
+suh.  The Chinese, strange to say, though they early attained to a
+remarkable degree of civilization, and have preceded the Europeans in
+many of the most important inventions, have a language which
+resembles that of children, or deaf and dumb people.  The sentence of
+short, simple, unconnected words, in which an infant amongst us
+attempts to express some of its wants and its ideas--the equally
+broken and difficult terms which the deaf and dumb express by signs,
+as the following passage of the Lord's Prayer: --"Our Father, heaven
+in, wish your name respect, wish your soul's kingdom providence
+arrive, wish your will do heaven earth equality," &c.--these are like
+the discourse of the refined people of the so-called Celestial
+Empire.  An attempt was made by the Abbe Sicard to teach the deaf and
+dumb grammatical signs; but they persisted in restricting themselves
+to the simple signs of ideas, leaving the structure undetermined by
+any but the natural order of connexion.  Such is exactly the
+condition of the Chinese language.
+
+Crossing the Pacific, we come to the last great family in the
+languages of the aboriginal Americans, which have all of them
+features in common, proving them to constitute a group by themselves,
+without any regard to the very different degrees of civilization
+which these nations had attained at the time of the discovery.  The
+common resemblance is in the grammatical structure as well as in
+words, and the grammatical structure of this family is of a very
+peculiar and complicated kind.  The general character in this respect
+has caused the term Polysynthetic to be applied to the American
+languages.  A long many-syllabled word is used by the rude Algonquins
+and Delawares to express a whole sentence:  for example, a woman of
+the latter nation, playing with a little dog or cat, would perhaps be
+heard saying, "kuligatschis," meaning, "give me your pretty little
+paw;" the word, on examination, is found to be made up in this
+manner:  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 youth
+is called pilape, a word compounded from the first part of pilsit,
+innocent, and the latter part of lenape, a man.  Thus, it will be
+observed, a number of parts of words are taken and thrown together,
+by a process which has been happily termed agglutination, so as to
+form one word, conveying a complicated idea.  There is also an
+elaborate system of inflection; in nouns, for instance, there is one
+kind of inflection to express the presence or absence of vitality,
+and another to express number.  The genius of the language has been
+described as accumulative:  it "tends rather to add syllables or
+letters, making farther distinctions in objects already before the
+mind, than to introduce new words." {291}  Yet it has also been shewn
+very distinctly, that these languages are based in words of one
+syllable, like those of the Chinese and Polynesian families; all the
+primary ideas are thus expressed:  the elaborate system of inflection
+and agglutination is shewn to be simply a farther development of the
+language-forming principle, as it may be called--or the Chinese
+system may be described as an arrestment of this principle at a
+particular early point.  It has been fully shewn, that between the
+structure of the American and other families, sufficient affinities
+exist to make a common origin or early connexion extremely likely.
+The verbal affinities are also very considerable.  Humboldt says, "In
+eighty-three American languages examined by Messrs. Barton and Vater,
+one hundred and seventy words have been found, the roots of which
+appear to be the same; and it is easy to perceive that this analogy
+is not accidental, since it does not rest merely upon imitative
+harmony, or on that conformity of organs which produces almost a
+perfect identity in the first sounds articulated by children.  Of
+these one hundred and seventy words which have this connexion, three-
+fifths resemble the Manchou, the Tongouse, the Mongal, and the
+Samoyed; and two-fifths, the Celtic and Tchoud, the Biscayan, the
+Coptic, and Congo languages.  These words have been found by
+comparing the whole of the American languages with the whole of those
+of the Old World; for hitherto we are acquainted with no American
+idiom which seems to have an exclusive correspondence with any of the
+Asiatic, African, or European tongues." {293}  Humboldt and others
+considered these words as brought into America by recent immigrants;
+an idea resting on no proof, and which seems at once refuted by the
+common 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 refer
+to a curious mathematical calculation by Dr. Thomas Young, to the
+effect, that if three words coincide in two different languages, it
+is ten to one they must be derived in both cases from some parent
+language, or introduced in some other manner.  "Six words would give
+more," he says, "than seventeen hundred to one, and eight near
+100,000, so that in these cases the evidence would be little short of
+absolute certainty."  He instances the following words to shew a
+connexion 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 seventy
+words in common between the languages of the new and old continents,
+and many of these are expressive of the most primitive ideas, there
+is, by Dr. Young's calculation, overpowering proof of the original
+connexion of the American and other human families.
+
+This completes the slight outline which I have been able to give, of
+the evidence for the various races of men being descended from one
+stock.  It cannot be considered as conclusive, and there are many
+eminent persons who deem the opposite idea the more probable; but I
+must say that, without the least regard to any other kind of
+evidence, that which physiology and philology present seems to me
+decidedly favourable to the idea of a single origin.
+
+Assuming that the human race is ONE, we are next called upon to
+inquire in what part of the earth it may most probably be supposed to
+have originated.  One obvious mode of approximating to a solution of
+this question is to trace backward the lines in which the principal
+tribes appear to have migrated, and to see if these converge nearly
+to a point.  It is very remarkable that the lines do converge, and
+are concentrated about the region of Hindostan.  The language,
+religion, modes of reckoning time, and some other peculiar ideas of
+the Americans, are now believed to refer their origin to North-
+Eastern Asia.  Trace them farther back in the same direction, and we
+come to the north of India.  The history of the Celts and Teutones
+represents 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 at
+the same place.  So does the line of Iranian population, which has
+peopled the east and south shores of the Mediterranean, Syria,
+Arabia, and Egypt.  The Malay variety, again, rests its limit in one
+direction on the borders of India.  Standing on that point, it is
+easy to see how the human family, originating there, might spread out
+in different directions, passing into varieties of aspect and of
+language as they spread, the Malay variety proceeding towards the
+Oceanic region, the Mongolians to the east and north, and sending off
+the red men as a sub-variety, the European population going off to
+the north-westward, and the Syrian, Arabian, and Egyptian, towards
+the countries which they are known to have so long occupied.  The
+Negro alone is here unaccounted for; and of that race it may fairly
+be said, that it is the one most likely to have had an independent
+origin, seeing that it is a type so peculiar in an inveterate black
+colour, and so mean in development.  But it is not necessary to
+presume such an origin for it, as much good argument might be
+employed to shew that it is only a deteriorated offshoot of the
+general stock.  Our view of the probable original seat of man agrees
+with the ancient traditions of the race.  There is one among the
+Hindoos which places the cradle of the human family in Thibet;
+another makes Ceylon the residence of the first man.  Our view is
+also in harmony with the hypothesis detailed in the chapter before
+the last.  According to that theory, we should expect man to have
+originated where the highest species of the quadrumana are to be
+found.  Now these are unquestionably found in the Indian Archipelago.
+
+After all, it may be regarded as still an open question, whether
+mankind is of one or many origins.  The first human generation may
+have consisted of many pairs, though situated at one place, and these
+may have been considerably different from each other in external
+characters.  And we are equally bound to admit, though this does not
+as yet seem to have occurred to any other speculator, that there may
+have been different lines and sources of origination, geographically
+apart, 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 the
+human race was at first in a highly civilized state, and that
+barbarism was a second condition.  This idea probably took its origin
+in a wish to support certain interpretations of the Mosaic record,
+and it has never yet been propounded by any writer who seemed to have
+a due sense of the value of science in this class of investigations.
+The principal argument for it is, that we see many examples of
+nations falling away from civilization into barbarism, while in some
+regions of the earth, the history of which we do not clearly know,
+there are remains of works of art far superior to any which the
+present unenlightened inhabitants could have produced.  It is to be
+readily admitted that such decadences are common; but do they
+necessarily prove that there has been anything like a regular and
+constant decline into the present state, from a state more generally
+refined?  May not these be only instances of local failures and
+suppressions of the principle of civilization, where it had begun to
+take root amongst a people generally barbarous?  It is, at least, as
+legitimate to draw this inference from the facts which are known.
+But it is also alleged that we know of no such thing as civilization
+being ever self-originated.  It is always seen to be imparted from
+one people to another.  Hence, of course, we must infer that
+civilization at the first could only have been of supernatural
+origin.  This argument appears to be founded on false premises, for
+civilization does sometimes rise in a manner clearly independent
+amongst a horde of people generally barbarous.  A striking instance
+is described in the laborious work of Mr. Catlin on the North-
+American tribes.  Far placed among those which inhabit the vast
+region of the north-west, and quite beyond the reach of any influence
+from the whites, he found a small tribe living in a fortified
+village, where they cultivated the arts of manufacture, realized
+comforts and luxuries, and had attained to a remarkable refinement of
+manners, insomuch as to be generally called the polite and friendly
+Mandans.  They were also more than usually elegant in their persons,
+and of every variety of complexion between that of their compatriots
+and a pure white.  Up to the time of Mr. Catlin's visit, these people
+had been able to defend themselves and their possessions against the
+roving bands which surrounded them on all sides; but, soon after,
+they were attacked by small-pox, which cut them all off except a
+small party, whom their enemies rushed in upon and destroyed to a
+man.  What is this but a repetition on a small scale of phenomena
+with which ancient history familiarizes us--a nation rising in arts
+and elegances amidst barbarous neighbours, but at length overpowered
+by the rude majority, leaving only a Tadmor or a Luxor as a monument
+of itself to beautify the waste?  What can we suppose the nation
+which built Palenque and Copan to have been but only a Mandan tribe,
+which chanced to have made its way farther along the path of
+civilization and the arts, before the barbarians broke in upon it?
+The flame essayed to rise in many parts of the earth; but there were
+always 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 to
+have attained a strength against which the powers of barbarism can
+never more prevail.  The state of our knowledge of uncivilized
+nations is very apt to make us fall into error on this subject.  They
+are generally supposed to be all at one point in barbarism, which is
+far from being the case, for in the midst of every great region of
+uncivilized men, such as North America, there are nations partially
+refined.  The Jolofs, Mandingoes, and Kafirs, are African examples,
+where a natural and independent origin for the improvement which
+exists is as unavoidably to be presumed as in the case of the
+Mandans.
+
+The most conclusive argument against the original civilization of
+mankind is to be found in the fact that we do not now see
+civilization existing anywhere except in certain conditions
+altogether different from any we can suppose' to have existed at the
+commencement of our race.  To have civilization, it is necessary that
+a people should be numerous and closely placed; that they should be
+fixed in their habitations, and safe from violent external and
+internal disturbance; that a considerable number of them should be
+exempt from the necessity of drudging for immediate subsistence.
+Feeling themselves at ease about the first necessities of their
+nature, including self-preservation, and daily subjected to that
+intellectual excitement which society produces, men begin to manifest
+what is called civilization; but never in rude and shelterless
+circumstances, or when widely scattered.  Even men who have been
+civilized, when transferred to a wide wilderness, where each has to
+work hard and isolatedly for the first requisites of life, soon shew
+a retrogression to barbarism:  witness the plains of Australia, as
+well as the backwoods of Canada and the prairies of Texas.  Fixity of
+residence and thickening of population are perhaps the prime
+requisites for civilization, and hence it will be found that all
+civilizations as yet known have taken place in regions physically
+limited.  That of Egypt arose in a narrow valley hemmed in by deserts
+on both sides.  That of Greece took its rise in a small peninsula
+bounded on the only land side by mountains.  Etruria and Rome were
+naturally limited regions.  Civilizations have taken place at both
+the eastern and western extremities of the elder continent--China and
+Japan, on the one hand; Germany, Holland, Britain, France, on the
+other--while the great unmarked tract between contains nations
+decidedly less advanced.  Why is this, but because the sea, in both
+cases, has imposed limits to further migration, and caused the
+population to settle and condense--the conditions most necessary for
+social improvement. {302}  Even the simple case of the Mandans
+affords an illustration of this principle, for Mr. Catlin expressly,
+though without the least regard to theory, attributes their
+improvement to the fact of their being a small tribe, obliged, by
+fear of their more numerous enemies, to SETTLE IN A PERMANENT
+VILLAGE, so fortified as to ensure their preservation.  "By this
+means," says he, "they have advanced farther in the arts of
+manufacture, and have supplied their lodges more abundantly with the
+comforts and even luxuries of life than any Indian nation I know of.
+The consequence of this," he adds, "is that the tribe have taken many
+steps ahead of other tribes in MANNERS AND REFINEMENTS."  These
+conditions can only be regarded as natural laws affecting
+civilization, and it might not be difficult, taking them into
+account, to predict of any newly settled country its social destiny.
+An island like Van Dieman's land might fairly be expected to go on
+more rapidly to good manners and sound institutions than a wide
+region like Australia.  The United States might be expected to make
+no great way in civilization till they be fully peopled to the
+Pacific; and it might not be unreasonable to expect that, when that
+even has occurred, the greatest civilizations of that vast territory
+will be found in the peninsula of California and the narrow stripe of
+country beyond the Rocky Mountains.  This, however, is a digression.
+To return:  it is also necessary for a civilization that at least a
+portion of the community should be placed above mean and engrossing
+toils.  Man's mind becomes subdued, like the dyer's hand, to that it
+works in.  In rude and difficult circumstances we unavoidably become
+rude, because then only the inferior and harsher faculties of our
+nature are called into existence.  When, on the contrary, there is
+leisure and abundance, the self-seeking and self-preserving instincts
+are allowed to rest, the gentler and more generous sentiments are
+evoked, and man becomes that courteous and chivalric being which he
+is found to be amongst the upper classes of almost all civilized
+countries.  These, then, may be said to be the chief natural laws
+concerned in the moral phenomenon of civilization.  If I am right in
+so considering them, it will of course be readily admitted that the
+earliest families of the human race, although they might be simple
+and innocent, could not have been in anything like a civilized state,
+seeing that the conditions necessary for that state could not have
+then existed.  Let us only for a moment consider some of the things
+requisite for their being civilized,--namely, a set of elegant homes
+ready furnished for their reception, fields ready cultivated to yield
+them food without labour, stores of luxurious appliances of all
+kinds, a complete social enginery for the securing of life and
+property,--and we shall turn from the whole conceit as one worthy
+only of the philosophers of Utopia.
+
+Yet, as has been remarked, the earliest families might be simple and
+innocent, while at the same time unskilled and ignorant, and obliged
+to live merely upon such substances as they could readily procure.
+The traditions of all nations refer to such a state as that in which
+mankind were at first:  perhaps it is not so much a tradition as an
+idea which the human mind naturally inclines to form respecting the
+fathers of the race; but nothing that we see of mankind absolutely
+forbids our entertaining this idea, while there are some
+considerations rather favourable to it.  A few families, in a state
+of nature, living near each other, in a country supplying the means
+of livelihood abundantly, are generally simple and innocent; their
+instinctive and perceptive faculties are also apt to be very active,
+although the higher intellect may be dormant.  If we therefore
+presume India to have been the cradle of our race, they might at
+first exemplify a sort of golden age; but it could not be of long
+continuance.  The very first movements from the primal seat would be
+attended with degradation, nor could there be any tendency to true
+civilization till groups had settled and thickened in particular
+seats physically limited.
+
+The probability may now be assumed that the human race sprung from
+one stock, which was at first in a state of simplicity, if not
+barbarism.  As yet we have not seen very distinctly how the various
+branches of the family, as they parted off, and took up separate
+ground, became marked by external features so peculiar.  Why are the
+Africans black, and generally marked by coarse features and ungainly
+forms?  Why are the Mongolians generally yellow, the Americans red,
+the Caucasians white?  Why the flat features of the Chinese, the
+small stature of the Laps, the soft round forms of the English, the
+lank features of their descendants, the Americans?  All of these
+phenomena appear, in a word, to be explicable on the ground of
+DEVELOPMENT.  We have already seen that various leading animal forms
+represent stages in the embryotic progress of the highest--the human
+being.  Our brain goes through the various stages of a fish's, a
+reptile's, and a mammifer's brain, and finally becomes human.  There
+is 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 points
+in which ossification commences is the lower jaw.  This bone is
+consequently sooner completed than the other bones of the head, and
+acquires a predominance, which, as is well known, it never loses in
+the Negro.  During the soft pliant state of the bones of the skull,
+the oblong form which they naturally assume, approaches nearly the
+permanent shape of the Americans.  At birth, the flattened face, and
+broad smooth forehead of the infant, the position of the eyes rather
+towards the side of the head, and the widened space between,
+represent the Mongolian form; while it is only as the child advances
+to maturity, that the oval face, the arched forehead, and the marked
+features 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 OF
+THE HIGHEST OR CAUCASIAN TYPE.  The Negro exhibits permanently the
+imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw, and slender bent limbs, of a
+Caucasian child, some considerable time before the period of its
+birth.  The aboriginal American represents the same child nearer
+birth.  The Mongolian is an arrested infant newly born.  And so
+forth.  All this is as respects form; {307b} but whence colour?  This
+might be supposed to have depended on climatal agencies only; but it
+has been shewn by overpowering evidence to be independent of these.
+In further considering the matter, we are met by the very remarkable
+fact that colour is deepest in the least perfectly developed type,
+next in the Malay, next in the American, next in the Mongolian, the
+very order in which the degrees of development are ranged.  MAY NOT
+COLOUR, THEN, DEPEND UPON DEVELOPMENT ALSO?  We do not, indeed, see
+that a Caucasian foetus at the stage which the African represents is
+anything like black; neither is a Caucasian child yellow, like the
+Mongolian.  There may, nevertheless, be a character of skin at a
+certain stage of development which is predisposed to a particular
+colour when it is presented as the envelope of a mature being.
+Development being arrested at so immature a stage in the case of the
+Negro, the skin may take on the colour as an unavoidable consequence
+of its imperfect organization.  It is favourable to this view, that
+Negro infants are not deeply black at first, but only acquire the
+full colour tint after exposure for some time to the atmosphere.
+Another consideration in its favour is that there is a likelihood of
+peculiarities of form and colour, since they are so coincident,
+depending on one set of phenomena.  If it be admitted as true, there
+can be no difficulty in accounting for all the varieties of mankind.
+They are simply the result of so many advances and retrogressions in
+the developing power of the human mothers, these advances and
+retrogressions being, as we have formerly seen, the immediate effect
+of external conditions in nutrition, hardship, &c., {309} and also,
+perhaps, to some extent, of the suitableness and unsuitableness of
+marriages, for it is found that parents too nearly related tend to
+produce offspring of the Mongolian type,--that is, persons who in
+maturity still are a kind of children.  According to this view, the
+greater part of the human race must be considered as having lapsed or
+declined from the original type.  In the Caucasian or Indo-European
+family alone has the primitive organization been improved upon.  The
+Mongolian, Malay, American, and Negro, comprehending perhaps five-
+sixths of mankind, are degenerate.  Strange that the great plan
+should admit of failures and aberrations of such portentous
+magnitude!  But pause and reflect; take time into consideration:  the
+past 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 the
+earth by the best examples of the Caucasian type, promising not only
+to fill up the waste places, but to supersede the imperfect nations
+already existing.  Who can tell what progress may be made, even in a
+single century, towards reversing the proportions of the perfect and
+imperfect types? and who can tell but that the time during which the
+mean types have lasted, long as it appears, may yet be thrown
+entirely into the shade by the time during which the best types will
+remain predominant?
+
+We have seen that the traces of a common origin in all languages
+afford a ground of presumption for the unity of the human race.  They
+establish a still stronger probability that mankind had not yet begun
+to disperse before they were possessed of a means of communicating
+their ideas by conventional sounds--in short, speech.  This is a gift
+so peculiar to man, and in itself so remarkable, that there is a
+great inclination to surmise a miraculous origin for it, although
+there is no proper ground, or even support, for such an idea in
+Scripture, while it is clearly opposed to everything else that we
+know with regard to the providential arrangements for the creation of
+our race.  Here, as in many other cases, a little observation of
+nature might have saved much vain discussion.  The real character of
+language itself has not been thoroughly understood.  Language, in its
+most comprehensive sense, is the communication of ideas by whatever
+means.  Ideas can be communicated by looks, gestures, and signs of
+various other kinds, as well as by speech.  The inferior animals
+possess some of those means of communicating ideas, and they have
+likewise a silent and unobservable mode of their own, the nature of
+which is a complete mystery to us, though we are assured of its
+reality by its effects.  Now, as the inferior animals were all in
+being before man, there was language upon earth long ere the history
+of our race commenced.  The only additional fact in the history of
+language, which was produced by our creation, was the rise of a new
+mode of expression--namely, that by SOUND-SIGNS produced by the vocal
+organs.  In other words, speech was the only novelty in this respect
+attending the creation of the human race.  No doubt it was an
+addition of great importance, for, in comparison with it, the other
+natural modes of communicating ideas sink into insignificance.
+Still, the main and fundamental phenomenon, language, as the
+communication of ideas, was no new gift of the Creator to man; and in
+speech itself, when we judge of it as a natural fact, we see only a
+result of some of those superior endowments of which so many others
+have fallen to our lot through the medium of an improved or advanced
+organization.
+
+The first and most obvious natural endowment concerned in speech is
+that peculiar organization of the larynx, trachea, and mouth, which
+enables us to produce the various sounds required in the case.  Man
+started at first with this organization ready for use, a constitution
+of the atmosphere adapted for the sounds which that organization was
+calculated to produce, and, lastly, but not leastly, as will
+afterwards 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 to
+produce sounds as an Eolian harp placed in a draught is to produce
+tones.  It was unavoidable that human beings so organized, and in
+such a relation to external nature, should utter sounds, and also
+come to attach to these conventional meanings, thus forming the
+elements of spoken language.  The great difficulty which has been
+felt was to account for man going in this respect beyond the inferior
+animals.  There could have been no such difficulty if speculators in
+this class of subjects had looked into physiology for an account of
+the superior vocal organization of man, and had they possessed a true
+science of mind to shew man possessing a faculty for the expression
+of ideas which is only rudimental in the lower animals.  Another
+difficulty has been in the consideration that, if men were at first
+utterly untutored and barbarous, they could scarcely be in a
+condition to form or employ language--an instrument which it requires
+the fullest powers of thought to analyse and speculate upon.  But
+this difficulty also vanishes upon reflection--for, in the first
+place, we are not bound to suppose the fathers of our race early
+attaining to great proficiency in language, and, in the second,
+language itself seems to be amongst the things least difficult to be
+acquired, if we can form any judgment from what we see in children,
+most of whom have, by three years of age, while their information and
+judgment are still as nothing, mastered and familiarized themselves
+with a quantity of words, infinitely exceeding in proportion what
+they acquire in the course of any subsequent similar portion of time.
+
+Discussions as to which parts of speech were first formed, and the
+processes by which grammatical structure and inflections took their
+rise, appear in a great measure needless, after the matter has been
+placed in this light.  The mental powers could readily connect
+particular arbitrary sounds with particular ideas, whether those
+ideas were nouns, verbs, or interjections.  As the words of all
+languages can be traced back into roots which are monosyllables, we
+may 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 expressive
+of pronouns and such prepositions as of, by, and to, are processes
+which would or might occur as matters of course, being simple results
+of a mental power called into action, and partly directed, by
+external necessities.  This power, however, as we find it in very
+different degrees of endowment in individuals, so would it be in
+different degrees of endowment in nations, or branches of the human
+family.  Hence we find the formation of words and the process of
+their composition and grammatical arrangement, in very different
+stages of development in different races.  The Chinese have a
+language composed of a limited number of monosyllables, which they
+multiply in use by mere variations of accent, and which they have
+never yet attained the power of clustering or inflecting; the
+language of this immense nation--the third part of the human race--
+may be said to be in the condition of infancy.  The aboriginal
+Americans, so inferior in civilization, have, on the other hand, a
+language of the most elaborately composite kind, perhaps even
+exceeding, in this respect, the languages of the most refined
+European nations.  These are but a few out of many facts tending to
+shew that language is in a great measure independent of civilization,
+as far as its advance and development are concerned.  Do they not
+also help to prove that cultivated intellect is not necessary for the
+origination of language?
+
+Facts daily presented to our observation afford equally simple
+reasons for the almost infinite diversification of language.  It is
+invariably found that, wherever society is at once dense and refined,
+language tends to be uniform throughout the whole population, and to
+undergo few changes in the course of time.  Wherever, on the
+contrary, we have a scattered and barbarous people, we have great
+diversities, and comparatively rapid alterations of language.
+Insomuch that, while English, French, and German are each spoken with
+little variation by many millions, there are islands in the Indian
+archipelago, probably not inhabited by one million, but in which
+there are hundreds of languages, as diverse as are English, French,
+and German.  It is easy to see how this should be.  There are
+peculiarities in the vocal organization of every person, tending to
+produce peculiarities of pronunciation; for example, it has been
+stated that each child in a family of six gave the monosyllable, fly,
+in a different manner, (eye, fy, ly, &c.) until, when the organs were
+more advanced, correct example induced the proper pronunciation of
+this and similar words.  Such departures from orthoepy are only to be
+checked by the power of such example; but this is a power not always
+present, or not always of sufficient strength.  The able and self-
+devoted Robert Moffat, in his work on South Africa, states, without
+the least regard to hypothesis, that amongst the people of the towns
+of that great region, "the purity and harmony of language is kept up
+by their pitchos or public meetings, by their festivals and
+ceremonies, as well as by their songs and their constant intercourse.
+With the isolated villages of the desert it is far otherwise.  They
+have no such meetings; they are compelled to traverse the wilds,
+often to a great distance from their native village.  On such
+occasions, fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a burden, often
+set out for weeks at a time, and leave their children to the care of
+two or three infirm old people.  The infant progeny, some of whom are
+beginning to lisp, while others can just master a whole sentence, and
+those still farther advanced, romping and playing together, the
+children of nature, through the live-long day, BECOME HABITUATED TO A
+LANGUAGE OF THEIR OWN.  The more voluble condescend to the less
+precocious, and thus, from this infant Babel, proceeds a dialect
+composed of a host of mongrel words and phrases, joined together
+without rule, and IN THE COURSE OF A GENERATION THE ENTIRE CHARACTER
+OF THE LANGUAGE IS CHANGED." {317}  I have been told, that in like
+manner the children of the Manchester factory workers, left for a
+great part of the day, in large assemblages, under the care of
+perhaps a single elderly person, and spending the time in amusements,
+are found to make a great deal of new language.  I have seen children
+in other circumstances amuse themselves by concocting and throwing
+into the family circulation entirely new words; and I believe I am
+running little risk of contradiction when I say that there is
+scarcely a family, even amongst the middle classes of this country,
+who have not some peculiarities of pronunciation and syntax, which
+have originated amongst themselves, it is hardly possible to say how.
+All these things being considered, it is easy to understand how
+mankind have come at length to possess between three and four
+thousand languages, all different at least as much as French, German,
+and English, though, as has been shewn, the traces of a common origin
+are observable in them all.
+
+What has been said on the question whether mankind were originally
+barbarous or civilized, will have prepared the reader for
+understanding how the arts and sciences, and the rudiments of
+civilization itself, took their rise amongst men.  The only source of
+fallacious views on this subject is the so frequent observation of
+arts, sciences, and social modes, forms, and ideas, being not
+indigenous where we see them now flourishing, but known to have been
+derived elsewhere:  thus Rome borrowed from Greece, Greece from
+Egypt, and Egypt itself, lost in the mists of historic antiquity, is
+now supposed to have obtained the light of knowledge from some still
+earlier scene of intellectual culture.  This has caused to many a
+great difficulty in supposing a natural or spontaneous origin for
+civilization and the attendant arts.  But, in the first place,
+several stages of derivation are no conclusive argument against there
+having been an originality at some earlier stage.  In the second,
+such observers have not looked far enough, for, if they had, they
+could have seen various instances of civilizations which it is
+impossible, with any plausibility, to trace back to a common origin
+with others; such are those of China and America.  They would also
+have seen civilization springing up, as it were, like oases amongst
+the arid plains of barbarism, as in the case of the Mandans.  A still
+more attentive study of the subject would have shewn, amongst living
+men, the very psychological procedure on which the origination of
+civilization and the arts and sciences depended.
+
+These things, like language, are simply the effects of the
+spontaneous working of certain mental faculties, each in relation to
+the things of the external world on which it was intended by creative
+Providence to be exercised.  The monkeys themselves, without
+instruction from any quarter, learn to use sticks in fighting, and
+some build houses--an act which cannot in their case be considered as
+one of instinct, but of intelligence.  Such being the case, there is
+no necessary difficulty in supposing how man, with his superior
+mental organization, (a brain five times heavier,) was able, in his
+primitive state, without instruction, to turn many things in nature
+to his use, and commence, in short, the circle of the domestic arts.
+He appears, in the most unfavourable circumstances, to be able to
+provide himself with some sort of dwelling, to make weapons, and to
+practise some simple kind of cookery.  But, granting, it will be
+said, that he can go thus far, how does he ever proceed farther
+unprompted, seeing that many nations remain fixed for ever at this
+point, and seem unable to take one step in advance?  It is perfectly
+true that there is such a fixation in many nations; but, on the other
+hand, all nations are not alike in mental organization, and another
+point has been established, that only when some favourable
+circumstances have settled a people in one place, do arts and social
+arrangements get leave to flourish.  If we were to limit our view to
+humbly endowed nations, or the common class of minds in those called
+civilized, we should see absolutely no conceivable power for the
+origination of new ideas and devices.  But let us look at the
+inventive class of minds which stand out amongst their fellows--the
+men who, with little prompting or none, conceive new ideas in
+science, arts, morals--and we can be at no loss to understand how and
+whence have arisen the elements of that civilization which history
+traces from country to country throughout the course of centuries.
+See a Pascal, reproducing the Alexandrian's problems at fifteen; a
+Ferguson, making clocks from the suggestions of his own brain, while
+tending cattle on a Morayshire heath; a boy Lawrence, in an inn on
+the Bath road, producing, without a master, drawings which the
+educated could not but admire; or look at Solon and Confucius,
+devising sage laws, and breathing the accents of all but divine
+wisdom, for their barbarous fellow-countrymen, three thousand years
+ago--and the whole mystery is solved at once.  Amongst the
+arrangements of Providence is one for the production of original,
+inventive, and aspiring minds, which, when circumstances are not
+decidedly unfavourable, strike out new ideas for the benefit of their
+fellow-creatures, or put upon them a lasting impress of their own
+superior sentiments.  Nations, improved by these means, become in
+turn foci for the diffusion of light over the adjacent regions of
+barbarism--their very passions helping to this end, for nothing can
+be more clear than that ambitious aggression has led to the
+civilization of many countries.  Such is the process which seems to
+form the destined means for bringing mankind from the darkness of
+barbarism to the day of knowledge and mechanical and social
+improvement.  Even the noble art of letters is but, as Dr. Adam
+Fergusson has remarked, "a natural produce of the human mind, which
+will rise spontaneously, wherever men are happily placed;" original
+alike amongst the ancient Egyptians and the dimly monumented
+Toltecans of Yucatan.  "Banish," says Dr. Gall, "music, poetry,
+painting, sculpture, architecture, all the arts and sciences, and let
+your Homers, Raphaels, Michael Angelos, Glucks, and Canovas, be
+forgotten, yet let men of genius of every description spring up, and
+poetry, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, and all the arts
+and sciences will again shine out in all their glory.  Twice within
+the records of history has the human race traversed the great circle
+of its entire destiny, and twice has the rudeness of barbarism been
+followed by a higher degree of refinement.  It is a great mistake to
+suppose one people to have proceeded from another on account of their
+conformity of manners, customs, and arts.  The swallow of Paris
+builds its nest like the swallow of Vienna, but does it thence follow
+that the former sprung from the latter?  With the same causes we have
+the same effects; with the same organization we have the
+manifestation of the same powers."
+
+
+
+MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS.
+
+
+
+It has been one of the most agreeable tasks of modern science to
+trace the wonderfully exact adaptations of the organization of
+animals to the physical circumstances amidst which they are destined
+to live.  From the mandibles of insects to the hand of man, all is
+seen to be in the most harmonious relation to the things of the
+outward world, thus clearly proving that DESIGN presided in the
+creation of the whole--design again implying a designer, another word
+for a CREATOR.
+
+It would be tiresome to present in this place even a selection of the
+proofs which have been adduced on this point.  The Natural Theology
+of Paley, and the Bridgewater Treatises, place the subject in so
+clear a light, that the general postulate may be taken for granted.
+The physical constitution of animals is, then, to be regarded as in
+the nicest congruity and adaptation to the external world.
+
+Less clear ideas have hitherto been entertained on the mental
+constitution of animals.  The very nature of this constitution is not
+as yet generally known or held as ascertained.  There is, indeed, a
+notion of old standing, that the mind is in some way connected with
+the brain; but the metaphysicians insist that it is, in reality,
+known only by its acts or effects, and they accordingly present the
+subject in a form which is unlike any other kind of science, for it
+does not so much as pretend to have nature for its basis.  There is a
+general disinclination to regard mind in connexion with organization,
+from a fear that this must needs interfere with the cherished
+religious doctrine of the spirit of man, and lower him to the level
+of the brutes.  A distinction is therefore drawn between our mental
+manifestations and those of the lower animals, the latter being
+comprehended under the term instinct, while ours are collectively
+described as mind, mind being again a received synonyme with soul,
+the immortal part of man.  There is here a strange system of
+confusion and error, which it is most imprudent to regard as
+essential to religion, since candid investigations of nature tend to
+shew its untenableness.  There is, in reality, nothing to prevent our
+regarding man as specially endowed with an immortal spirit, at the
+same time that his ordinary mental manifestations are looked upon as
+simple phenomena resulting from organization, those of the lower
+animals being phenomena absolutely the same in character, though
+developed within much narrower limits. {326}
+
+What has chiefly tended to take mind, in the eyes of learned and
+unlearned, out of the range of nature, is its apparently irregular
+and wayward character.  How different the manifestations in different
+beings! how unstable in all!--at one time so calm, at another so wild
+and impulsive!  It seemed impossible that anything so subtle and
+aberrant could be part of a system, the main features of which are
+regularity and precision.  But the irregularity of mental phenomena
+is only in appearance.  When we give up the individual, and take the
+mass, we find as much uniformity of result as in any other class of
+natural phenomena.  The irregularity is exactly of the same kind as
+that 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 place
+in any five years, is precisely the same as the quantity which falls
+in any other five years at the same place.  Thus, while it is
+absolutely impossible to predict of any one Frenchman that during
+next year he will commit a crime, it is quite certain that about one
+in every six hundred and fifty of the French people will do so,
+because in past years the proportion has generally been about that
+amount, the tendencies to crime in relation to the temptations being
+everywhere invariable over a sufficiently wide range of time.  So
+also, the number of persons taken in charge by the police in London
+for being drunk and disorderly on the streets, is, week by week, a
+nearly uniform quantity, shewing that the inclination to drink to
+excess is always in the mass about the same, regard being had to the
+existing temptations or stimulations to this vice.  Even mistakes and
+oversights are of regular recurrence, for it is found in the post-
+offices of large cities, that the number of letters put in without
+addresses is year by year the same.  Statistics has made out an
+equally distinct regularity in a wide range, with regard to many
+other things concerning the mind, and the doctrine founded upon it
+has lately produced a scheme which may well strike the ignorant with
+surprise.  It was proposed to establish in London a society for
+ensuring the integrity of clerks, secretaries, collectors, and all
+such functionaries as are usually obliged to find security for money
+passing through their hands in the course of business.  A gentleman
+of the highest character as an actuary spoke of the plan in the
+following terms:- "If a thousand bankers' clerks were to club
+together to indemnify their securities, by the payment of one pound a
+year each, and if each had given security for 500l., it is obvious
+that two in each year might become defaulters to that amount, four to
+half the amount, and so on, without rendering the guarantee fund
+insolvent.  If it be tolerably well ascertained that the instances of
+dishonesty (yearly) among such persons amount to one in five hundred,
+this club would continue to exist, subject to being in debt in a bad
+year, to an amount which it would be able to discharge in good ones.
+The only question necessary to be asked previous to the formation of
+such a club would be,--may it not be feared that the motive to resist
+dishonesty would be lessened by the existence of the club, or that
+ready-made rogues, by belonging to it, might find the means of
+obtaining situations which they would otherwise have been kept out of
+by the impossibility of obtaining security among those who know them?
+Suppose this be sufficiently answered by saying, that none but those
+who could bring satisfactory testimony to their previous good
+character should be allowed to join the club; that persons who may
+now hope that a deficiency on their parts will be made up and hushed
+up by the relative or friend who is security, will know very well
+that the club will have no motive to decline a prosecution, or to
+keep the secret, and so on.  It then only remains to ask, whether the
+sum demanded for the guarantee is sufficient?" {331}  The
+philosophical principle on which the scheme proceeds, seems to be
+simply this, that, amongst a given (large) number of persons of good
+character, there will be, within a year or other considerable space
+of time, a determinate number of instances in which moral principle
+and the terror of the consequences of guilt will be overcome by
+temptations of a determinate kind and amount, and thus occasion a
+certain periodical amount of loss which the association must make up.
+
+This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully establishes their
+being under the presidency of law.  Man is now seen to be an enigma
+only as an individual; in the mass he is a mathematical problem.  It
+is hardly necessary to say, much less to argue, that mental action,
+being proved to be under law, passes at once into the category of
+natural things.  Its old metaphysical character vanishes in a moment,
+and the distinction usually taken between physical and moral is
+annulled, as only an error in terms.  This view agrees with what all
+observation teaches, that mental phenomena flow directly from the
+brain.  They are seen to be dependent on naturally constituted and
+naturally conditioned organs, and thus obedient, like all other
+organic phenomena, to law.  And how wondrous must the constitution of
+this apparatus be, which gives us consciousness of thought and of
+affection, which makes us familiar with the numberless things of
+earth, and enables us to rise in conception and communion to the
+councils of God himself!  It is matter which forms the medium or
+instrument--a little mass which, decomposed, is but so much common
+dust; yet in its living constitution, designed, formed, and sustained
+by Almighty Wisdom, how admirable its character! how reflective of
+the unutterable depths of that Power by which it was so formed, and
+is so sustained!
+
+In the mundane economy, mental action takes its place as a means of
+providing for the independent existence and the various relations of
+animals, each species being furnished according to its special
+necessities and the demands of its various relations.  The nervous
+system--the more comprehensive term for its organic apparatus--is
+variously developed in different classes and species, and also in
+different individuals, the volume or mass bearing a general relation
+to the amount of power.  In the mollusca and crustacea we see simply
+a ganglionic cord pervading the extent of the body, and sending out
+lateral filaments.  In the vertebrata, we find a brain with a spinal
+cord, and branching lines of nervous tissue. {333}  But here, as in
+the general structure of animals, the great principle of unity is
+observed.  The brain of the vertebrata is merely an expansion of one
+of the ganglions of the nervous cord of the mollusca and crustacea.
+Or the corresponding ganglion of the mollusca and crustacea may be
+regarded as the rudiment of a brain; the superior organ thus
+appearing as only a farther development of the inferior.  There are
+many facts which tend to prove that the action of this apparatus is
+of an electric nature, a modification of that surprising agent, which
+takes magnetism, heat, and light, as other subordinate forms, and of
+whose general scope in this great system of things we are only
+beginning to have a right conception.  It has been found that simple
+electricity, artificially produced, and sent along the nerves of a
+dead body, excites muscular action.  The brain of a newly-killed
+animal being taken out, and replaced by a substance which produces
+electric action, the operation of digestion, which had been
+interrupted by the death of the animal, was resumed, shewing the
+absolute identity of the brain with a galvanic battery.  Nor is this
+a very startling idea, when we reflect that electricity is almost as
+metaphysical as ever mind was supposed to be.  It is a thing
+perfectly intangible, weightless.  Metal may be magnetized, or heated
+to seven hundred of Fahrenheit, without becoming the hundredth part
+of a grain heavier.  And yet electricity is a real thing, an actual
+existence in nature, as witness the effects of heat and light in
+vegetation--the power of the galvanic current to re-assemble the
+particles of copper from a solution, and make them again into a solid
+plate--the rending force of the thunderbolt as it strikes the oak;
+see also how both heat and light observe the angle of incidence in
+reflection, as exactly as does the grossest stone thrown obliquely
+against 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 human
+mind over that of the inferior animals.  Man's mind is almost
+infinite in device; it ranges over all the world; it forms the most
+wonderful combinations; it seeks back into the past, and stretches
+forward into the future; while the animals generally appear to have a
+narrow range of thought and action.  But so also has an infant but a
+limited range, and yet it is mind which works there, as well as in
+the most accomplished adults.  The difference between mind in the
+lower animals and in man is a difference in degree only; it is not a
+specific difference.  All who have studied animals by actual
+observation, and even those who have given a candid attention to the
+subject in books, must attain more or less clear convictions of this
+truth, notwithstanding all the obscurity which prejudice may have
+engendered.  We see animals capable of affection, jealousy, envy; we
+see them quarrel, and conduct quarrels, in the very manner pursued by
+the more impulsive of our own race.  We see them liable to flattery,
+inflated with pride, and dejected by shame.  We see them as tender to
+their young as human parents are, and as faithful to a trust as the
+most conscientious of human servants.  The horse is startled by
+marvellous objects, as a man is.  The dog and many others shew
+tenacious memory.  The dog also proves himself possessed of
+imagination, by the act of dreaming.  Horses, finding themselves in
+want of a shoe, have of their own accord gone to a farrier's shop
+where they were shod before.  Cats, closed up in rooms, will
+endeavour to obtain their liberation by pulling a latch or ringing a
+bell.  It has several times been observed that in a field of cattle,
+when one or two were mischievous, and persisted long in annoying or
+tyrannizing 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 in
+supplying the needs of a family reduced to orphanhood.  All of these
+are acts of reason, in no respect different from similar acts of men.
+Moreover, although there is no heritage of accumulated knowledge
+amongst the lower animals, as there is amongst us, they are in some
+degree susceptible of those modifications of natural character, and
+capable of those accomplishments, which we call education.  The
+taming and domestication of animals, and the changes thus produced
+upon their nature in the course of generations, are results identical
+with civilization amongst ourselves; and the quiet, servile steer is
+probably as unlike the original wild cattle of this country, as the
+English gentleman of the present day is unlike the rude baron of the
+age of King John.  Between a young, unbroken horse, and a trained
+one, there is, again, all the difference which exists between a wild
+youth reared at his own discretion in the country, and the same
+person when he has been toned down by long exposure to the influences
+of refined society.  On the accomplishments acquired by animals it
+were superfluous to enter at any length; but I may advert to the dogs
+of M. Leonard, as remarkable examples of what the animal intellect
+may be trained to.  When four pieces of card are laid down before
+them, each having a number pronounced ONCE in connexion with it, they
+will, after a re-arrangement of the pieces, select any one named by
+its number.  They also play at dominoes, and with so much skill as to
+triumph over biped opponents, whining if the adversary place a wrong
+piece, or if they themselves be deficient in a right one.  Of
+extensive combinations of thought we have no reason to believe that
+any animal is capable--and yet most of us must feel the force of
+Walter Scott's remark, that there was scarcely anything which he
+would not believe of a dog.  There is a curious result of education
+in certain animals, namely, that habits to which they have been
+trained in some instances become hereditary.  For example, the
+accomplishment of pointing at game, although a pure result of
+education, appears in the young pups brought up apart from their
+parents and kind.  The peculiar leap of the Irish horse, acquired in
+the course of traversing a boggy country, is continued in the progeny
+brought up in England.  This hereditariness of specific habits
+suggests a relation to that form of psychological demonstration
+usually called instinct; but instinct is only another term for mind,
+or is mind in a peculiar stage of development; and though the fact
+were otherwise, it could not affect the postulate, that
+demonstrations such as have been enumerated are mainly intellectual
+demonstrations, not to be distinguished as such from those of human
+beings.
+
+More than this, the lower animals manifested mental phenomena long
+before man existed.  While as yet there was no brain capable of
+working out a mathematical problem, the economy of the six-sided
+figure was exemplified by the instinct of the bee.  Ere human
+musician had whistled or piped, the owl hooted in B flat, the cuckoo
+had her song of a falling third, and the chirp of the cricket was in
+B.  The dog and the elephant prefigured the sagacity of the human
+mind.  The love of a human mother for her babe was anticipated by
+nearly every humbler mammal, the carnaria not excepted.  The peacock
+strutted, the turkey blustered, and the cock fought for victory, just
+as human beings afterwards did, and still do.  Our faculty of
+imitation, on which so much of our amusement depends, was exercised
+by the mocking-bird; and the whole tribe of monkeys must have walked
+about the pre-human world, playing off those tricks in which we see
+the comicality and mischief-making of our character so curiously
+exaggerated.
+
+The unity and simplicity which characterize nature give great
+antecedent probability to what observation seems about to establish,
+that, as the brain of the vertebrata generally is just an advanced
+condition of a particular ganglion in the mollusca and crustacea, so
+are the brains of the higher and more intelligent mammalia only
+farther developments of the brains of the inferior orders of the same
+class.  Or, to the same purpose, it may be said, that each species
+has certain superior developments, according to its needs, while
+others are in a rudimental or repressed state.  This will more
+clearly appear after some inquiry has been made into the various
+powers comprehended under the term mind.
+
+One of the first and simplest functions of mind is to give
+consciousness--consciousness of our identity and of our existence.
+This, apparently, is independent of the SENSES, which are simply
+media, and, as Locke has shewn, the only media, through which ideas
+respecting the external world reach the brain.  The access of such
+ideas to the brain is the act to which the metaphysicians have given
+the name of perception.  Gall, however, has shewn, by induction from
+a vast number of actual cases, that there is a part of the brain
+devoted to perception, and that even this is subdivided into portions
+which are respectively dedicated to the reception of different sets
+of ideas, as those of form, size, colour, weight, objects in their
+totality, events in their progress or occurrence, time, musical
+sounds, &c.  The system of mind invented by this philosopher--the
+only one founded upon nature, or which even pretends to or admits of
+that necessary basis--shews a portion of the brain acting as a
+faculty of comic ideas, another of imitation, another of wonder, one
+for discriminating or observing differences, and another in which
+resides the power of tracing effects to causes.  There are also parts
+of the brain for the sentimental part of our nature, or the
+affections, at the head of which stand the moral feelings of
+benevolence, conscientiousness, and veneration.  Through these, man
+stands in relation to himself, his fellow-men, the external world,
+and his God; and through these comes most of the happiness of man's
+life, as well as that which he derives from the contemplation of the
+world to come, and the cultivation of his relation to it, (pure
+religion.)  The other sentiments may be briefly enumerated, their
+names being sufficient in general to denote their functions--
+firmness, hope, cautiousness, self-esteem, love of approbation,
+secretiveness, marvellousness, constructiveness, imitation,
+combativeness, destructiveness, concentrativeness, adhesiveness, love
+of the opposite sex, love of offspring, alimentiveness, and love of
+life.  Through these faculties, man is connected with the external
+world, and supplied with active impulses to maintain his place in it
+as 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 the
+mind.  There is a particular state of each of these faculties, when
+the ideas of objects once formed by it are revived or reproduced, a
+process which seems to be intimately allied with some of the
+phenomena of the new science of photography, when images impressed by
+reflection of the sun's rays upon sensitive paper are, after a
+temporary obliteration, resuscitated on the sheet being exposed to
+the fumes of mercury.  Such are the phenomena of memory, that
+handmaid of intellect, without which there could be no accumulation
+of mental capital, but an universal and continual infancy.
+Conception and imagination appear to be only intensities, so to
+speak, of the state of brain in which memory is produced.  On their
+promptness and power depend most of the exertions which distinguish
+the man of arts and letters, and even in no small measure the
+cultivator of science.
+
+The faculties above described--the actual elements of the mental
+constitution--are seen in mature man in an indefinite potentiality
+and range of action.  It is different with the lower animals.  They
+are there comparatively definite in their power and restricted in
+their application.  The reader is familiar with what are called
+instincts in some of the humbler species, that is, an uniform and
+unprompted tendency towards certain particular acts, as the building
+of cells by the bee, the storing of provisions by that insect and
+several others, and the construction of nests for a coming progeny by
+birds.  This quality is nothing more than a mode of operation
+peculiar to the faculties in a humble state of endowment, or early
+stage of development.  The cell formation of the bee, the house-
+building of ants and beavers, the web-spinning of spiders, are but
+primitive 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 where
+our labours are in vain, or nearly so.  The storing of provisions by
+the ants is an exercise of acquisitiveness,--the faculty which with
+us makes rich men and misers.  A vast number of curious devices, by
+which insects provide for the protection and subsistence of their
+young, whom they are perhaps never to see, are most probably a
+peculiar restricted effort of philoprogenitiveness.  The common
+source of this class of acts, and of common mental operations, is
+shewn very convincingly by the melting of the one set into the other.
+Thus, for example, the bee and bird will make modifications in the
+ordinary form of their cells and nests when necessity compels them.
+Thus, the alimentiveness of such animals as the dog, usually definite
+with regard to quantity and quality, can be pampered or educated up
+to a kind of epicurism, that is, an indefiniteness of object and
+action.  The same faculty acts limitedly in ourselves at first,
+dictating the special act of sucking; afterwards it acquires
+indefiniteness.  Such is the real nature of the distinction between
+what are called instincts and reason, upon which so many volumes have
+been written without profit to the world.  All faculties are
+instinctive, that is, dependent on internal and inherent impulses.
+This term is therefore not specially applicable to either of the
+recognised modes of the operation of the faculties.  We only, in the
+one case, see the faculty in an immature and slightly developed
+state; in the other, in its most advanced condition.  In the one case
+it is DEFINITE, in the other INDEFINITE, in its range of action.
+These terms would perhaps be the most suitable for expressing the
+distinction.
+
+In the humblest forms of being we can trace scarcely anything besides
+a definite action in a few of the faculties.  Generally speaking, as
+we ascend in the scale, we see more and more of the faculties in
+exercise, and these tending more to the indefinite mode of
+manifestation.  And for this there is the obvious reason in
+providence, that the lowest animals have all of them a very limited
+sphere of existence, born only to perform a few functions, and enjoy
+a brief term of life, and then give way to another generation, so
+that they do not need much mental guidance.  At higher points in the
+scale, the sphere of existence is considerably extended, and the
+mental operations are less definite accordingly.  The horse, dog, and
+a few other rasorial types, noted for their serviceableness to our
+race, have the indefinite powers in no small endowment.  Man, again,
+shews very little of the definite mode of operation, and that little
+chiefly in childhood, or in barbarism or idiocy.  Destined for a wide
+field of action, and to be applicable to infinitely varied
+contingencies, he has all the faculties developed to a high pitch of
+indefiniteness, that he may be ready to act well in all imaginable
+cases.  His commission, it may be said, gives large discretionary
+powers, while that of the inferior animals is limited to a few
+precise directions.  But when the human brain is congenitally
+imperfect or diseased, or when it is in the state of infancy, we see
+in it an approach towards the character of the brains of some of the
+inferior animals.  Dr. G. J. Davey states that he has frequently
+witnessed, among his patients at the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum,
+indications of a particular abnormal cerebration which forcibly
+reminded him of the specific healthy characteristics of animals lower
+in the scale of organization; {346} and every one must have observed
+how often the actions of children, especially in their moments of
+play, and where their selfish feelings are concerned, bear a
+resemblance 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 the
+humbler forms, but a few of the mental faculties are traceable, just
+as we see in them but a few of the lineaments of universal structure.
+In man the system has arrived at its highest condition.  The few
+gleams of reason, then, which we see in the lower animals, are
+precisely analogous to such a development of the fore-arm as we find
+in the paddle of the whale.  Causality, comparison, and other of the
+nobler faculties, are in them RUDIMENTAL.
+
+Bound up as we thus are by an identity in the character of our mental
+organization with the lower animals, we are yet, it will be observed,
+strikingly distinguished from them by this great advance in
+development.  We have faculties in full force and activity which the
+animals either possess not at all, or in so low and obscure a form as
+to be equivalent to non-existence.  Now these parts of mind are those
+which connect us with the things that are not of this world.  We have
+veneration, prompting us to the worship of the Deity, which the
+animals lack.  We have hope, to carry us on in thought beyond the
+bounds of time.  We have reason, to enable us to inquire into the
+character of the Great Father, and the relation of us, his humble
+creatures, towards him.  We have conscientiousness and benevolence,
+by which we can in a faint and humble measure imitate, in our
+conduct, that which he exemplifies in the whole of his wondrous
+doings.  Beyond this, mental science does not carry us in support of
+religion:  the rest depends on evidence of a different kind.  But it
+is surely much that we thus discover in nature a provision for things
+so important.  The existence of faculties having a regard to such
+things is a good evidence that such things exist.  The face of God is
+reflected in the organization of man, as a little pool reflects the
+glorious sun.
+
+The affective or sentimental faculties are all of them liable to
+operate whenever appropriate objects or stimuli are presented, and
+this they do as irresistibly and unerringly as the tree sucks up
+moisture which it requires, with only this exception, that one
+faculty often interferes with the action of another, and operates
+instead by force of superior inherent strength or temporary activity.
+For example, alimentiveness may be in powerful operation with regard
+to its appropriate object, producing a keen appetite, and yet it may
+not act, in consequence of the more powerful operation of
+cautiousness, warning against evil consequences likely to ensue from
+the desired indulgence.  This liability to flit from under the
+control of one feeling to the control of another, constitutes what is
+recognised as free will in man, being nothing more than a vicissitude
+in the supremacy of the faculties over each other.
+
+It is a common mistake to suppose that the individuals of our own
+species are all of them formed with similar faculties--similar in
+power and tendency--and that education and the influence of
+circumstances produce all the differences which we observe.  There is
+not, in the old systems of mental philosophy, any doctrine more
+opposite to the truth than this.  It is refuted at once by the great
+differences of intellectual tendency and moral disposition to be
+observed amongst a group of young children who have been all brought
+up in circumstances perfectly identical--even in twins, who have
+never been but in one place, under the charge of one nurse, attended
+to alike in all respects.  The mental characters of individuals are
+inherently various, as the forms of their persons and the features of
+their faces are; and education and circumstances, though their
+influence is not to be despised, are incapable of entirely altering
+these characters, where they are strongly developed.  That the
+original characters of mind are dependent on the volume of particular
+parts of the brain and the general quality of that viscus, is proved
+by induction from an extensive range of observations, the force of
+which must have been long since universally acknowledged but for the
+unpreparedness of mankind to admit a functional connexion between
+mind and body.  The different mental characters of individuals may be
+presumed from analogy to depend on the same law of development which
+we have seen determining forms of being and the mental characters of
+particular species.  This we may conceive as carrying forward the
+intellectual powers and moral dispositions of some to a high pitch,
+repressing those of others at a moderate amount, and thus producing
+all the varieties which we see in our fellow-creatures.  Thus a
+Cuvier and a Newton are but expansions of a clown, and the person
+emphatically called the wicked man, is one whose highest moral
+feelings are rudimental.  Such differences are not confined to our
+species; they are only less strongly marked in many of the inferior
+animals.  There are clever dogs and wicked horses, as well as clever
+men and wicked men, and education sharpens the talents, and in some
+degree regulates the dispositions of animals, as it does our own.
+Here I may advert to a very interesting analogy between the mental
+characters of the types in the quinary system of zoology and the
+characters of individual men.  We have seen that the pre-eminent type
+is usually endowed with an harmonious assemblage of the mental
+qualities belonging to the whole group, while the sub-typical
+inclines 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 limited
+number is given the finely assorted assemblage of qualities which
+places them on a parallel with the typical.  To this may be
+attributed the universality which marks all the very highest brains,
+such as those of Shakespeare and Scott, men of whom it has been
+remarked that they must have possessed within themselves not only the
+poet, but the warrior, the statesman, and the philosopher; and who,
+moreover, appear to have had the mild and manly, the moral and the
+forcible parts of our nature, in the most perfect balance.
+
+There is, nevertheless, a general adaptation of the mental
+constitution of man to the circumstances in which he lives, as there
+is between all the parts of nature to each other.  The goods of the
+physical world are only to be realized by ingenuity and industrious
+exertion; behold, accordingly, an intellect full of device, and a
+fabric of the faculties which would go to pieces or destroy itself if
+it were not kept in constant occupation.  Nature presents to us much
+that is sublime and beautiful:  behold faculties which delight in
+contemplating these properties of hers, and in rising upon them, as
+upon wings, to the presence of the Eternal.  It is also a world of
+difficulties and perils, and see how a large portion of our species
+are endowed with vigorous powers which take a pleasure in meeting and
+overcoming difficulty and danger.  Even that principle on which our
+faculties are constituted--a wide range of freedom in which to act
+for all various occasions--necessitates a resentful faculty, by which
+individuals may protect themselves from the undue and capricious
+exercise of each other's faculties, and thus preserve their
+individual rights.  So also there is cautiousness, to give us a
+tendency 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 function
+which obviously has a certain legitimate range of action, however
+liable to be abused.  The constitution of the mind generally points
+to a state of intimate relation of individuals towards society,
+towards the external world, and towards things above this world.  No
+individual being is integral or independent; he is only part of an
+extensive piece of social mechanism.  The inferior mind, full of rude
+energy and unregulated impulse, does not more require a superior
+nature to act as its master and its mentor, than does the superior
+nature require to be surrounded by such rough elements on which to
+exercise its high endowments as a ruling and tutelary power.  This
+relation of each to each produces a vast portion of the active
+business of life.  It is easy to see that, if we were all alike in
+our moral tendencies, and all placed on a medium of perfect
+moderation in this respect, the world would be a scene of everlasting
+dulness and apathy.  It requires the variety of individual
+constitution to give moral life to the scene.
+
+The indefiniteness of the potentiality of the human faculties, and
+the complexity which thus attends their relations, lead unavoidably
+to occasional error.  If we consider for a moment that there are not
+less than thirty such faculties, that they are each given in
+different proportions to different persons, that each is at the same
+time endowed with a wide discretion as to the force and frequency of
+its action, and that our neighbours, the world, and our connexions
+with something beyond it, are all exercising an ever-varying
+influence over us, we cannot be surprised at the irregularities
+attending human conduct.  It is simply the penalty paid for the
+superior endowment.  It is here that the imperfection of our nature
+resides.  Causality and conscientiousness are, it is true, guides
+over all; but even these are only faculties of the same indeterminate
+constitution as the rest, and partake accordingly of the same
+inequality of action.  Man is therefore a piece of mechanism, which
+never can act so as to satisfy his own ideas of what he might be--for
+he can imagine a state of moral perfection, (as he can imagine a
+globe formed of diamonds, pearls, and rubies,) though his
+constitution forbids him to realize it.  There ever will, in the best
+disposed and most disciplined minds, be occasional discrepancies
+between the amount of temptation and the power summoned for
+regulation or resistance, or between the stimulus and the mobility of
+the faculty; and hence those errors, and shortcomings, and excesses,
+without end, with which the good are constantly finding cause to
+charge themselves.  There is at the same time even here a possibility
+of 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 be
+habitually humane, frank, and truthful.  So is human society, in its
+earliest stages, sanguinary, aggressive, and deceitful, but in time
+becomes just, faithful, and benevolent.  To such improvements there
+is a natural tendency which will operate in all fair circumstances,
+though it is not to be expected that irregular and undue impulses
+will ever be altogether banished from the system.
+
+It may still be a puzzle to many, how beings should be born into the
+world whose organization is such that they unavoidably, even in a
+civilized country, become malefactors.  Does God, it may be asked,
+make criminals?  Does he fashion certain beings with a predestination
+to evil?  He does not do so; and yet the criminal type of brain, as
+it is called, comes into existence in accordance with laws which the
+Deity has established.  It is not, however, as the result of the
+first or general intention of those laws, but as an exception from
+their ordinary and proper action.  The production of those evilly
+disposed beings is in this manner.  The moral character of the
+progeny depends in a general way, (as does the physical character
+also,) upon conditions of the parents,--both general conditions, and
+conditions at the particular time of the commencement of the
+existence of the new being, and likewise external conditions
+affecting the foetus through the mother.  Now the amount of these
+conditions is indefinite.  The faculties of the parents, as far as
+these are concerned, may have oscillated for the time towards the
+extreme of tensibility in one direction.  The influences upon the
+foetus may have also been of an extreme and unusual kind.  Let us
+suppose that the conditions upon the whole have been favourable for
+the development, not of the higher, but of the lower sentiments, and
+of the propensities of the new being, the result will necessarily be
+a mean type of brain.  Here, it will be observed, God no more decreed
+an immoral being, than he decreed an immoral paroxysm of the
+sentiments.  Our perplexity is in considering the ill-disposed being
+by himself.  He is only a part of a series of phenomena, traceable to
+a principle good in the main, but which admits of evil as an
+exception.  We have seen that it is for wise ends that God leaves our
+moral faculties to an indefinite range of action; the general good
+results of this arrangement are obvious; but exceptions of evil are
+inseparable from such a system, and this is one of them.  To come to
+particular illustration--when a people are oppressed, or kept in a
+state of slavery, they invariably contract habits of lying, for the
+purpose of deceiving and outwitting their superiors, falsehood being
+a refuge of the weak under difficulties.  What is a habit in parents
+becomes an inherent quality in children.  We are not, therefore, to
+be surprised when a traveller tells us that black children in the
+West Indies appear to lie by instinct, and never answer a white
+person truly even in the simplest matter.  Here we have secretiveness
+roused in a people to a state of constant and exalted exercise; an
+over tendency of the nervous energy in that direction is the
+consequence, and a new organic condition is established.  This tells
+upon the progeny, which comes into the world with secretiveness
+excessive in volume and activity.  All other evil characteristics may
+be readily conceived as being implanted in a new generation in the
+same way.  And sometimes not one, but several generations, may be
+concerned in bringing up the result to a pitch which produces crime.
+It is, however, to be observed, that the general tendency of things
+is to a limitation, not the extension of such abnormally constituted
+beings.  The criminal brain finds itself in a social scene where all
+is against it.  It may struggle on for a time, but the medium and
+superior natures are never long at a loss in getting the better of
+it.  The disposal of such beings will always depend much on the moral
+state of a community, the degree in which just views prevail with
+regard to human nature, and the feelings which accident may have
+caused to predominate at a particular time.  Where the mass was
+little enlightened or refined, and terrors for life or property were
+highly excited, malefactors have ever been treated severely.  But
+when order is generally triumphant, and reason allowed sway, men
+begin to see the true case of criminals--namely, that while one large
+department are victims of erroneous social conditions, another are
+brought to error by tendencies which they are only unfortunate in
+having inherited from nature.  Criminal jurisprudence then addresses
+itself less to the direct punishment than to the reformation and
+care-taking of those liable to its attention.  And such a treatment
+of criminals, it may be farther remarked, so that it stop short of
+affording any encouragement to crime, (a point which experience will
+determine,) is evidently no more than justice, seeing how
+accidentally all forms of the moral constitution are distributed, and
+how thoroughly mutual obligation shines throughout the whole frame of
+society--the strong to help the weak, the good to redeem and restrain
+the 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 be
+developed from inherent qualities, and to have a mode of action
+depending solely on its own organization.  Thus the whole is complete
+on one principle.  The masses of space are formed by law; law makes
+them in due time theatres of existence for plants and animals;
+sensation, disposition, intellect, are all in like manner developed
+and sustained in action by law.  It is most interesting to observe
+into how small a field the whole of the mysteries of nature thus
+ultimately resolve themselves.  The inorganic has one final
+comprehensive law, GRAVITATION.  The organic, the other great
+department of mundane things, rests in like manner on one law, and
+that is,--DEVELOPMENT.  Nor may even these be after all twain, but
+only branches of one still more comprehensive law, the expression of
+that 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 origin
+of nature bears upon the condition of man upon the earth, and his
+relation to supra-mundane things.
+
+That enjoyment is the proper attendant of animal existence is pressed
+upon us by all that we see and all we experience.  Everywhere we
+perceive in the lower creatures, in their ordinary condition,
+symptoms of enjoyment.  Their whole being is a system of needs, the
+supplying of which is gratification, and of faculties, the exercise
+of which is pleasurable.  When we consult our own sensations, we find
+that, even in a sense of a healthy performance of all the functions
+of the animal economy, God has furnished us with an innocent and very
+high enjoyment.  The mere quiet consciousness of a healthy play of
+the mental functions--a mind at ease with itself and all around it--
+is in like manner extremely agreeable.  This negative class of
+enjoyments, it may be remarked, is likely to be even more extensively
+experienced by the lower animals than by man, at least in the
+proportion of their absolute endowments, as their mental and bodily
+functions are much less liable to derangement than ours.  To find the
+world constituted on this principle is only what in reason we would
+expect.  We cannot conceive that so vast a system could have been
+created for a contrary purpose.  No averagely constituted human being
+would, in his own limited sphere of action, think of producing a
+similar system upon an opposite principle.  But to form so vast a
+range of being, and to make being everywhere a source of
+gratification, is conformable to our ideas of a Creator in whom we
+are constantly discovering traits of a nature, of which our own is
+but a faint and far-cast shadow at the best.
+
+It appears at first difficult to reconcile with this idea the many
+miseries which we see all sentient beings, ourselves included,
+occasionally enduring.  How, the sage has asked in every age, should
+a Being so transcendently kind, have allowed of so large an admixture
+of evil in the condition of his creatures?  Do we not at length find
+an answer to a certain extent satisfactory, in the view which has now
+been given of the constitution of nature?  We there see the Deity
+operating in the most august of his works by fixed laws, an
+arrangement which, it is clear, only admits of the main and primary
+results being good, but disregards exceptions.  Now the mechanical
+laws are so definite in their purposes, that no exceptions ever take
+place in that department; if there is a certain quantity of nebulous
+matter to be agglomerated and divided and set in motion as a
+planetary system, it will be so with hair's-breadth accuracy, and
+cannot be otherwise.  But the laws presiding over meteorology, life,
+and mind, are necessarily less definite, as they have to produce a
+great variety of mutually related results.  Left to act independently
+of each other, each according to its separate commission, and each
+with a wide range of potentiality to be modified by associated
+conditions, they can only have effects generally beneficial:  often
+there must be an interference of one law with another, often a law
+will chance to operate in excess, or upon a wrong object, and thus
+evil will be produced.  Thus, winds are generally useful in many
+ways, and the sea is useful as a means of communication between one
+country and another; but the natural laws which produce winds are of
+indefinite range of action, and sometimes are unusually concentrated
+in space or in time, so as to produce storms and hurricanes, by which
+much damage is done; the sea may be by these causes violently
+agitated, so that many barks and many lives perish.  Here, it is
+evident, the evil is only exceptive.  Suppose, again, that a boy, in
+the course of the lively sports proper to his age, suffers a fall
+which injures his spine, and renders him a cripple for life.  Two
+things have been concerned in the case:  first, the love of violent
+exercise, and second, the law of gravitation.  Both of these things
+are good in the main.  In the rash enterprises and rough sports in
+which boys engage, they prepare their bodies and minds for the hard
+tasks of life.  By gravitation, all moveable things, our own bodies
+included, are kept stable on the surface of the earth.  But when it
+chances that the playful boy loses his hold (we shall say) of the
+branch of a tree, and has no solid support immediately below, the law
+of gravitation unrelentingly pulls him to the ground, and thus he is
+hurt.  Now it was not a primary object of gravitation to injure boys;
+but gravitation could not but operate in the circumstances, its
+nature 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 the
+evils which afflict society.  War, it may be said, and said truly, is
+a tremendous example of evil, in the misery, hardship, waste of human
+life, and mis-spending of human energies, which it occasions.  But
+what is it that produces war?  Certain tendencies of human nature, as
+keen assertion of a supposed right, resentment of supposed injury,
+acquisitiveness, desire of admiration, combativeness, or mere love of
+excitement.  All of these are tendencies which are every day, in a
+legitimate extent of action, producing great and indispensable
+benefits to us.  Man would be a tame, indolent, unserviceable being
+without them, and his fate would be starvation.  War, then, huge evil
+though it be, is, after all, but the exceptive case, a casual
+misdirection of properties and powers essentially good.  God has
+given us the tendencies for a benevolent purpose.  He has only not
+laid down any absolute obstruction to our misuse of them.  That were
+an arrangement of a kind which he has nowhere made.  But he has
+established many laws in our nature which tend to lessen the
+frequency and destructiveness of these abuses.  Our reason comes to
+see that war is purely an evil, even to the conqueror.  Benevolence
+interposes to make its ravages less mischievous to human comfort, and
+less destructive to human life.  Men begin to find that their more
+active powers can be exercised with equal gratification on legitimate
+objects; for example, in overcoming the natural difficulties of their
+path through life, or in a generous spirit of emulation in a line of
+duty beneficial to themselves and their fellow-creatures.  Thus, war
+at length shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass, though there
+certainly is no reason to suppose that it will be at any early
+period, if ever, altogether dispensed with, while man's constitution
+remains as it is.  In considering an evil of this kind, we must not
+limit our view to our own or any past time.  Placed upon the earth
+with faculties prepared to act, but inexperienced, and with the more
+active propensities necessarily in great force to suit the condition
+of the globe, man was apt to misuse his powers much in this way at
+first, compared with what he is likely to do when he advances into a
+condition of civilization.  In the scheme of providence, thousands of
+years of frequent warfare, all the so-called glories which fill
+history, may be only an exception to the general rule.
+
+The sex passion in like manner leads to great evils; but the evils
+are only an exception from the vast mass of good connected with this
+affection.  Providence has seen it necessary to make very ample
+provision for the preservation and utmost possible extension of all
+species.  The aim seems to be to diffuse existence as widely as
+possible, to fill up every vacant piece of space with some sentient
+being to be a vehicle of enjoyment.  Hence this passion is conferred
+in great force.  But the relation between the number of beings, and
+the means of supporting them, is only on the footing of general law.
+There may be occasional discrepancies between the laws operating for
+the multiplication of individuals, and the laws operating to supply
+them with the means of subsistence, and evils will be endured in
+consequence, even in our own highly favoured species.  But against
+all these evils, and against those numberless vexations which have
+arisen in all ages from the attachment of the sexes, place the vast
+amount of happiness which is derived from this source--the basis of
+the whole circle of the domestic affections, the sweetening principle
+of life, the prompter of all our most generous feelings, and even of
+our most virtuous resolves--and every ill that can be traced to it is
+but as dust in the balance.  And here, also, we must be on our guard
+against judging from what we see in the world at a particular era.
+As reason and the higher sentiments of man's nature increase in
+force, this passion is put under better regulation, so as to lessen
+many of the evils connected with it.  The civilized man is more able
+to give it due control; his attachments are less the result of
+impulse; he studies more the weal of his partner and offspring.
+There are even some of the resentful feelings connected in early
+society with love, such as hatred of successful rivalry, and
+jealousy, which almost disappear in an advanced stage of
+civilization.  The evils springing, in our own species at least, from
+this passion, may therefore be an exception mainly peculiar to a
+particular term of the world's progress, and which may be expected to
+decrease greatly in amount.
+
+With respect, again, to disease, so prolific a cause of suffering to
+man, the human constitution is merely a complicated but regular
+process in electro-chemistry, which goes on well, and is a source of
+continual gratification, so long as nothing occurs to interfere with
+it injuriously, but which is liable every moment to be deranged by
+various external agencies, when it becomes a source of pain, and, if
+the injury be severe, ceases to be capable of retaining life.  It may
+be readily admitted that the evils experienced in this way are very
+great; but, after all, such experiences are no more than occasional,
+and not necessarily frequent--exceptions from a general rule of which
+the direct action is to confer happiness.  The human constitution
+might have been made of a more hardy character; but we always see
+hardiness and insensibility go together, and it may be of course
+presumed that we only could have purchased this immunity from
+suffering at the expense of a large portion of that delicacy in which
+lie some of our most agreeable sensations.  Or man's faculties might
+have been restricted to definiteness of action, as is greatly the
+case with those of the lower animals, and thus we should have been
+equally safe from the aberrations which lead to disease; but in that
+event we should have been incapable of acting to so many different
+purposes as we are, and of the many high enjoyments which the varied
+action of our faculties places in our power:  we should not, in
+short, have been human beings, but merely on a level with the
+inferior animals.  Thus, it appears, that the very fineness of man's
+constitution, that which places him in such a high relation to the
+mundane economy, and makes him the vehicle of so many exquisitely
+delightful sensations--it is this which makes him liable to the
+sufferings of disease.  It might be said, on the other hand, that the
+noxiousness of the agencies producing disease might have been
+diminished or extinguished; but the probability is, that this could
+not have been done without such a derangement of the whole economy of
+nature as would have been attended with more serious evils.  For
+example--a large class of diseases are the result of effluvia from
+decaying organic matter.  This kind of matter is known to be
+extremely useful, when mixed with earth, in favouring the process of
+vegetation.  Supposing the noxiousness to the human constitution done
+away with, might we not also lose that important quality which tends
+so largely to increase the food raised from the ground?  Perhaps (as
+has been suggested) the noxiousness is even a matter of special
+design, to induce us to put away decaying organic substances into the
+earth, where they are calculated to be so useful.  Now man has reason
+to enable him to see that such substances are beneficial under one
+arrangement, and noxious in the other.  He is, as it were, commanded
+to take the right method in dealing with it.  In point of fact, men
+do not always take this method, but allow accumulations of noxious
+matter to gather close about their dwellings, where they generate
+fevers and agues.  But their doing so may be regarded as only a
+temporary exception from the operation of mental laws, the general
+tendency of which is to make men adopt the proper measures.  And
+these measures will probably be in time universally adopted, so that
+one extensive class of diseases will be altogether or nearly
+abolished.
+
+Another large class of diseases spring from mismanagement of our
+personal economy.  Eating to excess, eating and drinking what is
+noxious, disregard to that cleanliness which is necessary for the
+right action of the functions of the skin, want of fresh air for the
+supply of the lungs, undue, excessive, and irregular indulgence of
+the mental affections, are all of them recognised modes of creating
+that derangement of the system in which disease consists.  Here also
+it may be said that a limitation of the mental faculties to definite
+manifestations (vulgo, instincts) might have enabled us to avoid many
+of 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 lower
+animals are, wanting that transcendently higher character of
+sensation and power, by which our enjoyments are made so much
+greater.  In making the desire of food, for example, with us an
+indefinite mental manifestation, instead of the definite one, which
+it is amongst the lower animals, the Creator has given us a means of
+deriving far greater gratifications from food (consistently with
+health) than the lower animals appear to be capable of.  He has also
+given us reason to act as a guiding and controlling power over this
+and other propensities, so that they may be prevented from becoming
+causes of malady.  We can see that excess is injurious, and are thus
+prompted to moderation.  We can see that all the things which we feel
+inclined to take are not healthful, and are thus exhorted to avoid
+what are pernicious.  We can also see that a cleanly skin and a
+constant supply of pure air are necessary to the proper performance
+of some of the most important of the organic functions, and thus are
+stimulated to frequent ablution, and to a right ventilation of our
+parlours and sleeping apartments.  And so on with the other causes of
+disease.  Reason may not operate very powerfully to these purposes in
+an early state of society, and prodigious evils may therefore have
+been endured from disease in past ages; but these are not necessarily
+to be endured always.  As civilization advances, reason acquires a
+greater ascendancy; the causes of the evils are seen and avoided; and
+disease shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass.  The experience
+of our own country places this in a striking light.  In the middle
+ages, when large towns had no police regulations, society was every
+now and then scourged by pestilence.  The third of the people of
+Europe are said to have been carried off by one epidemic.  Even in
+London the annual mortality has greatly sunk within a century.  The
+improvement in human life, which has taken place since the
+construction of the Northampton tables by Dr. Price, is equally
+remarkable.  Modern tables still shew a prodigious mortality among
+the young in all civilized countries--evidently a result of some
+prevalent error in the usual modes of rearing them.  But to remedy
+this evil there is the sagacity of the human mind, and the sense to
+adopt any reformed plans which may be shewn to be necessary.  By a
+change in the management of an orphan institution in London, during
+the last fifty years, an immense reduction in the mortality took
+place.  We may of course hope to see measures devised and adopted for
+producing a similar improvement of infant life throughout the world
+at large.
+
+In this part of our subject, the most difficult point certainly lies
+in those occurrences of disease where the afflicted individual has
+been in no degree concerned in bringing the visitation upon himself.
+Daily experience shews us infectious disease arising in a place where
+the natural laws in respect of cleanliness are neglected, and then
+spreading into regions where there is no blame of this kind.  We then
+see the innocent suffering equally with those who may be called the
+guilty.  Nay, the benevolent physician who comes to succour the
+miserable beings whose error may have caused the mischief, is
+sometimes seen to fall a victim to it, while many of his patients
+recover.  We are also only too familiar with the transmission of
+diseases from erring parents to innocent children, who, accordingly
+suffer, and perhaps die prematurely, as it were for the sins of
+others.  After all, however painful such cases may be in
+contemplation, they cannot be regarded in any other light than as
+exceptions from arrangements, the general working of which is
+beneficial.
+
+With regard to the innocence of the suffering parties, there is one
+important consideration which is pressed upon us from many quarters,
+namely--that moral conditions have not the least concern in the
+working of these simply physical laws.  These laws proceed with an
+entire independence of all such conditions, and desirably so, for
+otherwise 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 the
+less cautious of the two, ventures upon an insecure place, falls, and
+is killed, while the other, choosing a better footing, remains
+uninjured.  It is not in what we can conceive of the nature of
+things, that there should be a special exemption from the ordinary
+laws of matter, to save this virtuous man.  So it might be that, of
+two physicians, attending fever cases, in a mean part of a large
+city, the one, an excellent citizen, may stand in such a position
+with 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 and
+father, and who, unlike the other, only attends such cases with
+selfish ends, takes care to be as much as possible out of the stream
+of infection, and accordingly escapes.  In both of these cases man's
+sense of good and evil--his faculty of conscientiousness--would
+incline him to destine the vicious man to destruction and save the
+virtuous.  But the Great Ruler of Nature does not act on such
+principles.  He has established laws for the operation of inanimate
+matter, which are quite unswerving, so that when we know them, we
+have only to act in a certain way with respect to them, in order to
+obtain all the benefits and avoid all the evils connected with them.
+He has likewise established moral laws in our nature, which are
+equally unswerving, (allowing for their wider range of action,) and
+from obedience to which unfailing good is to be derived.  But the two
+sets of laws are independent of each other.  Obedience to each gives
+only its own proper advantage, not the advantage proper to the other.
+Hence it is that virtue forms no protection against the evils
+connected with the physical laws, while, on the other hand, a man
+skilled in and attentive to these, but unrighteous and disregardful
+of his neighbour, is in like manner not protected by his attention to
+physical circumstances from the proper consequences of neglect or
+breach of the moral laws.
+
+Thus it is that the innocence of the party suffering for the faults
+of a parent, or of any other person or set of persons, is evidently a
+consideration quite apart from that suffering.
+
+It is clear, moreover, from the whole scope of the natural laws, that
+the 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; the
+individual is left, as it were, to take his chance amidst the melee
+of the various laws affecting him.  If he be found inferiorly
+endowed, or ill befalls him, there was at least no partiality against
+him.  The system has the fairness of a lottery, in which every one
+has 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 a
+compensating, a repairing, and a consoling effect.  Suppose, for
+instance, that, from a defect in the power of development in a
+mother, her offspring is ushered into the world destitute of some of
+the most useful members, or blind, or deaf, or of imperfect
+intellect, there is ever to be found in the parents and other
+relatives, and in the surrounding public, a sympathy with the
+sufferer, which tends to make up for the deficiency, so that he is in
+the long run not much a loser.  Indeed, the benevolence implanted in
+our nature seems to be an arrangement having for one of its principal
+objects to cause us, by sympathy and active aid, to remedy the evils
+unavoidably suffered by our fellow-creatures in the course of the
+operation of the other natural laws.  And even in the sufferer
+himself, it is often found that a defect in one point is made up for
+by an extra power in another.  The blind come to have a sense of
+touch much more acute than those who see.  Persons born without hands
+have been known to acquire a power of using their feet for a number
+of the principal offices usually served by that member.  I need
+hardly say how remarkably fatuity is compensated by the more than
+usual regard paid to the children born with it by their parents, and
+the zeal which others usually feel to protect and succour such
+persons.  In short, we never see evil of any kind take place where
+there is not some remedy or compensating principle ready to interfere
+for its alleviation.  And there can be no doubt that in this manner
+suffering of all kinds is very much relieved.
+
+We may, then, regard the globes of space as theatres designed for the
+residence of animated sentient beings, placed there with this as
+their first and most obvious purpose--namely, to be sensible of
+enjoyments from the exercise of their faculties in relation to
+external things.  The faculties of the various species are very
+different, but the happiness of each depends on the harmony there may
+be 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 many
+more faculties, cannot be thus contented.  Besides having a
+sufficiency of food and bodily comfort, he must have entertainment
+for his intellect, whatever be its grade, objects for the domestic
+and social affections, objects for the sentiments.  He is also a
+progressive being, and what pleases him to-day may not please him to-
+morrow; but, in each case he demands a sphere of appropriate
+conditions in order to be happy.  By virtue of his superior
+organization, his enjoyments are much higher and more varied than
+those of any of the lower animals; but the very complexity of
+circumstances affecting him renders it at the same time unavoidable,
+that his nature should be often inharmoniously placed and
+disagreeably affected, and that he should therefore be unhappy.
+Still unhappiness amongst mankind is the exception from the rule of
+their condition, and an exception which is capable of almost infinite
+diminution, by virtue of the improving reason of man, and the
+experience which he acquires in working out the problems of society.
+
+To secure the immediate means of happiness it would seem to be
+necessary for men first to study with all care the constitution of
+nature, and, secondly, to accommodate themselves to that
+constitution, so as to obtain all the realizable advantages from
+acting conformably to it, and to avoid all likely evils from
+disregarding it.  It will be of no use to sit down and expect that
+things are to operate of their own accord, or through the direction
+of a partial deity, for our benefit; equally so were it to expose
+ourselves to palpable dangers, under the notion that we shall, for
+some reason, have a dispensation or exemption from them:  we must
+endeavour so to place ourselves, and so to act, that the arrangements
+which Providence has made impartially for all may be in our favour,
+and not against us; such are the only means by which we can obtain
+good and avoid evil here below.  And, in doing this, it is especially
+necessary that care be taken to avoid interfering with the like
+efforts of other men, beyond what may have been agreed upon by the
+mass as necessary for the general good.  Such interferences, tending
+in any way to injure the body, property, or peace of a neighbour, or
+to the injury of society in general, tend very much to reflect evil
+upon ourselves, through the re-action which they produce in the
+feelings of our neighbour and of society, and also the offence which
+they give to our own conscientiousness and benevolence.  On the other
+hand, when we endeavour to promote the efforts of our fellow-
+creatures to attain happiness, we produce a re-action of the contrary
+kind, the tendency of which is towards our own benefit.  The one
+course of action tends to the injury, the other to the benefit of
+ourselves and others.  By the one course the general design of the
+Creator towards his creatures is thwarted; by the other it is
+favoured.  And thus we can readily see the most substantial grounds
+for regarding all moral emotions and doings as divine in their
+nature, and as a means of rising to and communing with God.
+Obedience is not selfishness, which it would otherwise be--it is
+worship.  The merest barbarians have a glimmering sense of this
+philosophy, and it continually shines out more and more clearly in
+the public mind, as a nation advances in intelligence.  Nor are
+individuals alone concerned here.  The same rule applies as between
+one 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--this
+being a gross injustice to the subjected party, the mental
+manifestations of that party to the masters will be such as to mar
+the comfort of their lives; the minds of the masters themselves will
+be degraded by the association with beings so degraded; and thus,
+with some immediate or apparent benefit from keeping slaves, there
+will be in a far greater degree an experience of evil.  So also, if
+one portion of a nation, engaged in a particular department of
+industry, grasp at some advantages injurious to the other sections of
+the people, the first effect will be an injury to those other
+portions of the nation, and the second a re-active injury to the
+injurers, making their guilt their punishment.  And so when one
+nation commits an aggression upon the property or rights of another,
+or even pursues towards it a sordid or ungracious policy, the effects
+are sure to be redoubled evil from the offended party.  All of these
+things are under laws which make the effects, on a large range,
+absolutely certain; and an individual, a party, a people, can no more
+act unjustly with safety, than I could with safety place my leg in
+the track of a coming wain, or attempt to fast thirty days.  We have
+been constituted on the principle of only being able to realize
+happiness for ourselves when our fellow-creatures are also happy; we
+must therefore both do to others only as we would have others to do
+to us, and endeavour to promote their happiness as well as our own,
+in order to find ourselves truly comfortable in this field of
+existence.  These are words which God speaks to us as truly through
+his 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 not
+imply the most perfect conceivable love or regard on the part of the
+Deity towards his creatures.  Constituted as we are, feeling how vain
+our efforts often are to attain happiness or avoid calamity, and
+knowing that much evil does unavoidably befall us from no fault of
+ours, we are apt to feel that this is a dreary view of the Divine
+economy; and before we have looked farther, we might be tempted to
+say, Far rather let us cling to the idea, so long received, that the
+Deity acts continually for special occasions, and gives such
+directions to the fate of each individual as he thinks meet; so that,
+when sorrow comes to us, we shall have at least the consolation of
+believing that it is imposed by a Father who loves us, and who seeks
+by these means to accomplish our ultimate good.  Now, in the first
+place, if this be an untrue notion of the Deity and his ways, it can
+be of no real benefit to us; and, in the second, it is proper to
+inquire if there be necessarily in the doctrine of natural law any
+peculiarity calculated materially to affect our hitherto supposed
+relation to the Deity.  It may be that while we are committed to take
+our chance in a natural system of undeviating operation, and are left
+with apparent ruthlessness to endure the consequences of every
+collision into which we knowingly or unknowingly come with each law
+of the system, there is a system of Mercy and Grace behind the screen
+of nature, which is to make up for all casualties endured here, and
+the very largeness of which is what makes these casualties a matter
+of indifference to God.  For the existence of such a system, the
+actual constitution of nature is itself an argument.  The reasoning
+may proceed thus:  The system of nature assures us that benevolence
+is a leading principle in the divine mind.  But that system is at the
+same time deficient in a means of making this benevolence of
+invariable operation.  To reconcile this to the recognised character
+of the Deity, it is necessary to suppose that the present system is
+but a part of a whole, a stage in a Great Progress, and that the
+Redress is in reserve.  Another argument here occurs--the economy of
+nature, beautifully arranged and vast in its extent as it is, does
+not satisfy even man's idea of what might be; he feels that, if this
+multiplicity of theatres for the exemplification of such phenomena as
+we see on earth were to go on for ever unchanged, it would not be
+worthy of the Being capable of creating it.  An endless monotony of
+human generations, with their humble thinkings and doings, seems an
+object beneath that august Being.  But the mundane economy might be
+very well as a portion of some greater phenomenon, the rest of which
+was yet to be evolved.  It therefore appears that our system, though
+it may at first appear at issue with other doctrines in esteem
+amongst mankind, tends to come into harmony with them, and even to
+give them support.  I would say, in conclusion, that, even where the
+two above arguments may fail of effect, there may yet be a faith
+derived from this view of nature sufficient to sustain us under all
+sense of the imperfect happiness, the calamities, the woes, and pains
+of this sphere of being.  For let us but fully and truly consider
+what a system is here laid open to view, and we cannot well doubt
+that we are in the hands of One who is both able and willing to do us
+the 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, or
+though every hope we had built on the secular materials within our
+reach were felt to be melting from our grasp.  Thinking of all the
+contingencies of this world as to be in time melted into or lost in
+the greater system, to which the present is only subsidiary, let us
+wait the end with patience, and be of good cheer.
+
+
+
+NOTE CONCLUSORY.
+
+
+
+Thus ends a book, composed in solitude, and almost without the
+cognizance of a single human being, for the sole purpose (or as
+nearly so as may be) of improving the knowledge of mankind, and
+through that medium their happiness.  For reasons which need not be
+specified, the author's name is retained in its original obscurity,
+and, in all probability, will never be generally known.  I do not
+expect that any word of praise which the work may elicit shall ever
+be responded to by me; or that any word of censure shall ever be
+parried or deprecated.  It goes forth to take its chance of instant
+oblivion, or of a long and active course of usefulness in the world.
+Neither contingency can be of any importance to me, beyond the regret
+or the satisfaction which may be imparted by my sense of a lost or a
+realized benefit to my fellow-creatures.  The book, as far as I am
+aware, is the first attempt to connect the natural sciences into a
+history of creation.  The idea is a bold one, and there are many
+circumstances of time and place to render its boldness more than
+usually conspicuous.  But I believe my doctrines to be in the main
+true; I believe all truth to be valuable, and its dissemination a
+blessing.  At the same time, I hold myself duly sensible of the
+common liability to error, but am certain that no error in this line
+has the least chance of being allowed to injure the public mind.
+Therefore I publish.  My views, if correct, will most assuredly
+stand, and may sooner or later prove beneficial; if otherwise, they
+will as surely pass out of notice without doing any harm.
+
+My sincere desire in the composition of the book was to give the true
+view of the history of nature, with as little disturbance as possible
+to existing beliefs, whether philosophical or religious.  I have made
+little reference to any doctrines of the latter kind which may be
+thought inconsistent with mine, because to do so would have been to
+enter upon questions for the settlement of which our knowledge is not
+yet ripe.  Let the reconciliation of whatever is true in my views
+with whatever is true in other systems come about in the fulness of
+calm and careful inquiry.  I cannot but here remind the reader of
+what Dr. Wiseman has shewn so strikingly in his lectures, how
+different new philosophic doctrines are apt to appear after we have
+become somewhat familiar with them.  Geology at first seems
+inconsistent with the authority of the Mosaic record.  A storm of
+unreasoning indignation rises against its teachers.  In time, its
+truths, being found quite irresistible, are admitted, and mankind
+continue to regard the Scriptures with the same respect as before.
+So also with several other sciences.  Now the only objection that can
+be made on such ground to this book, is, that it brings forward some
+new hypotheses, at first sight, like geology, not in perfect harmony
+with that record, and arranges all the rest into a system which
+partakes of the same character.  But may not the sacred text, on a
+liberal interpretation, or with the benefit of new light reflected
+from nature, or derived from learning, be shewn to be as much in
+harmony with the novelties of this volume as it has been with geology
+and natural philosophy?  What is there in the laws of organic
+creation more startling to the candid theologian than in the
+Copernican system or the natural formation of strata?  And if the
+whole series of facts is true, why should we shrink from inferences
+legitimately flowing from it?  Is it not a wiser course, since
+reconciliation has come in so many instances, still to hope for it,
+still to go on with our new truths, trusting that they also will in
+time be found harmonious with all others?  Thus we avoid the damage
+which the very appearance of an opposition to natural truth is
+calculated to inflict on any system presumed to require such support.
+Thus we give, as is meet, a respectful reception to what is revealed
+through the medium of nature, at the same time that we fully reserve
+our reverence for all we have been accustomed to hold sacred, not one
+tittle of which it may ultimately be found necessary to alter.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{3}  By Mr. Henderson, Professor of Astronomy in the Edinburgh
+University, 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 Dublin
+Philosophical Magazine, February, 1843.
+
+{9}  The orbitual revolutions of the satellites of Uranus have not as
+yet been clearly scanned.  It has been thought that their path is
+retrograde compared with the rest.  Perhaps this may be owing to a
+bouleversement of the primary, for the inclination of its equator to
+the ecliptic is admitted to be unusually high; but the subject is
+altogether so obscure, that nothing can be founded on it.
+
+{12}  Astronomy, Lardner's Cyclopaedia.
+
+{17}  M. Compte combined Huygens's theorems for the measure of
+centrifugal force with the law of gravitation, and thus formed a
+simple fundamental equation between the duration of the rotation of
+what he calls the producing star, and the distance of the star
+produced.  The constants of this equation were the radius of the
+central star, and the intensity of gravity at its surface, which is a
+direct consequence of its mass.  It leads directly to the third law
+of Kepler, which thus becomes susceptible of being conceived a priori
+in a cosmogonical point of view.  M. Compte first applied it to the
+moon, and found, to his great delight, that the periodic time of that
+satellite agrees within an hour or two with the duration which the
+revolution of the earth ought to have had at the time when the lunar
+distance formed the limit of the earth's atmosphere.  He found the
+coincidence less exact, but still very striking in every other case.
+In those of the planets he obtained for the duration of the
+corresponding solar rotations a value always a little less than their
+actual periodic times.  "It is remarkable," says he, "that this
+difference, though increasing as the planet is more distant,
+preserves very nearly the same relation to the corresponding periodic
+time, of which it commonly forms the forty-fifth part,"--shewing, we
+may suppose, that only some small elements of the question had been
+overlooked by the calculator.  The defect changes to an excess in the
+different systems of the satellites, where it is proportionally
+greater than in the planets, and unequal in the different systems.
+"From the whole of these comparisons," says he, "I deduced the
+following general result: --Supposing the mathematical limit of the
+solar atmosphere successively extended to the regions where the
+different planets are now found, the duration of the sun's rotation
+was, at each of these epochs, sensibly equal to that of the actual
+sidereal revolution of the corresponding planet; and the same is true
+for each planetary atmosphere in relation to the different
+satellites."--Cours de Philosophie Positif.
+
+{42}  The researches on this subject were conducted chiefly by the
+late Baron Fourier, perpetual secretary to the Academy of Sciences of
+Paris.  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.  That
+fragments of crinoidea, though of no determinate species, occur in
+this system, we have the authority of Mr. Murchison.--Silurian
+System, 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 British
+Museum, is forty-five feet high.
+
+{93}  "Some of the most considerable dislocations of the border of
+the coal fields of Coalbrookdale and Dudley happened after the
+deposition of a part of the new red sandstone; but it is certain that
+those of Somersetshire and Gloucestershire were completed before the
+date of that rock."--Philips.
+
+{97}  The immediate effects of the slow respiration of the reptilia
+are, a low temperature in their bodies, and a slow consumption of
+food.  Requiring little oxygen, they could have existed in an
+atmosphere containing a less proportion of that gas to carbonic acid
+gas than what now obtains.
+
+{99}  The order to which frogs and toads belong.
+
+{103}  Dr. Buckland, quoting an article by Professor Hitchcock, in
+the 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 contents
+of the stomach faithfully preserved, and even with pieces of the
+external skin.  The pellets ejected by them (coprolites) are found in
+vast numbers, each generally enclosed in a nodule of ironstone, and
+sometimes 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 to
+an order in which the hog, elephant, horse, and rhinoceros are
+included.
+
+{149}  Intervals in the series were numerous in the department of the
+pachydermata; many of these gaps are now filled up from the extinct
+genera found in the tertiary formation.
+
+{151}  See paper by Professor Edward Forbes, read to the British
+Association, 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 the
+curve downwards, and in the bend is to be placed a small portion of
+mercury, not sufficient to close the connexion between the two legs;
+a solution of nitrate of silver is then to be introduced until it
+rises in both limbs of the tube.  The precipitation of the mercury,
+in the form of an Arbor Dianae, will then take place, slowly, only
+when the syphon is placed in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic
+meridian; but if it be placed in a plane coinciding with the magnetic
+meridian, the action is rapid, and the crystallization particularly
+beautiful, taking place principally in that branch of the syphon
+towards the north.  If the syphon be placed in a plane perpendicular
+to the magnetic meridian, and a strong magnet brought near it, the
+precipitation will commence in a short time, and be most copious in
+the branch of the syphon nearest to the south pole of the magnet."
+
+{169a}  Fatty matter has also been formed in the laboratory.  The
+process consisted in passing a mixture of carbonic acid, pure
+hydrogen, and carburetted hydrogen, in the proportion of one measure
+of the first, twenty of the second, and ten of the third, through a
+red-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 Microscope
+in the Study of Anatomy and Physiology, 1843.
+
+{172}  See Dr. Martin Barry on Fissiparous Generation; Jameson's
+Journal, Oct. 1843.  Appearances precisely similar have been detected
+in the germs of the crustacea.
+
+{175}  Mr. Leonard Horner and Sir David Brewster, on a substance
+resembling shell.--Philosophical Transactions, 1836.
+
+{179a}  Dr. Allen Thomson, in the article Generation, in Todd's
+Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology.
+
+{179b}  The term aboriginal is here suggested, as more correct than
+spontaneous, 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 viviparous
+quadrupeds have seven vertebrae in the neck.
+
+{201}  Lord's Popular Physiology.  It is to Tiedemann that we chiefly
+owe these curious observations; but ground was first broken in this
+branch of physiological science by Dr. John Hunter.
+
+{204}  When I formed this idea, I was not aware of one which seems
+faintly to foreshadow it--namely, Socrates's doctrine, afterwards
+dilated on by Plato, that "previous to the existence of the world,
+and beyond its present limits, there existed certain archetypes, the
+embodiment (if we may use such a word) of general ideas; and that
+these archetypes were models, in imitation of which all particular
+beings were created."
+
+{208}  The numbers 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, &c. are formed by adding
+the successive terms of the series of natural numbers thus:
+
+1=1
+1+2=3
+1+2+3=6
+l+2+3+4=10, &c.  They are called triangular numbers, because a number
+of points corresponding to any term can always be placed in the form
+of 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 the
+brain of every tribe of animals appears to pass, during its
+development, in succession through the types of all those below it,
+so the brain of man passes through the types of those of every tribe
+in the creation.  It represents, accordingly, before the second month
+of utero-gestation, that of an avertebrated animal; at the second
+month, that of an osseous fish; at the third, that of a turtle; at
+the fourth, that of a bird; at the fifth, that of one of the
+rodentia; at the sixth, that of one of the ruminantia; at the
+seventh, that of one of the digitigrada; at the eighth, that of one
+of the quadrumana; till at length, at the ninth, it compasses the
+brain of Man!  It is hardly necessary to say, that all this is only
+an approximation to the truth; since neither is the brain of all
+osseous fishes, of all turtles, of all birds, nor of all the species
+of any one of the above order of mammals, by any means precisely the
+same, nor does the brain of the human foetus at any time precisely
+resemble, perhaps, that of any individual whatever among the lower
+animals.  Nevertheless, it may be said to represent, at each of the
+above-mentioned periods, the aggregate, as it were, of the brains of
+each of the tribes stated; consisting as it does, about the second
+month, chiefly of the mesial parts of the cerebellum, the corpora
+quadrigemina, thalami optici, rudiments of the hemispheres of the
+cerebrum and corpora striata; and receiving in succession, at the
+third, the rudiments of the lobes of the cerebrum; at the fourth,
+those of the fornix, corpus callosum, and septum lucidum; at the
+fifth, the tubor annulare, and so forth; the posterior lobes of the
+cerebrum increasing from before to behind, so as to cover the thalami
+optici about the fourth month, the corpora quadrigemina about the
+sixth, and the cerebellum about the seventh.  This, then, is another
+example of an increase in the complexity of an organ succeeding its
+centralization; as if Nature, having first piled up her materials in
+one spot, delighted afterwards to employ her abundance, not so much
+in enlarging old parts as in forming new ones upon the old
+foundations, and thus adding to the complexity of a fabric, the
+rudimental 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.  Since
+it won't fit within the normal Gutenberg margins, and cannot be
+reproduced typographically, the rows of the table have been broken
+out as follows.]
+
+{229}  Some poor people having taken up their abode in the cells
+under the fortifications of Lisle, the proportion of defective
+infants produced by them became so great, that it was deemed
+necessary to issue an order commanding these cells to be shut up.
+
+{232}  These affinities and analogies are explained in the next
+chapter.
+
+{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 be
+explained in the sequel.
+
+{242}  This is preferred to grallatorial, as more comprehensively
+descriptive.  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 circle
+simiadae are only too rigid, for fossil geology has since added new
+genera to this group and the cebidae, and there may be still farther
+additions.
+
+{270}  See Wilson's American Ornithology; article, Fishing Crow.
+
+{274}  [Gutenberg note:  in the diagram the triangles extending from
+the 1,2,3,4 and the a,b,c,d meet at the same point--the line from the
+1,2,3,4 being at around 45 degrees and the line from the a,b,c,d
+being at around 60 degrees.  It isn't possible to reproduce this
+using normal characters.  Despite what the text says there is no line
+labelled 5 in the diagram.--DP]
+
+{278}  See Dr. Prichard's Researches into the Physical History of
+Man.
+
+{280}  Buckingham's Travels among the Arabs.  This fact is the more
+valuable to the argument, as having been set down with no regard to
+any kind of hypothesis.
+
+{287}  Wiseman's Lectures on the Connexion between Science and
+Revealed Religion, i. 44.  The Celtic has been established as a
+member or group of the Indo-European family, by the work of Dr.
+Prichard, on the Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations.  "First," says
+Dr. Wiseman, "he has examined the lexical resemblances, and shewn
+that the primary and most simple words are the same in both, as well
+as the numerals and elementary verbal roots.  Then follows a minute
+analysis of the verb, directed to shew its analogies with other
+languages, and they are such as manifest no casual coincidence, but
+an internal structure radically the same.  The verb substantive,
+which is minutely analysed, presents more striking analogies to the
+Persian verb than perhaps any other language of the family.  But
+Celtic is not thus become a mere member of this confederacy, but has
+brought to it most important aid; for, from it alone can be
+satisfactorily explained some of the conjugational endings in the
+other 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 inflexions
+arose from the pronouns of the respective persons, it is only in
+Celtic that we find a pronoun that can explain this termination; for
+there, 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--so
+puzzling when we consider that they are only, as will be presently
+seen, the child race of mankind--is solved when we look to
+geographical position producing fixity of residence and density of
+population.
+
+{307a}  Lord's Popular Physiology, explaining observations by M.
+Serres.
+
+{307b}  Conformably to this view, the beard, that peculiar attribute
+of maturity, is scanty in the Mongolian, and scarcely exists in the
+Americans and Negroes.
+
+{309}  Of this we have perhaps an illustration in the peculiarities
+which distinguish the Arabs residing in the valley of the Jordan.
+They have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair than other
+tribes of their nation; and we have seen one instance of a thoroughly
+Negro family being born to an ordinary couple.  It may be presumed
+that the conditions of the life of these people tend to arrest
+development.  We thus see how an offshoot of the human family
+migrating at an early period into Africa, might in time, from
+subjection 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?  Do
+not the first attributes of matter lie as inscrutable in the bosom of
+God--of its first author--as those of mind?  Has not even matter
+confessedly received from God the power of experiencing, in
+consequence 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 of
+other matter called ideas of the mind a wonder more flowing out of
+and in analogy with all former wonders, than would be, on the
+contrary, the wonder of this faculty of the mind not flowing out of
+any faculties of matter?  Is it not a wonder which, so far from
+destroying our hopes of immortality, can establish that doctrine on a
+train of inferences and inductions more firmly established and more
+connected with each other than the former belief can be, as soon as
+we have proved that matter is not perishable, but is only liable to
+successive combinations and decombinations.
+
+"Can we look farther back one way into the first origin of matter
+than we can look forward the other way into the last developments of
+mind?  Can we say that God has not in matter itself laid the seeds of
+every faculty of mind, rather than that he has made the first
+principle of mind entirely distinct from that of matter?  Cannot the
+first cause of all we see and know have FRAUGHT MATTER ITSELF, FROM
+ITS VERY BEGINNING, WITH ALL THE ATTRIBUTES NECESSARY TO DEVELOP INTO
+MIND, as well as he can have from the first made the attributes of
+mind wholly different from those of matter, only in order afterwards,
+by an imperceptible and incomprehensible link, to join the two
+together?
+
+" * * [The decombination of the matter on which mind rests] is this a
+reason why mind must be annihilated?  Is the temporary reverting of
+the mind, and of the sense out of which that mind developes, to their
+original component elements, a reason for thinking that they cannot
+again at another later period, and in another higher globe, be again
+recombined, and with more splendour than before? * * The New
+Testament does not after death here promise us a soul hereafter
+unconnected with matter, and which has no connexion with our present
+mind--a soul independent of time and space.  That is a fanciful idea,
+not founded on its expressions, when taken in their just and real
+meaning.  On the contrary, it promises us a mind like the present,
+founded on time and space; since it is, like the present, to hold a
+certain situation in time, and a certain locality in space.  But it
+promises a mind situated in portions of time and of space different
+from the present; a mind composed of elements of matter more
+extended, more perfect, and more glorious:  a mind which, formed of
+materials supplied by different globes, is consequently able to see
+farther into the past, and to think farther into the future, than any
+mind here existing:  a mind which, freed from the partial and uneven
+combination incidental to it on this globe, will be exempt from the
+changes for evil to which, on the present globe, mind as well as
+matter is liable, and will only thenceforth experience the changes
+for the better which matter, more justly poised, will alone continue
+to experience:  a mind which, no longer fearing the death, the total
+decomposition, to which it is subject on this globe, will thenceforth
+continue last and immortal."--HOPE, on the Origin and Prospects of
+Man, 1831.
+
+{331}  Dublin Review, Aug. 1840.  The Guarantee Society has since
+been established, and is likely to become a useful and prosperous
+institution.
+
+{333}  The ray, which is considered the lowest in the scale of
+fishes, or next to the crustaceans, gives the first faint
+representation 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 of
+thought--that is, the quickness of the transmission of sensation and
+will--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 per
+second, and the experiments of Wheatstone have shewn that the
+electric agent travels (if I may so speak) at the same rate, thus
+shewing a likelihood that one law rules the movements of all the
+"imponderable bodies."  Mental action may accordingly be presumed to
+have a rapidity equal to one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles in
+the second--a rate evidently far beyond what is necessary to make the
+design and execution of any of our ordinary muscular movements
+apparently 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 own
+species, will hide any nice morsel which it cannot eat, under a rug,
+or in some other by-place, designing to enjoy it afterwards.  I have
+seen children do the same thing.
+
+
+
+
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+<a href="#startoftext">Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, by Robert Chambers</a>
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+Title: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
+
+Author: Robert Chambers
+
+Release Date: December, 2004  [EBook #7116]
+[This file was first posted on March 11, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+</pre>
+<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
+<p>Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the
+1844 John Churchill edition.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h1>VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION</h1>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>THE BODIES OF SPACE, THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It is familiar knowledge that the earth which we inhabit is a globe
+of somewhat less than 8000 miles in diameter, being one of a series
+of eleven which revolve at different distances around the sun, and some
+of which have satellites in like manner revolving around them.&nbsp;
+The sun, planets, and satellites, with the less intelligible orbs termed
+comets, are comprehensively called the solar system, and if we take
+as the uttermost bounds of this system the orbit of Uranus (though the
+comets actually have a wider range), we shall find that it occupies
+a portion of space not less than three thousand six hundred millions
+of miles in extent.&nbsp; The mind fails to form an exact notion of
+a portion of space so immense; but some faint idea of it may be obtained
+from the fact, that, if the swiftest race-horse ever known had begun
+to traverse it, at full speed, at the time of the birth of Moses, he
+would only as yet have accomplished half his journey.</p>
+<p>It has long been concluded amongst astronomers, that the stars, though
+they only appear to our eyes as brilliant points, are all to be considered
+as suns, representing so many solar systems, each bearing a general
+resemblance to our own.&nbsp; The stars have a brilliancy and apparent
+magnitude which we may safely presume to be in proportion to their actual
+size and the distance at which they are placed from us.&nbsp; Attempts
+have been made to ascertain the distance of some of the stars by calculations
+founded on parallax, it being previously 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 than 19,200 millions of miles!&nbsp; In the case of the
+most brilliant star, Sirius, even this minute parallax could not be
+found; from which of course it was to be inferred that the distance
+of that star is something beyond the vast distance which has been stated.&nbsp;
+In some others, on which the experiment has been tried, no sensible
+parallax could be detected; from which the same inference was to be
+made in their case.&nbsp; But a sensible parallax of about one second
+has been ascertained in the case of the double star, &alpha; &alpha;
+, of the constellation of the Centaur, <a name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3">{3}</a>
+and one of the third of that amount for the double star, 61 Cygni; which
+gave reason to presume that the distance of the former might be about
+twenty thousand millions of miles, and the latter of much greater amount.&nbsp;
+If we suppose that similar intervals exist between all the stars, we
+shall readily see that the space occupied by even the comparatively
+small number visible to the naked eye, must be vast beyond all powers
+of conception.</p>
+<p>The number visible to the eye is about three thousand; but when a
+telescope of small power is directed to the heavens, a great number
+more come into view, and the number is ever increased in proportion
+to the increased power of the instrument.&nbsp; In one place, where
+they are more thickly sown than elsewhere, Sir William Herschel reckoned
+that fifty thousand passed over a field of view two degrees in breadth
+in a single hour.&nbsp; It was first surmised by the ancient philosopher,
+Democritus, that the faintly white zone which spans the sky under the
+name of the Milky Way, might be only a dense collection of stars too
+remote to be distinguished.&nbsp; This conjecture has been verified
+by the instruments of modern astronomers, and some speculations of a
+most remarkable kind have been formed in connexion with it.&nbsp; By
+the joint labours of the two Herschels, the sky has been &ldquo;gauged&rdquo;
+in all directions by the telescope, so as to ascertain the conditions
+of different parts with respect to the frequency of the stars.&nbsp;
+The result has been a conviction that, as the planets are parts of solar
+systems, so are solar systems parts of what may be called astral systems
+- that is, systems composed of a multitude of stars, bearing a certain
+relation to each other.&nbsp; The astral system to which we belong,
+is conceived to be of an oblong, flattish form, with a space wholly
+or comparatively vacant in the centre, while the extremity in one direction
+parts into two.&nbsp; The stars are most thickly sown in the outer parts
+of this vast ring, and these constitute the Milky Way.&nbsp; Our sun
+is believed to be placed in the southern portion of the ring, near its
+inner edge, so that we are presented with many more stars, and see the
+Milky Way much more clearly, in that direction, than towards the north,
+in which line our eye has to traverse the vacant central space.&nbsp;
+Nor is this all.&nbsp; Sir William Herschel, so early as 1783, detected
+a motion in our solar system with respect to the stars, and announced
+that it was tending towards the star &lambda;, in the constellation
+Hercules.&nbsp; This has been generally verified by recent and more
+exact calculations, <a name="citation5"></a><a href="#footnote5">{5}</a>
+which fix on a point in Hercules, near the star 143 of the 17th hour,
+according to Piozzi&rsquo;s catalogue, as that towards which our sun
+is proceeding.&nbsp; It is, therefore, receding from the inner edge
+of the ring.&nbsp; Motions of this kind, through such vast regions of
+space, must be long in producing any change sensible to the inhabitants
+of our planet, and it is not easy to grasp their general character;
+but grounds have nevertheless been found for supposing that not only
+our sun, but the other suns of the system pursue a wavy course round
+the ring <i>from west to east</i>, crossing and recrossing the middle
+of the annular circle.&nbsp; &ldquo;Some stars will depart more, others
+less, from either side of the circumference of equilibrium, according
+to the places in which they are situated, and according to the direction
+and the velocity with which they are put in motion.&nbsp; Our sun is
+probably one of those which depart furthest from it, and descend furthest
+into the empty space within the ring.&rdquo; <a name="citation6"></a><a href="#footnote6">{6}</a>&nbsp;
+According to this view, a time may come when we shall be much more in
+the thick of the stars of our astral system than we are now, and have
+of course much more brilliant nocturnal skies; but it may be countless
+ages before the eyes which are to see this added resplendence shall
+exist.</p>
+<p>The evidence of the existence of other astral systems besides our
+own is much more decided than might be expected, when we consider that
+the nearest of them must needs be placed at a mighty interval beyond
+our own.&nbsp; The elder Herschel, directing his wonderful tube towards
+the <i>sides</i> of our system, where stars are planted most rarely,
+and raising the powers of the instrument to the required pitch, was
+enabled with awe-struck mind to see suspended in the vast empyrean astral
+systems, or, as he called them, firmaments, resembling our own.&nbsp;
+Like light cloudlets to a certain power of the telescope, they resolved
+themselves, under a greater power, into stars, though these generally
+seemed no larger than the finest particles of diamond dust.&nbsp; The
+general forms of these systems are various; but one at least has been
+detected as bearing a striking resemblance to the supposed form of our
+own.&nbsp; The distances are also various, as proved by the different
+degrees of telescopic power necessary to bring them into view.&nbsp;
+The farthest observed by the astronomer were estimated by him as thirty-five
+thousand times more remote than Sirius, supposing its distance to be
+about twenty thousand millions of miles.&nbsp; It would thus appear,
+that not only does gravitation keep our earth in its place in the solar
+system, and the solar system in its place in our astral system, but
+it also may be presumed to have the mightier duty of preserving a local
+arrangement between that astral system and an immensity of others, through
+which the imagination is left to wander on and on without limit or stay,
+save that which is given by its inability to grasp the unbounded.</p>
+<p>The two Herschels have in succession made some other most remarkable
+observations on the regions of space.&nbsp; They have found within the
+limits of our astral system, and generally in its outer fields, a great
+number of objects which, from their foggy appearance, are called <i>nebul&aelig;</i>;
+some of vast extent and irregular figure, as that in the sword of Orion,
+which is visible to the naked eye; others of shape more defined; others,
+again, in which small bright nuclei appear here and there over the surface.&nbsp;
+Between this last form and another class of objects, which appear as
+clusters of nuclei with nebulous matter around each nucleus, there is
+but a step in what appears a chain of related things.&nbsp; Then, again,
+our astral space shews what are called nebulous stars, - namely, luminous
+spherical objects, bright in the centre and dull towards the extremities.&nbsp;
+These appear to be only an advanced condition of the class of objects
+above described.&nbsp; Finally, nebulous stars exist in every stage
+of concentration, down to that state in which we see only a common star
+with a slight <i>bur</i> around it.&nbsp; It may be presumed that all
+these are but 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
+the whole were only variations of one being.&nbsp; Are we to suppose
+that we have got a glimpse of the process through which a sun goes between
+its original condition, as a mass of diffused nebulous matter, and its
+full-formed state as a compact body?&nbsp; We shall see how far such
+an idea is supported by other things known with regard to the occupants
+of space, and the laws of matter.</p>
+<p>A superficial view of the astronomy of the solar system gives us
+only the idea of a vast luminous body (the sun) in the centre, and a
+few smaller, though various sized bodies, revolving at different distances
+around it; some of these, again, having smaller planets (satellites)
+revolving around them.&nbsp; There are, however, some general features
+of the solar system, which, when a profounder attention makes us acquainted
+with them, strike the mind very forcibly.</p>
+<p>It is, in the first place, remarkable, that the planets all move
+nearly <i>in one plane</i>, corresponding with the centre of the sun&rsquo;s
+body.&nbsp; Next, it is not less remarkable that the motion of the sun
+on its axis, those of the planets around the sun, and the satellites
+around their primaries, <a name="citation9"></a><a href="#footnote9">{9}</a>
+and the motions of all on their axes, are <i>in one direction</i> -
+namely, from west to east.&nbsp; Had all these matters been left to
+accident, the chances against the uniformity which we find would have
+been, though calculable, inconceivably great.&nbsp; Laplace states them
+at four millions of millions to one.&nbsp; It is thus powerfully impressed
+on us, that the uniformity of the motions, as well as their general
+adjustment to one plane, must have been a consequence of some cause
+acting throughout the whole system.</p>
+<p>Some of the other relations of the bodies are not less remarkable.&nbsp;
+The primary planets shew a progressive increase of bulk and diminution
+of density, from the one nearest to the sun to that which is most distant.&nbsp;
+With respect to density alone, we find, taking water as a measure and
+counting it as one, that Saturn is 13/32, or less than half; Jupiter,
+1 1/24; Mars, 3 2/7; Earth, 4 1/2; Venus, 5 11/15; Mercury 9 9/10, or
+about the weight of lead.&nbsp; Then the distances are curiously relative.&nbsp;
+It has been found that if we place the following line of numbers, -</p>
+<p>0 3 6 12 24 48 96 192,</p>
+<p>and add 4 to each, we shall have a series denoting the respective
+distances of the planets from the sun.&nbsp; It will stand thus -</p>
+<pre>4&nbsp; &nbsp;  7&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  10&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 16&nbsp; &nbsp;  28 52&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 100&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 196
+Merc. Venus.&nbsp; Earth.&nbsp; Mars.&nbsp; &nbsp;  Jupiter.&nbsp; Saturn.&nbsp; Uranus.</pre>
+<p>It will be observed that the first row of figures goes on from the
+second on the left hand in a succession of duplications, or multiplications
+by 2.&nbsp; Surely there is here a most surprising proof of the unity
+which I am claiming for the solar system.&nbsp; It was remarked when
+this curious relation was first detected, that there was a want of a
+planet corresponding to 28; the difficulty was afterwards considered
+as in a great measure overcome, by the discovery of four small planets
+revolving at nearly one mean distance from the sun, between Mars and
+Jupiter.&nbsp; The distances bear an equally interesting mathematical
+relation to the times of the revolutions round the sun.&nbsp; It has
+been found that, with respect to any two planets, the squares of the
+times of revolution are to each other in the same proportion as the
+cubes of their mean distances, - a most surprising result, for the discovery
+of which the world was indebted to the illustrious Kepler.&nbsp; Sir
+John Herschel truly observes - &ldquo;When we contemplate the constituents
+of the planetary system from the point of view which this relation affords
+us, it is no longer mere analogy which strikes us, no longer a general
+resemblance among them, as individuals independent of each other, and
+circulating about the sun, each according to its own peculiar nature,
+and connected with it by its own peculiar tie.&nbsp; The resemblance
+is now perceived to be a true <i>family likeness</i>; they are bound
+up in one chain - interwoven in one web of mutual relation and harmonious
+agreement, subjected to one pervading influence which extends from the
+centre to the farthest limits of that great system, of which all of
+them, the Earth included, must henceforth be regarded as members.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation12"></a><a href="#footnote12">{12}</a></p>
+<p>Connecting what has been observed of the series of nebulous stars
+with this wonderful relationship seen to exist among the constituents
+of our system, and further taking advantage of the light afforded by
+the ascertained laws of matter, modern astronomers have suggested the
+following hypothesis of the formation of that system.</p>
+<p>Of nebulous matter in its original state we know too little to enable
+us to suggest how nuclei should be established in it.&nbsp; But, supposing
+that, from a peculiarity in its constitution, nuclei are formed, we
+know very well how, by virtue of the law of gravitation, the process
+of an aggregation of the neighbouring matter to those nuclei should
+proceed, until masses more or less solid should become detached from
+the rest.&nbsp; It is a well-known law in physics that, when fluid matter
+collects towards or meets in a centre, it establishes a rotatory motion.&nbsp;
+See minor results of this law in the whirlwind and the whirlpool - nay,
+on so humble a scale as the water sinking through the aperture of a
+funnel.&nbsp; It thus becomes certain that when we arrive at the stage
+of a nebulous star, we have a rotation on an axis commenced.</p>
+<p>Now, mechanical philosophy informs us that, the instant a mass begins
+to rotate, there is generated a tendency to fling off its outer portions
+- in other words, the law of centrifugal force begins to operate.&nbsp;
+There are, then, two forces acting in opposition to each other, the
+one attracting <i>to</i>, the other throwing <i>from</i>, the centre.&nbsp;
+While these remain exactly counterpoised, the mass necessarily continues
+entire; but the least excess of the centrifugal over the attractive
+force would be attended with the effect of separating the mass and its
+outer parts.&nbsp; These outer parts would, then, be left as a ring
+round the central body, which ring would continue to revolve with the
+velocity possessed by the central mass at the moment of separation,
+but not necessarily participating in any changes afterwards undergone
+by that body.&nbsp; This is a process which might be repeated as soon
+as a new excess arose in the centrifugal over the attractive forces
+working in the parent mass.&nbsp; It might, indeed, continue to be repeated,
+until the mass attained the ultimate limits of the condensation which
+its constitution imposed upon it.&nbsp; From what cause might arise
+the periodical occurrence of an excess of the centrifugal force?&nbsp;
+If we suppose the agglomeration of a nebulous mass to be a process attended
+by refrigeration or cooling, which many facts render likely, we can
+easily understand why the outer parts, hardening under this process,
+might, by virtue of the greater solidity thence acquired, begin to present
+some resistance to the attractive force.&nbsp; As the solidification
+proceeded, this resistance would become greater, though there would
+still be a tendency to adhere.&nbsp; Meanwhile, the condensation of
+the central mass would be going on, tending to produce a separation
+from what may now be termed the <i>solidifying crust</i>.&nbsp; During
+the contention between the attractions of these two bodies, or parts
+of one body, there would probably be a ring of attenuation between the
+mass and its crust.&nbsp; At length, when the central mass had reached
+a certain stage in its advance towards solidification, a separation
+would take place, and the crust would become a detached ring.&nbsp;
+It is clear, of course, that some law presiding over the refrigeration
+of heated gaseous bodies would determine the stages at which rings were
+thus formed and detached.&nbsp; We do not know any such law, but what
+we have seen assures us it is one observing and reducible to mathematical
+formul&aelig;.</p>
+<p>If these rings consisted of matter nearly uniform throughout, they
+would probably continue each in its original form; but there are many
+chances against their being uniform in constitution.&nbsp; The unavoidable
+effects of irregularity in their constitution would be to cause them
+to gather towards centres of superior solidity, by which the annular
+form would, of course, be destroyed.&nbsp; The ring would, in short,
+break into several masses, the largest of which would be likely to attract
+the lesser into itself.&nbsp; The whole mass would then necessarily
+settle into a spherical form by virtue of the law of gravitation; in
+short, would then become a planet revolving round the sun.&nbsp; Its
+rotatory motion would, of course, continue, and satellites might then
+be thrown off in turn from its body in exactly the same way as the primary
+planets had been thrown off from the sun.&nbsp; The rule, if I can be
+allowed so to call it, receives a striking support from what appear
+to be its exceptions.&nbsp; While there are many chances against the
+matter of the rings being sufficiently equable to remain in the annular
+form till they were consolidated, it might nevertheless be otherwise
+in some instances; that is to say, the equableness might, in those instances,
+be sufficiently great.&nbsp; Such was probably the case with the two
+rings around the body of Saturn, which remain a living picture of the
+arrangement, if not the condition, in which all the planetary masses
+at one time stood.&nbsp; It may also be admitted that, when a ring broke
+up, it was possible that the fragments might spherify separately.&nbsp;
+Such seems to be the actual history of the ring between Jupiter and
+Mars, in whose place we now find four planets much beneath the smallest
+of the rest in size, and moving nearly at the same distance from the
+sun, though in orbits so elliptical, and of such different planes, that
+they keep apart.</p>
+<p>It has been seen that there are mathematical proportions in the relative
+distances and revolutions of the planets of our system.&nbsp; It has
+also been suggested that the periods in the condensation of the nebulous
+mass, at which rings were disengaged, must have depended on some particular
+crises in the condition of that mass, in connexion with the laws of
+centrifugal force and attraction.&nbsp; M. Compte, of Paris, has made
+some approach to the verification of the hypothesis, by calculating
+what ought to have been the rotation of the solar mass at the successive
+times when its surface extended to the various planetary orbits.&nbsp;
+He ascertained that <i>that rotation corresponded in every case with
+the actual sidereal revolution of the planets</i>, <i>and that the rotation
+of the primary planets in like manner corresponded with the orbitual
+periods of the secondaries</i>.&nbsp; The process by which he arrived
+at this conclusion is not to be readily comprehended by the unlearned;
+but those who are otherwise, allow that it is a powerful support to
+the present hypothesis of the formation of the globes of space. <a name="citation17"></a><a href="#footnote17">{17}</a></p>
+<p>The nebular hypothesis, as it has been called, obtains a remarkable
+support in what would at first seem to militate against it - the existence
+in our firmament of several thousands of solar systems, in which there
+are more than one sun.&nbsp; These are called double and triple stars.&nbsp;
+Some double stars, upon which careful observations have been made, are
+found to have a regular revolutionary motion round each other in ellipses.&nbsp;
+This kind of solar system has also been observed in what appears to
+be its rudimental state, for there are examples of nebulous stars containing
+two and three nuclei in near association.&nbsp; At a certain point in
+the confluence of the matter of these nebulous stars, they would all
+become involved in a common revolutionary motion, linked inextricably
+with each other, though it might be at sufficient distances to allow
+of each distinct centre having afterwards its attendant planets.&nbsp;
+We have seen that the law which causes rotation in the single solar
+masses, is exactly the same which produces the familiar phenomenon of
+a small whirlpool or dimple in the surface of a stream.&nbsp; Such dimples
+are not always single.&nbsp; Upon the face of a river where there are
+various contending currents, it may often be observed that two or more
+dimples are formed near each other with more or less regularity.&nbsp;
+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 an illustration of the wonders of binary and ternary solar
+systems.</p>
+<p>The nebular hypothesis is, indeed, supported by so many ascertained
+features of the celestial scenery, and by so many calculations of exact
+science, that it is impossible for a candid mind to refrain from giving
+it a cordial reception, if not to repose full reliance upon it, even
+without seeking for it support of any other kind.&nbsp; Some other support
+I trust yet to bring to it; but in the meantime, assuming its truth,
+let us see what idea it gives of the constitution of what we term the
+universe, of the development of its various parts, and of its original
+condition.</p>
+<p>Reverting to a former illustration - if we could suppose a number
+of persons of various ages presented to the inspection of an intelligent
+being newly introduced into the world, we cannot doubt that he would
+soon become convinced that men had once been boys, that boys had once
+been infants, and, finally, that all had been brought into the world
+in exactly the same circumstances.&nbsp; Precisely thus, seeing in our
+astral system many thousands of worlds in all stages of formation, from
+the most rudimental to that immediately preceding the present condition
+of those we deem perfect, it is unavoidable to conclude that all the
+perfect have gone through the various stages which we see in the rudimental.&nbsp;
+This leads us at once to the conclusion that the whole of our firmament
+was at one time a diffused mass of nebulous matter, extending through
+the space which it still occupies.&nbsp; So also, of course, must have
+been the other astral systems.&nbsp; Indeed, we must presume the whole
+to have been originally in one connected mass, the astral systems being
+only the first division into parts, and solar systems the second.</p>
+<p>The first idea which all this impresses upon us is, that the formation
+of bodies in space is <i>still and at present in progress</i>.&nbsp;
+We live at a time when many have been formed, and many are still forming.&nbsp;
+Our own solar system is to be regarded as completed, supposing its perfection
+to consist in the formation of a series of planets, for there are mathematical
+reasons for concluding that Mercury is the nearest planet to the sun,
+which can, according to the laws of the system, exist.&nbsp; But there
+are other solar systems within our astral system, which are as yet in
+a less advanced state, and even some quantities of nebulous matter which
+have scarcely begun to advance towards the stellar form.&nbsp; On the
+other hand, there are vast numbers of stars which have all the appearance
+of being fully formed systems, if we are to judge from the complete
+and definite appearance which they present to our vision through the
+telescope.&nbsp; We have no means of judging of the seniority of systems;
+but it is reasonable to suppose that, among the many, some are older
+than ours.&nbsp; There is, indeed, one piece of evidence for the probability
+of the comparative youth of our system, altogether apart from human
+traditions and the geognostic appearances of the surface of our planet.&nbsp;
+This consists in a thin nebulous matter, which is diffused around the
+sun to nearly the orbit of Mercury, of a very oblately spheroidal shape.&nbsp;
+This matter, which sometimes appears to our naked eyes, at sunset, in
+the form of a cone projecting upwards in the line of the sun&rsquo;s
+path, and which bears the name of the Zodiacal Light, has been thought
+a residuum or last remnant of the concentrating matter of our system,
+and thus may be supposed to indicate the comparative recentness of the
+principal events of our cosmogony.&nbsp; Supposing the surmise and inference
+to be correct, and they may be held as so far supported by more familiar
+evidence, we might with the more confidence speak of our system as not
+amongst the elder born of Heaven, but one whose various phenomena, physical
+and moral, as yet lay undeveloped, while myriads of others were fully
+fashioned and in complete arrangement.&nbsp; Thus, in the sublime chronology
+to which we are directing our inquiries, we first find ourselves called
+upon to consider the globe which we inhabit as a child of the sun, elder
+than Venus and her younger brother Mercury, but posterior in date of
+birth to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; next to regard our whole
+system as probably of recent formation in comparison with many of the
+stars of our firmament.&nbsp; We must, however, be on our guard against
+supposing the earth as a recent globe in our ordinary conceptions of
+time.&nbsp; From evidence afterwards to be adduced, it will be seen
+that it cannot be presumed to be less than many hundreds of centuries
+old.&nbsp; How much older Uranus may be no one can tell, much less how
+more aged may be many of the stars of our firmament, or the stars of
+other firmaments than ours.</p>
+<p>Another and more important consideration arises from the hypothesis;
+namely, as to the means by which the grand process is conducted.&nbsp;
+The nebulous matter collects around nuclei by virtue of the law of attraction.&nbsp;
+The agglomeration brings into operation another physical law, by force
+of which the separate masses of matter are either made to rotate singly,
+or, in addition to that single motion, are set into a coupled revolution
+in ellipses.&nbsp; Next centrifugal force comes into play, flinging
+off portions of the rotating masses, which become spheres by virtue
+of the same law of attraction, and are held in orbits of revolution
+round the central body by means of a composition between the centrifugal
+and gravitating forces.&nbsp; All, we see, is done by certain laws of
+matter, so that it becomes a question of extreme interest, what are
+such laws?&nbsp; All that can yet be said, in answer, is, that we see
+certain natural events proceeding in an invariable order under certain
+conditions, and thence infer the existence of some fundamental arrangement
+which, for the bringing about of these events, has a force and certainty
+of action similar to, but more precise and unerring than those arrangements
+which human society makes for its own benefit, and calls laws.&nbsp;
+It is remarkable of physical laws, that we see them operating on every
+kind of scale as to magnitude, with the same regularity and perseverance.&nbsp;
+The tear that falls from childhood&rsquo;s cheek is globular, through
+the efficacy of that same law of mutual attraction of particles which
+made the sun and planets round.&nbsp; The rapidity of Mercury is quicker
+than that of Saturn, for the same reason that, when we wheel a ball
+round by a string and make the string wind up round our fingers, the
+ball always flies quicker and quicker as the string is shortened.&nbsp;
+Two eddies in a stream, as has been stated, fall into a mutual revolution
+at the distance of a couple of inches, through the same cause which
+makes a pair of suns link in mutual revolution at the distance of millions
+of miles.&nbsp; There is, we might say, a sublime simplicity in this
+indifference of the grand regulations to the vastness or minuteness
+of the field of their operation.&nbsp; Their being uniform, too, throughout
+space, as far as we can scan it, and their being so unfailing in their
+tendency to operate, so that only the proper conditions are presented,
+afford to our minds matter for the gravest consideration.&nbsp; Nor
+should it escape our careful notice that the regulations on which all
+the laws of matter operate, are established on a rigidly accurate mathematical
+basis.&nbsp; Proportions of numbers and geometrical figures rest at
+the bottom of the whole.&nbsp; All these considerations, when the mind
+is thoroughly prepared for them, tend to raise our ideas with respect
+to the character of physical laws, even though we do not go a single
+step further in the investigation.&nbsp; But it is impossible for an
+intelligent mind to stop there.&nbsp; We advance from law to the cause
+of law, and ask, What is that?&nbsp; Whence have come all these beautiful
+regulations?&nbsp; Here science leaves us, but only to conclude, from
+other grounds, that there is a First Cause to which all others are secondary
+and ministrative, a primitive almighty will, of which these laws are
+merely the mandates.&nbsp; That great Being, who shall say where is
+his dwelling-place, or what his history!&nbsp; Man pauses breathless
+at the contemplation of a subject so much above his finite faculties,
+and only can wonder and adore!</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CONSTITUENT MATERIALS OF THE EARTH AND OF THE OTHER BODIES OF SPACE.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The nebular hypothesis almost necessarily supposes matter to have
+originally formed one mass.&nbsp; We have seen that the same physical
+laws preside over the whole.&nbsp; Are we also to presume that the constitution
+of the whole was uniform? - that is to say, that the whole consisted
+of similar elements.&nbsp; It seems difficult to avoid coming to this
+conclusion, at least under the qualification that, possibly, various
+bodies, under peculiar circumstances attending their formation, may
+contain elements which are wanting, and lack some which are present
+in others, or that some may entirely consist of elements in which others
+are entirely deficient.</p>
+<p>What are elements?&nbsp; This is a term applied by the chemist to
+a certain limited number of substances, (fifty-four or fifty-five are
+ascertained,) which, in their combinations, form all the matters of
+every kind present in and about our globe.&nbsp; They are called elements,
+or simple substances, because it has hitherto been found impossible
+to reduce them into others, wherefore they are presumed to be the primary
+bases of all matters.&nbsp; It has, indeed, been surmised that these
+so-called elements are only modifications of a primordial form of matter,
+brought about under certain conditions; but if this should prove to
+be the case, it would little affect the view which we are taking of
+cosmical arrangements.&nbsp; Analogy would lead us to conclude that
+the combinations of the primordial matter, forming our so-called elements,
+are as universal or as liable to take place everywhere as are the laws
+of gravitation and centrifugal force.&nbsp; We must therefore presume
+that the gases, the metals, the earths, and other simple substances,
+(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 times more distant than
+Sirius, as within the bounds of our own solar system or our own globe.</p>
+<p>Matter, whether it consist of about fifty-five ingredients, or only
+one, is liable to infinite varieties of condition under different circumstances,
+or, to speak more philosophically, under different laws.&nbsp; As a
+familiar illustration, water, when subjected to a temperature under
+32&deg; Fahrenheit, becomes ice; raise the temperature to 212&deg;,
+and it becomes steam, occupying a vast deal more space than it formerly
+did.&nbsp; The gases, when subjected to pressure, become liquids; for
+example, carbonic acid gas, when subjected to a weight equal to a column
+of water 1230 feet high, at a temperature of 32&deg;, takes this form:
+the other gases require various amounts of pressure for this transformation,
+but all appear to be liable to it when the pressure proper in each case
+is administered.&nbsp; Heat is a power greatly concerned in regulating
+the volume and other conditions of matter.&nbsp; A chemist can reckon
+with considerable precision what additional amount of heat would be
+required to vaporise all the water of our globe; how much more to disengage
+the oxygen which is diffused in nearly a proportion of one-half throughout
+its solids; and, finally, how much more would be required to cause the
+whole to become vaporiform, which we may consider as equivalent to its
+being restored to its original nebulous state.&nbsp; He can calculate
+with equal certainty what would be the effect of a considerable diminution
+of the earth&rsquo;s temperature - what changes would take place in
+each of its component substances, and how much the whole would shrink
+in bulk.</p>
+<p>The earth and all its various substances have at present a certain
+volume in consequence of the temperature which actually exists.&nbsp;
+When, then, we find that its matter and that of the associate planets
+was at one time diffused throughout the whole space, now circumscribed
+by the orbit of Uranus, we cannot doubt, after what we know of the power
+of heat, that the nebulous form of matter was attended by the condition
+of a very high temperature.&nbsp; The nebulous matter of space, previously
+to the formation of stellar and planetary bodies, must have been a universal
+Fire Mist, an idea which we can scarcely comprehend, though the reasons
+for arriving at it seem irresistible.&nbsp; The formation of systems
+out of this matter implies a change of some kind with regard to the
+condition of the heat.&nbsp; Had this power continued to act with its
+full original repulsive energy, the process of agglomeration by attraction
+could not have gone on.&nbsp; We do not know enough of the laws of heat
+to enable us to surmise how the necessary change in this respect was
+brought about, but we can trace some of the steps and consequences of
+the process.&nbsp; Uranus would be formed at the time when the heat
+of our system&rsquo;s matter was at the greatest, Saturn at the next,
+and so on.&nbsp; Now this tallies perfectly with the exceeding diffuseness
+of the matter of those elder planets, Saturn being not more dense or
+heavy than the substance cork.&nbsp; It may be that a sufficiency of
+heat still remains in those planets to make up for their distance from
+the sun, and the consequent smallness of the heat which they derive
+from his rays.&nbsp; And it may equally be, since Mercury is twice the
+density of the earth, that its matter exists under a degree of cold
+for which that planet&rsquo;s large enjoyment of the sun&rsquo;s rays
+is no more than a compensation.&nbsp; Thus there may be upon the whole
+a nearly equal experience of heat amongst all these children of the
+sun.&nbsp; Where, meanwhile, is the heat once diffused through the system
+over and above what remains in the planets?&nbsp; May we not rationally
+presume it to have gone to constitute that luminous envelope of the
+sun, in which his warmth-giving power is now held to reside?&nbsp; It
+could not be destroyed - it cannot be supposed to have gone off into
+space - it must have simply been reserved to constitute, at the last,
+a means of sustaining the many operations of which the planets were
+destined to be the theatre.</p>
+<p>The tendency of the whole of the preceding considerations is to bring
+the conviction that our globe is a specimen of all the similarly-placed
+bodies of space, as respects its constituent matter and the physical
+and chemical laws governing it, with only this qualification, that there
+are <i>possibly</i> shades of variation with respect to the component
+materials, and <i>undoubtedly</i> with respect to the conditions under
+which the laws operate, and consequently the effects which they produce.&nbsp;
+Thus, there may be substances here which are not in some other bodies,
+and substances here solid may be elsewhere liquid or vaporiform.&nbsp;
+We are the more entitled to draw such conclusions, seeing that there
+is nothing at all singular or special in the astronomical situation
+of the earth.&nbsp; It takes its place third in a series of planets,
+which series is only one of numberless other systems forming one group.&nbsp;
+It is strikingly - if I may use such an expression - a member of a democracy.&nbsp;
+Hence, we cannot suppose that there is any peculiarity about it which
+does not probably attach to multitudes of other bodies - in fact, to
+all that are analogous to it in respect of cosmical arrangements.</p>
+<p>It therefore becomes a point of great interest - what are the materials
+of this specimen?&nbsp; What is the constitutional character of this
+object, which may be said to be a sample, presented to our immediate
+observation, of those crowds of worlds which seem to us as the particles
+of the desert sand-cloud in number, and to whose profusion there are
+no conceivable local limits?</p>
+<p>The solids, liquids, and aeriform fluids of our globe are all, as
+has been stated, reducible into fifty-five substances hitherto called
+elementary.&nbsp; Six are gases; oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen being
+the chief.&nbsp; Forty-two are metals, of which eleven are remarkable
+as composing, in combination with oxygen, certain earths, as magnesia,
+lime, alumin.&nbsp; The remaining six, including carbon, silicon, sulphur,
+have not any general appellation.</p>
+<p>The gas oxygen is considered as by far the most abundant substance
+in our globe.&nbsp; It constitutes a fifth part of our atmosphere, a
+third part of water, and a large proportion of every kind of rock in
+the crust of the earth.&nbsp; Hydrogen, which forms two-thirds of water,
+and enters into some mineral substances, is perhaps next.&nbsp; Nitrogen,
+of which the atmosphere is four-fifths composed, must be considered
+as an abundant substance.&nbsp; The metal silicium, which unites with
+oxygen in nearly equal parts to form silica, the basis of nearly a half
+of the rocks in the earth&rsquo;s crust, is, of course, an important
+ingredient.&nbsp; Aluminium, the metallic basis of alumin, a large material
+in many rocks, is another abundant elementary substance.&nbsp; So, also,
+is carbon a small ingredient in the atmosphere, but the chief constituent
+of animal and vegetable substances, and of all fossils which ever were
+in the latter condition, amongst which coal takes a conspicuous place.&nbsp;
+The familiarly-known metals, as iron, tin, lead, silver, gold, are elements
+of comparatively small magnitude in that exterior part of the earth&rsquo;s
+body which we are able to investigate.</p>
+<p>It is remarkable of the simple substances that they are generally
+in some compound form.&nbsp; Thus, oxygen and nitrogen, though in union
+they form the aerial envelope of the globe, are never found separate
+in nature.&nbsp; Carbon is pure only in the diamond.&nbsp; And the metallic
+bases of the earths, though the chemist can disengage them, may well
+be supposed unlikely to remain long uncombined, seeing that contact
+with moisture makes them burn.&nbsp; Combination and re-combination
+are principles largely pervading nature.&nbsp; There are few rocks,
+for example, that are not composed of at least two varieties of matter,
+each of which is again a compound of elementary substances.&nbsp; What
+is still more wonderful with respect to this principle of combination,
+all the elementary substances observe certain mathematical proportions
+in their unions.&nbsp; One volume of them unites with one, two, three,
+or more volumes of another, any extra quantity being sure to be left
+over, if such there should be.&nbsp; It is hence supposed that matter
+is composed of infinitely minute particles or atoms, each of which belonging
+to any one substance, can only (through the operation of some as yet
+hidden law) associate with a certain number of the atoms of any other.&nbsp;
+There are also strange predilections amongst substances for each other&rsquo;s
+company.&nbsp; One will remain combined in solution with another, till
+a third is added, when it will abandon the former and attach itself
+to the latter.&nbsp; A fourth being added, the third will perhaps leave
+the first, and join the new comer.</p>
+<p>Such is an outline of the information which chemistry gives us regarding
+the constituent materials of our globe.&nbsp; How infinitely is the
+knowledge increased in interest, when we consider the probability of
+such being the materials of the whole of the bodies of space, and the
+laws under which these everywhere combine, subject only to local and
+accidental variations!</p>
+<p>In considering the cosmogenic arrangements of our globe, our attention
+is called in a special degree to the moon.</p>
+<p>In the nebular hypothesis, satellites are considered as masses thrown
+off from their primaries, exactly as the primaries had previously been
+from the sun.&nbsp; The orbit of any satellite is also to be regarded
+as marking the bounds of the mass of the primary at the time when that
+satellite was thrown off; its speed likewise denotes the rapidity of
+the rotatory motion of the primary at that particular juncture.&nbsp;
+For example, the outermost of the four satellites of Jupiter 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.&nbsp; This large mass took rather
+more than sixteen days six hours and a half (the present revolutionary
+period of the outermost satellite) to rotate on its axis.&nbsp; The
+innermost satellite must have been formed when the planet was reduced
+to a circumference of 309,075 miles, and rotated in about forty-two
+hours and a half.</p>
+<p>From similar inferences, we find that the mass of the earth, at a
+certain point of time after it was thrown off from the sun, was no less
+than 482,000 miles in diameter, being sixty times what it has since
+shrunk to.&nbsp; At that time, the mass must have taken rather more
+than twenty-nine and a half days to rotate, (being the revolutionary
+period of the moon,) instead of as now, rather less than twenty-four
+hours.</p>
+<p>The time intervening between the formation of the moon and the earth&rsquo;s
+diminution to its present size, was probably one of those vast sums
+in which astronomy deals so largely, but which the mind altogether fails
+to grasp.</p>
+<p>The observations made upon the surface of the moon by telescopes,
+tend strongly to support the hypothesis as to all the bodies of space
+being composed of similar matters, subject to certain variations.&nbsp;
+It does not appear that our satellite is provided with that gaseous
+envelope which, on earth, performs so many important functions.&nbsp;
+Neither is there any appearance of water upon the surface; yet that
+surface is, like that of our globe, marked by inequalities and the appearance
+of volcanic operations.&nbsp; These inequalities and volcanic operations
+are upon a scale far greater than any which now exist upon the earth&rsquo;s
+surface.&nbsp; Although, from the greater force of gravitation upon
+its exterior, the mountains, other circumstances being equal, might
+have been expected to be much smaller than ours, they are, in many instances,
+equal in height to nearly the highest of our Andes.&nbsp; They are generally
+of extreme steepness, and sharp of outline, a peculiarity which might
+be looked for in a planet deficient in water and atmosphere, seeing
+that these are the agents which wear down ruggedness on the surface
+of our earth.&nbsp; The volcanic operations are on a stupendous scale.&nbsp;
+They are the cause of the bright spots of the moon, while the want of
+them is what distinguishes the duller portions, usually but erroneously
+called <i>seas</i>.&nbsp; In some parts, bright volcanic matter, besides
+covering one large patch, radiates out in long streams, which appear
+studded with subordinate <i>foci</i> of the same kind of energy.&nbsp;
+Other objects of a most remarkable character are ring mountains, mounts
+like those of the craters of earthly volcanoes, surrounded immediately
+by vast and profound circular pits, hollowed under the general surface,
+these again being surrounded by a circular wall of mountain, rising
+far above the central one, and in the inside of which are terraces about
+the same height as the inner eminence.&nbsp; The well-known bright spot
+in the south-east quarter, called by astronomers <i>Tycho</i>, and which
+can be readily distinguished by the naked eye, is one of these ring-mountains.&nbsp;
+There is one of 200 miles in diameter, with a pit 22,000 feet deep;
+that is, twice the height of &AElig;tna.&nbsp; It is remarkable, that
+the maps given by Humboldt of a volcanic district in South America,
+and one illustrative of the formerly volcanic district of Auvergne,
+in France, present features strikingly like many parts of the moon&rsquo;s
+surface, as seen through a good glass.</p>
+<p>These characteristics of the moon forbid the idea that it can be
+at present a theatre of life like the earth, and almost seem to declare
+that it never can become so.&nbsp; But we must not rashly draw any such
+conclusions.&nbsp; The moon may be only in an earlier stage of the progress
+through which the earth has already gone.&nbsp; The elements which seem
+wanting may be only in combinations different in those which exist here,
+and may yet be developed as we here find them.&nbsp; Seas may yet fill
+the profound hollows of the surface; an atmosphere may spread over the
+whole.&nbsp; Should these events take place, meteorological phenomena,
+and all the phenomena of organic life, will commence, and the moon,
+like the earth, will become a green and inhabited world.</p>
+<p>It is unavoidably held as a strong proof in favour of any hypothesis,
+when all the relative phenomena are in harmony with it.&nbsp; This is
+eminently the case with the nebulous hypothesis, for here the associated
+facts cannot be explained on any other supposition.&nbsp; We have seen
+reason to conclude that the primary condition of matter was that of
+a diffused mass, in which the component molecules were probably kept
+apart through the efficacy of heat; that portions of this agglomerated
+into suns, which threw off planets; that these planets were at first
+very much diffused, but gradually contracted by cooling to their present
+dimensions.&nbsp; Now, as to our own globe, there is a remarkable proof
+of its having been in a fluid state at the time when it was finally
+solidifying, in the fact of its being bulged at the equator, the very
+form which a soft revolving body takes, and must inevitably take, under
+the influence of centrifugal force.&nbsp; This bulging makes the equatorial
+exceed the polar diameter as 230 to 229, which has been demonstrated
+to be precisely the departure from a correct sphere which might be predicated
+from a knowledge of the amount of the mass and the rate of rotation.&nbsp;
+There is an almost equally distinct memorial of the original high temperature
+of the materials, in the store of heat which still exists in the interior.&nbsp;
+The immediate surface of the earth, be it observed, exhibits only the
+temperature which might be expected to be imparted to such materials,
+by the heat of the sun.&nbsp; There is a point, very short way down,
+but varying in different climes, where all effect from the sun&rsquo;s
+rays ceases.&nbsp; Then, however, commences a temperature from an entirely
+different cause, one which evidently has its source in the interior
+of the earth, and which regularly increases as we descend to greater
+and greater depths, the rate of increment being about one degree Fahrenheit
+for every sixty feet; and of this high temperature there are other evidences,
+in the phenomena of volcanoes and thermal springs, as well as in what
+is ascertained with regard to the density of the entire mass of the
+earth.&nbsp; This, it will be remembered, is four and a half times the
+weight of water; but the actual weight of the principal solid substances
+composing the outer crust is as two and a half times the weight of water;
+and this, we know, if the globe were solid and cold, should increase
+vastly towards the centre, water acquiring the density of quicksilver
+at 362 miles below the surface, and other things in proportion, and
+these densities becoming much greater at greater depths; so that the
+entire mass of a cool globe should be of a gravity infinitely exceeding
+four and a half times the weight of water.&nbsp; The only alternative
+supposition is, that the central materials are greatly expanded or diffused
+by some means; and by what means could they be so expanded but by heat?&nbsp;
+Indeed, the existence of this central heat, a residuum of that which
+kept all matter in a vaporiform chaos at first, is amongst the most
+solid discoveries of modern science, <a name="citation42"></a><a href="#footnote42">{42}</a>
+and the support which it gives to Herschel&rsquo;s explanation of the
+formation of worlds is most important.&nbsp; We shall hereafter see
+what appear to be traces of an operation of this heat upon the surface
+of the earth in very remote times; an effect, however, which has long
+passed entirely away.&nbsp; The central heat has, for ages, reached
+a fixed point, at which it will probably remain for ever, as the non-conducting
+quality of the cool crust absolutely prevents it from suffering any
+diminution.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>THE EARTH FORMED - ERA OF THE PRIMARY ROCKS.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Although the earth has not been actually penetrated to a greater
+depth than three thousand feet, the nature of its substance can, in
+many instances, be inferred for the depth of many miles by other means
+of observation.&nbsp; We see a mountain composed of a particular substance,
+with strata, or beds of other rock, lying against its sloped sides;
+we, of course, infer that the substance of the mountain dips away under
+the strata which we see lying against it.&nbsp; Suppose that we walk
+away from the mountain across the turned up edges of the stratified
+rocks, and that for many miles we continue to pass over other stratified
+rocks, all disposed in the same way, till by and bye we come to a place
+where we begin to cross the opposite edges of the same beds; after which
+we pass over these rocks all in reverse order till we come to another
+extensive mountain composed of similar material to the first, and shelving
+away under the strata in the same way.&nbsp; We should then infer that
+the stratified rocks occupied a basin formed by the rock of these two
+mountains, and by calculating the thickness right through these strata,
+could be able to say to what depth the rock of the mountain extended
+below.&nbsp; By such means, the kind of rock existing many miles below
+the surface can often be inferred with considerable confidence.</p>
+<p>The interior of the globe has now been inspected in this way in many
+places, and a tolerably distinct notion of its general arrangements
+has consequently been arrived at.&nbsp; It appears that the basis rock
+of the earth, as it may be called, is of hard texture, and crystalline
+in its constitution.&nbsp; Of this rock, granite may be said to be the
+type, though it runs into many varieties.&nbsp; Over this, except in
+the comparatively few places where it projects above the general level
+in mountains, other rocks are disposed in sheets or strata, with the
+appearance of having been deposited originally from water; but these
+last rocks have nowhere been allowed to rest in their original arrangement.&nbsp;
+Uneasy movements from below have broken them up in great inclined masses,
+while in many cases there has been projected through the rents rocky
+matter more or less resembling the great inferior crystalline mass.&nbsp;
+This rocky matter must have been in a state of fusion from heat at the
+time of its projection, for it is often found to have run into and filled
+up lateral chinks in these rents.&nbsp; There are even instances where
+it has been rent again, and a newer melted matter of the same character
+sent through the opening.&nbsp; Finally, in the crust as thus arranged
+there are, in many places, chinks containing veins of metal.&nbsp; Thus,
+there is first a great inferior mass, composed of crystalline rock,
+and probably resting immediately on the fused and expanded matter of
+the interior: next, layers or strata of aqueous origin; next, irregular
+masses of melted inferior rock that have been sent up volcanically and
+confusedly at various times amongst the aqueous rocks, breaking up these
+into masses, and tossing them out of their original levels.&nbsp; This
+is an outline of the arrangements of the crust of the earth, as far
+as we can observe it.&nbsp; It is, at first sight, a most confused scene;
+but after some careful observation, we readily detect in it a regularity
+and order from which much instruction in the history of our globe is
+to be derived.</p>
+<p>The deposition of the aqueous rocks, and the projection of the volcanic,
+have unquestionably taken place since the settlement of the earth in
+its present form.&nbsp; They are indeed of an order of events which
+we see going on, under the agency of more or less intelligible causes,
+even down to the present day.&nbsp; We may therefore consider them generally
+as comparatively recent transactions.&nbsp; Abstracting them from the
+investigations before us, we arrive at the idea of the earth in its
+first condition as a globe of its present size - namely, as a mass,
+externally at least, consisting of the crystalline kind of rock, with
+the waters of the present seas and the present atmosphere around it,
+though these were probably in considerably different conditions, both
+as to temperature and their constituent materials, from what they now
+are.&nbsp; We are thus to presume that that crystalline texture of rock
+which we see exemplified in granite is the condition into which the
+great bulk of the solids of our earth were agglomerated directly from
+the nebulous or vaporiform state.&nbsp; It is a condition eminently
+of combination, for such rock is invariably composed of two or more
+of four substances - silica, mica, quartz, and hornblende - which associate
+in it in the form of grains or crystals, and which are themselves each
+composed of a group of the simple or elementary substances.</p>
+<p>Judging from the results and from still remaining conditions, we
+must suppose that the heat retained in the interior of the globe was
+more intense, or had greater freedom to act, in some places than in
+others.&nbsp; These became the scenes of volcanic operations, and in
+time marked their situations by the extrusion of traps and basalts from
+below - namely, rocks composed of the crystalline matter fused by intense
+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 open air, which
+conditions are found to have made considerable difference in its texture
+and appearance.&nbsp; The great stores of subterranean heat also served
+an important purpose in the formation of the aqueous rocks.&nbsp; These
+rocks might, according to Sir John Herschel, become subject to heat
+in the following manner:- While the surface of a particular mass of
+rock forms the bed of the sea, the heat is kept at a 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.&nbsp; But when new sediment settles at the
+bottom of that sea, the heat rises up to what was formerly the surface;
+and when a second quantity of sediment is laid down, it continues to
+rise through the first of the deposits, which then becomes subjected
+to those changes which heat is calculated to produce.&nbsp; This process
+is precisely the same as that of putting additional coats upon our own
+bodies; when, of course, the internal heat rises through each coat in
+succession, and the third (supposing there is a fourth above it) becomes
+as warm as perhaps the first originally was.</p>
+<p>In speaking of sedimentary rocks, we may be said to be anticipating.&nbsp;
+It is necessary, first, to shew how such rocks were formed, or how stratification
+commenced.</p>
+<p>Geology tells us as plainly as possible, that the original crystalline
+mass was not a perfectly smooth ball, with air and water playing round
+it.&nbsp; There were vast irregularities in the surface, - irregularities
+trifling, perhaps, compared with the whole bulk of the globe, but assuredly
+vast in comparison with any which now exist upon it.&nbsp; These irregularities
+might be occasioned by inequalities in the cooling of the substance,
+or by accidental and local sluggishness of the materials, or by local
+effects of the concentrated internal heat.&nbsp; From whatever cause
+they arose, there they were - enormous granitic mountains, interspersed
+with seas which sunk to a depth equally profound, and by which, perhaps,
+the mountains were wholly or partially covered.&nbsp; Now, it is a fact
+of which the very first principles of geology assure us, that the solids
+of the globe cannot for a moment be exposed to water, or to the atmosphere,
+without becoming liable to change.&nbsp; They instantly begin to wear
+down.&nbsp; This operation, we may be assured, proceeded with as much
+certainty in the earliest ages of our earth&rsquo;s history, as it does
+now, but upon a much more magnificent scale.&nbsp; There is the clearest
+evidence that the seas of those days were not in some instances less
+than a hundred miles in depth, however much more.&nbsp; The sub-aqueous
+mountains must necessarily have been of at least equal magnitude.&nbsp;
+The system of disintegration consequent upon such conditions would be
+enormous.&nbsp; The matters worn off, being carried into the neighbouring
+depths, and there deposited, became the components of the earliest stratified
+rocks, the first series of which is the <i>Gneiss and Mica Slate System</i>,
+or series, examples of which are exposed to view in the Highlands of
+Scotland and in the West of England.&nbsp; The vast thickness of these
+beds, in some instances, is what attests the profoundness of the primeval
+oceans in which they were formed; the Pensylvanian grawacke, a member
+of the next highest series, is not less than a hundred miles in direct
+thickness.&nbsp; We have also evidence that the earliest strata were
+formed in the presence of a stronger degree of heat than what operated
+in subsequent stages of the world, for the lamin&aelig; of the gneiss
+and of the mica and chlorite schists are contorted in a way which could
+only be the result of a very high temperature.&nbsp; It appears as if
+the seas in which these deposits were formed, had been in the troubled
+state of a caldron of water nearly at boiling heat.&nbsp; Such a condition
+would probably add not a little to the disintegrating power of the ocean.</p>
+<p>The earliest stratified rocks contain no matters which are not to
+be found in the primitive granite.&nbsp; They are the same in material,
+but only changed into new forms and combinations; hence they have been
+called by Mr. Lyell, metamorphic rocks.&nbsp; But how comes it that
+some of them are composed almost exclusively of one of the materials
+of granite; the mica schists, for example, of mica - the quartz rocks,
+of quartz, &amp;c.?&nbsp; For this there are both chemical and mechanical
+causes.&nbsp; Suppose that a river has a certain quantity of material
+to carry down, it is evident that it will soonest drop the larger particles,
+and carry the lightest farthest on.&nbsp; To such a cause is it owing
+that some of the materials of the worn-down granite have settled in
+one place and some in another. <a name="citation52"></a><a href="#footnote52">{52}</a>&nbsp;
+Again, some of these materials must be presumed to have been in a state
+of chemical solution in the primeval seas.&nbsp; It would be, of course,
+in conformity with chemical laws, that certain of these materials would
+be precipitated singly, or in modified combinations, to the bottom,
+so as to form rocks by themselves.</p>
+<p>The rocks hitherto spoken of contain none of those petrified remains
+of vegetables and animals which abound so much in subsequently formed
+rocks, and tell so wondrous a tale of the past history of our globe.&nbsp;
+They simply contain, as has been said, mineral materials derived from
+the primitive mass, and which appear to have been formed into strata
+in seas of vast depth.&nbsp; The absence from these rocks of all traces
+of vegetable and animal life, joined to a consideration of the excessive
+temperature which seems to have prevailed in their epoch, has led to
+the inference that no plants or animals of any kind then existed.&nbsp;
+A few geologists have indeed endeavoured to shew that the absence of
+organic remains is no proof of the globe having been then unfruitful
+or uninhabited, as the heat to which these rocks have been subjected
+at the time of their solidification, might have obliterated any remains
+of either plants or animals which were included in them.&nbsp; But this
+is only an hypothesis of negation; and it certainly seems very unlikely
+that a degree of heat sufficient to obliterate the remains of plants
+or animals when dead, would ever allow of their coming into or continuing
+in existence.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>COMMENCEMENT OF ORGANIC LIFE - SEA PLANTS, CORALS, ETC.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>We can scarcely be said to have passed out of these rocks, when we
+begin to find new conditions in the earth.&nbsp; It is here to be observed
+that the subsequent rocks are formed, in a great measure, of matters
+derived from the substance of those which went before, but contain also
+beds of limestone, which is to no small extent composed of an ingredient
+which has not hitherto appeared.&nbsp; Limestone is a carbonate of lime,
+a secondary compound, of which one of the ingredients, carbonic acid
+gas, presents the element <i>carbon</i>, a perfect novelty in our progress.&nbsp;
+Whence this substance?&nbsp; The question is the more interesting, from
+our knowing that carbon is the main ingredient in organic things.&nbsp;
+There is reason to believe that its primeval condition was that of a
+gas, confined in the interior of the earth, and diffused in the atmosphere.&nbsp;
+The atmosphere still contains about a two-thousandth part of carbonic
+acid gas, forming the grand store from which the substance of each year&rsquo;s
+crop of herbage and grain is derived, passing from herbage and grain
+into animal substance, and from animals again rendered back to the atmosphere
+in their expired breath, so that its amount is never impaired.&nbsp;
+Knowing this, when we hear of carbon beginning to appear in the ascending
+series of rocks, we are unavoidably led to consider it as marking a
+time of some importance in the earth&rsquo;s history, a new era of natural
+conditions, one in which organic life has probably played a part.</p>
+<p>It is not easy to suppose that, at this period, carbon was adopted
+directly in its gaseous form into rocks; for, if so, why should it not
+have been taken into earlier ones also?&nbsp; But we know that plants
+take it in, and transform it into substance; and we also know that there
+are classes of animals (marine polypes) which are capable of appropriating
+it, in connexion with lime, (carbonate of lime,) from the waters of
+the ocean, provided it be there in solution; and this substance do these
+animals deposit in masses (coral reefs) equal in extent to many strata.&nbsp;
+It has even been suggested, on strong grounds of probability, that a
+class of limestone beds are simply these reefs subjected to subsequent
+heat and pressure.</p>
+<p>The appearance, then, of limestone beds in the early part of the
+stratified series, may be presumed to be connected with the fact of
+the commencement of organic life upon our planet, and, indeed, a consequent
+and a symptom of it.</p>
+<p>It may not be out of place here to remark, that carbon is presumed
+to exist largely in the interior of the earth, from the fact of such
+considerable quantities of it issuing at this day, in the form of carbonic
+acid gas, from fissures and springs.&nbsp; The primeval and subsequent
+history of this element is worthy of much attention, and we shall have
+to revert to it as a matter greatly concerning our subject.&nbsp; Delabeche
+estimates the quantity of carbonic acid gas locked up in every cubic
+yard of limestone, at 16,000 cubic feet.&nbsp; The quantity locked up
+in coal, in which it forms from 64 to 75 per cent., must also be enormous.&nbsp;
+If all this were disengaged in a gaseous form, the constitution of the
+atmosphere would undergo a change, of which the first effect would be
+the extinction of life in all land animals.&nbsp; But a large proportion
+of it must have at one time been in the atmosphere.&nbsp; The atmosphere
+would then, of course, be incapable of supporting life in land animals.&nbsp;
+It is important, however, to observe that such an atmosphere would not
+be inconsistent with a luxuriant land vegetation; for experiment has
+proved that plants will flourish in air containing <i>one-twelfth</i>
+of this gas, or 166 times more than the present charge of our atmosphere.&nbsp;
+The results which we observe are perfectly consistent with, and may
+be said to presuppose an atmosphere highly charged with this gas, from
+about the close of the primary non-fossiliferous rocks to the termination
+of the carboniferous series, for there we see vast deposits (coal) containing
+carbon as a large ingredient, while at the same time the leaves of the
+<i>Stone Book</i> present no record of the contemporaneous existence
+of land animals.</p>
+<p>The hypothesis of the connexion of the first limestone beds with
+the commencement of organic life upon our planet is supported by the
+fact, that in these beds we find the first remains of the bodies of
+animated creatures.&nbsp; My hypothesis may indeed be unsound; but,
+whether or not, it is clear, taking organic remains as upon the whole
+a faithful chronicle, that the deposition of these limestone beds was
+coeval with the existence of the earliest, or all but the earliest,
+living creatures upon earth.</p>
+<p>And what were those creatures?&nbsp; It might well be with a kind
+of awe that the uninstructed inquirer would wait for an answer to this
+question.&nbsp; But nature is simpler than man&rsquo;s wit would make
+her, and behold, the interrogation only brings before us the unpretending
+forms of various zoophytes and polypes, together with a few single and
+double-valved shell-fish (mollusks), all of them creatures of the sea.&nbsp;
+It is rather surprising to find these before any vegetable forms, considering
+that vegetables appear to us as forming the necessary first link in
+the chain of nutrition; but it is probable that there were sea plants,
+and also some simpler forms of animal life, before this period, although
+of too slight a substance to leave any fossil trace of their existence.</p>
+<p>The exact point in the ascending stratified series at which the first
+traces of organic life are to be found is not clearly determined.&nbsp;
+Dr. M&rsquo;Culloch states that he found fossil orthocerata (a kind
+of shell-fish) so early as the gneiss tract of Loch Eribol, in Sutherland;
+but Messrs. Sedgwick and Murchison, on a subsequent search, could not
+verify the discovery.&nbsp; It has also been stated, that the gneiss
+and mica tract of Bohemia contains some seams of grawacke, in which
+are organic remains; but British geologists have not as yet attached
+much importance to this statement.&nbsp; We have to look a little higher
+in the series for indubitable traces of organic life.</p>
+<p>Above the gneiss and mica slate system, or group of strata, is the
+<i>Clay Slate and Grawacke Slate System</i>; that is to say, it is higher
+in the <i>order of supraposition</i>, though very often it rests immediately
+on the primitive granite.&nbsp; The sub-groups of this system are in
+the following succession upwards:- 1, hornblende slate; 2, chiastolite
+slate; 3, clay slate; 4, Snowdon rocks, (grawacke and conglomerates;)
+5, Bala limestone; 6, Plynlymmon rocks, (grawacke and grawacke slates,
+with beds of conglomerates.)&nbsp; This system is largely developed
+in the west and north of England, and it has been well examined, partly
+because some of the slate beds are extensively quarried for domestic
+purposes.&nbsp; If we overlook the dubious statements respecting Sutherland
+and Bohemia, we have in this &ldquo;system&rdquo; the first appearances
+of life upon our planet.&nbsp; The animal remains are chiefly confined
+to the slate beds, those named from Bala, in Wales, being the most prolific.&nbsp;
+<i>Zoophyta</i>, <i>polyparia</i>, <i>crinoidea</i>, <i>conchifera</i>,
+and <i>crustacea</i>, <a name="citation60"></a><a href="#footnote60">{60}</a>
+are the orders of the animal kingdom thus found in the earliest of earth&rsquo;s
+sepulchres.&nbsp; The <i>orders</i> are distinguished without difficulty,
+from the general characters of the creatures whose remains are found;
+but it is only in this general character that they bear a general resemblance
+to any creatures now existing.&nbsp; When we come to consider specific
+characters, we see that a difference exists - that, in short, the species
+and even genera are no longer represented upon earth.&nbsp; More than
+this, it will be found that the earliest species comparatively soon
+gave place to others, and that they are not represented even in the
+next higher group of rocks.&nbsp; One important remark has been made,
+that a comparatively small variety of species is found in the older
+rocks, although of some particular ones the remains are very abundant;
+as, for instance, of a species of asaphus, which is found between the
+lamin&aelig; of some of the slate rocks of Wales, and the corresponding
+rocks of Normandy and Germany in enormous quantities.</p>
+<p>Ascending to the next group of rocks, we find the traces of life
+become more abundant, the number of species extended, and important
+additions made in certain vestiges of fuci, or sea-plants, and of fishes.&nbsp;
+This group of rocks has been called by English geologists, the <i>Silurian
+System</i>, because largely developed at the surface of a district of
+western England, formerly occupied by a people whom the Roman historians
+call Silures.&nbsp; It is a series of sandstones, limestones, and beds
+of shale (hardened mud), which are classed in the following sub-groups,
+beginning with the undermost: - 1, Llandillo rocks, (darkish calcareous
+flagstones;) 2 and 3, two groups called 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.)&nbsp; From the lowest beds upwards, there are polypiaria,
+though most prevalent in the Wenlock limestone; conchifera, a vast number
+of genera, but all of the order brachiopoda, (including terebratula,
+pentamerus, spirifer, orthis, lept&aelig;na;) mollusca, of several orders
+and many genera, (including turritella, orthoceras, nautilus, bellerophon;)
+crustacea, all of them trilobites, (including trinucleus, asaphus, calamene.)&nbsp;
+A little above the Llandillo rocks, there have been discovered certain
+convoluted forms, which are now established as annelids, or sea-worms,
+a tribe of creatures still existing, (nereidina and serpulina,) and
+which may often be found beneath stones on a sea-beach.&nbsp; One of
+these, figured by Mr. Murchison, is furnished with feet in vast numbers
+all along its body, like a centipede.&nbsp; The occurrence of annelids
+is important, on account of their character and status in the animal
+kingdom.&nbsp; They are red-blooded and hermaphrodite, and form a link
+of connexion between the annulosa (white-blooded worms) and a humble
+class of the vertebrata. <a name="citation62"></a><a href="#footnote62">{62}</a>&nbsp;
+The Wenlock limestone is most remarkable amongst all the rocks of the
+Silurian system, for organic remains.&nbsp; Many slabs of it are wholly
+composed of corals, shells, and trilobites, held together by shale.&nbsp;
+It contains many genera of crinoidea and polypiaria, and it is thought
+that some beds of it are wholly the production of the latter creatures,
+or are, in other words, coral reefs transformed by heat and pressure
+into rocks.&nbsp; Remains of fishes, of a very minute size, have been
+detected by Mr. Philips in the Aymestry limestone, being apparently
+the first examples of vertebrated animals which breathed upon our planet.&nbsp;
+In the upper Ludlow rocks, remains of six genera of fish have been for
+a longer period known; they belong to the order of cartilaginous fishes,
+an order of mean organization and ferocious habits, of which the shark
+and sturgeon are living specimens.&nbsp; &ldquo;Some were furnished
+with long palates, and squat, firmly-based teeth, well adapted for crushing
+the strong-cased zoophytes and shells of the period, fragments of which
+occur in the f&oelig;cal remains; some with teeth that, like the fossil
+sharks of the later formations, resemble lines of miniature pyramids,
+larger and smaller alternating; some with teeth sharp, thin, and so
+deeply serrated, that every individual tooth resembles a row of poniards
+set up against the walls of an armory; and these last, says Agassiz,
+furnished with weapons so murderous, must have been the pirates of the
+period.&nbsp; Some had their fins guarded with long spines, hooked like
+the beak of an eagle; some with spines of straighter and more slender
+form, and ribbed and furrowed longitudinally like columns; some were
+shielded by an armour of bony points, and some thickly covered with
+glistening scales.&rdquo; <a name="citation64"></a><a href="#footnote64">{64}</a></p>
+<p>The traces of fuci in this system are all but sufficient to allow
+of a distinction of genera.&nbsp; In some parts of North America, extensive
+though thin beds of them have been found.&nbsp; A distinguished French
+geologist, M. Brogniart, has shewn that all existing marine plants are
+classifiable with regard to the zones of climate; some being fitted
+for the torrid zone, some for the temperate, some for the frigid.&nbsp;
+And he establishes that the fuci of these early rocks speak of a torrid
+climate, although they may be found in what are now temperate regions;
+he also states that those of the higher rocks betoken, as we ascend,
+a gradually diminishing temperature.</p>
+<p>We thus early begin to find proofs of the general uniformity of organic
+life over the surface of the earth, at the time when each particular
+system of rocks was formed.&nbsp; Species identical with the remains
+in the Wenlock limestone occur in the corresponding class of rocks in
+the Eifel, and partially in the Harz, Norway, Russia, and Brittany.&nbsp;
+The situations of the remains in Russia are fifteen hundred miles from
+the Wenlock beds; but at the distance of between six and seven thousand
+from those, - namely, in the vale of Mississippi, the same species are
+discovered.&nbsp; Uniformity in animal life over large geographical
+areas argues uniformity in the conditions of animal life; and hence
+arise some curious inferences.&nbsp; Species, in the same low class
+of animals, are now much more limited; for instance, the Red Sea gives
+different polypiaria, zoophytes, and shell-fish, from the Mediterranean.&nbsp;
+It is the opinion of M. Brogniart, that the uniformity which existed
+in the primeval times can only be attributed to the temperature arising
+from the internal heat, which had yet, as he supposes, been sufficiently
+great to overpower the ordinary meteorological influences, and spread
+a tropical clime all over the globe.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>ERA OF THE OLD RED SANDSTONE - FISHES ABUNDANT.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>We advance to a new chapter in this marvellous history - the era
+of the <i>Old Red Sandstone System</i>.&nbsp; This term has been recently
+applied to a series of strata, of enormous thickness in the whole mass,
+largely developed in Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, and
+South Wales; also in the counties of Fife, Forfar, Moray, Cromarty,
+and Caithness; and in Russia and North America, if not in many other
+parts of the world.&nbsp; The particular strata forming the system are
+somewhat different in different countries; but there is a general character
+to the extent of these being a mixture of flagstones, marly rocks, and
+sandstones, usually of a laminous structure, with conglomerates.&nbsp;
+There is also a schist shewing the presence of bitumen; a remarkable
+new ingredient, since it is a vegetable production.&nbsp; In the conglomerates,
+of great extent and thickness, which form, in at least one district,
+the basis or leading feature of the system, inclosing water-worn fragments
+of quartz and other rocks, we have evidence of the seas of that period
+having been subjected to a violent and long-continued agitation, probably
+from volcanic causes.&nbsp; The upper members of the series bear the
+appearance of having been deposited in comparatively tranquil seas.&nbsp;
+The English specimens of this system shew a remarkable freedom from
+those disturbances which result in the interjection of trap; and they
+are thus defective in mineral ores.&nbsp; In some parts of England the
+old red sandstone system has been stated as 10,000 feet in thickness.</p>
+<p>In this era, the forms of life which existed in the Silurian are
+continued: we have the same orders of marine creatures, zoophyta, polypiaria,
+conchifera, crustacea; but to these are added numerous fishes, some
+of which are of most extraordinary and surprising forms.&nbsp; Several
+of the strata are crowded with remains of fish, shewing that the seas
+in which those beds were deposited had swarmed with that class of inhabitants.&nbsp;
+The investigation of this system is recent; but already <a name="citation68"></a><a href="#footnote68">{68}</a>
+M. Agassiz has ascertained about twenty genera, and thrice the number
+of species.&nbsp; And it is remarkable that the Silurian fishes are
+here only represented in genera; the whole of the <i>species</i> of
+that era had already passed away.&nbsp; Even throughout the sub-groups
+of the system itself, the species are changed; and these are phenomena
+observed throughout all the subsequent systems or geological eras; apparently
+arguing that, during the deposition of all the rocks, a gradual change
+of physical conditions was constantly going on.&nbsp; A varying temperature,
+or even a varying depth of sea, would at present be attended with similar
+changes in marine life; and by analogy we are entitled to assume that
+such variations in the ancient seas might be amongst the causes of that
+constant change of genera and species in the inhabitants of those seas
+to which the organic contents of the rocks bear witness.</p>
+<p>Some of the fossils of this system, - the cephalaspis, coccosteus,
+pterichthys, holoptychius - are, in form and structure, entirely different
+from any fishes now existing, only the sturgeon family having any trace
+of affinity to them in any respect.&nbsp; They seem to form a sort of
+connecting link between the crustacea and true fishes.</p>
+<p>The <i>cephalaspis</i> may be considered as making the smallest advance
+from the crustacean character; it very much resembles in form the asaphus
+of lower formations, having a longish tail-like body inserted within
+the cusp of a large crescent-shaped head, somewhat like a saddler&rsquo;s
+cutting-knife.&nbsp; The body is covered with strong plates of bone,
+enamelled, and the head was protected on the upper side with one large
+plate, as with a buckler - hence the name, implying <i>buckler-head</i>.&nbsp;
+A range of small fins conveys the idea of its having been as weak in
+motion as it is strong in structure.&nbsp; The <i>coccosteus</i> may
+be said to mark the next advance to fish creation.&nbsp; The outline
+of its body is of the form of a short thick coffin, rounded, covered
+with strong bony plates, and terminating in a long tail, which seems
+to have been the sole organ of motion.&nbsp; It is very remarkable,
+that, while the tail establishes this creature among the vertebrata
+and the fishes, its mouth has been opened vertically, like those of
+the crustaceans, but which is contrary to the mode of vertebrata generally.&nbsp;
+This seems a pretty strong mark of the link character of the coccosteus
+between these two great departments of the animal kingdom.&nbsp; The
+<i>pterichthys</i> has also strong bony plates over its body, arranged
+much like those of a tortoise, and has a long tail; but its most remarkable
+feature, and that which has suggested its name, is a pair of long and
+narrow wing-like appendages attached to the shoulders, which the creature
+is supposed to have erected for its defence when attacked by an enemy.</p>
+<p>The <i>holoptychius</i> is of a flat oval form, furnished with fins,
+and ending in a long tail; the whole body covered with strong plates
+which overlap each other, and the head forming only a slight rounded
+projection from the general figure.&nbsp; The specimens in the lower
+beds are not above the size of a flounder; but in the higher strata,
+to judge by the size of the scales or plates which have been found,
+the creature attained a comparatively monstrous size.</p>
+<p>The other fishes of the system, - the osteolepis, glyptolepis, dipterus,
+&amp;c., are, in general outline, much like fishes still existing, but
+their organization has, nevertheless, some striking peculiarities.&nbsp;
+They have been entirely covered with bony scales or plates, enamelled
+externally; their spines are tipped with bone, and, as one striking
+and unvarying feature, the tail is only finned on the lower side.&nbsp;
+The internal skeleton, of which no traces have been preserved, is presumed
+to have been cartilaginous.&nbsp; They therefore unite the character
+of cartilaginous fishes with a character peculiar to themselves, and
+in which we see pretty clear vestiges of the pre-existent crustaceous
+form.</p>
+<p>With regard to the link character of these animals, some curious
+facts are mentioned.&nbsp; It appears that in the imperfect condition
+of the vertebral column, and the inferior situation of the mouth in
+the pterichthys, coccosteus, &amp;c., there is an analogy to the form
+of the dorsal cord and position of the mouth in the embryo of perfect
+fishes.&nbsp; The one-sided form of the tail in the osteolepis &amp;c.
+finds a similar analogy in the form of the tail in the embryo of the
+salmon.&nbsp; It is not premature to remark how broadly these facts
+seem to hint at a parity of law affecting the progress of general creation,
+and the progress of an individual f&oelig;tus of one of the more perfect
+animals.</p>
+<p>It is equally ascertained of the types of being prevalent in the
+old red, as of those of the preceding system, that they are uniform
+in the corresponding strata of distant parts of the earth; for instance,
+Russia and North America.</p>
+<p>In the old red sandstone, the marine plants, of which faint traces
+are observable in the Silurians, continue to appear.&nbsp; It would
+seem as if less change took place in the vegetation than in the animals
+of those early seas; and for this, as Mr. Miller has remarked, it is
+easy to imagine reasons.&nbsp; For example, an infusion of lime into
+the sea would destroy animal life, but be favourable to vegetation.</p>
+<p>As yet there were no land animals or plants, and for this the presumable
+reason is, that no dry land as yet existed.&nbsp; We are not left to
+make this inference solely from the absence of land animals and plants;
+in the arrangement of the primary (stratified) rocks, we have further
+evidence of it.&nbsp; That these rocks were formed in a generally horizontal
+position, we are as well assured as that they were formed at the bottom
+of seas.&nbsp; But they are always found greatly inclined in position,
+tilted up against the slopes of the granitic masses which are beneath
+them in geological order, though often shooting up to a higher point
+in the atmosphere.&nbsp; No doubt can be entertained that these granitic
+masses, forming our principal mountain ranges, have been protruded from
+below, or, at least, thrust much further up, <i>since</i> the deposition
+of the primary rocks.&nbsp; The protrusion was what tilted up the primary
+rocks; and the inference is, of course, unavoidable, that these mountains
+have risen chiefly, at least, since the primary rocks were laid down.&nbsp;
+It is remarkable that, while the primary rocks thus incline towards
+granitic nuclei or axes, the strata higher in the series rest against
+these again, generally at a less inclination, or none at all, shewing
+that these strata were laid down after the swelling mountain eminences
+had, by their protrusion, tilted up the primary strata.&nbsp; And thus
+it may be said an era of local upthrowing of the primitive and (perhaps)
+central matter of our planet, is established as happening about the
+close of the primary strata, and beginning of the next ensuing system.&nbsp;
+It may be called the <i>Era of the Oldest Mountains</i>, or, more boldly,
+of the formation of the detached portions of dry land over the hitherto
+watery surface of the globe - an important part of the designs of Providence,
+for which the time was now apparently come.&nbsp; It may be remarked,
+that volcanic disturbances and protrusions of trap took place throughout
+the whole period of the deposition of the primary rocks; but they were
+upon a comparatively limited scale, and probably all took place under
+water.&nbsp; It was only now that the central granitic masses of the
+great mountain ranges were thrown up, carrying up with them broken edges
+of the primary strata; a process which seems to have had this difference
+from the other, that it was the effect of a more tremendous force exerted
+at a lower depth in the earth, and generally acting in lines pervading
+a considerable portion of the earth&rsquo;s surface.&nbsp; We shall
+by-and-by see that the protrusion of some of the mountain ranges was
+not completed, or did not stop, at that period.&nbsp; There is no part
+of geological science more clear than that which refers to the ages
+of mountains.&nbsp; It is as certain that the Grampian mountains of
+Scotland are older than the Alps and Apennines, as it is that civilization
+had visited Italy, and had enabled her to subdue the world, while Scotland
+was the residence of &ldquo;roving barbarians.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Pyrenees,
+Carpathians, and other ranges of continental Europe, are all younger
+than the Grampians, or even the insignificant Mendip Hills of southern
+England.&nbsp; Stratification tells this tale as plainly as Livy tells
+the history of the Roman republic.&nbsp; It tells us - to use the words
+of Professor Philips - that at the time when the Grampians sent streams
+and detritus to straits where now the valleys of the Forth and Clyde
+meet, the greater part of Europe was a wide ocean.</p>
+<p>The last three systems - called, in England, the Cumbrian, Silurian,
+and Devonian, and collectively the pal&aelig;ozoic rocks, from their
+containing the remains of the earliest inhabitants of the globe - are
+of vast thickness; in England, not much less than 30,000 feet, or nearly
+six miles.&nbsp; In other parts of the world, as we have seen, the earliest
+of these systems alone is of much greater depth - arguing an enormous
+profundity in the ocean in which they were formed.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>SECONDARY ROCKS.&nbsp; ERA OF THE CARBONIFEROUS FORMATION.&nbsp;
+LAND FORMED.&nbsp; COMMENCEMENT OF LAND PLANTS.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>We now enter upon a new great epoch in the history of our globe.&nbsp;
+There was now dry land.&nbsp; As a consequence of this fact, there was
+fresh water, for rain, instead of immediately returning to the sea,
+as formerly, was now gathered in channels of the earth, and became springs,
+rivers, and lakes.&nbsp; There was now a theatre for the existence of
+land plants and animals, and it remains to be inquired if these accordingly
+were produced.</p>
+<p>The Secondary Rocks, in which our further researches are to be prosecuted,
+consist of a great and varied series, resting, generally unconformably,
+against flanks of the upturned primary rocks, sometimes themselves considerably
+inclined, at others, forming extensive basin-like beds, nearly horizontal;
+in many places, much broken up and shifted by disturbances from below.&nbsp;
+They have all been formed out of the materials of the older rocks, by
+virtue of the wearing power of air and water, which is still every day
+carrying down vast quantities of the elevated matter of the globe into
+the sea.&nbsp; But the separate strata are each much more distinct in
+the matter of its composition than might be expected.&nbsp; Some are
+siliceous or arenaceous (sandstones), composed mainly of fine grains
+from the quartz rocks - the most abundant of the primary strata.&nbsp;
+Others are argillaceous - clays, shales, &amp;c., chiefly derived, probably,
+from the slate beds of the primary series.&nbsp; Others are calcareous,
+derived from the early limestone.&nbsp; As a general feature, they are
+softer and less crystalline than the primary rocks, as if they had endured
+less of both heat and pressure than the senior formation.&nbsp; There
+are beds (<i>coal</i>) formed solely of vegetable matter, and some others
+in which the main ingredient is particles of iron, (<i>the iron black
+band</i>.)&nbsp; The secondary rocks are quite as communicative with
+regard to their portion of the earth&rsquo;s history as the primitive
+were.</p>
+<p>The first, or lowest, group of the secondary rocks is called the
+<i>Carboniferous Formation</i>, from the remarkable feature of its numerous
+interspersed beds of coal.&nbsp; It commences with the beds of the <i>mountain
+limestone</i>, which, in some situations, as in Derbyshire and Ireland,
+are of great thickness, being alternated with chert (a siliceous sandstone),
+sandstones, shales, and beds of coal, generally of the harder and less
+bituminous kind (<i>anthracite</i>), the whole being covered in some
+places by the millstone grit, a siliceous conglomerate composed of the
+detritus of the primary rocks.&nbsp; The mountain limestone, attaining
+in England to a depth of eight hundred yards, greatly exceeds in volume
+any of the primary limestone beds, and shews an enormous addition of
+power to the causes formerly suggested as having produced this substance.&nbsp;
+In fact, remains of corals, crinoidea, and shells, are so abundant in
+it, as to compose three-fourths of the mass in some parts.&nbsp; Above
+the mountain limestone commence the more conspicuous <i>coal beds</i>,
+alternating with sandstones, shales, beds of limestone, and ironstone.&nbsp;
+Coal is altogether composed of the matter of a terrestrial vegetation,
+transmuted by pressure.&nbsp; Some fresh-water shells have been found
+in it, but few of marine origin, and no remains of those zoophytes and
+crinoidea so abundant in the mountain limestone and other rocks.&nbsp;
+Coal beds exist in Europe, Asia, and America, and have hitherto been
+esteemed as the most valuable of mineral productions, from the important
+services which the substance renders in manufactures and in domestic
+economy.&nbsp; It is to be remarked, that there are some local variations
+in the arrangement of coal beds.&nbsp; In France, they rest immediately
+on the granite and other primary rocks, the intermediate strata not
+having been found at those places.&nbsp; In America, the kind called
+anthracite occurs among the slate beds, and this species also abounds
+more in the mountain limestone than with us.&nbsp; These last circumstances
+only shew that different parts of the earth&rsquo;s surface did not
+all witness the same events of a certain fixed series exactly at the
+same time.&nbsp; There had been an exhibition of dry land about the
+site of America, a little earlier than in Europe.</p>
+<p>Some features of the condition of the earth during the deposition
+of the carboniferous group, are made out with a clearness which must
+satisfy most minds.&nbsp; First we are told of a time when carbonate
+of lime was formed in vast abundance at the bottoms of profound seas,
+accompanied by an unusually large population of corals and encrinites;
+while in some parts of the earth there were patches of dry land, covered
+with a luxuriant vegetation.&nbsp; Next we have a comparatively brief
+period of volcanic disturbance, (when the conglomerate was formed.)&nbsp;
+Then the causes favourable to the so abundant production of limestone,
+and the large population of marine acrita, decline, and we find the
+masses of dry land increase in number and extent, and begin to bear
+an amount of forest vegetation, far exceeding that of the most sheltered
+tropical spots of the present surface.&nbsp; The climate, even in the
+latitude of Baffin&rsquo;s Bay, was torrid, and perhaps the atmosphere
+contained a larger charge of carbonic acid gas (the material of vegetation)
+than it now does.&nbsp; The forests or thickets of the period, included
+no species of plants now known upon earth.&nbsp; They mainly consisted
+of gigantic shrubs, which are either not represented by any existing
+types, or are akin to kinds which are now only found in small and lowly
+forms.&nbsp; That these forests grew upon a Polynesia, or multitude
+of small islands, is considered probable, from similar vegetation being
+now found in such situations within the tropics.&nbsp; With regard to
+the circumstances under which the masses of vegetable matter were transformed
+into successive coal strata, geologists are divided.&nbsp; From examples
+seen at the present day, at the mouths of such rivers as the Mississippi,
+which traverse extensive sylvan regions, and from other circumstances
+to be adverted to, it is held likely by some that the vegetable matter,
+the rubbish of decayed forests, was carried by rivers into estuaries,
+and there accumulated in vast natural rafts, until it sunk to the bottom,
+where an overlayer of sand or mud would prepare it for becoming a stratum
+of coal.&nbsp; Others conceive that the vegetation first went into the
+condition of a peat moss, that a sink in the level then exposed it to
+be overrun by the sea, and covered with a layer of sand or mud; that
+a subsequent uprise made the mud dry land, and fitted it to bear a new
+forest, which afterwards, like its predecessor, became a bed of peat;
+that, in short, by repetitions of this process, the alternate layers
+of coal, sandstone, and shale, constituting the carboniferous group,
+were formed.&nbsp; It is favourable to this last view that marine fossils
+are scarcely found in the body of the coal itself, though abundant in
+the shale layers above and below it; also that in several places erect
+stems of trees are found with their roots still fixed in the shale beds,
+and crossing the sandstone beds at almost right angles, shewing that
+these, at least, had not been drifted from their original situations.&nbsp;
+On the other hand, it is not easy to admit such repeated risings and
+sinkings of surface as would be required, on this hypothesis, to form
+a series of coal strata.&nbsp; Perhaps we may most safely rest at present
+with the supposition that coal has been formed under both classes of
+circumstances, though in the latter only as an exception to the former.</p>
+<p>Upwards of three hundred species of plants have been ascertained
+to exist in the coal formation; but it is not necessary to suppose that
+the whole contained in that system are now, or ever will be distinguished.&nbsp;
+Experiments shew that some great classes of plants become decomposed
+in water in a much less space of time than others, and it is remarkable
+that those which decompose soonest, are of the classes found most rare,
+or not at all, in the coal strata.&nbsp; It is consequently to be inferred
+that there may have been grasses and mosses at this era, and many species
+of trees, the remains of which had lost all trace of organic form before
+their substance sunk into the mass of which coal was formed.&nbsp; In
+speaking, therefore, of the vegetation of this period, we must bear
+in mind that it may have comprehended forms of which we have no memorial.</p>
+<p>Supposing, nevertheless, that, in the main, the ascertained vegetation
+of the coal system is that which grew at the time of its formation,
+it is interesting to find that the terrestrial botany of our globe begins
+with classes of comparatively simple forms and structure.&nbsp; In the
+ranks of the vegetable kingdom, the lowest place is taken by plants
+of cellular tissue, and which have no flowers, (<i>cryptogamia</i>,)
+as lichens, mosses, fungi, ferns, sea-weeds.&nbsp; Above these stand
+plants of vascular tissue, and bearing flowers, in which again there
+are two great subdivisions; first, plants having one seed-lobe, (<i>monocotyledons</i>,)
+and in which the new matter is added within, (<i>endogenous</i>,) of
+which the cane and palm are examples; second, plants having two seed-lobes,
+(<i>dicotyledons</i>,) and in which the new matter is added on the outside
+under the bark, (<i>exogenous</i>,) of which the pine, elm, oak, and
+most of the British forest-trees are examples; these subdivisions also
+ranking in the order in which they are here stated.&nbsp; Now it is
+clear that a predominance of these forms in succession marked the successive
+epochs developed by fossil geology; the simple abounding first, and
+the complex afterwards.</p>
+<p>Two-thirds of the plants of the carboniferous era are of the cellular
+or cryptogamic kind, a proportion which would probably be much increased
+if we knew the whole Flora of that era.&nbsp; The ascertained dicotyledons,
+or higher-class plants, are comparatively few in this formation; but
+it will be found that they constantly increased as the globe grew older.</p>
+<p>The master-form or type of the era was the <i>fern</i>, or breckan,
+of which about one hundred and thirty species have already been ascertained
+as entering into the composition of coal. <a name="citation84a"></a><a href="#footnote84a">{84a}</a>&nbsp;
+The fern is a plant which thrives best in warm, shaded, and moist situations.&nbsp;
+In tropical countries, where these conditions abound, there are many
+more species than in temperate climes, and some of these are arborescent,
+or of a tree-like size and luxuriance. <a name="citation84b"></a><a href="#footnote84b">{84b}</a>&nbsp;
+The ferns of the coal strata have been of this magnitude, and that without
+regard to the parts of the earth where they are found.&nbsp; In the
+coal of Baffin&rsquo;s Bay, of Newcastle, and of the torrid zone alike,
+are the fossil ferns arborescent, shewing clearly that, in that era,
+the present tropical temperature, or one even higher, existed in very
+high latitudes.</p>
+<p>In the swamps and ditches of England there grows a plant called the
+horse-tail (<i>equisetum</i>), having a succulent, erect, jointed stem,
+with slender leaves, and a scaly catkin at the top.&nbsp; A second large
+section of the plants of the carboniferous era were of this kind (<i>equisetace&aelig;</i>),
+but, like the fern, reaching the magnitudes of trees.&nbsp; While existing
+equiseta rarely exceed three feet in height, and the stems are generally
+under half an inch in diameter, their kindred, entombed in the coal
+beds, seem to have been generally fourteen or fifteen feet high, with
+stems from six inches to a foot in thickness.&nbsp; Arborescent plants
+of this family, like the arborescent ferns, now grow only in tropical
+countries, and their being found in the coal beds in all latitudes is
+consequently held as an additional proof, that at this era a warm climate
+was extended much farther to the north than at present.&nbsp; It is
+to be remarked that plants of this kind (forming two genera, the most
+abundant of which is the <i>calamites</i>) are only represented on the
+present surface by plants of the same <i>family</i>: the <i>species</i>
+which flourished at this era gradually lessen in number as we advance
+upwards in the series of rocks, and disappear before we arrive at the
+tertiary formation.</p>
+<p>The club-moss family (<i>lycopodiace&aelig;</i>) are other plants
+of the present surface, usually seen in a lowly and creeping form in
+temperate latitudes, but presenting species which rise to a greater
+magnitude within the tropics.&nbsp; Many specimens of this family are
+found in the coal beds; it is thought they have contributed more to
+the substance of the coal than any other family.&nbsp; But, like the
+ferns and equisetace&aelig;, they rise to a prodigious magnitude.&nbsp;
+The lepidodendra (so the fossil genus is called) have probably been
+from sixty-five to eighty feet in height, having at their base a diameter
+of about three feet, while their leaves measured twenty inches in length.&nbsp;
+In the forests of the coal era, the lepidodendra would enjoy the rank
+of firs in our forests, affording shade to the only less stately ferns
+and calamites.&nbsp; The internal structure of the stem, and the character
+of the seed-vessels, shew them to have been a link between single-lobed
+and double-lobed plants, a fact worthy of note, as it favours the idea
+that, in vegetable, as well as animal creation, a progress has been
+observed, in conformity with advancing conditions.&nbsp; It is also
+curious to find a missing link of so much importance in a genus of plants
+which has long ceased to have a living place upon earth.</p>
+<p>The other leading plants of the coal era are without representatives
+on the present surface, and their characters are in general less clearly
+ascertained.&nbsp; Amongst the most remarkable are - the <i>sigillaria</i>,
+of which large stems are very abundant, shewing that the interior has
+been soft, and the exterior fluted with separate leaves inserted in
+vertical rows along the flutings - and the <i>stigmaria</i>, plants
+apparently calculated to flourish in marshes or pools, having a short,
+thick, fleshy stem, with a dome-shaped top, from which sprung branches
+of from twenty to thirty feet long.&nbsp; Amongst monocotyledons were
+some palms, (<i>flabellaria</i> and <i>n&aelig;ggerathia</i>,) besides
+a few not distinctly assignable to any class.</p>
+<p>The dicotyledons of the coal are comparatively few, though on the
+present surface they are the most numerous sub-class.&nbsp; Besides
+some of doubtful affinity, (<i>annularia</i>, <i>asterophyllites</i>,
+&amp;c.,) there were a few of the pine family, which seem to have been
+the highest class of trees of this era, and are only as yet found in
+isolated cases, and in sandstone beds.&nbsp; The first discovered lay
+in the Craigleith quarry, near Edinburgh, and consisted of a stem about
+two feet thick, and forty-seven feet in length.&nbsp; Others have since
+been found, both in the same situation, and at Newcastle.&nbsp; Leaves
+and fruit being wanting, an ingenious mode of detecting the nature of
+these trees was hit upon by Mr. Witham of Lartington.&nbsp; Taking thin
+polished cross slices of the stem, and subjecting them to the microscope,
+he detected the structure of the wood to be that of a cone-bearing tree,
+by the presence of certain &ldquo;reticulations&rdquo; which distinguish
+that family, in addition to the usual radiating and concentric lines.&nbsp;
+That particular tree was concluded to be an araucaria, a species now
+found in Norfolk Island, in the South Sea, and in a few other remote
+situations.&nbsp; The conifer&aelig; of this era form the dawn of dicotyledenous
+trees, of which they may be said to be the simplest type, and to which,
+it has already been noticed, the lepidodendra are a link from the monocotyledons.&nbsp;
+The concentric rings of the Craigleith and other conifer&aelig; of this
+era have been mentioned.&nbsp; It is interesting to find in these a
+record of the changing seasons of those early ages, when as yet there
+were no human beings to observe time or tide.&nbsp; They are clearly
+traced; but it is observed that they are more slightly marked than is
+the case with their family at the present day, as if the changes of
+temperature had been within a narrower range.</p>
+<p>Such was the vegetation of the carbonigenous era, composed of forms
+at the bottom of the botanical scale, flowerless, fruitless, but luxuriant
+and abundant beyond what the most favoured spots on earth can now shew.&nbsp;
+The rigidity of the leaves of its plants, and the absence of fleshy
+fruits and farinaceous seeds, unfitted it to afford nutriment to animals;
+and, monotonous in its forms, and destitute of brilliant colouring,
+its sward probably unenlivened by any of the smaller flowering herbs,
+its shades uncheered by the hum of insects, or the music of birds, it
+must have been but a sombre scene to a human visitant.&nbsp; But neither
+man nor any other animals were then in existence to look for such uses
+or such beauties in this vegetation.&nbsp; It was serving other and
+equally important ends, clearing (probably) the atmosphere of matter
+noxious to animal life, and storing up mineral masses which were in
+long subsequent ages to prove of the greatest service to the human race,
+even to the extent of favouring the progress of its civilization.</p>
+<p>The animal remains of this era are not numerous, in comparison with
+those which go before, or those which come after.&nbsp; The mountain
+limestone, indeed, deposited at the commencement of it, abounds unusually
+in polypiaria and crinoidea; but when we ascend to the coal-beds themselves,
+the case is altered, and these marine remains altogether disappear.&nbsp;
+We have then only a limited variety of conchifers and shell mollusks,
+with fragments of a few species of fishes, and these are rarely or never
+found in the coal seams, but in the shales alternating with them.&nbsp;
+Some of the fishes are of a sauroid character, that is, partake of the
+nature of the lizard, a genus of the reptilia, a land class of animals,
+so that we may be said here to have the first approach to a kind of
+animals calculated to breathe the atmosphere.&nbsp; Such is the Megalichthys
+Hibbertii, found by Dr. Hibbert Ware, in a limestone bed of fresh-water
+origin, underneath the coal at Burdiehouse, near Edinburgh.&nbsp; Others
+of the same kind have been found in the coal measures in Yorkshire,
+and in the low coal shales at Manchester.&nbsp; This is no more than
+might be expected, as collections of fresh water now existed, and it
+is presumable that they would be peopled.&nbsp; The chief other fishes
+of the coal era are named pal&aelig;othrissum, pal&aelig;oniscus, diperdus.</p>
+<p>Coal strata are nearly confined to the group termed the carboniferous
+formation.&nbsp; Thin beds are not unknown afterwards, but they occur
+only as a rare exception.&nbsp; It is therefore thought that the most
+important of the conditions which allowed of so abundant a terrestrial
+vegetation, had ceased about the time when this formation was closed.&nbsp;
+The high temperature was not one of the conditions which terminated,
+for there are evidences of it afterwards; but probably the superabundance
+of carbonic acid gas supposed to have existed during this era was expended
+before its close.&nbsp; There can be little doubt that the infusion
+of a large dose of this gas into the atmosphere at the present day would
+be attended by precisely the same circumstances as in the time of the
+carboniferous formation.&nbsp; Land animal life would not have a place
+on earth; vegetation would be enormous; and coal strata would be formed
+from the vast accumulations of woody matter, which would gather in every
+sea, near the mouths of great rivers.&nbsp; On the exhaustion of the
+superabundance of carbonic acid gas, the coal formation would cease,
+and the earth might again become a suitable theatre of being for land
+animals.</p>
+<p>The termination of the carboniferous formation is marked by symptoms
+of volcanic violence, which some geologists have considered to denote
+the close of one system of things and the beginning of another.&nbsp;
+Coal beds generally lie in basins, as if following the curve of the
+bottom of seas.&nbsp; But there is no such basin which is not broken
+up into pieces, some of which have been tossed up on edge, others allowed
+to sink, causing the ends of strata to be in some instances many yards,
+and in a few several hundred feet, removed from the corresponding ends
+of neighbouring fragments.&nbsp; These are held to be results of volcanic
+movements below, the operation of which is further seen in numerous
+upbursts and intrusions of volcanic rock (trap).&nbsp; That these disturbances
+took place about the close of the formation, and not later, is shewn
+in the fact of the next higher group of strata being comparatively undisturbed.&nbsp;
+Other symptoms of this time of violence are seen in the beds of conglomerate
+which occur amongst the first strata above the coal.&nbsp; These, as
+usual, consist of fragments of the elder rocks, more or less worn from
+being tumbled about in agitated water, and laid down in a mud paste,
+afterwards hardened.&nbsp; Volcanic disturbances break up the rocks;
+the pieces are worn in seas; and a deposit of conglomerate is the consequence.&nbsp;
+Of porphyry, there are some such pieces in the conglomerate of Devonshire,
+three or four tons in weight.&nbsp; It is to be admitted for strict
+truth that, in some parts of Europe, the carboniferous formation is
+followed by superior deposits, without the appearance of such disturbances
+between their respective periods; but apparently this case belongs to
+the class of exceptions already noticed. <a name="citation93"></a><a href="#footnote93">{93}</a>&nbsp;
+That disturbance was general, is supported by the further and important
+fact of the destruction of many forms of organic being previously flourishing,
+particularly of the vegetable kingdom.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>ERA OF THE NEW RED SANDSTONE.&nbsp; TERRESTRIAL ZOOLOGY COMMENCES
+WITH REPTILES.&nbsp; FIRST TRACES OF BIRDS.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The next volume of the rock series refers to an era distinguished
+by an event of no less importance than the commencement of land animals.&nbsp;
+The <i>New Red Sandstone System</i> is subdivided into groups, some
+of which are wanting in some places; they are pretty fully developed
+in the north of England, in the following ascending order:- 1.&nbsp;
+Lower red sandstone; 2.&nbsp; Magnesian limestone; 3.&nbsp; Red and
+white sandstones and conglomerate; 4.&nbsp; Variegated marls.&nbsp;
+Between the third and fourth there is, in Germany, another group, called
+the Muschelkalk, a word expressing a limestone full of shells.</p>
+<p>The first group, containing the conglomerates already adverted to,
+seems to have been produced during the time of disturbance which occurred
+so generally after the carbonigenous era.&nbsp; This new era is distinguished
+by a paucity of organic remains, as might partly be expected from the
+appearances of disturbance, and the red tint of the rocks, the latter
+being communicated by a solution of oxide of iron, a substance unfavourable
+to animal life.</p>
+<p>The second group is a limestone with an infusion of magnesia.&nbsp;
+It is developed less generally than some others, but occurs conspicuously
+in England and Germany.&nbsp; Its place, above the red sandstone, shews
+the recurrence of circumstances favourable to animal life, and we accordingly
+find in it not only zoophytes, conchifera, and a few tribes of fish,
+but some faint traces of land plants, and a new and startling appearance
+- a reptile of saurian (lizard) character, analogous to the now existing
+family called monitors.&nbsp; Remains of this creature are found in
+cupriferous (copper-bearing) slate connected with the mountain limestone,
+at Mansfield and Glucksbrunn, in Germany, which may be taken as evidence
+that dry land existed in that age near those places.&nbsp; The magnesia
+limestone is also remarkable as the last rock in which appears the lept&aelig;na,
+or producta, a conchifer of numerous species which makes a conspicuous
+appearance in all previous seas.&nbsp; It is likewise to be observed,
+that the fishes of this age, to the genera of which the names pal&aelig;oniscus,
+catopterus, platysomus, &amp;c., have been applied, vanish, and henceforth
+appear no more.</p>
+<p>The third group, chiefly sandstones, variously coloured according
+to the amount and nature of the metallic oxide infused into them, shews
+a recurrence of agitation, and a consequent diminution of the amount
+of animal life.&nbsp; In the upper part, however, of this group, there
+are abundant symptoms of a revival of proper conditions for such life.&nbsp;
+There are marl beds, the origin of which substance in decomposed shells
+is obvious; and in Germany, though not in England, here occurs the muschelkalk,
+containing numerous organic remains, (generally different from those
+of the magnesian limestone,) and noted for the specimens of land animals,
+which it is the first to present in any considerable abundance to our
+notice.</p>
+<p>These animals are of the vertebrate sub-kingdom, but of its lowest
+class next after fishes, - namely, reptiles, - a portion of the terrestrial
+tribes whose imperfect respiratory system perhaps fitted them for enduring
+an atmosphere not yet quite suitable for birds or mammifers. <a name="citation97"></a><a href="#footnote97">{97}</a>&nbsp;
+The specimens found in the muschelkalk are allied to the crocodile and
+lizard tribes of the present day, but in the latter instance are upon
+a scale of magnitude as much superior to present forms as the lepidodendron
+of the coal era was superior to the dwarf club-mosses of our time.&nbsp;
+These saurians also combine some peculiarities of structure of a most
+extraordinary character.</p>
+<p>The animal to which the name <i>ichthyosaurus</i> has been given,
+was as long as a young whale, and it was fitted for living in the water,
+though breathing the atmosphere.&nbsp; It had the vertebral column and
+general bodily form of a fish, but to that were added the head and breast-bone
+of a lizard, and the paddles of the whale tribes.&nbsp; The beak, moreover,
+was that of a porpoise, and the teeth were those of a crocodile.&nbsp;
+It must have been a most destructive creature to the fish of those early
+seas.</p>
+<p>The <i>plesiosaurus</i> was of similar bulk, with a turtle-like body
+and paddles, shewing that the sea was its element, but with a long serpent-like
+neck, terminating in a saurian head, calculated to reach prey at a considerable
+distance.&nbsp; These two animals, of which many varieties have been
+discovered, constituting distinct species, are supposed to have lived
+in the shallow borders of the seas of this and subsequent formations,
+devouring immense quantities of the finny tribes.&nbsp; It was at first
+thought that no creatures approaching them in character now inhabit
+the earth; but latterly Mr. Darwin has discovered, in the reptile-peopled
+Galapagos Islands, in the South Sea, a marine saurian from three to
+four feet long.</p>
+<p>The <i>megalosaurus</i> was an enormous lizard - a land creature,
+also carnivorous.&nbsp; The <i>pterodactyle</i> was another lizard,
+but furnished with wings to pursue its prey in the air, and varying
+in size between a cormorant and a snipe.&nbsp; Crocodiles abounded,
+and some of these were herbivorous.&nbsp; Such was the iguanodon, a
+creature of the character of the iguana of the Ganges, but reaching
+a hundred feet in length, or twenty times that of its modern representative.</p>
+<p>There were also numerous <i>tortoises</i>, some of them reaching
+a great size; and Professor Owen has found in Warwickshire some remains
+of an animal of the batrachian order, <a name="citation99"></a><a href="#footnote99">{99}</a>
+to which, from the peculiar form of the teeth, he has given the name
+of labyrinthidon.&nbsp; Thus, three of Cuvier&rsquo;s four orders of
+reptilia (<i>sauria</i>, <i>chelonia</i>, and <i>batrachia</i>) are
+represented in this formation, the serpent order (<i>ophidia</i>) being
+alone wanting.</p>
+<p>The variegated marl beds which constitute the uppermost group of
+the formation, present two additional genera of huge saurians, - the
+phytosaurus and mastodonsaurus.</p>
+<p>It is in the upper beds of the red sandstone that beds of salt first
+occur.&nbsp; These are sometimes of such thickness, that the mine from
+which the material has been excavated looks like a lofty church.&nbsp;
+We see in the present world no circumstances calculated to produce the
+formation of a bed of rock salt; yet it is not difficult to understand
+how such strata were formed in an age marked by ultra-tropical heat
+and frequent volcanic disturbances.&nbsp; An estuary, cut off by an
+upthrow of trap, or a change of level, and left to dry up under the
+heat of the sun, would quickly become the bed of a dense layer of rock
+salt.&nbsp; A second shift of level, or some other volcanic disturbance,
+connecting it again with the sea, would expose this stratum to being
+covered over with a layer of sand or mud, destined in time to form the
+next stratum of rock above it.</p>
+<p>The plants of this era are few and unobtrusive.&nbsp; Equiseta, calamites,
+ferns, Voltzia, and a few of the other families found so abundantly
+in the preceding formation, here present themselves, but in diminished
+size and quantity.</p>
+<p>This seems to be the proper place to advert to certain memorials
+of a peculiar and unexpected character respecting these early ages in
+the sandstones.&nbsp; So low as the bottom of the carboniferous system,
+slabs are found marked over a great extent of surface with that peculiar
+corrugation or wrinkling which the receding tide leaves upon a sandy
+beach when the sea is but slightly agitated; and not only are these
+ripple-marks, as they are called, found on the surfaces, but casts of
+them are found on the under sides of slabs lying above.&nbsp; The phenomena
+suggests the time when the sand ultimately formed into these stone slabs,
+was part of the beach of a sea of the carbonigenous era; when, left
+wavy by one tide, it was covered over with a thin layer of fresh sand
+by the next, and so on, precisely as such circumstances might be expected
+to take place at the present day.&nbsp; Sandstone surfaces, ripple-marked,
+are found throughout the subsequent formations: in those of the new
+red, at more than one place in England, they further bear impressions
+of rain-drops which have fallen upon them - the rain, of course, of
+the inconceivably remote age in which the sandstones were formed.&nbsp;
+In the Greensill sandstone, near Shrewsbury, it has even been possible
+to tell from what direction the shower came which impressed the sandy
+surface, the rims of the marks being somewhat raised on one side, exactly
+as might be expected from a slanting shower falling at this day upon
+one of our beaches.&nbsp; These facts have the same sort of interest
+as the season rings of the Craigleith conifers, as speaking of a parity
+between some of the familiar processes of nature in those early ages
+and our own.</p>
+<p>In the new red sandstone, impressions still more important in the
+inferences to which they tend, have been observed, - namely, the footmarks
+of various animals.&nbsp; In a quarry of this formation, at Corncockle
+Muir, in Dumfriesshire, where the slabs incline at an angle of thirty-eight
+degrees, the vestiges of an animal supposed to have been a tortoise
+are distinctly traced up and down the slope, as if the creature had
+had occasion to pass backwards and forwards in that direction only,
+possibly in its daily visits to the sea.&nbsp; Some slabs similarly
+impressed, in the Stourton quarries in Cheshire, are further marked
+with a shower of rain which we know must have fallen <i>afterwards</i>,
+for its little hollows are impressed in the footmarks also, though more
+slightly than on the rest of the surface, the comparative hardness of
+a trodden place having apparently prevented so deep an impression being
+made.&nbsp; At Hessberg, in Saxony, the vestiges of four distinct animals
+have been traced, one of them a web-footed animal of small size, considered
+as a congener of the crocodile; another, whose footsteps having a resemblance
+to an impression of a swelled human hand, has caused it to be named
+the <i>cheirotherium</i>.&nbsp; The footsteps of the cheirotherium have
+been found also in the Stourton quarries above mentioned.&nbsp; Professor
+Owen, who stands at the head of comparative anatomy in the present day,
+has expressed his belief that this last animal was the same batrachian
+of which he has found fragments in the new red sandstone of Warwickshire.&nbsp;
+At Runcorn, near Manchester, and elsewhere, have been discovered the
+tracks of an animal which Mr. Owen calls the rynchosaurus, uniting with
+the body of a reptile the beak and feet of a bird, and which clearly
+had been a <i>link</i> between these two classes.</p>
+<p>If geologists shall ultimately give their approbation to the inferences
+made from a recent discovery in America, we shall have the addition
+of perfect birds, though probably of a low type, to the animal forms
+of this era.&nbsp; It is stated to be in quarries of this rock, in the
+valley of Connecticut, that footprints have been found, apparently produced
+by birds of the order grall&aelig;, or waders.&nbsp; &ldquo;The footsteps
+appear in regular succession on the continuous track of an animal, in
+the act of walking or running, with the right and left foot always in
+their relative places.&nbsp; The distance of the intervals between each
+footstep on the same track is occasionally varied, but to no greater
+amount than may be explained by the bird having altered its pace.&nbsp;
+Many tracks of different individuals and different species are often
+found crossing each other, and crowded, like impressions of feet upon
+the shores of a muddy stream, where ducks and geese resort.&rdquo; <a name="citation103"></a><a href="#footnote103">{103}</a>&nbsp;
+Some of these prints indicate small animals, but others denote birds
+of what would now be an unusually large size.&nbsp; One animal, having
+a foot fifteen inches in length, (one-half more than that of the ostrich,)
+and a stride of from four to six feet, has been appropriately entitled,
+<i>ornithichnites giganteus.</i></p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>ERA OF THE OOLITE.&nbsp; COMMENCEMENT OF MAMMALIA.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The chronicles of this period consist of a series of beds, mostly
+calcareous, taking their general name (<i>Oolite System</i>) from a
+conspicuous member of them - the oolite - a limestone composed of an
+aggregation of small round grains or spherules, and so called from its
+fancied resemblance to a cluster of eggs, or the roe of a fish.&nbsp;
+This texture of stone is novel and striking.&nbsp; It is supposed to
+be of chemical origin, each spherule being an aggregation of particles
+round a central nucleus.&nbsp; The oolite system is largely developed
+in England, France, Westphalia, and Northern Italy; it appears in Northern
+India and Africa, and patches of it exist in Scotland, and in the vale
+of the Mississippi.&nbsp; It may of course be yet discovered in many
+other parts of the world.</p>
+<p>The series, as shewn in the neighbourhood of Bath, is (beginning
+with the lowest) as follows:- 1.&nbsp; Lias, a set of strata variously
+composed of limestone, clay, marl, and shale, clay being predominant;
+2.&nbsp; Lower oolitic formation, including, besides the great oolite
+bed of central England, fullers&rsquo; earth beds, forest marble, and
+cornbrash; 3.&nbsp; Middle oolitic formation, composed of two sub-groups,
+the Oxford clay and coral rag, the latter being a mere layer of the
+works of the coral polype; 4.&nbsp; Upper oolitic formation, including
+what are called Kimmeridge clay and Portland oolite.&nbsp; In Yorkshire
+there is an additional group above the lias, and in Sutherlandshire
+there is another group above that again.&nbsp; In the wealds (moorlands)
+of Kent and Sussex, there is, in like manner, above the fourth of the
+Bath series, another additional group, to which the name of the <i>Wealden</i>
+has been given, from its situation, and which, composed of sandstones
+and clays, is subdivided into Purbeck beds, Hastings sand, and Weald
+clay.</p>
+<p>There are no particular appearances of disturbance between the close
+of the new red sandstone and the beginning of the oolite system, as
+far as has been observed in England.&nbsp; Yet there is a great change
+in the materials of the rocks of the two formations, shewing that while
+the bottoms of the seas of the one period had been chiefly arenaceous,
+those of the other were chiefly clayey and limy.&nbsp; And there is
+an equal difference between the two periods in respect of both botany
+and zoology.&nbsp; While the new red sandstone shews comparatively scanty
+traces of organic creation, those in the oolite are extremely abundant,
+particularly in the department of animals, and more particularly still
+of sea mollusca, which, it has been observed, are always the more conspicuous
+in proportion to the predominance of calcareous rocks.&nbsp; It is also
+remarkable that the animals of the oolitic system are entirely different
+in species from those of the preceding age, and that these species cease
+before the next.&nbsp; In this system we likewise find that uniformity
+over great space which has been remarked of the Faunas of earlier formations.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;In the equivalent deposits in the Himalaya Mountains, at Fernando
+Po, in the region north of the Cape of Good Hope, and in the Run of
+Cutch, and other parts of Hindostan, fossils have been discovered, which,
+as far as English naturalists who have seen them can determine, are
+undistinguishable from certain oolite and lias fossils of Europe.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation108a"></a><a href="#footnote108a">{108a}</a></p>
+<p>The dry land of this age presented cycade&aelig;, &ldquo;a beautiful
+class of plants between the palms and conifers, having a tall, straight
+trunk, terminating in a magnificent crown of foliage.&rdquo; <a name="citation108b"></a><a href="#footnote108b">{108b}</a>&nbsp;
+There were tree ferns, but in smaller proportion than in former ages;
+also equisetace&aelig;, lilia, and conifers.&nbsp; The vegetation was
+generally analogous to that of the Cape of Good Hope and Australia,
+which seems to argue a climate (we must remember, a universal climate)
+between the tropical and temperate.&nbsp; It was, however, sufficiently
+luxuriant in some instances to produce thin seams of coal, for such
+are found in the oolite formation of both Yorkshire and Sutherland.&nbsp;
+The sea, as for ages before, contained alg&aelig;, of which, however,
+only a few species have been preserved to our day.&nbsp; The lower classes
+of the inhabitants of the ocean were unprecedentedly abundant.&nbsp;
+The polypiaria were in such abundance as to form whole strata of themselves.&nbsp;
+The crinoidea and echinites were also extremely numerous.&nbsp; Shell
+mollusks, in hundreds of new species, occupied the bottoms of the seas
+of those ages, while of the swimming shell-fish, ammonites and belemnites,
+there were also many scores of varieties.&nbsp; The belemnite here calls
+for some particular notice.&nbsp; It commences in the oolite, and terminates
+in the next formation.&nbsp; It is an elongated, conical shell, terminating
+in a point, and having, at the larger end, a cavity for the residence
+of the animal, with a series of air-chambers below.&nbsp; The animal,
+placed in the upper cavity, could raise or depress itself in the water
+at pleasure by a pneumatic operation upon the entral air tube pervading
+its shell.&nbsp; Its tentacula, sent abroad over the summit of the shell,
+searched the sea for prey.&nbsp; The creature had an ink-bag, with which
+it could muddle the water around it, to protect itself from more powerful
+animals, and, strange to say, this has been found so well preserved
+that an artist has used it in one instance as a paint, wherewith to
+delineate the belemnite itself.</p>
+<p>The crustacea discovered in this formation are less numerous.&nbsp;
+There are many fishes, some of which (<i>acrodus</i>, <i>psammodus</i>,
+&amp;c.,) are presumed from remains of their palatal bones, to have
+been of the gigantic cartilaginous class, now represented by such as
+the cestraceon.&nbsp; It has been considered by Professor Owen as worthy
+of notice, that, the cestraceon being an inhabitant of the Australian
+seas, we have, in both the botany and ichthyology of this period, an
+analogy to that continent.&nbsp; The pycnodontes, (thick-toothed,) and
+lepidoides, (having thick scales,) are other families described by M.
+Agassiz as extensively prevalent.&nbsp; In the shallow waters of the
+oolitic formation, the ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, and other huge saurian
+carnivora of the preceding age, plied, in increased numbers, their destructive
+vocation. <a name="citation110"></a><a href="#footnote110">{110}</a>&nbsp;
+To them were added new genera, the cetiosaurus, mososaurus, and some
+others, all of similar character and habits.</p>
+<p>Land reptiles abounded, including species of the pterodactyle of
+the preceding age - tortoises, trionyces, crocodilians - and the pliosaurus,
+a creature which appears to have formed a link between the plesiosaurus
+and the crocodile.&nbsp; We know of at least six species of the flying
+saurian, the pterodactyle, in this formation.</p>
+<p>Now, for the first time, we find remains of insects, an order of
+animals not well calculated for fossil preservation, and which are therefore
+amongst the rarest of the animal tribes found in rocks, though they
+are the most numerous of all living families.&nbsp; A single libellula
+(dragon-fly) was found in the Stonesfield slate, a member of the lower
+oolitic group quarried near Oxford; and this was for several years the
+only specimen known to exist so early; but now many species have been
+found in a corresponding rock at Solenhofen, in Germany.&nbsp; It is
+remarkable that the remains of insects are found most plentifully near
+the remains of pterodactyles, to which undoubtedly they served as prey.</p>
+<p>The first glimpse of the highest class of the vertebrate sub-kingdom
+- <i>mammalia</i> - is obtained from the Stonesfield slate, where there
+has been found the jaw-bone of a quadruped evidently insectivorous,
+and inferred, from peculiarities in the structure of that small fragment,
+to have belonged to the marsupial family, (pouched animals).&nbsp; It
+may be observed, although no specimens of so high a class of animals
+as mammalia are found earlier, such may nevertheless have existed: the
+defect may be in our not having found them; but, other things considered,
+the probability is that heretofore there were no mammifers.&nbsp; It
+is an interesting circumstance that the first mammifers found should
+have belonged to the marsupialia, when the place of that order in the
+scale of creation is considered.&nbsp; In the imperfect structure of
+their brain, deficient in the organs connecting the two hemispheres
+- and in the mode of gestation, which is only in small part uterine
+- this family is clearly a link between the oviparous vertebrata (birds,
+reptiles, and fishes) and the higher mammifers.&nbsp; This is further
+established by their possessing a faint development of two canals passing
+from near the anus to the external surface of the viscera, which are
+fully possessed in reptiles and fishes, for the purpose of supplying
+aerated water to the blood circulating in particular vessels, but which
+are unneeded by mammifers.&nbsp; Such rudiments of organs in certain
+species which do not require them in any degree, are common in both
+the animal and vegetable kingdoms, but are always most conspicuous in
+families approaching in character to those classes to which the full
+organs are proper.&nbsp; This subject will be more particularly adverted
+to in the sequel.</p>
+<p>The highest part of the oolitic formation presents some phenomena
+of an unusual and interesting character, which demand special notice.&nbsp;
+Immediately above the upper oolitic group in Buckinghamshire, in the
+vicinity of Weymouth, and other situations, there is a thin stratum,
+usually called by workmen the <i>dirt-bed</i>, which appears, from incontestable
+evidence, to have been a soil, formed, like soils of the present day,
+in the course of time, upon a surface which had previously been the
+bottom of the sea.&nbsp; The dirt-bed contains exuvi&aelig; of tropical
+trees, accumulated through time, as the forest shed its honours on the
+spot where it grew, and became itself decayed.&nbsp; Near Weymouth there
+is a piece of this stratum, in which stumps of trees remain rooted,
+mostly erect or slightly inclined, and from one to three feet high;
+while trunks of the same forest, also silicified, lie imbedded on the
+surface of the soil in which they grew.</p>
+<p>Above this bed lie those which have been called the Wealden, from
+their full development in the Weald of Sussex; and these as incontestably
+argue that the dry land forming the dirt-bed had next afterwards become
+the area of brackish estuaries, or lakes partially connected with the
+sea; for the Wealden strata contain exuvi&aelig; of fresh-water tribes,
+besides those of the great saurians and chelonia.&nbsp; The area of
+this estuary comprehends the whole south-east province of England.&nbsp;
+A geologist thus confidently narrates the subsequent events: &ldquo;Much
+calcareous matter was first deposited [in this estuary], and in it were
+entombed myriads of shells, apparently analogous to those of the vivipara.&nbsp;
+Then came a thick envelope of sand, sometimes interstratified with mud;
+and, finally, muddy matter prevailed.&nbsp; The solid surface beneath
+the waters would appear to have suffered a long continued and gradual
+depression, which was as gradually filled, or nearly so, with transported
+matter; in the end, however, after a depression of several hundred feet,
+the sea again entered upon the area, not suddenly or violently - for
+the Wealden rocks pass gradually into the superincumbent cretaceous
+series - but so quietly, that the mud containing the remains of terrestrial
+and fresh-water creatures was tranquilly covered up by sands replete
+with marine exuvi&aelig;.&rdquo; <a name="citation114"></a><a href="#footnote114">{114}</a>&nbsp;
+A subsequent depression of the same area, to the depth of at least three
+hundred fathoms, is believed to have taken place, to admit of the deposition
+of the cretaceous beds lying above.</p>
+<p>From the scattered way in which remains of the larger terrestrial
+animals occur in the Wealden, and the intermixture of pebbles of the
+special appearance of those worn in rivers, it is also inferred that
+the estuary which once covered the south-east part of England was the
+mouth of a river of that far-descending class of which the Mississippi
+and Amazon are examples.&nbsp; What part of the earth&rsquo;s surface
+presented the dry land through which that and other similar rivers flowed,
+no one can tell for certain.&nbsp; It has been surmised, that the particular
+one here spoken of may have flowed from a point not nearer than the
+site of the present Newfoundland.&nbsp; Professor Philips has suggested,
+from the analogy of the mineral composition, that anciently elevated
+coal strata may have composed the dry land from which the sandy matters
+of these strata were washed.&nbsp; Such a deposit as the Wealden almost
+necessarily implies a local, not a general condition; yet it has been
+thought that similar strata and remains exist in the Pays de Bray, near
+Beauvais.&nbsp; This leads to the supposition that there may have been,
+in that age, a series of river-receiving estuaries along the border
+of some such great ocean as the Atlantic, of which that of modern Sussex
+is only an example.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>ERA OF THE CRETACEOUS FORMATION.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The record of this period consists of a series of strata, in which
+chalk beds make a conspicuous appearance, and which is therefore called
+the cretaceous system or formation.&nbsp; In England, a long stripe,
+extending from Yorkshire to Kent, presents the cretaceous beds upon
+the surface, generally lying conformably upon the oolite, and in many
+instances rising into bold escarpments towards the west.&nbsp; The celebrated
+cliffs of Dover are of this formation.&nbsp; It extends into northern
+France, and thence north-westward into Germany, whence it is traced
+into Scandinavia and Russia.&nbsp; The same system exists in North America,
+and probably in other parts of the earth not yet geologically investigated.&nbsp;
+Being a marine deposit, it establishes that seas existed at the time
+of its formation on the tracts occupied by it, while some of its organic
+remains prove that, in the neighbourhood of those seas, there were tracts
+of dry land.</p>
+<p>The cretaceous formation in England presents beds chiefly sandy in
+the lowest part, chiefly clayey in the middle, and chiefly of chalk
+in the upper part, the chalk beds being never absent, which some of
+the lower are in several places.&nbsp; In the vale of the Mississippi,
+again, the true chalk is wholly, or all but wholly absent.&nbsp; In
+the south of England, the lower beds are, (reckoning from the lowest
+upwards), 1.&nbsp; <i>Shankland</i> or <i>greensand</i>, &ldquo;a triple
+alternation of sands and sandstones with clay;&rdquo; 2.&nbsp; Galt,
+&ldquo;a stiff blue or black clay, abounding in shells, which frequently
+possess a pearly lustre;&rdquo; 3.&nbsp; <i>Hard</i> chalk; 4.&nbsp;
+Chalk with flints; these two last being generally white, but in some
+districts red, and in others yellow.&nbsp; The whole are, in England,
+about 1200 feet thick, shewing the considerable depths of the ocean
+in which the deposits were made.</p>
+<p>Chalk is a carbonate of lime, and the manner of its production in
+such vast quantities was long a subject of speculation among geologists.&nbsp;
+Some light seemed to be thrown upon the subject a few years ago, when
+it was observed, that the detritus of coral reefs in the present tropical
+seas gave a powder, undistinguishable, when dried, from ordinary chalk.&nbsp;
+It then appeared likely that the chalk beds were the detritus of the
+corals which were in the oceans of that era.&nbsp; Mr. Darwin, who made
+some curious inquiries on this point, further suggested, that the matter
+might have intermediately passed through the bodies of worms and fish,
+such as feed on the corals of the present day, and in whose stomachs
+he has found impure chalk.&nbsp; This, however, cannot be a full explanation
+of the production of chalk, if we admit some more recent discoveries
+of Professor Ehrenberg.&nbsp; That master of microscopic investigation
+announces, that chalk is composed partly of &ldquo;inorganic particles
+of irregular elliptical structure and granular slaty disposition,&rdquo;
+and partly of shells of inconceivable minuteness, &ldquo;varying from
+the one-twelfth to the two hundred and eighty-eighth part of a line&rdquo;
+- a cubic inch of the substance containing above ten millions of them!&nbsp;
+The chalk of the north of Europe contains, he says, a larger proportion
+of the inorganic matter; that of the south, a larger proportion of the
+organic matter, being in some instances almost entirely composed of
+it.&nbsp; He has been able to classify many of these creatures, some
+of them being allied to the nautili, nummuli, cyprides, &amp;c.&nbsp;
+The shells of some are calcareous, of others siliceous.&nbsp; M. Ehrenberg
+has likewise detected microscopic sea-plants in the chalk.</p>
+<p>The distinctive feature of the uppermost chalk beds in England, is
+the presence of flint nodules.&nbsp; These are generally disposed in
+layers parallel to each other.&nbsp; It was readily presumed by geologists
+that these masses were formed by a chemical aggregation of particles
+of silica, originally held in solution in the mass of the chalk.&nbsp;
+But whence the silica in a substance so different from it?&nbsp; Ehrenberg
+suggests that it is composed of the siliceous coverings of a portion
+of the microscopic creatures, whose shells he has in other instances
+detected in their original condition.&nbsp; It is remarkable that the
+chalk <i>with</i> flint abounds in the north of Europe; that <i>without</i>
+flints in the south; while in the northern chalk siliceous animalcules
+are wanting, and in the southern present in great quantities.&nbsp;
+The conclusion seems but natural, that in the one case the siliceous
+exuvi&aelig; have been left in their original form; in the other dissolved
+chemically, and aggregated on the common principle of chemical affinity
+into nodules of flint, probably concentrating, in every instance, upon
+a piece of decaying organic matter, as has been the case with the nodules
+of ironstone in the earlier rocks, and the spherules of the oolite.</p>
+<p>What is more remarkable, M. Ehrenberg has ascertained that at least
+fifty-seven species of the microscopic animals of the chalk, being infusoria
+and calcareous-shelled polythalamia, are still found living in various
+parts of the earth.&nbsp; These species are the most abundant in the
+rock.&nbsp; Singly they are the most unimportant of all animals, but
+in the mass, forming as they do such enormous strata over a large part
+of the earth&rsquo;s surface, they have an importance greatly exceeding
+that of the largest and noblest of the beasts of the field.&nbsp; Moreover,
+these species have a peculiar interest, as the only specific types of
+that early age which are reproduced in the present day.&nbsp; Species
+of sea mollusks, of reptiles, and of mammifers, have been changed again
+and again, since the cretaceous era; and it is not till a long subsequent
+age that we find the first traces of any other of even the humblest
+species which now exist; but here have these humble infusoria and polythalamia
+kept their place on earth through all its revolutions since that time,
+- are we to say, safe in their very humility, which might adapt them
+to a greater variety of circumstances than most other animals, or are
+we required to look for some other explanation of the phenomenon?</p>
+<p>All the ordinary and more observable orders of the inhabitants of
+the sea, except the cetacea, have been found in the cretaceous formation
+- zoophytes, radiaria, mollusks, crustacea, (in great variety of species,)
+and fishes in smaller variety.&nbsp; In Europe, remains of the marine
+saurians have been found; they may be presumed to have become extinct
+in that part of the globe before this time, their place and destructive
+office being perhaps supplied by cartilaginous fishes, of which the
+teeth are found in great quantities.&nbsp; In America, however, remains
+of the plesiosaurus have been discovered in this part of the stratified
+series.&nbsp; The reptiles, too, so numerous in the two preceding periods,
+appear to have now much diminished in numbers.&nbsp; One, entitled the
+mos&aelig;saurus, seems to have held an intermediate place between the
+monitor and iguana, and to have been about twenty-five feet long, with
+a tail calculated to assist it powerfully in swimming.&nbsp; Crocodiles
+and turtles existed, and amongst the fishes were some of a saurian character.</p>
+<p>Fuci abounded in the seas of this era.&nbsp; Conferv&aelig; are found
+enclosed in flints.&nbsp; Of terrestrial vegetation, as of terrestrial
+animals, the specimens in the European area are comparatively rare,
+rendering it probable that there was no dry land near.&nbsp; The remains
+are chiefly of ferns, conifers, and cycade&aelig;, but in the two former
+cases we have only cones and leaves.&nbsp; There have been discovered
+many pieces of wood, containing holes drilled by the teredo, and thus
+shewing that they had been long drifted about in the ocean before being
+entombed at the bottom.</p>
+<p>The series in America corresponding to this, entitled the ferruginous
+sand formation, presents fossils generally identical with those of Europe,
+not excepting the fragments of drilled wood; shewing that, in this,
+as in earlier ages, there was a parity of conditions for animal life
+over a vast tract of the earth&rsquo;s surface.&nbsp; To European reptiles,
+the American formation adds a gigantic one, styled the saurodon, from
+the lizard-like character of its teeth.</p>
+<p>We have seen that footsteps of birds are considered to have been
+discovered in America, in the new red sandstone.&nbsp; Some similar
+isolated phenomena occur in the subsequent formations.&nbsp; Mr. Mantell
+discovered some bones of birds, apparently waders, in the Wealden.&nbsp;
+The immediate connexion of that set of birds with land, may account,
+of course, for their containing a terrestrial organic relic, which the
+marine beds above and below did not possess.&nbsp; In the slate of Glarus,
+in Switzerland, corresponding to the English galt, in the chalk formation,
+the remains of a bird have been found.&nbsp; From a chalk bed near Maidstone,
+have likewise been extracted some remains of a bird, supposed to have
+been of the long-winged swimmer family, and equal in size to the albatross.&nbsp;
+These, it must be owned, are less strong traces of the birds than we
+possess of the reptiles and other tribes; but it must be remembered,
+that the evidence of fossils, as to the absence of any class of animals
+from a certain period of the earth&rsquo;s history, can never be considered
+as more than negative.&nbsp; Animals, of which we find no remains in
+a particular formation, may, nevertheless, have lived at the time, and
+it may have only been from unfavourable circumstances that their remains
+have not been preserved for our inspection.&nbsp; The single circumstance
+of their being little liable to be carried down into seas, might be
+the cause of their non-appearance in our quarries.&nbsp; There is at
+the same time a limit to uncertainty on this point.&nbsp; We see, from
+what remains have been found in the whole series, a clear progress throughout,
+from humble to superior types of being.&nbsp; Hence we derive a light
+as to what animals may have existed at particular times, which is in
+some measure independent of the specialties of fossilology.&nbsp; The
+birds are below the mammalia in the animal scale; and therefore they
+may be supposed to 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.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>ERA OF THE TERTIARY FORMATION. - MAMMALIA ABUNDANT.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The chalk-beds are the highest which extend over a considerable space;
+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 <i>Tertiary Formation</i> has been applied.&nbsp;
+London and Paris alike rest on basins of this formation, and another
+such basin extends from near Winchester, under Southampton, and re-appears
+in the Isle of Wight.&nbsp; There is a patch, or fragment of the formation
+in one of the Hebrides.&nbsp; A stripe of it extends along the east
+coast of North America, from Massachusetts to Florida.&nbsp; It is also
+found in Sicily and Italy, insensibly blended with formations still
+in progress.&nbsp; Though comparatively a local formation, it is not
+of the less importance as a record of the condition of the earth during
+a certain period.&nbsp; As in other formations, it is marked, in the
+most distant localities, by identity of organic remains.</p>
+<p>The hollows filled by the tertiary formation must be considered as
+the beds of estuaries left at the conclusion of the cretaceous period.&nbsp;
+We have seen that an estuary, either by the drifting up of its mouth,
+or a change of level in that quarter, may be supposed to have become
+an inland sheet of water, and that, by another change, of the reverse
+kind, it may be supposed to have become an estuary again.&nbsp; Such
+changes the Paris basin appears to have undergone oftener than once,
+for, first, we have there a fresh-water formation of clay and limestone
+beds; then, a marine-limestone formation; next, a second fresh water
+formation, in which the material of the celebrated <i>plaster of Paris</i>
+(gypsum) is included; then, a second marine formation of sandy and limy
+beds; and finally, a third series of fresh-water strata.&nbsp; Such
+alternations occur in other examples of the tertiary formation likewise.</p>
+<p>The tertiary beds present all but an entirely new set of animals,
+and as we ascend in the series, we find more and more of these identical
+with species still existing upon earth, as if we had now reached the
+dawn of the present state of the zoology of our planet.&nbsp; By the
+study of the shells alone, Mr. Lyell has been enabled to divide the
+whole term into four sub-periods, to which he has given names with reference
+to the proportions which they respectively present of surviving species
+- first, the eocene, (from &rsquo;&pi;&omega;&sigmaf;, the dawn; &chi;&alpha;&iota;&nu;&omicron;&sigmaf;,
+recent;) second, the miocene, (&mu;&epsilon;&iota;&omega;&nu;, less;)
+third, older pliocene, (&pi;&lambda;&epsilon;&iota;&omega;&nu;, more;)
+fourth, newer pliocene.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>EOCENE SUB-PERIOD.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The eocene period presents, in three continental groups, 1238 species
+of shells, of which forty-two, or 3.5 per cent, yet flourish.&nbsp;
+Some of these are remarkable enough; but they all sink into insignificance
+beside the mammalian remains which the lower eocene deposits of the
+Paris basin present to us, shewing that the land had now become the
+theatre of an extensive creation of the highest class of animals.&nbsp;
+Cuvier ascertained about fifty species of these, all of them long since
+extinct.&nbsp; A considerable number are <i>pachydermata</i>, <a name="citation127"></a><a href="#footnote127">{127}</a>
+of a character approximating to the South American tapir: the names,
+pal&aelig;otherium, anthracotherium, anoplotherium, lophiodon, &amp;c.,
+have been applied to them with a consideration of more or less conspicuous
+peculiarities; but a description of the first may give some general
+idea of the whole.&nbsp; It was about the size of a horse, but more
+squat and clumsy, and with a heavier head, and a lower jaw shorter than
+the upper; the feet, also, instead of hooves, presented three large
+toes, rounded, and unprovided with claws.&nbsp; These animals were all
+herbivorous.&nbsp; Amongst an immense number of others are found many
+new reptiles, some of them adapted for fresh water; species of birds
+allied to the sea-lark, curlew, quail, buzzard, owl, and pelican; species
+allied to the dormouse and squirrel; also the opossum and racoon; and
+species allied to the genette, fox, and wolf.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>MIOCENE SUB-PERIOD.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>In the miocene sub-period, the shells give eighteen per cent. of
+existing species, shewing a considerable advance from the preceding
+era, with respect to the inhabitants of the sea.&nbsp; The advance in
+the land animals is less marked, but yet considerable.&nbsp; The predominating
+forms are still pachydermatous, and the tapir type continues to be conspicuous.&nbsp;
+One animal of this kind, called the <i>dinotherium</i>, is supposed
+to have been not less than eighteen feet long; it had a mole-like form
+of the shoulder-blade, conferring the power of digging for food, and
+a couple of tusks turning down from the lower jaw, by which it could
+have attached itself, like the walrus, to a shore or bank, while its
+body floated in the water.&nbsp; Dr. Buckland considers this and some
+similar miocene animals, as adapted for a semi-aquatic life, in a region
+where lakes abounded.&nbsp; Besides the tapirs, we have in this era
+animals allied to the glutton, the bear, the dog, the horse, the hog,
+and lastly, several felin&aelig;, (creatures of which the lion is the
+type;) all of which are new forms, as far as we know.&nbsp; There was
+also an abundance of marine mammalia, seals, dolphins, lamantins, walruses,
+and whales, none of which had previously appeared.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>PLIOCENE SUB-PERIOD.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The shells of the older pliocene give from thirty-five to fifty;
+those of the newer, from ninety to ninety-five per cent. of existing
+species.&nbsp; The pachydermata of the preceding era now disappear,
+and are replaced by others belonging to still existing families - elephant,
+hippopotamus, rhinoceros - though now extinct as species.&nbsp; Some
+of these are startling, from their enormous magnitude.&nbsp; The great
+mastodon, whose remains are found in abundance in America, was a species
+of elephant, judged, from peculiarities of its teeth, to have lived
+on aquatic plants, and reaching the height of twelve feet.&nbsp; The
+mammoth was another elephant, but supposed to have survived till comparatively
+recent times, as a specimen, in all respects entire, was found in 1801,
+preserved in ice, in Siberia.&nbsp; We are more surprised by finding
+such gigantic proportions in an animal called the megatherium, which
+ranks in an order now assuming much humbler forms - the edentata - to
+which the sloth, ant-eater, and armadillo belong.&nbsp; The megatherium
+had a skeleton of enormous solidity, with an armour-clad body, and five
+toes, terminating in huge claws, wherewith to grasp the branches, from
+which, like its existing congener, the sloth, it derived its food.&nbsp;
+The megalonyx was a similar animal, only somewhat less than the preceding.&nbsp;
+Finally, the pliocene gives us for the first time, oxen, deer, camels,
+and other specimens of the <i>ruminantia.</i></p>
+<p>Such is an outline of the fauna of the tertiary era, as ascertained
+by the illustrious naturalists who first devoted their attention to
+it.&nbsp; It will be observed that it brings us up to the felin&aelig;,
+or carnivora, a considerably elevated point in the animal scale, but
+still leaving a blank for the quadrumana (monkeys) and for man, who
+collectively form, as will be afterwards seen, the first group in that
+scale.&nbsp; It sometimes happens, however, as we have seen, that a
+few rare traces of a particular class of animals are in time found in
+formations originally thought to be destitute of them, displaying as
+it were a dawn of that department of creation.&nbsp; Such seems to be
+the case with at least the quadrumana.&nbsp; A jaw-bone and tooth of
+an animal of this order, and belonging to the genus macacus, were found
+in the London clay, (eocene,) at Kyson, near Woodbridge, in 1839.&nbsp;
+Another jaw-bone, containing several teeth, supposed to have belonged
+to a species of monkey about three feet high, was discovered about the
+same time in a stratum of marl surmounted by compact limestone, in the
+department of Gers, at the foot of the Pyrenees.&nbsp; Associated with
+this last were remains of not less than thirty mammiferous quadrupeds,
+including three species of rhinoceros, a large anoplotherium, three
+species of deer, two antelopes, a true dog, a large cat, an animal like
+a weasel, a small hare, and a huge species of the edentata.&nbsp; Both
+of these places are considerably to the north of any region now inhabited
+by the monkey tribes.&nbsp; Fossil remains of quadrumana 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 of semnopithecus, and the second, a
+still larger animal belonging to the American group of monkeys, but
+a new genus, and denominated by its discoverer, Dr. Lund, protopithecus.&nbsp;
+The latter would be four feet in height.</p>
+<p>One remarkable circumstance connected with the tertiary formation
+remains to be noticed, - namely, the prevalence of volcanic action at
+that era.&nbsp; In Auvergne, in Catalonia, near Venice, and in the vicinity
+of Rome and Naples, lavas exactly resembling the produce of existing
+volcanoes, are associated and intermixed with the lacustrine as well
+as marine tertiaries.&nbsp; The superficies of tertiaries in England
+is disturbed by two great swells, forming what are called anticlinal
+axes, one of which divides the London from the Hampshire basin, while
+the other passes through the Isle of Wight, both throwing the strata
+down at violent inclination towards the north, as if the subterranean
+disturbing force had <i>waved</i> forward in that direction.&nbsp; The
+Pyrenees, too, and Alps, have both undergone elevation since the deposition
+of the tertiaries; and in Sicily there are mountains which have risen
+three thousand feet since the deposition of some of the most recent
+of these rocks.&nbsp; The general effect of these operations was of
+course to extend the land surface, and to increase the variety of its
+features, thus improving the natural drainage, and generally adapting
+the earth for the reception of higher classes of animals.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>ERA OF THE SUPERFICIAL FORMATIONS.&nbsp; COMMENCEMENT OF PRESENT
+SPECIES.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>We have now completed our survey of the series of stratified rocks,
+and traced in their fossils the progress of organic creation down to
+a time which seems not long antecedent to the appearance of man.&nbsp;
+There are, nevertheless, monuments of still another era or space of
+time which it is all but certain did also precede that event.</p>
+<p>Over the rock formations of all eras, in various parts of the globe,
+but confined in general to situations not very elevated, there is a
+layer of stiff clay, mostly of a blue colour, mingled with fragments
+of rock of all sizes, travel-worn, and otherwise, and to which geologists
+give the name of diluvium, as being apparently the produce of some vast
+flood, or of the sea thrown into an unusual agitation.&nbsp; It seems
+to indicate that, at the time when it was laid down, much of the present
+dry land was under the ocean, a supposition which we shall see supported
+by other evidence.&nbsp; The included masses of rock have been carefully
+inspected in many places, and traced to particular parent beds at considerable
+distances.&nbsp; Connected with these phenomena are certain rock surfaces
+on the slopes of hills and elsewhere, which exhibit groovings and scratchings,
+such as we might suppose would be produced by a quantity of loose blocks
+hurried along over them by a flood.&nbsp; Another associated phenomenon
+is that called <i>crag and tail</i>, which exists in many places, -
+namely, a rocky mountain, or lesser elevation, presenting on one side
+the naked rock in a more or less abrupt form, and on the other a gentle
+slope; the sites of Windsor, Edinburgh, and Stirling, with their respective
+castles, are specimens of crag and tail.&nbsp; Finally, we may advert
+to certain long ridges of clay and gravel which arrest the attention
+of travellers on the surface of Sweden and Finland, and which are also
+found in the United States, where, indeed, the whole of these phenomena
+have been observed over a large surface, as well as in Europe.&nbsp;
+It is very remarkable that the direction from which the diluvial blocks
+have generally come, the lines of the grooved rock surfaces, the direction
+of the crag and tail eminences, and that of the clay and gravel ridges
+- phenomena, be it observed, extending over the northern parts of both
+Europe and America - are <i>all from the north and north-west towards
+the south-east</i>.&nbsp; We thus acquire the idea of a powerful current
+moving in a direction from north-west to south-east, carrying, besides
+mud, masses of rock which furrowed the solid surfaces as they passed
+along, abrading the north-west faces of many hills, but leaving the
+slopes in the opposite direction uninjured, and in some instances forming
+long ridges of detritus along the surface.&nbsp; These are curious considerations,
+and it has become a question of much interest, by what means, and under
+what circumstances, was such a current produced.&nbsp; One hypothetical
+answer has some plausibility about it.&nbsp; From an investigation of
+the nature of glaciers, and some observations which seem to indicate
+that these have at one time extended to lower levels, and existed in
+regions (the Scottish Highlands an example) where there is now no perennial
+snow, it has been surmised that there was a time, subsequent to the
+tertiary era, when the circumpolar ice extended far into the temperate
+zone, and formed a lofty, as well as extensive accumulation.&nbsp; A
+change to a higher temperature, producing a sudden thaw of this mass,
+might set free such a quantity of water as would form a large flood,
+and the southward flow of this deluge, joined to the direction which
+it would obtain from the rotatory motion of the globe, would of course
+produce that compound or south-easterly direction which the phenomena
+require.&nbsp; All of these speculations are as yet far too deficient
+in facts to be of much value; and I must freely own that, for one, I
+attach little importance to them.&nbsp; All that we can legitimately
+infer from the diluvium is, that the northern parts of Europe and America
+were then under the sea, and that a strong current set over them.</p>
+<p>Connected with the diluvium is the history of <i>ossiferous caverns</i>,
+of which specimens singly exist at Kirkdale in Yorkshire, Gailenreuth
+in Franconia, and other places.&nbsp; They occur in the calcareous strata,
+as the great caverns generally do, but have in all instances been naturally
+closed up till the recent period of their discovery.&nbsp; The floors
+are covered with what appears to be a bed of the diluvial clay, over
+which rests a crust of stalagmite, the result of the droppings from
+the roof since the time when the clay-bed was laid down.&nbsp; In the
+instances above specified, and several others, there have been found,
+under the clay bed, assemblages of the bones of animals, of many various
+kinds.&nbsp; At Kirkdale, for example, the remains 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.&nbsp; From
+many of the bones of the gentler of these animals being found in a broken
+state, it is supposed that the cave was a haunt of hyenas and other
+predaceous animals, by which the smaller ones were here consumed.&nbsp;
+This must have been at a time antecedent to the submersion which produced
+the diluvium, since the bones are covered by a bed of that formation.&nbsp;
+It is impossible not to see here a very natural series of incidents.&nbsp;
+First, the cave is frequented by wild beasts, who make it a kind of
+charnel-house.&nbsp; Then, submerged in the current which has been spoken
+of, it receives a clay flooring from the waters containing that matter
+in suspension.&nbsp; Finally, raised from the water, but with no mouth
+to the open air, it remains unintruded on for a long series of ages,
+during which the clay flooring receives a new calcareous covering, from
+the droppings of the roof.&nbsp; Dr. Buckland, who examined and described
+the Kirkdale cave, was at first of opinion that it presented a physical
+evidence of the Noachian deluge; but he afterwards saw reason to consider
+its phenomena as of a time far apart from that event, which rests on
+evidence of an entirely different kind.</p>
+<p>Our attention is next drawn to the erratic blocks or boulders, which
+in many parts of the earth are thickly strewn over the surface, particularly
+in the north of Europe.&nbsp; Some of these blocks are many tons in
+weight, yet are clearly ascertained to have belonged originally to situations
+at a great distance.&nbsp; Fragments, for example, of the granite of
+Shap Fell are found in every direction around to the distance of fifty
+miles, one piece being placed high upon Criffel Mountain, on the opposite
+side of the Solway estuary; so also are fragments of the Alps found
+far up the slopes of the Jura.&nbsp; There are even blocks on the east
+coast of England, supposed to have travelled from Norway.&nbsp; The
+only rational conjecture which can be formed as to the transport of
+such masses from so great a distance, is one which presumes them to
+have been carried and dropped by icebergs, while the space between their
+original and final sites was under ocean.&nbsp; Icebergs do even now
+carry off such masses from the polar coasts, which, falling when the
+retaining ice melts, must take up situations at the bottom of the sea
+analogous to those in which we find the erratic blocks of the present
+day.</p>
+<p>As the diluvium and erratic blocks clearly suppose one last long
+submersion of the surface, (<i>last</i>, geologically speaking,) there
+is another set of appearances which as manifestly shew the steps by
+which the land was made afterwards to reappear.&nbsp; These consist
+of <i>terraces</i>, which have been detected near, and at some distance
+inland from, the coast lines of Scandinavia, Britain, America, and other
+regions; being evidently ancient beaches, or platforms, on which the
+margin of the sea at one time rested.&nbsp; They have been observed
+at different heights above the present sea-level, from twenty to above
+twelve hundred feet; and in many places they are seen rising above each
+other in succession, to the number of three, four, and even more.&nbsp;
+The smooth flatness of these terraces, with generally a slight inclination
+towards the sea, the sandy composition of many of them, and, in some
+instances, the preservation of marine shells in the ground, identify
+them perfectly with existing sea-beaches, notwithstanding the cuts and
+scoopings which have every here and there been effected in them by water-courses.&nbsp;
+The irresistible inference from the phenomena is, that the highest was
+first the coast line; then an elevation took place, and the second highest
+became so, the first being now raised into the air and thrown inland.&nbsp;
+Then, upon another elevation, the sea began to form, at its new point
+of contact with the land, the third highest beach, and so on down to
+the platform nearest to the present sea-beach.&nbsp; Phenomena of this
+kind become comparatively familiar to us, when we hear of evidence that
+the last sixty feet of the elevation of Sweden, and the last eighty-five
+of that of Chili, have taken place since man first dwelt in those countries;
+nay, that the elevation of the former country goes on 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 one night, under the influence
+of a powerful earthquake, so lately as 1822.&nbsp; Subterranean forces,
+of the kind then exemplified in Chili, supply a ready explanation of
+the whole phenomena, though some other operating causes have been suggested.&nbsp;
+In an inquiry on this point, it becomes of consequence to learn some
+particulars respecting the levels.&nbsp; Taking a particular beach,
+it is generally observed that the level continues the same along a considerable
+number of miles, and nothing like breaks or hitches has as yet been
+detected in any case.&nbsp; A second and a third beach are also observed
+to be exactly parallel to the first.&nbsp; These facts would seem to
+indicate quiet elevating movements, uniform over a large tract.&nbsp;
+It must, however, be remarked that the raised beaches at one part of
+a coast rarely coincide with those at another part forty or fifty miles
+off.&nbsp; We might suppose this to indicate a limit in that extent
+of the uniformity of the elevating cause, but it would be rash to conclude
+positively that such is the case.&nbsp; In the present sea, as is well
+known, there are different levels at different places, owing to the
+operation of peculiar local causes, as currents, evaporation, and the
+influx of large rivers into narrow-mouthed estuaries.&nbsp; The differences
+of level in the ancient beaches might be occasioned by some such causes.&nbsp;
+But, whatever doubt may rest on this minor point, enough has been ascertained
+to settle the main one, that we have in these platforms indubitable
+monuments of the last rise of the land from the sea, and the concluding
+great event of the geological history.</p>
+<p>The idea of such a wide-spread and possibly universal submersion
+unavoidably suggests some considerations as to the effect which it might
+have upon terrestrial animal life.&nbsp; It seems likely that this would
+be, on such an occasion, extensively, if not universally destroyed.&nbsp;
+Nor does the idea of its universal destruction seem the less plausible,
+when we remark, that none of the species of land animals heretofore
+discovered can be detected at a subsequent period.&nbsp; The whole seem
+to have been now changed.&nbsp; Some geologists appear much inclined
+to think that there was at this time a new development of terrestrial
+animal life upon the globe, and M. Agassiz, whose opinion on such a
+subject must always be worthy of attention, speaks all but decidedly
+for such a conclusion.&nbsp; It must, however, be owned, that proofs
+for it are still scanty, beyond the bare fact of a submersion which
+appears to have had a very wide range.&nbsp; I must therefore be content
+to leave this point, as far as geological evidence is concerned, for
+future affirmation.</p>
+<p>There are some other superficial deposits, of less consequence on
+the present occasion than the diluvium - namely, lacustrine deposits,
+or filled-up lakes; alluvium, or the deposits of rivers beside their
+margins; deltas, the deposits made by great ones at their efflux into
+the sea; peat mosses; and the vegetable soil.&nbsp; The animal remains
+found in these generally testify to a zoology on the verge of that which
+still exists, or melting into it, there being included many species
+which still exist.&nbsp; In a lacustrine deposit at Market-Weighton,
+in the Vale of York, there have been found bones of the elephant, rhinoceros,
+bison, wolf, horse, felis, deer, birds, all or nearly all extinct species;
+associated with thirteen species of land and fresh water shells, &ldquo;exactly
+identical with types now living in the vicinity.&rdquo;&nbsp; In similar
+deposits in North America, are remains of the mammoth, mastodon, buffalo,
+and other animals of extinct and living types.&nbsp; In short, these
+superficial deposits shew precisely such remains as might be expected
+from a time at which the present system of things (to use a vague but
+not unexpressive phrase) obtained, but yet so far remote in chronology
+as to allow of the dropping of many species, through familiar causes,
+in the interval.&nbsp; Still, however, there is no authentic or satisfactory
+instance of human remains being found, except in deposits obviously
+of very modern date; a tolerably strong proof that the creation of our
+own species is a comparatively recent event, and one posterior (generally
+speaking) to all the great natural transactions chronicled by geology.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Thus concludes the wondrous chapter of the earth&rsquo;s history
+which is told by geology.&nbsp; It takes up our globe at the period
+when its original incandescent state had nearly ceased; conducts it
+through what we have every reason to believe were vast, or at least
+very considerable, spaces of time, in the course of which many superficial
+changes took place, and vegetable and animal life was gradually developed;
+and drops it just at the point when man was apparently about to enter
+on the scene.&nbsp; The compilation of such a history, from materials
+of so extraordinary a character, and the powerful nature of the evidence
+which these materials afford, are calculated to excite our admiration,
+and the result must be allowed to exalt the dignity of science, as a
+product of man&rsquo;s industry and his reason.</p>
+<p>If there is any thing more than another impressed on our minds by
+the course of the geological history, it is, that the same laws and
+conditions of nature now apparent to us have existed throughout the
+whole time, though the operation of some of these laws may now be less
+conspicuous than in the early ages, from some of the conditions having
+come to a settlement and a close.&nbsp; That seas have flowed and ebbed,
+and winds disturbed their surfaces, in the time of the secondary rocks,
+we have proof on the yet preserved surfaces of the sands which constituted
+margins of the seas in those days.&nbsp; Even the fall of wind-slanted
+rain is evidenced on the same tablets.&nbsp; The washing down of detached
+matter from elevated grounds, which we see rivers constantly engaged
+in at the present time, and which is daily shallowing the seas adjacent
+to their mouths, only appears to have proceeded on a greater scale in
+earlier epochs.&nbsp; The volcanic subterranean force, which we see
+belching forth lavas on the sides of mountains, and throwing up new
+elevations by land and sea, was only more powerfully operative in distant
+ages.&nbsp; To turn to organic nature, vegetation seems to have proceeded
+then exactly as now.&nbsp; The very alternations of the seasons has
+been read in unmistakable characters in sections of the trees of those
+days, precisely as it might be read in a section of a tree cut down
+yesterday.&nbsp; The system of prey amongst animals flourished throughout
+the whole of the pre-human period; and the adaptation of all plants
+and animals to their respective spheres of existence was as perfect
+in those early ages as it is still.</p>
+<p>But, as has been observed, the operation of the laws may be modified
+by conditions.&nbsp; At one early age, if there was any dry land at
+all, it was perhaps enveloped in an atmosphere unfit for the existence
+of terrestrial animals, and which had to go though some changes before
+that condition was altered.&nbsp; In the carbonigenous era, dry land
+seems to have consisted only of clusters of islands, and the temperature
+was much above what now obtains at the same places.&nbsp; Volcanic forces,
+and perhaps also the disintegrating power, seem to have been on the
+decrease since the first, or we have at least long enjoyed an exemption
+from such paroxysms of the former, as appear to have prevailed at the
+close of the coal formation in England and throughout the tertiary era.&nbsp;
+The surface has also undergone a gradual progress by which it has become
+always more and more variegated, and thereby fitted for the residence
+of a higher class of animals.</p>
+<p>In pursuing the progress of the development of both plants and animals
+upon the globe, we have seen an advance in both cases, along the line
+leading to the higher forms of organization.&nbsp; Amongst plants, we
+have first sea-weeds, afterwards land plants; and amongst these the
+simpler (cellular and cryptogamic) before the more complex.&nbsp; In
+the department of zoology, we see zoophytes, radiata, mollusca, articulata,
+existing for ages before there were any higher forms.&nbsp; The first
+step forward gives fishes, the humblest class of the vertebrata; and,
+moreover, the earliest fishes partake of the character of the next lowest
+sub-kingdom, the articulata.&nbsp; Afterwards come land animals, of
+which the first are reptiles, universally allowed to be the type next
+in advance from fishes, and to be connected with these by the links
+of an insensible gradation.&nbsp; From reptiles we advance to birds,
+and thence to mammalia, which are commenced by marsupialia, acknowledgedly
+low forms in their class.&nbsp; That there is thus a progress of some
+kind, the most superficial glance at the geological history is sufficient
+to convince us.&nbsp; Indeed the doctrine of the gradation of animal
+forms has received a remarkable support from the discoveries of this
+science, as several types formerly wanting to a completion of the series
+have been found in a fossil state. <a name="citation149"></a><a href="#footnote149">{149}</a></p>
+<p>It is scarcely less evident, from the geological record, that the
+progress of organic life has observed some correspondence with the progress
+of physical conditions on the surface.&nbsp; We do not know for certain
+that the sea, at the time when it supported radiated, molluscous, and
+articulated families, was incapable of supporting fishes; but causes
+for such a limitation are far from inconceivable.&nbsp; The huge saurians
+appear to have been precisely adapted to the low muddy coasts and sea
+margins of the time when they flourished.&nbsp; Marsupials appear at
+the time when the surface was generally in that flat, imperfectly variegated
+state in which we find Australia, the region where they now live in
+the greatest abundance, and one which has no higher native mammalian
+type.&nbsp; Finally, it was not till the land and sea had come into
+their present relations, and the former, in its principal continents,
+had acquired the irregularity of surface necessary for man, that man
+appeared.&nbsp; We have likewise seen reason for supposing that land
+animals could not have lived before the carbonigenous era, owing to
+the great charge of carbonic acid gas presumed to have been contained
+in the atmosphere down to that time.&nbsp; The surplus of this having
+gone, as M. Brogniart suggests, to form the vegetation, whose ruins
+became coal, and the air being thus brought to its present state, land
+animals immediately appeared.&nbsp; So also, sea-plants were at first
+the only specimens of vegetation, because there appears to have been
+no place where other plants could be produced or supported.&nbsp; Land
+vegetation followed, at first simple, afterwards complex, probably in
+conformity with an advance of the conditions required by the higher
+class of plants.&nbsp; In short, we see everywhere throughout the geological
+history, strong traces of a parallel advance of the physical conditions
+and the organic forms.</p>
+<p>In examining the fossils of the lower marine creation, with a reference
+to the kind of rock in connexion, with which they are found, it is observed
+that some strata are attended by a much greater abundance of both species
+and individuals than others.&nbsp; They abound most in calcareous rocks,
+which is precisely what might be expected, since lime is necessary for
+the formation of the shells of the mollusks and articulata, and the
+hard substance of the crinoidea and corals; next in the carboniferous
+series; next in the tertiary; next in the new red sandstone; next in
+slates; and lastly, least of all, in the primary rocks. <a name="citation151"></a><a href="#footnote151">{151}</a>&nbsp;
+This may have been the case without regard to the origination of new
+species, but more probably it was otherwise; or why, for instance, should
+the polypiferous zoophyta be found almost exclusively in the limestones?&nbsp;
+There are, indeed, abundant appearances as if, throughout all the changes
+of the surface, the various kinds of organic life invariably <i>pressed
+in</i>, immediately on the specially suitable conditions arising, so
+that no place which could support any form of organic being might be
+left for any length of time unoccupied.&nbsp; Nor is it less remarkable
+how various species are withdrawn from the earth, when the proper conditions
+for their particular existence are changed.&nbsp; The trilobite, of
+which fifty species existed during the earlier formations, was extirpated
+before the secondary had commenced, and appeared no more.&nbsp; The
+ammonite does not appear above the chalk.&nbsp; The species, and even
+genera of all the early radiata and mollusks were exchanged for others
+long ago.&nbsp; Not one species of any creature which flourished before
+the tertiary (Ehrenberg&rsquo;s infusoria excepted) now exists; and
+of the mammalia which arose during that series, many forms are altogether
+gone, while of others we have now only kindred species.&nbsp; Thus to
+find not only frequent additions to the previously existing forms, but
+frequent withdrawals of forms which had apparently become inappropriate
+- a constant shifting as well as advance - is a fact calculated very
+forcibly to arrest attention.</p>
+<p>A candid consideration of all these circumstances can scarcely fail
+to introduce into our minds a somewhat different idea of organic creation
+from what has hitherto been generally entertained.&nbsp; That God created
+animated beings, as well as the terraqueous theatre of their being,
+is a fact so powerfully evidenced, and so universally received, that
+I at once take it for granted.&nbsp; But in the particulars of this
+so highly supported idea, we surely here see cause for some re-consideration.&nbsp;
+It may now be inquired, - In what way was the creation of animated beings
+effected?&nbsp; The ordinary notion may, I think, be not unjustly described
+as this, - that the Almighty author produced the progenitors of all
+existing species by some sort of personal or immediate exertion.&nbsp;
+But how does this notion comport with what we have seen of the gradual
+advance of species, from the humblest to the highest?&nbsp; How can
+we suppose an immediate exertion of this creative power at one time
+to produce zoophytes, another time to add a few marine mollusks, another
+to bring in one or two conchifers, again to produce crustaceous fishes,
+again perfect fishes, and so on to the end?&nbsp; This would surely
+be to take a very mean view of the Creative Power - to, in short, anthropomorphize
+it, or reduce it to some such character as that borne by the ordinary
+proceedings of mankind.&nbsp; And yet this would be unavoidable; for
+that the organic creation was thus progressive through a long space
+of time, rests on evidence which nothing can overturn or gainsay.&nbsp;
+Some other idea must then be come to with regard to <i>the mode</i>
+in which the Divine Author proceeded in the organic creation.&nbsp;
+Let us seek in the history of the earth&rsquo;s formation for a new
+suggestion on this point.&nbsp; We have seen powerful evidence, that
+the construction of this globe and its associates, and inferentially
+that of all the other globes of space, was the result, not of any immediate
+or personal exertion on the part of the Deity, but of natural laws which
+are expressions of his will.&nbsp; What is to hinder our supposing that
+the organic creation is also a result of natural laws, which are in
+like manner an expression of his will?&nbsp; More than this, the fact
+of the cosmical arrangements being an effect of natural laws is a powerful
+argument for the organic arrangements being so likewise, for how can
+we suppose that the august Being who brought all these countless worlds
+into form by the simple establishment of a natural principle flowing
+from his mind, was to interfere personally and specially on every occasion
+when a new shell-fish or reptile was to be ushered into existence on
+<i>one</i> of these worlds?&nbsp; Surely this idea is too ridiculous
+to be for a moment entertained.</p>
+<p>It will be objected that the ordinary conceptions of Christian nations
+on this subject are directly derived from Scripture, or, at least, are
+in conformity with it.&nbsp; If they were clearly and unequivocally
+supported by Scripture, it may readily be allowed that there would be
+a strong objection to the reception of any opposite hypothesis.&nbsp;
+But the fact is, however startling the present announcement of it may
+be, that the first chapter of the Mosaic record is not only not in harmony
+with the ordinary ideas of mankind respecting cosmical and organic creation,
+but is opposed to them, and only in accordance with the views here taken.&nbsp;
+When we carefully peruse it with awakened minds, we find that all the
+procedure is represented primarily and pre-eminently as flowing <i>from
+commands and expressions of will</i>, <i>not from direct acts</i>.&nbsp;
+Let there be light - let there be a firmament - let the dry land appear
+- let the earth bring forth grass, the herb, the tree - let the waters
+bring forth the moving creature that hath life - let the earth bring
+forth the living creature after his kind - these are the terms in which
+the principal acts are described.&nbsp; The additional expressions,
+- God made the firmament - God made the beast of the earth, &amp;c.,
+occur subordinately, and only in a few instances; they do not necessarily
+convey a different idea of the mode of creation, and indeed only appear
+as alternative phrases, in the usual duplicative manner of Eastern narrative.&nbsp;
+Keeping this in view, the words used in a subsequent place, &ldquo;God
+<i>formed</i> man in his own image,&rdquo; cannot well be understood
+as implying any more than what was implied before, - namely, that man
+was produced in consequence of an expression of the Divine will to that
+effect.&nbsp; Thus, the scriptural objection quickly vanishes, and the
+prevalent ideas about the organic creation appear only as a mistaken
+inference from the text, formed at a time when man&rsquo;s ignorance
+prevented him from drawing therefrom a just conclusion.&nbsp; At the
+same time, I freely own that I do not think it right to adduce the Mosaic
+record, either in objection to, or support of any natural hypothesis,
+and this for many reasons, but particularly for this, that there is
+not the least appearance of an intention in that book to give philosophically
+exact views of nature.</p>
+<p>To a reasonable mind the Divine attributes must appear, not diminished
+or reduced in any way, by supposing a creation by law, but infinitely
+exalted.&nbsp; It is the narrowest of all views of the Deity, and characteristic
+of a humble class of intellects, to suppose him acting constantly in
+particular ways for particular occasions.&nbsp; It, for one thing, greatly
+detracts from his foresight, the most undeniable of all the attributes
+of Omnipotence.&nbsp; It lowers him towards the level of our own humble
+intellects.&nbsp; Much more worthy of him it surely is, to suppose that
+all things have been commissioned by him from the first, though neither
+is he absent from a particle of the current of natural affairs in one
+sense, seeing that the whole system is continually supported by his
+providence.&nbsp; Even in human affairs, if I may be allowed to adopt
+a familiar illustration, there is a constant progress from specific
+action for particular occasions, to arrangements which, once established,
+shall continue to answer for a great multitude of occasions.&nbsp; Such
+plans the enlightened readily form for themselves, and conceive as being
+adopted by all who have to attend to a multitude of affairs, while the
+ignorant suppose every act of the greatest public functionary to be
+the result of some special consideration and care on his part alone.&nbsp;
+Are we to suppose the Deity adopting plans which harmonize only with
+the modes of procedure of the less enlightened of our race?&nbsp; Those
+who would object to the hypothesis of a creation by the intervention
+of law, do not perhaps consider how powerful an argument in favour of
+the existence of God is lost by rejecting this doctrine.&nbsp; When
+all is seen to be the result of law, the idea of an Almighty Author
+becomes irresistible, for the creation of a law for an endless series
+of phenomena - an act of intelligence above all else that we can conceive
+- could have no other imaginable source, and tells, moreover, as powerfully
+for a sustaining as for an originating power.&nbsp; On this point a
+remark of Dr. Buckland seems applicable: &ldquo;If the properties adopted
+by the elements at the moment of their creation adapted them beforehand
+to the infinity of complicated useful purposes which they have already
+answered, and may have still farther to answer, under many dispensations
+of the material world, such an aboriginal constitution, so far from
+superseding an intelligent agent, would only exalt our conceptions of
+the consummate skill and power that could comprehend such an infinity
+of future uses under future systems, in the original groundwork of his
+creation.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A late writer, in a work embracing a vast amount of miscellaneous
+knowledge, but written in a dogmatic style, argues at great length for
+the doctrine of more immediate exertions on the part of the Deity in
+the works of his creation.&nbsp; One of the most striking of his illustrations
+is as follows:- &ldquo;The coral polypi, united by a common animal bond,
+construct a defined form in stone; many kinds construct many forms.&nbsp;
+An allotted instinct may permit each polypus to construct its own cell,
+but there is no superintending one to direct the pattern, nor can the
+workers unite by consultation for such an end.&nbsp; There is no recipient
+for an instinct by which the pattern might be constructed.&nbsp; It
+is God alone, therefore, who is the architect; and for this end, consequently,
+he must dispose of every new polypus required to continue the pattern,
+in a new and peculiar position, which the animal could not have discovered
+by itself.&nbsp; Yet more, millions of these blind workers unite their
+works to form an island, which is also wrought out according to a constant
+general pattern, and of a very peculiar nature, though the separate
+coral works are numerously diverse.&nbsp; Still less, then, here is
+an instinct possible.&nbsp; The Great Architect himself must execute
+what he planned, in each case equally.&nbsp; He uses these little and
+senseless animals as hands; but they are hands which himself must direct.&nbsp;
+He must direct each one everywhere, and therefore he is ever acting.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation159"></a><a href="#footnote159">{159}</a>&nbsp; This
+is a most notable example of a dangerous kind of reasoning.&nbsp; It
+is now believed that corals have a general life and sensation throughout
+the whole mass, residing in the nervous tissue which envelops them;
+consequently, there is nothing more wonderful in their determinate general
+forms than in those of other animals.</p>
+<p>It may here be remarked that there is in our doctrine that harmony
+in all the associated phenomena which generally marks great truths.&nbsp;
+First, it agrees, as we have seen, with the idea of planet-creation
+by natural law.&nbsp; Secondly, upon this supposition, all that geology
+tells us of the succession of species appears natural and intelligible.&nbsp;
+Organic life <i>presses in</i>, as has been remarked, wherever there
+was room and encouragement for it, the forms being always such as suited
+the circumstances, and in a certain relation to them, as, for example,
+where the limestone-forming seas produced an abundance of corals, crinoidea,
+and shell-fish.&nbsp; Admitting for a moment a re-origination of species
+after a cataclysm, as has been surmised by some geologists, though the
+hypothesis is always becoming less and less tenable, it harmonizes with
+nothing so well as the idea of a creation by law.&nbsp; The more solitary
+commencements of species, which would have been the most inconceivably
+paltry exercise for an immediately creative power, are sufficiently
+worthy of one operating by laws.</p>
+<p>It is also to be observed, that the thing to be accounted for is
+not merely the origination of organic being upon this little planet,
+third of a series which is but one of hundreds of thousands of series,
+the whole of which again form but one portion of an apparently infinite
+globe-peopled space, where all seems analogous.&nbsp; We have to suppose,
+that every one of these numberless globes is either a theatre of organic
+being, or in the way of becoming so.&nbsp; This is a conclusion which
+every addition to our knowledge makes only the more irresistible.&nbsp;
+Is it conceivable, as a fitting mode of exercise for creative intelligence,
+that it should be constantly moving from one sphere to another, to form
+and plant the various species which may be required in each situation
+at particular times?&nbsp; Is such an idea accordant with our general
+conception of the dignity, not to speak of the power, of the Great Author?&nbsp;
+Yet such is the notion which we must form, if we adhere to the doctrine
+of special exercise.&nbsp; Let us see, on the other hand, how the doctrine
+of a creation by law agrees with this expanded view of the organic world.</p>
+<p>Unprepared as most men may be for such an announcement, there can
+be no doubt that we are able, in this limited sphere, to form some satisfactory
+conclusions as to the plants and animals of those other spheres which
+move at such immense distances from us.&nbsp; Suppose that the first
+persons of an early nation who made a ship and ventured to sea in it,
+observed, as they sailed along, a set of objects which they had never
+before seen - namely, a fleet of other ships - would they not have been
+justified in supposing that those ships were occupied, like their own,
+by human beings possessing hands to row and steer, eyes to watch the
+signs of the weather, intelligence to guide them from one place to another
+- in short, beings in all respects like themselves, or only shewing
+such differences as they knew to be producible by difference of climate
+and habits of life.&nbsp; Precisely in this manner we can speculate
+on the inhabitants of remote spheres.&nbsp; We see that matter has originally
+been diffused in one mass, of which the spheres are portions.&nbsp;
+Consequently, inorganic matter must be presumed to be everywhere the
+same, although probably with differences in the proportions of ingredients
+in different globes, and also some difference of conditions.&nbsp; Out
+of a certain number of the elements of inorganic matter are composed
+organic bodies, both vegetable and animal; such must be the rule in
+Jupiter and in Sirius, as it is here.&nbsp; We, therefore, are all but
+certain that herbaceous and ligneous fibre, that flesh and blood, are
+the constituents of the organic beings of all those spheres which are
+as yet seats of life.&nbsp; Gravitation we see to be an all-pervading
+principle: therefore there must be a relation between the spheres and
+their respective organic occupants, by virtue of which they are fixed,
+as far as necessary, on the surface.&nbsp; Such a relation, of course,
+involves details as to the density and elasticity of structure, as well
+as size, of the organic tenants, in proportion to the gravity of the
+respective planets - peculiarities, however, which may quite well consist
+with the idea of a universality of general types, to which we are about
+to come.&nbsp; Electricity we also see to be universal; if, therefore,
+it be a principle concerned in life and in mental action, as science
+strongly suggests, life and mental action must everywhere be of one
+general character.&nbsp; We come to comparatively a matter of detail,
+when we advert to heat and light; yet it is important to consider that
+these are universal agents, and that, as they bear marked relations
+to organic life and structure on earth, they may be presumed to do so
+in other spheres also.&nbsp; The considerations as to light are particularly
+interesting, for, on our globe, the structure of one important organ,
+almost universally distributed in the animal kingdom, is in direct and
+precise relation to it.&nbsp; Where there is light there will be eyes,
+and these, in other spheres, will be the same in all respects as the
+eyes of tellurian animals, with only such differences as may be necessary
+to accord with minor peculiarities of condition and of situation.&nbsp;
+It is but a small stretch of the argument to suppose that, one conspicuous
+organ of a large portion of our animal kingdom being thus universal,
+a parity in all the other organs - species for species, class for class,
+kingdom for kingdom - is highly likely, and that thus the inhabitants
+of all the other globes of space bear not only a general, but a particular
+resemblance to those of our own.</p>
+<p>Assuming that organic beings are thus spread over all space, the
+idea of their having all come into existence by the operation of laws
+everywhere 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 of means.&nbsp;
+Thus, as one set of laws produced all orbs and their motions and geognostic
+arrangements, so one set of laws overspread them all with life.&nbsp;
+The whole productive or creative arrangements are therefore in perfect
+unity.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED
+TRIBES.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The general likelihood of an organic creation by law having been
+shewn, we are next to inquire if science has any facts tending to bring
+the assumption more nearly home to nature.&nbsp; Such facts there certainly
+are; but it cannot be surprising that they are comparatively few and
+scattered, when we consider that the inquiry is into one of nature&rsquo;s
+profoundest mysteries, and one which has hitherto engaged no direct
+attention in almost any quarter.</p>
+<p>Crystallization is confessedly a phenomenon of inorganic matter;
+yet the simplest rustic observer is struck by the resemblance which
+the examples of it left upon a window by frost bear to vegetable forms.&nbsp;
+In some crystallizations the mimicry is beautiful and complete; for
+example, in the well-known one called the <i>Arbor Dian&aelig;</i>.&nbsp;
+An amalgam of four parts of silver and two of mercury being dissolved
+in nitric acid, and water equal to thirty weights of the metals being
+added, a small 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 <i>crystallization precisely resembling a shrub</i>.&nbsp;
+The experiment may be varied in a way which serves better to detect
+the influence of electricity in such operations, as noted below. <a name="citation166"></a><a href="#footnote166">{166}</a>&nbsp;
+Vegetable figures are also presented in some of the most ordinary appearances
+of the electric fluid.&nbsp; In the marks caused by positive electricity,
+or which it leaves in its passage, we see the ramifications of a tree,
+as well as of its individual leaves; those of the negative, recal the
+bulbous or the spreading root, according as they are clumped or divergent.&nbsp;
+These phenomena seem to say that the electric energies have had something
+to do in determining the forms of plants.&nbsp; That they are intimately
+connected with vegetable life is indubitable, for germination will not
+proceed in water charged with negative electricity, while water charged
+positively greatly favours it; and a garden sensibly increases in luxuriance,
+when a number of conducting rods are made to terminate in branches over
+its beds.&nbsp; With regard to the resemblance of the ramifications
+of the branches and leaves of plants to the traces of the positive electricity,
+and that of the roots to the negative, it is a circumstance calling
+for especial remark, that the atmosphere, particularly its lower strata,
+is generally charged positively, while the earth is always charged negatively.&nbsp;
+The correspondence here is curious.&nbsp; A plant thus appears as a
+thing formed on the basis of a natural electrical operation - the <i>brush</i>
+realized.&nbsp; We can thus suppose the various forms of plants as,
+immediately, the result of a law in electricity variously affecting
+them according to their organic character, or respective germinal constituents.&nbsp;
+In the poplar, the brush is unusually vertical, and little divergent;
+the reverse in the beech: in the palm, a pencil has proceeded straight
+up for a certain distance, radiates there, and turns outwards and downwards;
+and so on.&nbsp; We can here see at least traces of secondary means
+by which the Almighty Deviser might establish all the vegetable forms
+with which the earth is overspread.</p>
+<p>Vegetable and animal bodies are mainly composed of the same four
+simple substances or elements - carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen.&nbsp;
+The first combinations of these in animals are into what are called
+proximate principles, as albumen, fibrin, urea, alantoin, &amp;c., out
+of which the structure of the animal body is composed.&nbsp; Now the
+chemist, by the association of two parts oxygen, four hydrogen, two
+carbon, and two nitrogen, can <i>make urea</i>.&nbsp; Alantoin has also
+been produced artificially.&nbsp; Two of the proximate principles being
+realizable by human care, the possibility of realizing or forming all
+is established.&nbsp; Thus the chemist may be said to have it in his
+power to realize the first step in organization. <a name="citation169a"></a><a href="#footnote169a">{169a}</a>&nbsp;
+Indeed, it is fully acknowledged by Dr. Daubeny, that in the combinations
+forming the proximate principles there is no chemical peculiarity.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It is now certain,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;that the same simple
+laws of composition pervade the whole creation; and that, if the organic
+chemist only takes the requisite precautions to avoid resolving into
+their ultimate elements the proximate principles upon which he operates,
+the results of his analysis will shew that they are combined precisely
+according to the same plan as the elements of mineral bodies are known
+to be.&rdquo; <a name="citation169b"></a><a href="#footnote169b">{169b}</a>&nbsp;
+A particular fact is here worthy of attention.&nbsp; &ldquo;The conversion
+of fecula into sugar, as one of the ordinary processes of vegetable
+economy, is effected by the production of a secretion termed <i>diastose</i>,
+which occasions both the rupture of the starch vesicles, and the change
+of their contained gum into sugar.&nbsp; This diastose may be separately
+obtained by the chemist, and it acts as effectually in his laboratory
+as in the vegetable organization.&nbsp; He can also imitate its effects
+by other chemical agents.&rdquo; <a name="citation170"></a><a href="#footnote170">{170}</a>&nbsp;
+The writer quoted below adds, &ldquo;No reasonable ground has yet been
+adduced for supposing that, if we had the power of bringing together
+the elements of any organic compound, in their requisite states and
+proportions, the result would be any other than that which is found
+in the living body.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is much to know the elements out of which organic bodies are composed.&nbsp;
+It is something more to know their first combinations, and that these
+are simply chemical.&nbsp; How these combinations are associated in
+the structure of living bodies is the next inquiry, but it is one to
+which as yet no satisfactory answer can be given.&nbsp; The investigation
+of the minuti&aelig; of organic structure by the microscope is of such
+recent origin, that its results cannot be expected to be very clear.&nbsp;
+Some facts, however, are worthy of attention with regard to the present
+inquiry.&nbsp; It is ascertained that the basis of all vegetable and
+animal substances consists of nucleated cells; that is, cells having
+granules within them.&nbsp; Nutriment is converted into these before
+being assimilated by the system.&nbsp; The tissues are formed from them.&nbsp;
+The ovum destined to become a new creature, is originally only a cell
+with a contained granule.&nbsp; We see it acting this reproductive part
+in the simplest manner in the cryptogamic plants.&nbsp; &ldquo;The parent
+cell, arrived at maturity by the exercise of its organic functions,
+bursts, and liberates its contained granules.&nbsp; These, at once thrown
+upon their own resources, and entirely dependent for their nutrition
+on the surrounding elements, develop themselves into new cells, which
+repeat the life of their original.&nbsp; Amongst the higher tribes of
+the cryptogamia, the reproductive cell does not burst, but the first
+cells of the new structure are developed within it, and these gradually
+extend, by a similar process of multiplication, into that primary leaf-like
+expansion which is the first formed structure in all plants.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+<a name="citation171"></a><a href="#footnote171">{171}</a>&nbsp; <i>Here
+the little cell becomes directly a plant</i>, <i>the full formed living
+being</i>.&nbsp; It is also worthy of remark that, in the sponges, (an
+animal form,) a gemmule detached from the body of the parent, and trusting
+for sustentation only to the fluid into which it has been cast, becomes,
+without further process, the new creature.&nbsp; Further, it has been
+recently discovered by means of the microscope, that there is, as far
+as can be judged, a perfect resemblance between the ovum of the mammal
+tribes, during that early stage when it is passing through the oviduct,
+and the young of the infusory animalcules.&nbsp; One of the most remarkable
+of these, the <i>volvox globator</i>, has exactly the form of the germ
+which, after passing through a long f&oelig;tal progress, becomes a
+complete mammifer, an animal of the highest class.&nbsp; It has even
+been found that both are alike provided with those <i>cilia</i>, which,
+producing a revolving motion, or its appearance, is partly the cause
+of the name given to this animalcule.&nbsp; These resemblances are the
+more entitled to notice, that they were made by various observers, distant
+from each other at the time. <a name="citation172"></a><a href="#footnote172">{172}</a>&nbsp;
+It has likewise been noted that the globules of the blood are reproduced
+by the expansion of contained granules; they are, in short, <i>distinct
+organisms multiplied by the same fissiparous generation</i>.&nbsp; So
+that all animated nature may be said to be based on this mode of origin;
+<i>the fundamental form of organic being is a globule</i>, <i>having
+a new globule forming within itself</i>, by which it is in time discharged,
+and which is again followed by another and another, in endless succession.&nbsp;
+It is of course obvious that, if these globules could be produced by
+any process from inorganic elements, we should be entitled to say that
+the fact of a transit from the inorganic into the organic had been witnessed
+in that instance; the possibility of the commencement of animated creation
+by the ordinary laws of nature might be considered as established.&nbsp;
+Now it was given out some years ago by a French physiologist, that <i>globules
+could be produced in albumen by electricity</i>.&nbsp; If, therefore,
+these globules be identical with the cells which are now held to be
+reproductive, it might be said that the production of albumen by artificial
+means is the only step in the process wanting.&nbsp; This has not 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, and two compounds
+perfectly co-ordinate, urea and alantoin, have actually been produced.</p>
+<p>In such an investigation as the present, it is not unworthy of notice
+that the production of shell is a natural operation which can be precisely
+imitated artificially.&nbsp; Such an incrustation takes place on both
+the outside and inside of the wheel in a bleaching establishment, in
+which cotton cloth is rinsed free of the lime employed in its purification.&nbsp;
+From the <i>dressing</i> employed by the weaver, the cloth obtains the
+animal matter, <i>gelatin</i>; this and the lime form the constituents
+of the incrustation, exactly as in natural shell.&nbsp; In the wheel
+employed at Catrine, in Ayrshire, where the phenomenon was first observed
+by the eye of science, it had required ten years to produce a coating
+the tenth of an inch in thickness.&nbsp; This incrustation has all the
+characters of shell, displaying a highly polished surface, beautifully
+iridescent, and, when broken, a foliated texture.&nbsp; The examination
+of it has even thrown some light on the character and mode of formation
+of natural shell.&nbsp; &ldquo;The plates into 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
+lamin&aelig; are separated by a thin iridescent film, varying from the
+three to the fifty millionth part of an inch in thickness, and producing
+all the various colours of thin plates which correspond to intermediate
+thicknesses: between some of the lamin&aelig; no such film exists, probably
+in consequence of the interval of time between their formation being
+too short; and between others the film has been formed of unequal thickness.&nbsp;
+There can be no doubt that these iridescent films are formed when the
+dash-wheel is at rest during the night, and that when no film exists
+between two lamin&aelig;, an interval too short for its formation, (arising,
+perhaps, from the stopping of the work during the day,) has elapsed
+during the drying or induration of one lamina and the deposition of
+another.&rdquo; <a name="citation175"></a><a href="#footnote175">{175}</a>&nbsp;
+From this it has been deduced, by a patient investigation, that those
+colours of mother-of-pearl, which are incommunicable to wax, arise from
+iridescent films deposited between the lamin&aelig; of its structure,
+and it is hence inferred that <i>the animal</i>, like the wheel, <i>rests
+periodically from its labours in forming the natural substance.</i></p>
+<p>These, it will be owned, are curious and not irrelevant facts; but
+it will be asked what actual experience says respecting the origination
+of life.&nbsp; Are there, it will be said, any authentic instances of
+either plants or animals, of however humble and simple a kind, having
+come into existence otherwise than in the ordinary way of generation,
+since the time of which geology forms the record?&nbsp; It may be answered,
+that the negative of this question could not be by any means formidable
+to the doctrine of law-creation, seeing that the conditions necessary
+for the operation of the supposed life-creating laws may not have existed
+within record to any great extent.&nbsp; On the other hand, as we see
+the physical laws of early times still acting with more or less force,
+it might not be unreasonable to expect that we should still see some
+remnants, or partial and occasional workings of the life-creating energy
+amidst a system of things generally stable and at rest.&nbsp; Are there,
+then, any such remnants to be traced in our own day, or during man&rsquo;s
+existence upon earth?&nbsp; If there be, it clearly would form a strong
+evidence in favour of the doctrine, as what now takes place upon a confined
+scale and in a comparatively casual manner may have formerly taken place
+on a great scale, and as the proper and eternity-destined means of supplying
+a vacant globe with suitable tenants.&nbsp; It will at the same time
+be observed that, the earth being now supplied with both kinds of tenants
+in great abundance, we only could expect to find the life-originating
+power at work in some very special and extraordinary circumstances,
+and probably only in the inferior and obscurer departments of the vegetable
+and animal kingdoms.</p>
+<p>Perhaps, if the question were asked of ten men of approved reputation
+in science, nine out of the number would answer in the negative.&nbsp;
+This is because, in a great number of instances where the superficial
+observers of former times assumed a non-generative origin for life,
+(as in the celebrated case in Virgil&rsquo;s fourth Georgic,) either
+the direct contrary has been ascertained, or exhaustive experiments
+have left no alternative from the conclusion that ordinary generation
+did take place, albeit in a manner which escapes observation.&nbsp;
+Finding that an erroneous assumption has been formed in many cases,
+modern inquirers have not hesitated to assume that there can be no case
+in which generation is not concerned; an assumption not only unwarranted
+by, but directly opposed to, the principles of philosophical investigation.&nbsp;
+Yet this is truly the point at which the question now rests in the scientific
+world.</p>
+<p>I have no wish here to enter largely into a subject so wide and so
+full of difficulties; but I may remark, that the explanations usually
+suggested where life takes its rise without apparent generative means,
+always appear to me to partake much of the fallacy of the <i>petitio
+principii</i>.&nbsp; When, for instance, lime is laid down upon a piece
+of waste moss ground, and a crop of white clover for which no seeds
+were sown is the consequence, the explanation that the seeds have been
+dormant there for an unknown time, and were stimulated into germination
+when the lime produced the appropriate circumstances, appears extremely
+unsatisfactory, especially when we know that (as in an authentic case
+under my notice) the spot is many miles from where clover is cultivated,
+and that there is nothing for six feet below but pure peat moss, clover
+seeds being, moreover, known to be too heavy to be transported, as many
+other seeds are, by the winds.&nbsp; Mushrooms, we know, can be propagated
+by their seed; but another mode of raising them, well known to the gardener,
+is to mix cow and horse dung together, and thus form a bed in which
+they are expected to grow without any seed being planted.&nbsp; It is
+assumed that the seeds are carried by the atmosphere, unperceived by
+us, and, finding here an appropriate field for germination, germinate
+accordingly; but this is only assumption, and though designed to be
+on the side of a severe philosophy, in reality makes a pretty large
+demand on credulity.&nbsp; There are several persons eminent in science
+who profess at least to find great difficulties in accepting the doctrine
+of invariable generation.&nbsp; One of these, in the work noted below,
+<a name="citation179a"></a><a href="#footnote179a">{179a}</a> has stated
+several considerations arising from analogical reasoning, which appear
+to him to throw the balance of evidence in favour of the aboriginal
+production of infusoria, <a name="citation179b"></a><a href="#footnote179b">{179b}</a>
+the vegetation called mould, and the like.&nbsp; One seems to be of
+great force; namely, that the animalcules, which are supposed (altogether
+hypothetically) to be produced by ova, are afterwards found increasing
+their numbers, not by that mode at all, but by division of their bodies.&nbsp;
+If it be the nature of these creatures to propagate in this splitting
+or fissiparous manner, how could they be communicated to a vegetable
+infusion?&nbsp; Another fact of very high importance is presented in
+the following terms:- &ldquo;The nature of the animalcule, or vegetable
+production, bears a constant relation to the state of the infusion,
+so that, in similar circumstances, the same are always produced without
+this being influenced by the atmosphere.&nbsp; There seems to be a certain
+<i>progressive advance in the productive powers of the infusion</i>,
+for at the first the animalcules are only of the smaller kinds, or monades,
+and afterwards <i>they become gradually larger and more complicated
+in their structure; after a time</i>, <i>the production ceases</i>,
+<i>although the materials</i> <i>are by no means exhausted</i>.&nbsp;
+When the quantity of water is very small, and the organic matter abundant,
+the production is usually of a vegetable nature; when there is much
+water, animalcules are more frequently produced.&rdquo;&nbsp; It has
+been shewn by the opponents of this theory, that when a vegetable infusion
+is debarred from the contact of the atmosphere, by being closely sealed
+up or covered with a layer of oil, no animalcules are produced; but
+it has been said, on the other hand, that the exclusion of the air may
+prevent some simple condition necessary for the aboriginal development
+of life - and nothing is more likely.&nbsp; Perhaps the prevailing doctrine
+is in nothing placed in greater difficulties than it is with regard
+to the entozoa, or creatures which live within the bodies of others.&nbsp;
+These creatures do, and apparently can, live nowhere else than in the
+interior of other living bodies, where they generally take up their
+abode in the viscera, but also sometimes in the chambers of the eye,
+the interior of the brain, the serous sacs, and other places having
+no communication from without.&nbsp; Some are viviparous, others oviparous.&nbsp;
+Of the latter it cannot reasonably be supposed that the ova ever pass
+through the medium of the air, or through the blood-vessels, for they
+are too heavy for the one transit, and too large for the other.&nbsp;
+Of the former, it cannot be conceived how they pass into young animals
+- certainly not by communication from the parent, for it has often been
+found that entozoa do not appear in certain generations, and some of
+peculiar and noted character have only appeared at rare intervals, and
+in very extraordinary circumstances.&nbsp; A candid view of the less
+popular doctrine, as to the origin of this humble form of life, is taken
+by a distinguished living naturalist.&nbsp; &ldquo;To explain the beginning
+of these worms within the human body, on the common doctrine that all
+created beings proceed from their likes, or a primordial egg, is so
+difficult, that the moderns have been driven to speculate, as our fathers
+did, on their spontaneous birth; but they have received the hypothesis
+with some modification.&nbsp; Thus it is not from putrefaction or fermentation
+that the entozoa are born, for both of these processes are rather fatal
+to their existence, but from the aggregation and fit apposition of matter
+which is already organized, or has been thrown from organized surfaces.&nbsp;
+Their origin in this manner is not more wonderful or more inexplicable
+than that of many of the inferior animals from sections of themselves.
+* * Particles of matter fitted by digestion, and their transmission
+through a living body, for immediate assimilation with it, or flakes
+of lymph detached from surfaces already organized, seem neither to exceed
+nor fall below that simplicity of structure which favours this wonderful
+development; and the supposition that, like morsels of a planaria, they
+may also, when retained in contact with living parts, and in other favourable
+circumstances, continue to live and be gradually changed into creatures
+of analogous conformation, is surely not so absurd as to be brought
+into comparison with the Metamorphoses of Ovid. * * We think the hypothesis
+is also supported in some degree by the fact, that the origin of the
+entozoa is favoured by all causes which tend to disturb the equality
+between the secerning and absorbent systems.&rdquo; <a name="citation182"></a><a href="#footnote182">{182}</a>&nbsp;
+Here particles of organized matter are suggested as the germinal origin
+of distinct and fully organized animals, many of which have a highly
+developed reproductive system.&nbsp; How near such particles must be
+to the inorganic form of matter may be judged from what has been said
+within the last few pages.&nbsp; If, then, this view of the production
+of entozoa be received, it must be held as in no small degree favourable
+to the general doctrine of an organic creation by law.</p>
+<p>There is another series of facts, akin to the above, and which deserve
+not less attention.&nbsp; The pig, in its domestic state, is subject
+to the attacks of a hydatid, from which the wild animal is free; hence
+the disease called measles in pork.&nbsp; The domestication of the pig
+is of course an event subsequent to the origin of man; indeed, comparatively
+speaking, a recent event.&nbsp; Whence, then, the first progenitor of
+this hydatid?&nbsp; So also there is a tinea which attacks dressed wool,
+but never touches it in its unwashed state.&nbsp; A particular insect
+disdains all food but chocolate, and the larva of the <i>oinopota cellaris</i>
+lives nowhere but in wine and beer, all of these being articles manufactured
+by man.&nbsp; There is likewise a creature called the <i>pimelodes cyclopum</i>,
+which is only found in subterranean cavities connected with certain
+specimens of the volcanic formation in South America, dating from a
+time posterior to the arrangements of the earth for our species.&nbsp;
+Whence the first pymelodes cyclopum?&nbsp; Will it, to a geologist,
+appear irrational to suppose that, just as the pterodactyle was added
+in the era of the new red sandstone, when the earth had become suited
+for such a creature, so may these creatures have been added when media
+suitable for their existence arose, and that such phenomena may take
+place any day, the only cause for their taking place seldom being the
+rarity of the rise of new physical conditions on a globe which seems
+to have already undergone the principal part of its destined mutations?</p>
+<p>Between such isolated facts and the greater changes which attended
+various geological eras, it is not easy to see any difference, besides
+simply that of the scale on which the respective phenomena took place,
+as the throwing off of one copy from an engraved plate is exactly the
+same process as that by which a thousand are thrown off.&nbsp; Nothing
+is more easy to conceive than that to Creative Providence, the numbers
+of such phenomena, the time when, and the circumstances under which
+they take place, are indifferent matters.&nbsp; The Eternal One has
+arranged for everything beforehand, and trusted all to the operation
+of the laws of his appointment, himself being ever present in all things.&nbsp;
+We can even conceive that man, in his many doings upon the surface of
+the earth, may occasionally, without his being aware of it, or otherwise,
+act as an instrument in preparing the association of conditions under
+which the creative laws work; and perhaps some instances of his having
+acted as such an instrument have actually occurred in our own time.</p>
+<p>I allude, of course, to the experiments conducted a few years ago
+by Mr. Crosse, which seemed to result in the production of a heretofore
+unknown species of insect in considerable numbers.&nbsp; Various causes
+have prevented these experiments and their results from receiving candid
+treatment, but they may perhaps be yet found to have opened up a new
+and most interesting chapter of nature&rsquo;s mysteries.&nbsp; Mr.
+Crosse was pursuing some experiments in crystallization, causing a powerful
+voltaic battery to operate upon a saturated solution of silicate of
+potash, when the insects unexpectedly made their appearance.&nbsp; He
+afterwards tried nitrate of copper, which is a deadly poison, and from
+that fluid also did live insects emerge.&nbsp; Discouraged by the reception
+of his experiments, Mr. Crosse soon discontinued them; but they were
+some years after pursued by Mr. Weekes, of Sandwich, with precisely
+the same results.&nbsp; This gentleman, besides trying the first of
+the above substances, employed ferro-cyanet of potash, on account of
+its containing a larger proportion of carbon, the principal element
+of organic bodies; and from this substance the insects were produced
+<i>in increased numbers</i>.&nbsp; A few weeks sufficed for this experiment,
+with the powerful battery of Mr. Crosse; but the first attempts of Mr.
+Weekes required about eleven months, a ground of presumption in itself
+that the electricity was chiefly concerned in the phenomenon.&nbsp;
+The changes undergone by the fluid operated upon, were in both cases
+remarkable, and nearly alike.&nbsp; In Mr. Weekes&rsquo; apparatus,
+the silicate of potash became first turbid, then of a milky appearance;
+round the negative wire of the battery, dipped into the fluid, there
+gathered a quantity of <i>gelatinous matter</i>, a part of the process
+of considerable importance, considering that gelatin is one of the <i>proximate
+principles</i>, or first compounds, of which animal bodies are formed.&nbsp;
+From this matter Mr. Weekes observed one of the insects in the very
+act of emerging, immediately after which, it ascended to the surface
+of the fluid, and sought concealment in an obscure corner of the apparatus.&nbsp;
+The insects produced by both experimentalists seem to have been the
+same, a species of acarus, minute and semi-transparent, and furnished
+with long bristles, which can only be seen by the aid of the microscope.&nbsp;
+It is worthy of remark, that some of these insects, soon after their
+existence had commenced, were found to be likely to extend their species.&nbsp;
+They were sometimes observed to go back to the fluid to feed, and occasionally
+they devoured each other. <a name="citation187"></a><a href="#footnote187">{187}</a></p>
+<p>The reception of novelties in science must ever be regulated very
+much by the amount of kindred or relative phenomena which the public
+mind already possesses and acknowledges, to which the new can be assimilated.&nbsp;
+A novelty, however true, if there be no received truths with which it
+can be shewn in harmonious relation, has little chance of a favourable
+hearing.&nbsp; In fact, as has been often observed, there is a measure
+of incredulity from our ignorance as well as from our knowledge, and
+if the most distinguished philosopher three hundred years ago had ventured
+to develop any striking new fact which only could harmonize with the
+as yet unknown Copernican solar system, we cannot doubt that it would
+have been universally scoffed at in the scientific world, such as it
+then was, or at the best interpreted in a thousand wrong ways in conformity
+with ideas already familiar.&nbsp; The experiments above described,
+finding a public mind which had never discovered a fact or conceived
+an idea at all analogous, were of course ungraciously received.&nbsp;
+It was held to be impious, even to surmise that animals could have been
+formed through any instrumentality of an apparatus devised by human
+skill.&nbsp; The more likely account of the phenomena was said to be,
+that the insects were only developed from ova, resting either in the
+fluid, or in the wooden frame on which the experiments took place.&nbsp;
+On these objections the following remarks may be made.&nbsp; The supposition
+of impiety arises from an entire misconception of what is implied by
+an aboriginal creation of insects.&nbsp; The experimentalist could never
+be considered as the author of the existence of these creatures, except
+by the most unreasoning ignorance.&nbsp; The utmost that can be claimed
+for, or imputed to him is that he arranged the natural conditions under
+which the true creative energy - that of the Divine Author of all things
+- was pleased to work in that instance.&nbsp; On the hypothesis here
+brought forward, the <i>acarus Crossii</i> was a type of being ordained
+from the beginning, and destined to be realized under certain physical
+conditions.&nbsp; When a human hand brought these conditions into the
+proper arrangement, it did an act akin to hundreds of familiar ones
+which we execute every day, and which are followed by natural results;
+but it did nothing more.&nbsp; The production of the insect, if it did
+take place as assumed, was as clearly an act of the Almighty himself,
+as if he had fashioned it with hands.&nbsp; For the presumption that
+an act of aboriginal creation did take place, there is this to be said,
+that, in Mr. Weekes&rsquo;s experiment, every care that ingenuity could
+devise was taken to exclude the possibility of a development of the
+insects from ova.&nbsp; The wood of the frame was baked in a powerful
+heat; a bell-shaped glass covered the apparatus, and from this the atmosphere
+was excluded by the constantly rising fumes from the liquid, for the
+emission of which there was an aperture so arranged at the top of the
+glass, that only these fumes could pass.&nbsp; The water was distilled,
+and the substance of the silicate had been subjected to white heat.&nbsp;
+Thus every source of fallacy seemed to be shut up.&nbsp; In such circumstances,
+a candid mind, which sees nothing either impious or unphilosophical
+in the idea of a new creation, will be disposed to think that there
+is less difficulty in believing in such a creation having actually taken
+place, than in believing that, in two instances, separated in place
+and time, exactly the same insects should have chanced to arise from
+concealed ova, and these a species heretofore unknown.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It has been already intimated, as a general fact, that there is an
+obvious gradation amongst the families of both the vegetable and animal
+kingdoms, from the simple lichen and animalcule respectively up to the
+highest order of dicotyledonous trees and the mammalia.&nbsp; Confining
+our attention, in the meantime, to the animal kingdom - it does not
+appear that this gradation passes along one line, on which every form
+of animal life can be, as it were, strung; there may be branching or
+double lines at some places; or the whole may be in a circle composed
+of minor circles, as has been recently suggested.&nbsp; But still it
+is incontestable that there are general appearances of a scale beginning
+with the simple and advancing to the complicated.&nbsp; The animal kingdom
+was divided by Cuvier into four sub-kingdoms, or divisions, and these
+exhibit an unequivocal gradation in the order in which they are here
+enumerated:- Radiata, (polypes, &amp;c.;) mollusca, (pulpy animals;)
+articulata, (jointed animals;) vertebrata, (animals with internal skeleton.)&nbsp;
+The gradation can, in like manner, be clearly traced in the <i>classes</i>
+into which the sub-kingdoms are subdivided, as, for instance, when we
+take those of the vertebrata in this order - reptiles, fishes, birds,
+mammals.</p>
+<p>While the external forms of all these various animals are so different,
+it is very remarkable that the whole are, after all, variations of a
+fundamental plan, which can be traced as a basis throughout the whole,
+the variations being merely modifications of that plan to suit the particular
+conditions in which each particular animal has been designed to live.&nbsp;
+Starting from the primeval germ, which, as we have seen, is the representative
+of a particular order of full-grown animals, we find all others to be
+merely advances from that type, with the extension of endowments and
+modification of forms which are required in each particular case; each
+form, also, retaining a strong affinity to that which precedes it, and
+tending to impress its own features on that which succeeds.&nbsp; This
+unity of structure, as it is called, becomes the more remarkable, when
+we observe that the organs, while preserving a resemblance, are often
+put to different uses.&nbsp; For example: the ribs become, in the serpent,
+organs of locomotion, and the snout is extended, in the elephant, into
+a prehensile instrument.</p>
+<p>It is equally remarkable that analogous purposes are served in different
+animals by organs essentially different.&nbsp; Thus, the mammalia breathe
+by lungs; the fishes, by gills.&nbsp; These are not modifications of
+one organ, but distinct organs.&nbsp; In mammifers, the gills exist
+and act at an early stage of the f&oelig;tal state, but afterwards go
+back and appear no more; while the lungs are developed.&nbsp; In fishes,
+again, the gills only are fully developed; while the lung structure
+either makes no advance at all, or only appears in the rudimentary form
+of an air-bladder.&nbsp; So, also, the baleen of the whale and the teeth
+of the land mammalia are different organs.&nbsp; The whale, in embryo,
+shews the rudiments of teeth; but these, not being wanted, are not developed,
+and the baleen is brought forward instead.&nbsp; The land animals, we
+may also be sure, have the rudiments of baleen in their organization.&nbsp;
+In many instances, a particular structure is found advanced to a certain
+point in a particular set of animals, (for instance, feet in the serpent
+tribe,) although it is not there required in any degree; but the peculiarity,
+being carried a little farther forward, is perhaps useful in the next
+set of animals in the scale.&nbsp; Such are called rudimentary organs.&nbsp;
+With this class of phenomena are to be ranked the useless mamm&aelig;
+of the male human being, and the unrequired process of bone in the male
+opossum, which is needed in the female for supporting her pouch.&nbsp;
+Such curious features are most conspicuous in animals which form links
+between various classes.</p>
+<p>As formerly stated, the marsupials, standing at the bottom of the
+mammalia, shew their affinity to the oviparous vertebrata, by the rudiments
+of two canals passing from near the anus to the external surfaces of
+the viscera, which are fully developed in fishes, being required by
+them for the respiration of aerated waters, but which are not needed
+by the atmosphere-breathing marsupials.&nbsp; We have also the peculiar
+form of the sternum and rib-bones of the lizards <i>represented</i>
+in the mammalia in certain white cartilaginous lines traceable among
+their abdominal muscles.&nbsp; The struphionid&aelig; (birds of the
+ostrich type) form a link between birds and mammalia, and in them we
+find the wings imperfectly or not at all developed, a diaphragm and
+urinary sac, (organs wanting in other birds,) and feathers approaching
+the nature of hair.&nbsp; Again, the ornithorynchus belongs to a class
+at the bottom of the mammalia, and approximating to birds, and in it
+behold the bill and web-feet of that order!</p>
+<p>For further illustration, it is obvious that, various as may be the
+lengths of the upper part of the vertebral column in the mammalia, it
+always consists of the same parts.&nbsp; The giraffe has in its tall
+neck the same number of bones with the pig, which scarcely appears to
+have a neck at all. <a name="citation195"></a><a href="#footnote195">{195}</a>&nbsp;
+Man, again, has no tail; but the notion of a much-ridiculed philosopher
+of the last century is not altogether, as it happens, without foundation,
+for the bones of a caudal extremity exist in an undeveloped state in
+the <i>os coccygis</i> of the human subject.&nbsp; The limbs of all
+the vertebrate animals are, in like manner, on one plan, however various
+they may appear.&nbsp; In the hind-leg of a horse, for example, the
+angle called the hock is the same part which in us forms the heel; and
+the horse, and all other quadrupeds, with almost the solitary exception
+of the bear, walk, in reality, upon what answers to the toes of a human
+being.&nbsp; In this and many other quadrupeds the fore part of the
+extremities is shrunk up in a hoof, as the tail of the human being is
+shrunk up in the bony mass at the bottom of the back.&nbsp; The bat,
+on the other hand, has these parts largely developed.&nbsp; The membrane,
+commonly called its wing, is framed chiefly upon bones answering precisely
+to those of the human hand; its extinct congener, the pterodactyle,
+had the same membrane extended upon the fore-finger only, which in that
+animal was prolonged to an extraordinary extent.&nbsp; In the paddles
+of the whale and other animals of its order, we see the same bones as
+in the more highly developed extremities of the land mammifers; and
+even the serpent tribes, which present no external appearance of such
+extremities, possess them in reality, but in an undeveloped or rudimental
+state.</p>
+<p>The same law of development presides over the vegetable kingdom.&nbsp;
+Amongst phanerogamous plants, a certain number of organs appear to be
+always present, either in a developed or rudimentary state; and those
+which are rudimentary can be developed by cultivation.&nbsp; The flowers
+which bear stamens on one stalk and pistils on another, can be caused
+to produce both, or to become perfect flowers, by having a sufficiency
+of nourishment supplied to them.&nbsp; So also, where a special function
+is required for particular circumstances, nature has provided for it,
+not by a new organ, but by a modification of a common one, which she
+has effected in development.&nbsp; Thus, for instance, some plants destined
+to live in arid situations, require to have a store of water which they
+may slowly absorb.&nbsp; The need is arranged for by a cup-like expansion
+round the stalk, in which water remains after a shower.&nbsp; Now the
+<i>pitcher</i>, as this is called, is not a new organ, but simply a
+metamorphose of a leaf.</p>
+<p>These facts clearly shew how all the various organic forms of our
+world are bound up in one - how a fundamental unity pervades and embraces
+them all, collecting them, from the humblest lichen up to the highest
+mammifer, in one system, the whole creation of which must have depended
+upon one law or decree of the Almighty, though it did not all come forth
+at one time.&nbsp; After what we have seen, the idea of a separate exertion
+for each must appear totally inadmissible.&nbsp; The single fact of
+abortive or rudimentary organs condemns it; for these, on such a supposition,
+could be regarded in no other light than as blemishes or blunders -
+the thing of all others most irreconcilable with that idea of Almighty
+Perfection which a general view of nature so irresistibly conveys.&nbsp;
+On the other hand, when the organic creation is admitted to have been
+effected by a general law, we see nothing in these abortive parts but
+harmless peculiarities of development, and interesting evidences of
+the manner in which the Divine Author has been pleased to work.</p>
+<p>We have yet to advert to the most interesting class of facts connected
+with the laws of organic development.&nbsp; It is only in recent times
+that physiologists have observed that each animal passes, in the course
+of its germinal history, through a series of changes resembling the
+<i>permanent forms</i> of the various orders of animals inferior to
+it in the scale.&nbsp; Thus, for instance, an insect, standing at the
+head of the articulated animals, is, in the larva state, a true annelid,
+or worm, the annelida being the lowest in the same class.&nbsp; The
+embryo of a crab resembles the perfect animal of the inferior order
+myriapoda, and passes through all the forms of transition which characterize
+the intermediate tribes of crustacea.&nbsp; The frog, for some time
+after its birth, is a fish with external gills, and other organs fitting
+it for an aquatic life, all of which are changed as it advances to maturity,
+and becomes a land animal.&nbsp; The mammifer only passes through still
+more stages, according to its higher place in the scale.&nbsp; Nor is
+man himself exempt from this law.&nbsp; His first form is that which
+is permanent in the animalcule.&nbsp; His organization gradually passes
+through conditions generally resembling a fish, a reptile, a bird, and
+the lower mammalia, before it attains its specific maturity.&nbsp; At
+one of the last stages of his f&oelig;tal career, he exhibits an intermaxillary
+bone, which is characteristic of the perfect ape; this is suppressed,
+and he may then be said to take leave of the simial type, and become
+a true human creature.&nbsp; Even, as we shall see, the varieties of
+his race are represented in the progressive development of an individual
+of the highest, before we see the adult Caucasian, the highest point
+yet attained in the animal scale.</p>
+<p>To come to particular points of the organization.&nbsp; The brain
+of man, which exceeds that of all other animals in complexity of organization
+and fulness of development, is, at one early period, only &ldquo;a simple
+fold of nervous matter, with difficulty distinguishable into three parts,
+while a little tail-like prolongation towards the hinder parts, and
+which had been the first to appear, is the only representation of a
+spinal marrow.&nbsp; Now, in this state it perfectly resembles the brain
+of an adult fish, thus assuming <i>in transitu</i> the form that in
+the fish is permanent.&nbsp; In a short time, however, the structure
+is become more complex, the parts more distinct, the spinal marrow better
+marked; it is now the brain of a reptile.&nbsp; The change continues;
+by a singular motion, certain parts (<i>corpora quadragemina</i>) which
+had hitherto appeared on the upper surface, now pass towards the lower;
+the former is their permanent situation in fishes and reptiles, the
+latter in birds and mammalia.&nbsp; This is another advance in the scale,
+but more remains yet to be done.&nbsp; The complication of the organ
+increases; cavities termed <i>ventricles</i> are formed, which do not
+exist in fishes, reptiles, or birds; curiously organized parts, such
+as the corpora striata, are added; it is now the brain of the mammalia.&nbsp;
+Its last and final change alone seems wanting, that which shall render
+it the brain of MAN.&rdquo; <a name="citation201"></a><a href="#footnote201">{201}</a>&nbsp;
+And this change in time takes place.</p>
+<p>So also with the heart.&nbsp; This organ, in the mammalia, consists
+of four cavities, but in the reptiles of only three, and in fishes of
+two only, while in the articulated animals it is merely a prolonged
+tube.&nbsp; Now in the mammal f&oelig;tus, at a certain early stage,
+the organ has the form of a prolonged tube; and a human being may be
+said to have then the heart of an insect.&nbsp; Subsequently it is shortened
+and widened, and becomes divided by a contraction into two parts, a
+ventricle and an auricle; it is now the heart of a fish.&nbsp; A subdivision
+of the auricle afterwards makes a triple-chambered form, as in the heart
+of the reptile tribes; lastly, the ventricle being also subdivided,
+it becomes a full mammal heart.</p>
+<p>Another illustration here presents itself with the force of the most
+powerful and interesting analogy.&nbsp; Some of the earliest fishes
+of our globe, those of the Old Red Sandstone, present, as we have seen,
+certain peculiarities, as the one-sided tail and an inferior position
+of the mouth.&nbsp; No fishes of the present day, in a mature state,
+are so characterized; but some, at a certain stage of their existence,
+have such peculiarities.&nbsp; It occurred to a geologist to inquire
+if the fish which existed before the Old Red Sandstone had any peculiarities
+assimilating them to the f&oelig;tal condition of existing fish, and
+particularly if they were small.&nbsp; The first which occur before
+the time of the Old Red Sandstone, are those described by Mr. Murchison,
+as belonging to the Upper Ludlow Rocks; <i>they are all rather small</i>.&nbsp;
+Still older are those detected by Mr. Philips, in the Aymestry Limestone,
+being the most ancient of the class which have as yet been discovered;
+<i>these are so extremely minute as only to be distinguishable by the
+microscope</i>.&nbsp; Here we apparently have very clear demonstrations
+of a parity, or rather identity, of laws presiding over the development
+of the animated tribes on the face of the earth, and that of the individual
+in embryo.</p>
+<p>The tendency of all these illustrations is to make us look to <i>development</i>
+as the principle which has been immediately concerned in the peopling
+of this globe, a process extending over a vast space of time, but which
+is nevertheless connected in character with the briefer process by which
+an individual being is evoked from a simple germ.&nbsp; What mystery
+is there here - and how shall I proceed to enunciate the conception
+which I have ventured to form of what may prove to be its proper solution!&nbsp;
+It is an idea by no means calculated to impress by its greatness, or
+to puzzle by its profoundness.&nbsp; It is an idea more marked by simplicity
+than perhaps any other of those which have explained the great secrets
+of nature.&nbsp; But in this lies, perhaps, one of its strongest claims
+to the faith of mankind.</p>
+<p>The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest
+up to the highest and most recent, are, then, to be regarded as a series
+of <i>advances of the principle of development</i>, which have depended
+upon external physical circumstances, to which the resulting animals
+are appropriate.&nbsp; I contemplate the whole phenomena as having been
+in the first place arranged in the counsels of Divine Wisdom, to take
+place, not only upon this sphere, but upon all the others in space,
+under necessary modifications, and as being carried on, from first to
+last, here and elsewhere, under immediate favour of the creative will
+or energy. <a name="citation204"></a><a href="#footnote204">{204}</a>&nbsp;
+The nucleated vesicle, the fundamental form of all organization, we
+must regard as the meeting-point between the inorganic and the organic
+- the end of the mineral and beginning of the vegetable and animal kingdoms,
+which thence start in different directions, but in perfect parallelism
+and analogy.&nbsp; We have already seen that this nucleated vesicle
+is itself a type of mature and independent being in the infusory animalcules,
+as well as the starting point of the f&oelig;tal progress of every higher
+individual in creation, both animal and vegetable.&nbsp; We have seen
+that it is a form of being which electric agency will produce - though
+not perhaps usher into full life - in albumen, one of those compound
+elements of animal bodies, of which another (urea) has been made by
+artificial means.&nbsp; Remembering these things, we are drawn on to
+the supposition, that the first step in the creation of life upon this
+planet was <i>a chemico-electric operation</i>, <i>by which simple germinal
+vesicles were produced</i>.&nbsp; This is so much, but what were the
+next steps?&nbsp; Let a common vegetable infusion help us to an answer.&nbsp;
+There, as we have seen, simple forms are produced at first, but afterwards
+they become more complicated, until at length the life-producing powers
+of the infusion are exhausted.&nbsp; Are we to presume that, in this
+case, the simple engender the complicated?&nbsp; Undoubtedly, this would
+not be more wonderful as a natural process than one which we never think
+of wondering at, because familiar to us - namely, that in the gestation
+of 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 all the
+subsequent stages - fish, reptile, &amp;c. - the one may, with scarcely
+a metaphor, be said to be the progenitor of the other.&nbsp; I suggest,
+then, as an hypothesis already countenanced by much that is ascertained,
+and likely to be further sanctioned by much that remains to be known,
+that the first step was <i>an advance under favour of peculiar conditions</i>,
+<i>from the simplest forms of being</i>, <i>to the next more complicated</i>,
+<i>and this through the medium of the ordinary process of generation.</i></p>
+<p>Unquestionably, what we ordinarily see of nature is calculated to
+impress a conviction that each species invariably produces its like.&nbsp;
+But I would here call attention to a remarkable illustration of natural
+law which has been brought forward by Mr. Babbage, in his <i>Ninth Bridgewater
+Treatise</i>.&nbsp; The reader is requested to suppose himself seated
+before the calculating machine, and observing it.&nbsp; It is moved
+by a weight, and there is a wheel which revolves through a small angle
+round its axis, at short intervals, presenting to his eye successively,
+a series of numbers engraved on its divided circumference.</p>
+<p>Let the figures thus seen be the series, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &amp;c.,
+of natural numbers, each of which exceeds its immediate antecedent by
+unity.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now, reader,&rdquo; says Mr. Babbage, &ldquo;let me ask you
+how long you will have counted before you are firmly convinced that
+the engine has been so adjusted, that it will continue, while its motion
+is maintained, to produce the same series of natural numbers?&nbsp;
+Some minds are so constituted, that, after passing the first hundred
+terms, they will be satisfied that they are acquainted with the law.&nbsp;
+After seeing five hundred terms few will doubt, and after the fifty
+thousandth term the propensity to believe that the succeeding term will
+be fifty thousand and one, will be almost irresistible.&nbsp; That term
+<i>will</i> be fifty thousand and one; and the same regular succession
+will continue; the five millionth and the fifty millionth term will
+still appear in their expected order, and one unbroken chain of natural
+numbers will pass before your eyes, from <i>one</i> up to <i>one hundred
+million.</i></p>
+<p>&ldquo;True to the vast induction which has been made, the next succeeding
+term will be one hundred million and one; but the next number presented
+by the rim of the wheel, instead of being one hundred million and two,
+is one hundred million <i>ten thousand</i> and two.&nbsp; The whole
+series from the commencement being thus, -</p>
+<p>1<br />2<br />3<br />4<br />5<br />.<br />. .<br />. . .<br />99,999,999<br />100,000,000<br />regularly
+as far as 100,000,001<br />100,010,002 the law changes.<br />100,030,003<br />100,060,004<br />100,100,005<br />100,150,006<br />100,210,007<br />100,280,008<br />.
+. .<br />. . .<br />. . .</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The law which seemed at first to govern this series failed
+at the hundred million and second term.&nbsp; This term is larger than
+we expected by 10,000.&nbsp; The next term is larger than was anticipated
+by 30,000, and the excess of each term above what we had expected forms
+the following table:-</p>
+<p>10,000<br />30,000<br />60,000<br />100,000<br />150,000<br />. .
+.<br />. . .</p>
+<p>being, in fact, the series of <i>triangular numbers</i>, <a name="citation208"></a><a href="#footnote208">{208}</a>
+each multiplied by 10,000.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If we now continue to observe the numbers presented by the
+wheel, we shall find, that for a hundred, or even for a thousand terms,
+they continue to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers;
+but after watching them for 2761 terms, we find that this law fails
+in the case of the 2762d term.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If we continue to observe, we shall discover another law then
+coming into action, which also is dependent, but in a different manner,
+on triangular numbers.&nbsp; This will continue through about 1430 terms,
+when a new law is again introduced which extends over about 950 terms,
+and this, too, like all its predecessors, fails, and gives place to
+other laws, which appear at different intervals.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now it must be observed that <i>the law that each number presented
+by the engine is greater by unity than the preceding number</i>, which
+law the observer had deduced from an induction of a hundred million
+instances, <i>was not the true law that regulated its action</i>, and
+that the occurrence of the number 100,010,002 at the 100,000,002nd term
+was <i>as necessary a consequence of the original adjustment</i>, <i>and
+might have been as fully foreknown at the commencement</i>, <i>as was
+the regular succession of any one of the intermediate numbers to its
+immediate antecedent</i>.&nbsp; The same remark applies to the next
+apparent deviation from 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 periods themselves at which the more distant laws will be introduced.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It is not difficult to apply the philosophy of this passage to the
+question under consideration.&nbsp; It must be borne in mind that the
+gestation 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 a
+matter probably involving enormous spaces of time.&nbsp; Suppose that
+an ephemeron, hovering over a pool for its one April day of life, were
+capable of observing the fry of the frog in the water below.&nbsp; In
+its aged afternoon, having seen no change upon them for such a long
+time, it would be little qualified to conceive that the external branchi&aelig;
+of these creatures were to decay, and be replaced by internal lungs,
+that feet were to be developed, the tail erased, and the animal then
+to become a denizen of the land.&nbsp; Precisely such may be our difficulty
+in conceiving that any of the species which people our earth is capable
+of advancing by generation to a higher type of being.&nbsp; During the
+whole time which we call the historical era, the limits of species have
+been, to ordinary observation, rigidly adhered to.&nbsp; But the historical
+era is, we know, only a small portion of the entire age of our globe.&nbsp;
+We do not know what may have happened during the ages which preceded
+its commencement, as we do not know what may happen in ages yet in the
+distant future.&nbsp; All, therefore, that we can properly infer from
+the apparently invariable production of like by like is, that such is
+the ordinary procedure of nature in the time immediately passing before
+our eyes.&nbsp; Mr. Babbage&rsquo;s illustration powerfully suggests
+that this ordinary procedure may be subordinate to a higher law which
+only <i>permits</i> it for a time, and in proper season interrupts and
+changes it.&nbsp; We shall soon see some philosophical evidence for
+this very conclusion.</p>
+<p>It has been seen that, in the reproduction of the higher animals,
+the new being passes through stages in which it is successively fish-like
+and reptile-like.&nbsp; But the resemblance is not to the adult fish
+or the adult reptile, but to the fish and reptile at a certain point
+in their f&oelig;tal progress; this holds true with regard to the vascular,
+nervous, and other systems alike.&nbsp; It may be illustrated by a simple
+diagram.&nbsp; The f&oelig;tus of all the four classes may be supposed
+to advance in an identical condition to the point A.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;M
+&nbsp;&nbsp;|
+&nbsp;&nbsp;| B<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;|/<br />D + R<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;|/
+C + F<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;|/<br />A +<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;|<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;|</pre>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The fish there diverges and passes along a line apart, and peculiar
+to A itself, to its mature state at F.&nbsp; The reptile, bird, and
+mammal, go on together to C, where the reptile diverges in like manner,
+and advances by itself to R.&nbsp; The bird diverges at D, and goes
+on to B.&nbsp; The mammal then goes forward in a straight line to the
+highest point of organization at M.&nbsp; This diagram shews only the
+main ramifications; but the reader must suppose minor ones, representing
+the subordinate differences of orders, tribes, families, genera, &amp;c.,
+if he wishes to extend his views to the whole varieties of being in
+the animal kingdom.&nbsp; Limiting ourselves at present to the outline
+afforded by this diagram, it is apparent that the only thing required
+for an advance from one type to another in the generative process is
+that, for example, the fish embryo should not diverge at A, but go on
+to C before it diverges, in which case the progeny will be, not a fish,
+but a reptile.&nbsp; To protract the <i>straightforward part of the
+gestation over a small space</i> - and from species to species the space
+would be small indeed - is all that is necessary.</p>
+<p>This might be done by the force of certain external conditions operating
+upon the parturient system.&nbsp; The nature of these conditions we
+can only conjecture, for their operation, which in the geological eras
+was so powerful, has in its main strength been long interrupted, and
+is now perhaps only allowed to work in some of the lowest departments
+of the organic world, or under extraordinary casualties in some of the
+higher, and to these points the attention of science has as yet been
+little directed.&nbsp; But though this knowledge were never to be clearly
+attained, it need not much affect the present argument, provided it
+be satisfactorily shewn that there must be some such influence within
+the range of natural things.</p>
+<p>To this conclusion it must be greatly conducive that the law of organic
+development is still daily seen at work to certain effects, only somewhat
+short of a transition from species to species.&nbsp; Sex we have seen
+to be a matter of development.&nbsp; There is an instance, in a humble
+department of the animal world, of arrangements being made by the animals
+themselves for adjusting this law to the production of a particular
+sex.&nbsp; Amongst bees, as amongst several other insect tribes, there
+is in each community but one true female, the queen bee, the workers
+being false females or neuters; that is to say, sex is carried on in
+them to a point where it is attended by sterility.&nbsp; The preparatory
+states of the queen bee occupy sixteen days; those of the neuters, twenty;
+and those of males, twenty-four.&nbsp; Now it is a fact, settled by
+innumerable observations and experiments, that the bees can so modify
+a worker in the larva state, that, when it emerges from the pupa, it
+is found to be a queen or true female.&nbsp; For this purpose they enlarge
+its cell, make a pyramidal hollow to allow of its assuming a vertical
+instead of a horizontal position, keep it warmer than other larv&aelig;
+are kept, and feed it with a peculiar kind of food.&nbsp; From these
+simple circumstances, leading to a shortening of the embryotic condition,
+results a creature different in form, and also in dispositions, from
+what would have otherwise been produced.&nbsp; Some of the organs possessed
+by the worker are here altogether wanting.&nbsp; We have a creature
+&ldquo;destined to enjoy love, to burn with jealousy and anger, to be
+incited to vengeance, and to pass her time without labour,&rdquo; instead
+of one &ldquo;zealous for the good of the community, a defender of the
+public rights, enjoying an immunity from the stimulus of sexual appetite
+and the pains of parturition; laborious, industrious, patient, ingenious,
+skilful; incessantly engaged in the nurture of the young, in collecting
+honey and pollen, in elaborating wax, in constructing cells and the
+like! - paying the most respectful and assiduous attention to objects
+which, had its ovaries been developed, it would have hated and pursued
+with the most vindictive fury till it had destroyed them!&rdquo; <a name="citation215"></a><a href="#footnote215">{215}</a>&nbsp;
+All these changes may be produced by a mere modification of the embryotic
+progress, which it is within the power of the adult animals to effect.&nbsp;
+But it is important to observe that this modification is different from
+working a direct change upon the embryo.&nbsp; It is not the different
+food which effects a metamorphosis.&nbsp; All that is done is merely
+to accelerate the period of the insect&rsquo;s perfection.&nbsp; By
+the arrangements made and the food given, the embryo becomes sooner
+fit for being ushered forth in its imago or perfect state.&nbsp; Development
+may be said to be thus arrested at a particular stage - that early one
+at which the female sex is complete.&nbsp; In the other circumstances,
+it is allowed to go on four days longer, and a stage is then reached
+between the two sexes, which in this species is designed to be the perfect
+condition of a large portion of the community.&nbsp; Four days more
+make it a perfect male.&nbsp; It is at the same time to be observed
+that there is, from the period of oviposition, a destined distinction
+between the sexes of the young bees.&nbsp; The queen lays the whole
+of the eggs which are designed to become workers, before she begins
+to lay those which become males.&nbsp; But probably the condition of
+her reproductive system governs the matter of sex, for it is remarked
+that when her impregnation is delayed beyond the twenty-eighth day of
+her entire existence, she lays only eggs which become males.</p>
+<p>We have here, it will be admitted, a most remarkable illustration
+of the principle of development, although in an operation limited to
+the production of sex only.&nbsp; Let it not be said that the phenomena
+concerned in the generation of bees may be very different from those
+concerned in the reproduction of the higher animals.&nbsp; There is
+a unity throughout nature which makes the one case an instructive reflection
+of the other.</p>
+<p>We shall now see an instance of development operating within the
+production of what approaches to the character of variety of species.&nbsp;
+It is fully established that a human family, tribe, or nation, is liable,
+in the course of generations, to be either advanced from a mean form
+to a higher one, or degraded from a higher to a lower, by the influence
+of the physical conditions in which it lives.&nbsp; The coarse features,
+and other structural peculiarities of the negro race only continue while
+these people live amidst the circumstances usually associated with barbarism.&nbsp;
+In a more temperate clime, and higher social state, the face and figure
+become greatly refined.&nbsp; The few African nations which possess
+any civilization also exhibit forms approaching the European; and when
+the same people in the United States of America have enjoyed a within-door
+life for several generations, they assimilate to the whites amongst
+whom they live.&nbsp; On the other hand, there are authentic instances
+of a people originally well-formed and good-looking, being brought,
+by imperfect diet and a variety of physical hardships, to a meaner form.&nbsp;
+It is remarkable that prominence of the jaws, a recession and diminution
+of the cranium, and an elongation and attenuation of the limbs, are
+peculiarities always produced by these miserable conditions, for they
+indicate an unequivocal retrogression towards the type of the lower
+animals.&nbsp; Thus we see nature alike willing to go back and to go
+forward.&nbsp; Both effects are simply the result of the operation of
+the law of development in the generative system.&nbsp; Give good conditions,
+it advances; bad ones, it recedes.&nbsp; Now, perhaps, it is only because
+there is no longer a possibility, in the higher types of being, of giving
+sufficiently favourable conditions to carry on species to species, that
+we see the operation of the law so far limited.</p>
+<p>Let us trace this law also in the production of certain classes of
+monstrosities.&nbsp; A human f&oelig;tus is often left with one of the
+most important parts of its frame imperfectly developed: the heart,
+for instance, goes no farther than the three-chambered form, so that
+it is the heart of a reptile.&nbsp; There are even instances of this
+organ being left in the two-chambered or fish form.&nbsp; Such defects
+are the result of nothing more than a failure of the power of development
+in the system of the mother, occasioned by weak health or misery.&nbsp;
+Here we have apparently a realization of the converse of those conditions
+which carry on species to species, so far, at least, as one organ is
+concerned.&nbsp; Seeing a complete specific retrogression in this one
+point, how easy it is to imagine an access of favourable conditions
+sufficient to reverse the phenomenon, and make a fish mother develop
+a reptile heart, or a reptile mother develop a mammal one.&nbsp; It
+is no great boldness to surmise that a super-adequacy in the measure
+of this under-adequacy (and the one thing seems as natural an occurrence
+as the other) would suffice in a goose to give its progeny the body
+of a rat, and produce the ornithorynchus, or might give the progeny
+of an ornithorynchus the mouth and feet of a true rodent, and thus complete
+at two stages the passage from the aves to the mammalia.</p>
+<p>Perhaps even the transition from species to species does still take
+place in some of the obscurer fields of creation, or under extraordinary
+casualties, though science professes to have no such facts on record.&nbsp;
+It is here to be remarked, that such facts might often happen, and yet
+no record be taken of them, for so strong is the prepossession for the
+doctrine of invariable like-production, that such circumstances, on
+occurring, would be almost sure to be explained away on some other supposition,
+or, if presented, would be disbelieved and neglected.&nbsp; Science,
+therefore, has no such facts, for the very same reason that some small
+sects are said to have no discreditable members - namely, that they
+do not receive such persons, and extrude all who begin to verge upon
+the character.&nbsp; There are, nevertheless, some facts which have
+chanced to be reported without any reference to this hypothesis, and
+which it seems extremely difficult to explain satisfactorily upon any
+other.&nbsp; One of these has already been mentioned - a progression
+in the forms of the animalcules in a vegetable infusion from the simpler
+to the more complicated, a sort of microcosm, representing the whole
+history of the progress of animal creation as displayed by geology.&nbsp;
+Another is given in the history of the Acarus Crossii, which may be
+only the ultimate stage of a series of similar transformations effected
+by electric agency in the solution subjected to it.&nbsp; There is,
+however, one direct case of a translation of species, which has been
+presented with a respectable amount of authority. <a name="citation221"></a><a href="#footnote221">{221}</a>&nbsp;
+It appears that, whenever oats sown at the usual time are kept cropped
+down during summer and autumn, and allowed to remain over the winter,
+a thin crop of rye is the harvest presented at the close of the ensuing
+summer.&nbsp; This experiment has been tried repeatedly, with but one
+result; invariably the <i>secale cereale</i> is the crop reaped where
+the <i>avena sativa</i>, a recognised different species, was sown.&nbsp;
+Now it will not satisfy a strict inquirer to be told that the seeds
+of the rye were latent in the ground and only superseded the dead product
+of the oats; for if any such fact were in the case, why should the usurping
+grain be always rye?&nbsp; Perhaps those curious facts which have been
+stated with regard to 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 which takes place under certain favouring conditions, now apparently
+of comparatively rare occurrence.&nbsp; The case of the oats is the
+more valuable, as bearing upon the suggestion as to a protraction of
+the gestation at a particular part of its course.&nbsp; Here, the generative
+process is, by the simple mode of cropping down, kept up for a whole
+year beyond its usual term.&nbsp; The type is thus allowed to advance,
+and what was oats becomes rye.</p>
+<p>The idea, then, which I form of the progress of organic life upon
+the globe - and the hypothesis is applicable to all similar theatres
+of vital being - is, <i>that the simplest and most primitive type</i>,
+<i>under a law to which that of like-production is subordinate</i>,
+<i>gave birth to the type next above it</i>, <i>that this again produced
+the next higher</i>, <i>and so on to the very highest</i>, the stages
+of advance being in all cases very small - namely, from one species
+only to another; so that the phenomenon has always been of a simple
+and modest character.&nbsp; Whether the whole of any species was at
+once translated forward, or only a few parents were employed to give
+birth to the new type, must remain undetermined; but, supposing that
+the former was the case, we must presume that the moves along the line
+or lines were simultaneous, so that the place vacated by one species
+was immediately taken by the next in succession, and so on back to the
+first, for the supply of which the formation of a new germinal vesicle
+out of inorganic matter was alone necessary.&nbsp; Thus, the production
+of new forms, as shewn in the pages of the geological record, has never
+been anything more than a new stage of progress in gestation, an event
+as simply natural, and attended as little by any circumstances of a
+wonderful or startling kind, as the silent advance of an ordinary mother
+from one week to another of her pregnancy.&nbsp; Yet, be it remembered,
+the whole phenomena are, in another point of view, wonders of the highest
+kind, for in each of them we have to trace the effect of an Almighty
+Will which had arranged the whole in such harmony with external physical
+circumstances, that both were developed in parallel steps - and probably
+this development upon our planet is but a sample of what has taken place,
+through the same cause, in all the other countless theatres of being
+which are suspended in space.</p>
+<p>This may be the proper place at which to introduce the preceding
+illustrations in a form calculated to bring them more forcibly before
+the mind of the reader.&nbsp; The following table was suggested to me,
+in consequence of seeing the scale of animated nature presented in Dr.
+Fletcher&rsquo;s Rudiments of Physiology.&nbsp; 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,
+and also in the f&oelig;tal progress of one of the principal human organs.
+<a name="citation224"></a><a href="#footnote224">{224}</a>&nbsp; This
+scale, it may be remarked, was not made up with a view to support such
+an hypothesis as the present, nor with any apparent regard to the history
+of fossils, but merely to express the appearance of advancement in the
+orders of the Cuvierian system, assuming, as the criterion of that advancement,
+&ldquo;an increase in the number and extent of the manifestations of
+life, or of the relations which an organized being bears to the external
+world.&rdquo;&nbsp; Excepting in the relative situation of the annelida
+and a few of the mammal orders, the parity is perfect; nor may even
+these small discrepancies appear when the order of fossils shall have
+been further investigated, or a more correct scale shall have been formed.&nbsp;
+Meanwhile, it is a wonderful evidence in favour of our hypothesis, that
+a scale formed so arbitrarily should coincide to such a nearness with
+our present knowledge of the succession of animal forms upon earth,
+and also that both of these series should harmonize so well with the
+view given by modern physiologists of the embryotic progress of one
+of the organs of the highest order of animals.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>TABLE <a name="citation226"></a><a href="#footnote226">{226}</a></p>
+<p>Table shows: scale of animal kingdom (the numbers indicate orders);
+order of animals in; ascending series of rocks; f&oelig;tal human brain
+resembles, in</p>
+<p>(The numbers indicate orders)</p>
+<p>Rocks: 1. Gneiss and Mica Slate system<br />F&oelig;tal: 1st month,
+that of an avertebrated animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: RADIATA (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)<br />Order: Zoophyta, Polypiaria<br />Rocks:
+2. Clay Slate and Grawacke system<br />F&oelig;tal: 1st month, that
+of an avertebrated animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: MOLLUSCA (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)<br />Order: Conchifera, Double-shelled
+Mollusks<br />Rocks: 3. Silurian system<br />F&oelig;tal: 1st month,
+that of an avertebrated animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: ARTICULATA <i>Annelida</i> (12, 13, 14)<br />Rocks: 3. Silurian
+system<br />F&oelig;tal: 1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: ARTICULATA <i>Crustacea</i> (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)<br />Order:
+Crustacea, Annelida, Crustaceous Fishes<br />Rocks: 3. Silurian system<br />F&oelig;tal:
+1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: ARTICULATA <i>Arachnida &amp; Insecta</i> (21-31)<br />Order:
+Crustaceous Fishes<br />Rocks: 4. Old Red Sandstone<br />F&oelig;tal:
+1st month, that of an avertebrated animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Pisces</i> (32, 33, 34, 35, 36)<br />Order:
+True Fishes<br />Rocks: 5. Carboniferous formation<br />F&oelig;tal:
+2nd month, that of a fish;</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Reptilia</i> (37, 38, 39, 40)<br />Order: Piscine
+Saurians (ichthyosaurus, &amp;c.), Pterodactyles, Crocodiles, Tortoises,
+Batrachians<br />Rocks: 6. New Red Sandstone<br />F&oelig;tal: 3rd month,
+that of a turtle;</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Aves</i> (41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46)<br />Order:
+Birds<br />Rocks: 6. New Red Sandstone<br />F&oelig;tal: 4th month,
+that of a bird;</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 47 Cetacea<br />Order: (Bone of
+a marsupial animal)<br />Rocks: 7. Oolite</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 48 Ruminantia<br />Order: (Bone
+of a marsupial animal)<br />Rocks: 8. Cretaceous formation</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 49 Pachydermata<br />Order: Pachydermata
+(tapirs, horses, &amp;c.)<br />Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 50 Edentata<br />Order: Pachydermata
+(tapirs, horses, &amp;c.)<br />Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 51 Rodentia<br />Order: Rodentia
+(dormouse, squirrel, &amp;c.)<br />Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene<br />F&oelig;tal:
+5th month, that of a rodent;</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 52 Marsupialia<br />Order: Marsupialia
+(racoon, opossum, &amp;c.)<br />Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene<br />F&oelig;tal:
+6th month, that of a ruminant;</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 53 Amphibia<br />Order: Marsupialia
+(racoon, opossum, &amp;c.)<br />Rocks: 9. Lower Eocene<br />F&oelig;tal:
+6th month, that of a ruminant;</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 54 Digitigrada<br />Order: Digitigrada
+(genette, fox, wolf, &amp;c.)<br />Rocks: 10. Miocene<br />F&oelig;tal:
+7th month, that of a digitigrade animal;</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 55 Plantigrada<br />Order: Plantigrada
+(bear)<br />Rocks: 10. Miocene</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 55 Plantigrada<br />Order: Cetacea
+(lamantins, seals, whales)<br />Rocks: 10. Miocene</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 56 Insectivora<br />Order: Edentata
+(sloths, &amp;c.)<br />Rocks: 11. Pliocene</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 56 Insectivora<br />Order: Ruminantia
+(oxen, deer, &amp;c.)<br />Rocks: 11. Pliocene</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 57 Cheiroptera<br />Rocks: 11.
+Pliocene</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 58 Quadrumana<br />Order: Quadrumana
+(monkeys)<br />Rocks: 11. Pliocene<br />F&oelig;tal: 8th month, that
+of the quadrumana;</p>
+<p>Scale: VERTEBRATA <i>Mammalia</i>: 59 Bimana<br />Order: Bimana (man)<br />Rocks:
+12. Superficial deposits<br />F&oelig;tal: 9th month, attains full human
+character;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The reader has seen physical conditions several times referred to,
+as to be presumed to have in some way governed the progress of the development
+of the zoological circle.&nbsp; This language may seem vague, and, it
+may be asked, - can any particular physical condition be adduced as
+likely to have affected development?&nbsp; To this it may be answered,
+that air and light are probably amongst the principal agencies of this
+kind which operated in educing the various forms of being.&nbsp; Light
+is found to be essential to the development of the individual embryo.&nbsp;
+When tadpoles were placed in a perforated box, and that box sunk in
+the Seine, light being the only condition thus abstracted, they grew
+to a great size in their original form, but did not pass through the
+usual metamorphose which brings them to their mature state as frogs.&nbsp;
+The proteus, an animal of the frog kind, inhabiting the subterraneous
+waters of Carniola, and which never acquires perfect lungs so as to
+become a land animal, is presumed to be an example of arrested development,
+from the same cause.&nbsp; When, in connexion with these facts, we learn
+that human mothers living in dark and close cells under ground, - that
+is to say, with an inadequate provision of air and light, - are found
+to produce an unusual proportion of defective children, <a name="citation229"></a><a href="#footnote229">{229}</a>
+we can appreciate the important effects of both these physical conditions
+in ordinary reproduction.&nbsp; Now there is nothing to forbid the supposition
+that the earth has been at different stages of its career under different
+conditions, as to both air and light.&nbsp; On the contrary, we have
+seen reason for supposing that the proportion of carbonic acid gas (the
+element fatal to animal life) was larger at the time of the carboniferous
+formation than it afterwards became.&nbsp; We have also seen that astronomers
+regard the zodiacal light as a residuum of matter enveloping the sun,
+and which was probably at one time denser than it is now.&nbsp; Here
+we have the indications of causes for a progress in the purification
+of the atmosphere and in the diffusion of light during the earlier ages
+of the earth&rsquo;s history, with which the progress of organic life
+may have been conformable.&nbsp; An accession to the proportion of oxygen,
+and the effulgence of the central luminary, may have been the immediate
+prompting cause of all those advances from species to species which
+we have seen, upon other grounds, to be necessarily supposed as having
+taken place.&nbsp; And causes of the like nature may well be supposed
+to operate on other spheres of being, as well as on this.&nbsp; I do
+not indeed present these ideas as furnishing the true explanation of
+the progress of organic creation; they are merely thrown out as hints
+towards the formation of a just hypothesis, the completion of which
+is only to be looked for when some considerable advances shall have
+been made in the amount and character of our stock of knowledge.</p>
+<p>Early in this century, M. Lamarck, a naturalist of the highest character,
+suggested an hypothesis of organic progress which deservedly incurred
+much ridicule, although it contained a glimmer of the truth.&nbsp; He
+surmised, and endeavoured, with a great deal of ingenuity, to prove,
+that one being advanced in the course of generations to another, in
+consequence merely of its experience of wants calling for the exercise
+of its faculties in a particular direction, by which exercise new developments
+of organs took place, ending in variations sufficient to constitute
+a new species.&nbsp; Thus he thought that a bird would be driven by
+necessity to seek its food in the water, and that, in its efforts to
+swim, the outstretching of its claws would lead to the expansion of
+the intermediate membranes, and it would thus become web-footed.&nbsp;
+Now it is possible that wants and the exercise of faculties have entered
+in some manner into the production of the phenomena which we have been
+considering; but certainly not in the way suggested by Lamarck, whose
+whole notion is obviously so inadequate to account for the rise of the
+organic kingdoms, that we only can place it with pity among the follies
+of the wise.&nbsp; Had the laws of organic development been known in
+his time, his theory might have been of a more imposing kind.&nbsp;
+It is upon these that the present hypothesis is mainly founded.&nbsp;
+I take existing natural means, and shew them to have been capable of
+producing all the existing organisms, with the simple and easily conceivable
+aid of a higher generative law, which we perhaps still see operating
+upon a limited scale.&nbsp; I also go beyond the French philosopher
+to a very important point, the original Divine conception of all the
+forms of being which these natural laws were only instruments in working
+out and realizing.&nbsp; The actuality of such a conception I hold to
+be strikingly demonstrated by the discoveries of Macleay, Vigors, and
+Swainson, with respect to the affinities and analogies of animal (and
+by implication vegetable) organisms. <a name="citation232"></a><a href="#footnote232">{232}</a>&nbsp;
+Such a regularity in the <i>structure</i>, as we may call it, of the
+<i>classification of animals</i>, as is shewn in their systems, is totally
+irreconcilable with the idea of form going on to form merely as needs
+and wishes in the animals themselves dictated.&nbsp; Had such been the
+case, all would have been irregular, as things arbitrary necessarily
+are.&nbsp; But, lo, the whole plan of being is as symmetrical as the
+plan of a house, or the laying out of an old-fashioned garden!&nbsp;
+This must needs have been devised and arranged for beforehand.&nbsp;
+And what a preconception or forethought have we here!&nbsp; Let us only
+for a moment consider how various are the external physical conditions
+in which animals live - climate, soil, temperature, land, water, air
+- the peculiarities of food, and the various ways in which it is to
+be sought; the peculiar circumstances in which the business of reproduction
+and the care-taking of the young are to be attended to - all these required
+to be taken into account, and thousands of animals were to be formed
+suitable in organization and mental character for the concerns they
+were to have with these various conditions and circumstances - here
+a tooth fitted for crushing nuts; there a claw fitted to serve as a
+hook for suspension; here to repress teeth and develop a bony net-work
+instead; there to arrange for a bronchial apparatus, to last only for
+a 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 rigidly
+regular: let us, I say, only consider these things, and we shall see
+that the decreeing of laws to bring the whole about was an act involving
+such a degree of wisdom and device as we only can attribute, adoringly,
+to the one Eternal and Unchangeable.&nbsp; It may be asked, how does
+this reflection comport with that timid philosophy which would have
+us to draw back from the investigation of God&rsquo;s works, lest the
+knowledge of them should make us undervalue his greatness and forget
+his paternal character?&nbsp; Does it not rather appear that our ideas
+of the Deity can only be worthy of him in the ratio in which we advance
+in a knowledge of his works and ways; and that the acquisition of this
+knowledge is consequently an available means of our growing in a genuine
+reverence for him!</p>
+<p>But the idea that any of the lower animals have been concerned in
+any way with the origin of man - is not this degrading?&nbsp; Degrading
+is a term, expressive of a notion of the human mind, and the human mind
+is liable to prejudices which prevent its notions from being invariably
+correct.&nbsp; Were we acquainted for the first time with the circumstances
+attending the production of an individual of our race, we might equally
+think them degrading, and be eager to deny them, and exclude them from
+the admitted truths of nature.&nbsp; Knowing this fact familiarly and
+beyond contradiction, a healthy and natural mind finds no difficulty
+in regarding it complacently.&nbsp; Creative Providence has been pleased
+to order that it should be so, and it must therefore be submitted to.&nbsp;
+Now the idea as to the progress of organic creation, if we become satisfied
+of its truth, ought to be received precisely in this spirit.&nbsp; It
+has pleased Providence to arrange that one species should give birth
+to another, until the second highest gave birth to man, who is the very
+highest: be it so, it is our part to admire and to submit.&nbsp; The
+very faintest notion of there being anything ridiculous or degrading
+in the theory - how absurd does it appear, when we remember that every
+individual amongst us actually passes through the characters of the
+insect, the fish, and reptile, (to speak nothing of others,) before
+he is permitted to breathe the breath of life!&nbsp; But such notions
+are mere emanations of false pride and ignorant prejudice.&nbsp; He
+who conceives them little reflects that they, in reality, involve the
+principle of a contempt for the works and ways of God.&nbsp; For it
+may be asked, if He, as appears, has chosen to employ inferior organisms
+as a generative medium for the production of higher ones, even including
+ourselves, what right have we, his humble creatures, to find fault?&nbsp;
+There is, also, in this prejudice, an element of unkindliness towards
+the lower animals, which is utterly out of place.&nbsp; These creatures
+are all of them part products of the Almighty Conception, as well as
+ourselves.&nbsp; All of them display wondrous evidences of his wisdom
+and benevolence.&nbsp; All of them have had assigned to them by their
+Great Father a part in the drama of the organic world, as well as ourselves.&nbsp;
+Why should they be held in such contempt?&nbsp; Let us regard them in
+a proper spirit, as parts of the grand plan, instead of contemplating
+them in the light of frivolous prejudices, and we shall be altogether
+at a loss to see how there should be any degradation in the idea of
+our race having been genealogically connected with them.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>MACLEAY SYSTEM OF ANIMATED NATURE.&nbsp; THIS SYSTEM CONSIDERED
+IN CONNEXION WITH THE PROGRESS OF ORGANIC CREATION, AND AS INDICATING
+THE NATURAL STATUS OF MAN.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It is now high time to advert to the system formed by the animated
+tribes, both with a view to the possible illustration of the preceding
+argument, and for the light which it throws upon that general system
+of nature which it is the more comprehensive object of this book to
+ascertain.</p>
+<p>The vegetable and animal kingdoms are arranged upon a scale, starting
+from simply organized forms, and going on to the more complex, each
+of these forms being but slightly different from those next to it on
+both sides.&nbsp; The lowest and most slightly developed forms in the
+two kingdoms are so closely connected, that it is impossible to say
+where vegetable ends and animal begins.&nbsp; United at what may be
+called their bases, they start away in different directions, but not
+altogether to lose sight of each other.&nbsp; On the contrary, they
+maintain a strict analogy throughout the whole of their subsequent courses,
+sub-kingdom for sub-kingdom, class for class; shewing a beautiful, though
+as yet obscure relation between the two grand forms of being, and consequently
+a unity in the laws which brought them both into existence.&nbsp; So
+complete does this analogy appear, even in the present imperfect state
+of science, that I fully expect in a few years to see the animal and
+vegetable kingdoms duly ranked up against each other in a system of
+parallels, which will admit of our assigning to each species in the
+former the particular shrub or tree corresponding to it in the latter,
+all marked by unmistakable analogies of the most interesting kind.</p>
+<p>It is as yet but a few years since a system of subordinate analogies
+not less remarkable began to be speculated upon as within the range
+of the animal kingdom.&nbsp; Probably it also exists in the vegetable
+kingdom; but to this point no direct attention has been given; so we
+are left to infer that such is the case from theoretical considerations
+only.&nbsp; We are indebted for what we know of these beautiful analogies
+to three naturalists - Macleay, Vigors, and Swainson, whose labours
+tempt us to dismiss in a great measure the artificial classifications
+hitherto used, and make an entirely new conspectus of the animal kingdom,
+not to speak of the corresponding reform which will be required in our
+systems of botany also.</p>
+<p>The Macleay system, as it may be called in honour of its principal
+author, announces that, whether we take the whole animal kingdom, or
+any definite division of it, we shall find that we are examining a group
+of beings which is capable of being arranged along a series of close
+affinities, <i>in a circular form</i>, - that is to say, starting from
+any one portion of the group, when it is properly arranged, we can proceed
+from one to another by minute gradations, till at length, having run
+through the whole, we return to the point whence we set out.&nbsp; All
+natural groups of animals are, therefore, in the language of Mr. Macleay,
+<i>circular</i>; and the possibility of throwing any supposed group
+into a circular arrangement is held as a decisive test of its being
+a real or natural one.&nbsp; It is of course to be understood that each
+circle is composed of a set of inferior circles: for example, a set
+of <i>tribe</i> circles composes an <i>order</i>; a set of <i>order</i>
+circles, again, forms a <i>class</i>; and so on.&nbsp; Of each group,
+the component circles are <i>invariably five in number</i>: thus, in
+the animal kingdom, there are five sub-kingdoms, - the vertebrata, annulosa,
+<a name="citation239a"></a><a href="#footnote239a">{239a}</a> radiata,
+acrita, <a name="citation239b"></a><a href="#footnote239b">{239b}</a>
+mollusca.&nbsp; Take, again, one of these sub-kingdoms, the vertebrata,
+and we find it composed of five classes, - the mammalia, reptilia, pisces,
+amphibia, and aves, each of the other sub-kingdoms being similarly divisible.&nbsp;
+Take the mammalia, and it is in like manner found to be composed of
+five orders, - the cheirotheria, <a name="citation239c"></a><a href="#footnote239c">{239c}</a>
+fer&aelig;, cetacea, glires, ungulata.&nbsp; Even in this numerical
+uniformity, which goes down to the lowest ramifications of the system,
+there would be something very remarkable, as arguing a definite and
+preconceived arrangement; but this is only the least curious part of
+the Macleay theory.</p>
+<p>We shall best understand the wonderfully complex system of analogies
+developed by that theory, if we start from the part of the kingdom in
+which they were first traced, - namely, the class aves, or birds.&nbsp;
+This gives for its five orders, - <i>incessores</i>, (perching birds,)
+<i>raptores</i>, (birds of prey,) <i>natatores</i>, (swimming birds,)
+<i>grallatores</i>, (waders,) <i>rasores</i>, (scrapers.)&nbsp; In these
+orders our naturalists discerned distinct organic characters, of different
+degrees of perfectness, the first being the most perfect with regard
+to the general character of the class, and therefore the best representative
+of that class; whence it was called the <i>typical</i> order.&nbsp;
+The second was found to be inferior, or rather to have a less perfect
+balance of qualities; hence it was designated the <i>sub-typical</i>.&nbsp;
+In this are comprehended the chief noxious and destructive animals of
+the circle to which it belongs.&nbsp; The other three groups were called
+aberrant, as exhibiting a much wider departure from the typical standard,
+although the last of the three is observed to make a certain recovery,
+and join on to the typical group, so as to complete the circle.&nbsp;
+The first of the aberrant groups (natatores) is remarkable for making
+the water the theatre of its existence, and the birds composing it are
+in general of comparatively large bulk.&nbsp; The second (grallatores)
+are long-limbed and long-billed, that they may wade and pick up their
+subsistence in the shallows and marshes in which they chiefly live.&nbsp;
+The third (rasores) are distinguished by strong feet, for walking or
+running on the ground, and for scraping in it for their food; also by
+wings designed to scarcely raise them off the earth and, farther, by
+a general domesticity of character and usefulness to man.</p>
+<p>Now the most remarkable circumstance is, that these organic characters,
+habits, and moral properties, were found to be traceable more or less
+distinctly in the corresponding portions of every other group, even
+of those belonging to distant subdivisions of the animal kingdom, as,
+for instance, the insects.&nbsp; The incessores (typical order of aves)
+being reduced to its constituent circles or tribes, it was found that
+these strictly represented the five orders.&nbsp; In the <i>conirostres</i>
+are the perfections which belong to the incessores as an order, with
+the conspicuous external feature of a comparatively small notch in their
+bills; in the <i>dentirostres</i>, the notch is strong and toothlike,
+(hence the name of the tribe) assimilating them to the raptores; the
+<i>fissirostres</i> come into analogy with the natatores in the slight
+development of their feet and their great powers of flight; the <i>tenuirostres</i>
+have the small mouths and long soft bills of the grallatores.&nbsp;
+Finally, the <i>scansores</i> resemble the rasores in their superior
+intelligence and docility, and in their having strong limbs and a bill
+entire at the tip.&nbsp; This parity of qualities becomes clearer when
+placed in a tabular form:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<pre><i>Orders of Birds.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Characters.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Tribes of Incessores.</i></pre>
+<pre>Incessores&nbsp; - Most perfect of their circle;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Conirostres.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;notch of bill small<br />Raptores&nbsp; &nbsp; - Notch of bill like a tooth&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Dentirostres.<br />Natatores&nbsp;  - Slightly developed feet;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Fissirostres.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;strong flight<br />Grallatores - Small mouths; long soft bills&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Tenuirostres.<br />Rasores&nbsp; &nbsp;  - Strong feet, short wings;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Scansores.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;docile and domestic</pre>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Some comprehensive terms are much wanted to describe these five characters,
+so curiously repeated throughout the whole of the animal, and probably
+also the vegetable kingdom.&nbsp; Meanwhile, Mr. Swainson calls them
+typical, sub-typical, natatorial, suctorial, <a name="citation242"></a><a href="#footnote242">{242}</a>
+and rasorial.&nbsp; Some of his illustrations of the principle are exceedingly
+interesting.&nbsp; He shews that the leading animal of a typical circle
+usually has a combination of properties concentrated in itself, without
+any of these preponderating remarkably over others.&nbsp; The sub-typical
+circles, he says, &ldquo;do not comprise the largest individuals in
+bulk, but always those which are the most powerfully armed, either for
+inflicting injury on their own class, for exciting terror, producing
+injury, or creating annoyance to man.&nbsp; Their dispositions are often
+sanguinary, since the forms most conspicuous among them live by rapine,
+and subsist on the blood of other animals.&nbsp; They are, in short,
+symbolically types of <i>evil</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; This symbolical character
+is most conspicuous about the centre of the series of gradations:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Kingdom . . . Annulosa.<br />Sub-kingdom . . . Reptilia.<br />Class
+(Mammalia) . . .&nbsp; Fer&aelig;.<br />(Aves) . . . Raptores.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>In the annulosa it is not distinct, although we must also remember
+that insects do produce enormous ravages and annoyance in many parts
+of the earth.&nbsp; In the reptilia it is more distinct, since to this
+class belong the ophidia, (serpents,) an order peculiarly noxious.&nbsp;
+It comes to a kind of climax in the fer&aelig; and raptores, which fulfil
+the function of butchers among land animals.&nbsp; As we descend through
+tribes, families, genera, species, it becomes fainter and fainter, but
+never altogether vanishes.&nbsp; In the dentirostres, for instance,
+we have in a subdued form the hooked bill and predaceous character of
+the raptores; to this tribe belongs the family of the shrikes, so deadly
+to all the lesser field birds.&nbsp; In the genus bos, we have, in the
+sub-typical group, the bison, &ldquo;wild, revengeful, and shewing an
+innate detestation of man.&rdquo;&nbsp; In equus, we have, in the same
+situation, the zebra, which actually shews the stripes of the tiger,
+and is as remarkable for its wildness as its congeners, the horse and
+ass, are for their docility and usefulness.&nbsp; To quote again from
+Mr. Swainson, &ldquo;the singular threatening aspect which the caterpillars
+of the sphinx moth assume on being disturbed, is a remarkable modification
+of the terrific or evil nature which is impressed in one form or another,
+palpable or remote, upon all sub-typical groups; for this division of
+the lepidopterous order is precisely of this denomination.&nbsp; In
+the pre-eminent type of this order of insects, the butterflies, (papilionides,)
+our associations little prepare us for expecting any trace of the evil
+principle; but here, too, there is a sub-typical division.&nbsp; These,&rdquo;
+says our naturalist, &ldquo;are distinguished by their caterpillars
+being armed with formidable spines or prickles, which in general are
+possessed of some highly acrimonious or poisonous quality, capable of
+injuring those who touch them.&nbsp; It is only,&rdquo; continues Mr.
+Swainson, &ldquo;when extensive researches bring to light a uniformity
+of results, that we can venture to believe they are so universal as
+to deserve being ranked as primary laws.&nbsp; Thus, when a celebrated
+entomologist denounced as impure the black and lurid beetles forming
+the saprophagous petalocera of Mr. Macleay, a tribe living only upon
+putrid vegetable matter, and hiding themselves in their disgusting food,
+or in dark hollows of the earth, neither of these celebrated men suspected
+the absolute fact, elicited from our analogies of this group, that this
+very tribe constituted the sub-typical group of one of the primary divisions
+of coleopterous insects: nor had they any suspicion that, by the filthy
+habits and repulsive forms of these beetles, nature had intended that
+they should be types or emblems of hundreds of other groups, distinguished
+by peculiarities equally indicative of evil.&nbsp; On the other hand,
+the thalerophagous petalocera, forming the typical group of the same
+division, present us with all the perfections and habits belonging to
+their kind.&nbsp; These families of beetles live only upon fresh vegetables;
+they are diurnal, and sport in the glare of day, pure in their food,
+elegant in their shapes, and beautiful in their colours.&rdquo; <a name="citation246"></a><a href="#footnote246">{246}</a></p>
+<p>The third type, (first of the three aberrant,) called by Mr. Swainson,
+the <i>natatorial</i>, or aquatic, are chiefly remarkable for their
+bulk, the disproportionate size of the head, and the absence, or slight
+development of the feet.&nbsp; They partake of the predaceous and destructive
+character of the adjoining sub-typical group, and the means of their
+predacity are generally found in the mouth alone.&nbsp; In the primary
+division of the animal kingdom, we find the type in the radiata, not
+one of which lives out of water.&nbsp; In the vertebrata, it is in the
+fishes.&nbsp; In both of these, feet are totally wanting.&nbsp; Descending
+to the class mammalia, we have this type in the cetacea, which present
+a comparatively slight development of limbs.&nbsp; In the aves, as we
+have seen, the type is presented in the natatores, whose name has been
+adopted as an appropriate term for all the corresponding groups.&nbsp;
+An enumeration of some other examples of the natatorial type, as the
+cephalopoda (instanced in the cuttle-fish) in the mollusca; the crustacea
+(crabs, &amp;c.) in the annulosa; the owls (which often duck for fish)
+in the raptores; the ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, &amp;c., among reptilia,
+will serve to bring the general character, and its pervasion of the
+whole animal world, forcibly before the mind of the reader.</p>
+<p>The next type is that of meanest and most imperfect organization,
+the lower termination of all groups, as the typical is the upper.&nbsp;
+It is called by Mr. Swainson the suctorial, from a very generally prevalent
+peculiarity, that of drawing sustenance by suction.&nbsp; The acrita,
+or polypes, 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 and tenuirostres,
+among birds; the coleoptera, (bug, louse, flea, &amp;c.) among insects;
+the gastrobranchus, among fishes; are examples which will illustrate
+the special characters of this type.&nbsp; These are smallness, particularly
+in the head and mouth, feebleness, and want of offensive protection,
+defect of organs of mastication, considerable powers of swift movement,
+and (often) a parasitic mode of living; while of negative qualities,
+there are, besides, indisposition to domestication, and an unsuitableness
+to serve as human food.</p>
+<p>The rasorial type comprehends most of the animals which become domesticated
+and useful to man, as, first, the fowls which give a name to the type,
+the ungulata, and more particularly the ruminantia, among quadrupeds,
+and the dog among the fer&aelig;.&nbsp; Gentleness, familiarity with
+man, and a peculiar approach to human intelligence, are the leading
+mental characteristics of animals of this type.&nbsp; Amongst external
+characters, we generally find power of limbs and feet for locomotion
+on land, (to which the rasorial type is confined,) abundant tail and
+ornaments for the head, whether in the form of tufts, crests, horns,
+or bony excrescences.&nbsp; In the animal kingdom, the mollusca are
+the rasorial type, which, however, only shews itself there in their
+soft and sluggish character, and their being very generally edible.&nbsp;
+In the ptilota, or winged insects, the hymenopterous are the rasorial
+type, and it is not therefore surprising to find amongst them the ants
+and bees, &ldquo;the most social, intelligent, and in the latter case,
+most useful to man, of all the annulose animals.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As yet the speculations on representation are imperfect, in consequence
+of the novelty of the doctrine, and the defective state of our knowledge
+of animated nature.&nbsp; It has, however, been so fully proved in the
+aves, and traced so clearly in other parts of the animal kingdom, and
+as a general feature of that part of nature, that hardly a doubt can
+exist of its being universally applicable.&nbsp; Even in the lowly forms
+of the acrita, (polypes,) the suctorial type of the animal kingdom,
+representation has been discerned, and with some remarkable results
+as to the history of our world.&nbsp; The acrita were the first forms
+of animal life upon earth, the starting point of that great branch of
+organization.&nbsp; Now, this sub-kingdom consists, like the rest, of
+five groups, (classes,) and these are respectively representations of
+the acrita itself, and the other four sub-kingdoms, which had not come
+into existence when the acrita were formed.&nbsp; The polypi vaginati,
+in the crustaceous covering of the living mass, and their more or less
+articulated structure, represent the <i>annulosa</i>.&nbsp; In the radiated
+forms of the rotifera, and the simple structure of the polypi rudes,
+we are reminded of the <i>radiata</i>.&nbsp; The <i>mollusca</i> are
+typified in the soft, mucous, sluggish intestina.&nbsp; And, finally,
+in the fleshy living mass which surrounds the bony and hollow axis of
+the polypi natantes, we have a sketch of the <i>vertebrata</i>.&nbsp;
+The acrita thus appear as a prophecy of the higher events of animal
+development.&nbsp; They shew that the nobler orders of being, including
+man himself, were contemplated from the first, and came into existence
+by virtue of a law, the operation of which had commenced ages before
+their forms were realized.</p>
+<p>The system of representation is therefore to be regarded as <i>a
+powerful additional proof of the hypothesis of organic progress by virtue
+of law</i>.&nbsp; It establishes the unity of animated nature and the
+definite character of its entire constitution.&nbsp; It enables us to
+see how, under the flowing robes of nature, where all looks arbitrary
+and accidental, there is an artificiality of the most rigid kind.&nbsp;
+The natural, we now perceive, sinks into and merges in a Higher Artificial.&nbsp;
+To adopt a comparison more apt than dignified, we may be said to be
+placed here as insects are in a garden of the old style.&nbsp; Our first
+unassisted view is limited, and we perceive only the irregularities
+of the minute surface, and single shrubs which appear arbitrarily scattered.&nbsp;
+But our view at length extending and becoming more comprehensive, we
+begin to see parterres balancing each other, trees, statues, and arbours
+placed symmetrically, and that the whole is an assemblage of parts mutually
+reflective.&nbsp; It can scarcely be necessary to point to the inference
+hence arising with regard to the origination of nature in some Power,
+of which man&rsquo;s mind is a faint and humble representation.&nbsp;
+The insects of the garden, supposing them to be invested with reasoning
+power, and aware how artificial are their own works, might of course
+very reasonably conclude that, being in its totality an artificial object,
+the garden was the work of some maker or artificer.&nbsp; And so also
+must we conclude, when we attain a knowledge of the artificiality which
+is at the basis of nature, that nature is wholly the production of a
+Being resembling, but infinitely greater than ourselves.</p>
+<p>Organic beings are, then, bound together in development, and in a
+system of both affinities and analogies.&nbsp; Now, it will be asked,
+does this agree with what we know of the geographical distribution of
+organic beings, and of the history of organic progress as delineated
+by geology?&nbsp; Let us first advert to the geographical question.</p>
+<p>Plants, as is well known, require various kinds of soil, forms of
+geographical surface, climate, and other conditions, for their existence.&nbsp;
+And it is everywhere found that, however isolated a particular spot
+may be with regard to these conditions, - as a mountain top in a torrid
+country, the marsh round a salt spring far inland, or an island placed
+far apart in the ocean, - appropriate plants have there taken up their
+abode.&nbsp; But the torrid zone divides the two temperate regions from
+each other by the space of more than forty-six degrees, and the torrid
+and temperate zones together form a much broader line of division between
+the two arctic regions.&nbsp; The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the
+Persian Gulf, also divide the various portions of continent in the torrid
+and temperate zones from each other.&nbsp; Australia is also divided
+by a broad sea from the continent of Asia.&nbsp; Thus there are various
+portions of the earth separated from each other in such a way as to
+preclude anything like a general communication of the seeds of their
+respective plants towards each other.&nbsp; Hence arises an interesting
+question - Are the plants of the various isolated regions which enjoy
+a parity of climate and other conditions, identical or the reverse?&nbsp;
+The answer is - that in such regions the vegetation bears a general
+resemblance, but the <i>species</i> are nearly all different, and there
+is even, in a considerable measure, a diversity of families.</p>
+<p>The general facts have been thus stated: in the arctic and antarctic
+regions, and in those parts of lower latitudes, which, from their elevation,
+possess the same cold climate, there is always a similar or analogous
+vegetation, but few species are common to the various situations.&nbsp;
+In like manner, the intertropical vegetation of Asia, Africa, and America,
+are specifically different, though generally similar.&nbsp; The southern
+region of America is equally diverse from that of Africa, a country
+similar in clime, but separated by a vast extent of ocean.&nbsp; The
+vegetation of Australia, another region similarly placed in respect
+of clime, is even more peculiar.&nbsp; These facts are the more remarkable
+when we discover that, in most instances, the plants of one region have
+thriven when transplanted to another of parallel clime.&nbsp; This would
+shew that parity of conditions does not lead to a parity of productions
+so exact as to include identity of species, or even genera.&nbsp; Besides
+the various isolated regions here enumerated, there are some others
+indicated by naturalists as exhibiting a vegetation equally peculiar.&nbsp;
+Some of these are isolated by mountains, or the interposition of sandy
+wastes.&nbsp; For example, the temperate region of the elder continent
+is divided about the centre of Asia, and the east of that line is different
+from the west.&nbsp; So also is the same region divided in North America
+by the Rocky Mountains.&nbsp; Abyssinia and Nubia constitute another
+distinct botanical region.&nbsp; De Candolle enumerates in all twenty
+well-marked portions of the earth&rsquo;s surface which are peculiar
+with respect to vegetation; a number which would be greatly increased
+if remote islands and isolated mountain ranges were to be included.</p>
+<p>When we come to the zoology, we find precisely similar results, excepting
+that man (with, perhaps, some of the less conspicuous forms of being)
+is universal, and that several tribes, as the bear and dog, appear to
+have passed by the land connexion from the arctic regions of the eastern
+to those of the western hemisphere.&nbsp; &ldquo;With these exceptions,&rdquo;
+says Dr. Prichard, &ldquo;and without any others, as far as zoological
+researches have yet gone, it may be asserted that no individual species
+are common to distant regions.&nbsp; In parallel climates, analogous
+species replace each other; sometimes, but not frequently, the same
+genus is found in two separate continents; but the species which are
+natives of one region are not identical with corresponding races indigenous
+in the opposite hemisphere.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A similar result arises when we compare the three great intertropical
+regions, as well as the extreme spaces of the three great continents,
+which advance into the temperate climates of the southern hemisphere.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thus, the tribes of simi&aelig;, (monkeys,) of the dog and
+cat kinds, of pachyderms, including elephants, tapirs, rhinoceroses,
+hogs, of bats, of saurian and ophidian reptiles, as well of birds and
+other terrene animals, are all different in the three great continents.&nbsp;
+In the lower departments of the mammiferous family, we find that the
+bruta, or edendata, (sloths, armadillos, &amp;c.,) of Africa, are differently
+organized from those of America, and these again from the tribes found
+in the Malayan archipelago and Terra Australis.&rdquo; <a name="citation255"></a><a href="#footnote255">{255}</a></p>
+<p>It does not appear that the diversity between the similar regions
+of Africa, Asia, and America, is occasioned in all instances by any
+disqualification of these countries to support precisely the same genera
+or species.&nbsp; The ox, horse, goat, &amp;c., of the elder continent
+have thriven and extended themselves in the new, and many of the indigenous
+tribes of America would no doubt flourish in corresponding climates
+in Europe, Asia, and Africa.&nbsp; It has, however, been remarked by
+naturalists unacquainted with the Macleay system, that the larger and
+more powerful animals of their respective orders belong to the elder
+continent, and that thus the animals of America, unlike the features
+of inanimate nature, appear to be upon a small scale.&nbsp; The swiftest
+and most agile animals, and a large proportion of those most useful
+to man, are also natives of the elder continent.&nbsp; On the other
+hand, the bulk of the edentata, a group remarkable for defects and meanness
+of organization, are American.&nbsp; The zoology of America may be said,
+upon the whole, to recede from that of Asia, &ldquo;and perhaps in a
+greater degree,&rdquo; adds Dr. Prichard, &ldquo;from that of Africa.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+A much greater recession is, however, observed in both the botany and
+zoology of Australia.</p>
+<p>There &ldquo;we do not find, in the great masses of vegetation, either
+the majesty of the virgin forests of America, or the variety and elegance
+of those of Asia, or the delicacy and freshness of the woods of our
+temperate countries of Europe.&nbsp; The vegetation is generally gloomy
+and sad; it has the aspect of our evergreens or heaths; the plants are
+for the most part woody; the leaves of nearly all the plants are linear,
+lanceolated, small, coriaceous, and spinescent.&nbsp; The grasses, which
+elsewhere are generally soft and flexible, participate in the stiffness
+of the other vegetables.&nbsp; The greater part of the plants of New
+Holland belong to new genera; and those included in the genera already
+known are of new species.&nbsp; The natural families which prevail are
+those of the heaths, the prote&aelig;, composit&aelig;, leguminos&aelig;,
+and myrthoide&aelig;; the larger trees all belong to the last family.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation257"></a><a href="#footnote257">{257}</a></p>
+<p>The prevalent animals of Australia are not less peculiar.&nbsp; It
+is well known that none above the marsupialia, or pouched animals, are
+native to it.&nbsp; The most conspicuous are these marsupials, which
+exist in great varieties here, though unknown in the elder continent,
+and only found in a few mean forms in America.&nbsp; Next to them are
+the monotremata, which are entirely peculiar to this portion of the
+earth.&nbsp; Now these are animals at the bottom of the mammiferous
+class, adjoining to that of birds, of whose character and organization
+the monotremata largely partake, the ornithorynchus presenting the bill
+and feet of a duck, producing its young in eggs, and having, like birds,
+a clavicle between the two shoulders.&nbsp; The birds of Australia vary
+in structure and plumage, but all have some singularity about them -
+the swan, for instance, is black.&nbsp; The country abounds in reptiles,
+and the prevalent fishes are of the early kinds, having a cartilaginous
+structure.</p>
+<p>Altogether, the plants and animals of this minor continent convey
+the impression of an early system of things, such as might be displayed
+in other parts of the earth about the time of the oolite.&nbsp; In connexion
+with this circumstance, it is a fact of some importance, that the geognostic
+character of Australia, its vast arid plains, its little diversified
+surface and consequent paucity of streams, and the very slight development
+of volcanic rock on its surface, seem to indicate a system of physical
+conditions, such as we may suppose to have existed elsewhere in the
+oolitic era: perhaps we see the chalk formation preparing there in the
+vast coral beds frontiering the coast.&nbsp; Australia thus appears
+as a portion of the earth which has, from some unknown causes, been
+belated in its physical and organic development.&nbsp; And certainly
+the greater part of its surface is not fitted to be an advantageous
+place of residence for beings above the marsupialia, and judging from
+analogy, it may yet be subjected to a series of changes in the highest
+degree inconvenient to any human beings who may have settled upon it.</p>
+<p>The general conclusions regarding the geography of organic nature,
+may be thus stated.&nbsp; (1.) There are numerous distinct foci of organic
+production throughout the earth.&nbsp; (2.) These have everywhere advanced
+in accordance with the local conditions of climate &amp;c., as far as
+at least the class and order are concerned, a diversity taking place
+in the lower gradations.&nbsp; No physical or geographical reason appearing
+for this diversity, we are led to infer that, (3,) it is the result
+of minute and inappreciable causes giving the law of organic development
+a particular direction in the lower subdivisions of the two kingdoms.&nbsp;
+(4.) Development has not gone on to equal results in the various continents,
+being most advanced in the eastern continent, next in the western, and
+least in Australia, this inequality being perhaps the result of the
+comparative antiquity of the various regions, geologically and geographically.</p>
+<p>It must at the same time be admitted that the line of organic development
+has nowhere required for its advance the whole of the families comprehended
+in the two kingdoms, seeing that some of these are confined to one continent,
+and some to another, without a conceivable possibility of one having
+been connected with the other in the way of ancestry.&nbsp; The two
+great families of quadrumana, cebid&aelig; and simiad&aelig;, are a
+noted instance, the one being exclusively American, while the other
+belongs entirely to the old world.&nbsp; There are many other cases
+in which the full circular group can only be completed by taking subdivisions
+from various continents.&nbsp; This would seem to imply that, while
+the entire system is so remarkable for its unity, it has nevertheless
+been produced in lines geographically detached, these lines perhaps
+consisting of particular typical groups placed in an independent succession,
+or of two or more of these groups.&nbsp; And for this idea there is,
+even in the present imperfect state of our knowledge of animated nature,
+some countenance in ascertained facts, the birds of Australia, for example,
+being chiefly of the suctorial type, while it may be presumed that the
+observation as to the predominance of the useful animals in the Old
+World, is not much different from saying that the rasorial type is there
+peculiarly abundant.&nbsp; It does not appear that the idea of independent
+lines, consisting of particular types, or sets of types, is necessarily
+inconsistent with the general hypothesis, as nothing yet ascertained
+of the Macleay system forbids their having an independent set of affinities.&nbsp;
+On this subject, however, there is as yet much obscurity, and it must
+be left to future inquirers to clear it up.</p>
+<p>We must now call to mind that the geographical distribution of plants
+and animals was very different in the geological ages from what it is
+now.&nbsp; Down to a time not long antecedent to man, the same vegetation
+overspread every clime, and a similar uniformity marked the zoology.&nbsp;
+This is conceived by M. Brogniart, with great plausibility, to have
+been the result of a uniformity of climate, produced by the as yet unexhausted
+effect of the internal heat of the earth upon its surface; whereas climate
+has since depended chiefly on external sources of heat, as modified
+by the various meteorological influences.&nbsp; However the early uniform
+climate was produced, certain it is that, from about the close of the
+geological epoch, plants and animals have been dispersed over the globe
+with a regard to their particular characters, and specimens of both
+are found so isolated in particular situations, as utterly to exclude
+the idea that they came thither from any common centre.&nbsp; It may
+be asked, - Considering that, in the geological epoch, species are not
+limited to particular regions, and that since the close of that epoch,
+they are very peculiarly limited, are we to presume the present organisms
+of the world to have been created <i>ab initio</i> after that time?&nbsp;
+To this it may be answered, - Not necessarily, as it so happens that
+animals begin to be much varied, or to appear in a considerable variety
+of species, towards the close of the geological history.&nbsp; It may
+have been that the multitudes of locally peculiar species only came
+into being after the uniform climate had passed away.&nbsp; It may have
+only been when a varied climate arose, that the originally few species
+branched off into the present extensive variety.</p>
+<p>A question of a very interesting kind will now probably arise in
+the reader&rsquo;s mind - <i>What place or status is assigned to man
+in the new natural system</i>.&nbsp; Before going into this inquiry,
+it is necessary to advert to several particulars of the natural system
+not yet noticed.</p>
+<p>It is necessary, in particular, to ascertain the grades which exist
+in the classification of animals.&nbsp; In the line of the aves, Mr.
+Swainson finds these to be nine, the species pica, for example, being
+thus indicated:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<pre>Kingdom&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Animalia.<br />Sub-kingdom&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Vertebrata.<br />Class&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Aves.<br />Order&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Incessores.<br />Tribe&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Conirostres.<br />Family&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Corvid&aelig;.<br />Sub-family&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Corvin&aelig;.<br />Genus&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Corvus.<br />Sub-genus, or species&nbsp; &nbsp; Pica.</pre>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>This brings us down to species, the subdivision where intermarriage
+or breeding is usually considered as natural to animals, and where a
+resemblance of offspring to parents is generally persevered in.&nbsp;
+The dog, for instance, is a species, because all dogs can breed together,
+and the progeny partakes of the appearances of the parents.&nbsp; The
+human race is held as a species, primarily for the same reasons.&nbsp;
+Species, however, is liable to another subdivision, which naturalists
+call variety; and variety appears to be subject to exactly the same
+system of <i>representation</i> which have been traced in species and
+higher denominations.&nbsp; In canis, for instance, the bull-dog and
+mastiff represent the ferocious sub-typical group; the waterdog is natatorial;
+we see the speed and length of muzzle of the suctorial group in the
+greyhound; and the bushy tail and gentle and serviceable character of
+the rasorial in the shepherd&rsquo;s dog and spaniel.&nbsp; Even the
+striped and spotted skin of the tiger and panther is reproduced in the
+more ferocious kind of dogs - an indication of a fundamental connexion
+between physical and mental qualities which we have also seen in the
+zebra, and which is likewise displayed in the predominance of a yellow
+colour in the vultures and owls in common with the lion and his congeners.</p>
+<p>It is by no means clearly made out that this system of nine gradations
+over and above that of variety applies in all departments of nature.&nbsp;
+On the contrary, even Mr. Swainson gives series in which several of
+them are omitted.&nbsp; It may be that, in some departments of nature,
+variation from the class or order has gone down into fewer shades than
+in others; or it may be, that many of the variations have not survived
+till our era, or have not been as yet detected by naturalists; in either
+of which cases there may be a necessity for shortening the series by
+the omission of one or two grades, as for instance <i>tribe</i> or <i>sub-family</i>.&nbsp;
+This, however, is much to be regretted, as it introduces an irregularity
+into the natural system, and consequently throws a difficulty and doubt
+in the way of our investigating it.&nbsp; With these preliminary remarks,
+I shall proceed to inquire what is the natural status of man.</p>
+<p>That man&rsquo;s place is to be looked for in the class mammalia
+and sub-kingdom vertebrata admits of no doubt, from his possessing both
+the characters on which these divisions are founded.&nbsp; When we descend,
+however, below the <i>class</i>, we find no settled views on the subject
+amongst naturalists.&nbsp; Mr. Swainson, who alone has given a review
+of the animal kingdom on the Macleay system, unfortunately writes on
+this subject in a manner which excites a suspicion as to his judgment.&nbsp;
+His arrangement of the first or typical order of the mammalia is therefore
+to be received with great hesitation.&nbsp; It is as follows:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<pre>Typical&nbsp; &nbsp;  Quadrumana&nbsp; Pre-eminently organized for grasping.<br />Sub-typical Fer&aelig; . . .&nbsp; Claws retractile; carnivorous.<br />Natatorial&nbsp; Cetacea. .&nbsp; Pre-eminently aquatic; feet very short.<br />Suctorial&nbsp;  Glires . .&nbsp; Muzzle lengthened and pointed.<br />Rasorial&nbsp; &nbsp; Ungulata .&nbsp; Crests and other processes on the head.</pre>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>He then takes the quadrumana, and places it in the following arrangement:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<pre>Typical . .&nbsp;  Simiad&aelig;&nbsp; . . .&nbsp; (Monkeys of Old World.)<br />Sub-typical . Cebid&aelig;&nbsp;  . . .&nbsp; (Monkeys of New World.)<br />Natatorial .&nbsp; Unknown&nbsp; .<br />Suctorial . . Vespertilionid&aelig; (Bats.)<br />Rasorial .&nbsp; &nbsp; Lemurid&aelig; . .&nbsp; . (Lemurs.)</pre>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>He considers the simiad&aelig; as a complete circle, and argues thence
+that there is no room in the range of the animal kingdom for man.&nbsp;
+Man, he says, is not a constituent part of any circle, for, if he were,
+there ought to be other animals on each hand having affinity to him,
+whereas there are none, the resemblance of the orangs being one of mere
+analogy.&nbsp; Mr. Swainson therefore considers our race as standing
+apart, and forming a link between the unintelligent order of beings
+and the angels!&nbsp; And this in spite of the glaring fact that, in
+our teeth, hands, and other features grounded on by naturalists as characteristic,
+we do not differ more from the simiad&aelig; than the bats do from the
+lemurs - in spite also of that resemblance of analogy to the orangs
+which he himself admits, and which, at the least, must be held to imply
+a certain relation.&nbsp; He also overlooks that, though there may be
+no room for man in the circle of the simiad&aelig;, (this, indeed, is
+quite true,) there may be in the order, where he actually leaves a place
+entirely blank, or only to be filled up, as he suggests, by mermen!
+<a name="citation266"></a><a href="#footnote266">{266}</a>&nbsp; Another
+argument in his arrangement is, that it leaves the grades of classification
+very much abridged, there being at the most seven instead of nine.&nbsp;
+But serious argument on a theory so preposterous may be considered as
+nearly thrown away.&nbsp; I shall therefore at once proceed to suggest
+a new arrangement of this portion of the animal kingdom, in which man
+is allowed the place to which he is zoologically entitled.</p>
+<p>I propose that the typical order of the mammalia should be designated
+cheirotheria, from the sole character which is universal amongst them,
+their possessing hands, and with a regard to that pre-eminent qualification
+for grasping which has been ascribed to them - an analogy to the perching
+habit of the typical order of birds, which is worthy of particular notice.&nbsp;
+The tribes of the cheirotheria I arrange as follows:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<pre>Typical&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Bimana.<br />Sub-typical&nbsp; &nbsp; Simiad&aelig;.<br />Natatorial&nbsp; &nbsp;  Vespertilionid&aelig;.<br />Suctorial&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Lemurid&aelig;.<br />Rasorial&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Cebid&aelig;.</pre>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Here man is put into the typical place, as the genuine head, not
+only of this order, but of the whole animal world.&nbsp; The double
+affinity which is requisite is obtained, for here he has the simiad&aelig;
+on one hand, and the cebid&aelig; on the other.&nbsp; The five tribes
+of the order are completed, the vespertilionid&aelig; being shifted
+(provisionally) into the natatorial place, for which their appropriateness
+is so far evidenced by the aquatic habits of several of the tribe, and
+the lemurid&aelig; into the suctorial, to which their length of muzzle
+and remarkable saltatory power are highly suitable.&nbsp; At the same
+time, the simiad&aelig; are degraded from the typical place, to which
+they have no sort of pretension, and placed where their mean and mischievous
+character seem to require; the cebid&aelig; again being assigned that
+situation which their comparatively inoffensive dispositions, their
+arboreal habits, and their extraordinary development of the tail, (which
+with them is like a fifth hand,) render so proper.</p>
+<p>The zoological status thus assigned to the human race is precisely
+what might be expected.&nbsp; In order to understand its full value,
+it is necessary to observe how the various type peculiarities operate
+in fixing the character of the animals ranked in them.&nbsp; It is easy
+to conceive that they must be, in some instances, much mixed up with
+each other, and consequently obscured.&nbsp; If an animal, for example,
+is the suctorial member of a circle of species, forming the natatorial
+type of genera, forming a family or sub-family which in its turn is
+rasorial, its qualities must evidently be greatly mingled and ill to
+define.&nbsp; 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 again the rapacious
+or sub-typical group of its order, we may expect to find the qualities
+of that group exalted or intensified, and accordingly made the more
+conspicuous.&nbsp; Such is really the case with the vultures, in the
+rapacious birds, a family remarkable above all of their order for their
+carnivorous and foul habits.&nbsp; So, also, if we take the typical
+group of the birds, the incessores or perchers, and look in it for its
+typical group, the conirostres, and seek there again for the typical
+family of that group, the corvid&aelig;, we may expect to find a very
+marked superiority in organization and character.&nbsp; Such is really
+the case.&nbsp; &ldquo;The crow,&rdquo; says Mr. Swainson, &ldquo;unites
+in itself a greater number of properties than are to be found individually
+in any other genus of birds; as if in fact it had taken from all the
+other orders a portion of their peculiar qualities, for the purpose
+of exhibiting in what manner they could be combined.&nbsp; From the
+rapacious birds this &ldquo;type of types,&rdquo; as the crow has been
+justly called, takes the power of soaring in the air, and of seizing
+upon living birds, like the hawks, while its habit of devouring putrid
+substances, and picking out the eyes of young animals, is borrowed from
+the vultures.&nbsp; From the scansorial or climbing order it takes the
+faculty of picking the ground, and discovering its food when hidden
+from the eye, while the parrot family gives it the taste for vegetable
+food, and furnishes it with great cunning, sagacity, and powers of imitation,
+even to counterfeiting the human voice.&nbsp; Next come the order of
+waders, who impart their quota to the perfection of the crow by giving
+it great powers of flight, and perfect facility in walking, such being
+among the chief attributes of the suctorial order.&nbsp; Lastly, the
+aquatic birds contribute their portion, by giving this terrestrial bird
+the power of feeding not only on fish, which are their peculiar food,
+but actually of occasionally catching it. <a name="citation270"></a><a href="#footnote270">{270}</a>&nbsp;
+In this wonderful manner do we find the crow partially invested with
+the united properties of all other birds, while in its own order, that
+of the incessores or perchers, it stands the pre-eminent type.&nbsp;
+We cannot also fail to regard it as a remarkable proof of the superior
+organization and character of the corvid&aelig;, that they are adapted
+for all climates, and accordingly found all over the world.</p>
+<p>Mr. Swainson&rsquo;s description of the zoological status of the
+crow, written without the least design of throwing any light upon that
+of man, evidently does so in a remarkable degree.&nbsp; It prepares
+us to expect in the place among the mammalia, corresponding to that
+of the corvid&aelig; in the aves, a being or set of beings possessing
+a remarkable concentration of qualities from all the other groups of
+their order, but in general character as far above the corvid&aelig;
+as a typical group is above an aberrant one, the mammalia above the
+aves.&nbsp; Can any of the simiad&aelig; pretend to such a place, narrowly
+and imperfectly endowed as these creatures are - a mean reflection apparently
+of something higher?&nbsp; Assuredly not, and in this consideration
+alone Mr. Swainson&rsquo;s arrangement must fall to the ground.&nbsp;
+To fill worthily so lofty a station in the animated families man alone
+is competent.&nbsp; In him only is to be found that concentration of
+qualities from all the other groups of his order which has been described
+as marking the corvid&aelig;.&nbsp; That grasping power, which has been
+selected as the leading physical quality of his order, is nowhere so
+beautifully or so powerfully developed as in his hand.&nbsp; The intelligence
+and teachableness of the simiad&aelig; rise to a climax in his pre-eminent
+mental nature.&nbsp; His sub-analogy to the fer&aelig; is marked by
+his canine teeth, and the universality of his rapacity, for where is
+the department of animated nature which he does not without scruple
+sacrifice to his convenience?&nbsp; With sanguinary, he has also gentle
+and domesticable dispositions, thus reflecting the characters of the
+ungulata, (the rasorial type of the class,) to which we perhaps see
+a further analogy in the use which he makes of the surface of the earth
+as a source of food.&nbsp; To the aquatic type his love of maritime
+adventure very readily assimilates him; and how far the suctorial is
+represented in his nature it is hardly necessary to say.&nbsp; As the
+corvid&aelig;, too, are found in every part of the earth - almost the
+only one of the inferior animals which has been acknowledged as universal
+- so do we find man.&nbsp; He thrives in all climates, and with regard
+to style of living, can adapt himself to an infinitely greater diversity
+of circumstances than any other animated creature.</p>
+<p>Man, then, considered zoologically, and without regard to the distinct
+character assigned to him by theology, simply takes his place as the
+type of all types of the animal kingdom, the true and unmistakable head
+of animated nature upon this earth.&nbsp; It will readily occur that
+some more particular investigations into the ranks of types might throw
+additional light on man&rsquo;s status, and perhaps his nature; and
+such light we may hope to obtain when the philosophy of zoology shall
+have been studied as it deserves.&nbsp; Perhaps some such diagram as
+the one given on the next page will be found to be an approximation
+to the expression of the merely natural or secular grade of man in comparison
+with other animals.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; /&nbsp; |<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; /&nbsp;  |<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; /&nbsp; &nbsp; |<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/|&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  /|&nbsp; &nbsp; |<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/ |&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; / |&nbsp; &nbsp; |<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/&nbsp; |&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  /| |&nbsp; &nbsp; |<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/|&nbsp; |&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; / | |&nbsp; &nbsp; |<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/ |&nbsp; |&nbsp; &nbsp;  /| | |&nbsp; &nbsp; |<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/| |&nbsp; |&nbsp; &nbsp; / | | |&nbsp; &nbsp; |<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;/ | |&nbsp; |&nbsp;  /| | | |&nbsp; &nbsp; |<br />&nbsp;/| | |&nbsp; |&nbsp; / | | | |&nbsp; &nbsp; |<br />+-1-2-3--4-+--a-b-c-d----+ <a name="citation274"></a><a href="#footnote274">{274}</a></pre>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Here the upright lines, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, may represent the comparative
+height and grade of organization of both the five sub-kingdoms, and
+the five classes of each of these; 5 being the vertebrata in the one
+case, and the mammalia in the other.&nbsp; The difference between the
+height of the line 1 and the line 5 gives an idea of the difference
+of being the head type of the aves, (corvid&aelig;,) and the head type
+of the mammalia, (bimana;) <i>a</i>. <i>b. c. d</i>.&nbsp; 5, again,
+represent the five groups of the first order of the mammalia; <i>a</i>,
+being the organic structure of the highest simia, and 5, that of man.&nbsp;
+A set of tangent lines of this kind may yet prove one of the most satisfactory
+means of ascertaining the height and breadth of the psychology of our
+species.</p>
+<p>It may be asked, - Is the existing human race the only species designed
+to occupy the grade to which it is here referred?&nbsp; Such a question
+evidently ought not to be answered rashly; and I shall therefore confine
+myself to the admission that, judging by analogy, we might expect to
+see several varieties of the being, homo.&nbsp; There is no other family
+approaching to this in importance, which presents but one species.&nbsp;
+The corvid&aelig;, our parallel in aves, consist of several distinct
+genera and sub-genera.&nbsp; It is startling to find such an appearance
+of imperfection in the circle to which man belongs, and the ideas which
+rise in consequence are not less startling.&nbsp; Is our race but the
+initial of the grand crowning type?&nbsp; Are there yet to be species
+superior to us in organization, purer in feeling, more powerful in device
+and act, and who shall take a rule over us!&nbsp; There is in this nothing
+improbable on other grounds.&nbsp; The present race, rude and impulsive
+as it is, is perhaps the best adapted to the present state of things
+in the world; but the external world goes through slow and gradual changes,
+which may leave it in time a much serener field of existence.&nbsp;
+There may then be occasion for a nobler type of humanity, which shall
+complete the zoological circle on this planet, and realize some of the
+dreams of the purest spirits of the present race.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The human race is known to consist of numerous nations, displaying
+considerable differences of external form and colour, and speaking in
+general different languages.&nbsp; This has been the case since the
+commencement of written record.&nbsp; It is also ascertained that the
+external peculiarities of particular nations do not rapidly change.&nbsp;
+There is rather a tendency to a persistency of type in all lines of
+descent, insomuch that a subordinate admixture of various type is usually
+obliterated in a few generations.&nbsp; Numerous as the varieties are,
+they have all been found classifiable under five leading ones:- 1.&nbsp;
+The Caucasian or Indo-European, which extends from India into Europe
+and Northern Africa; 2.&nbsp; The Mongolian, which occupies Northern
+and Eastern Asia; 3.&nbsp; The Malayan, which extends from the Ultra-Gangetic
+Peninsula into the numerous islands of the South Sea and Pacific; 4.&nbsp;
+The Negro, chiefly confined to Africa; 5.&nbsp; The aboriginal American.&nbsp;
+Each of these is distinguished by certain general features of so marked
+a kind, as to give rise to a supposition that they have had distinct
+or independent origins.&nbsp; Of these peculiarities, colour is the
+most conspicuous: the Caucasians are generally white, the Mongolians
+yellow, the Negroes black, and the Americans red.&nbsp; The opposition
+of two of these in particular, white and black, is so striking, that
+of them, at least, it seems almost necessary to suppose separate origins.&nbsp;
+Of late years, however, the whole of this question has been subjected
+to a rigorous investigation, and it has been successfully shewn that
+the human race might have had one origin, for anything that can be inferred
+from external peculiarities.</p>
+<p>It appears from this inquiry, <a name="citation278"></a><a href="#footnote278">{278}</a>
+that colour and other physiological characters are of a more superficial
+and accidental nature than was at one time supposed.&nbsp; One fact
+is at the very first extremely startling, that there are nations, such
+as the inhabitants of Hindostan, known to be one in descent, which nevertheless
+contain groups of people of almost all shades of colour, and likewise
+discrepant in other of those important features on which much stress
+has been laid.&nbsp; Some other facts, which I may state in brief terms,
+are scarcely less remarkable.&nbsp; 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 as those of the
+best European nations.&nbsp; While we have no proof of Negro races becoming
+white in the course of generations, the converse may be held as established,
+for there are Arab and Jewish families of ancient settlement in Northern
+Africa, who have become as black as the other inhabitants.&nbsp; There
+are also facts which seem to shew the possibility of a natural transition
+by generation from the black to the white complexion, and from the white
+to the black.&nbsp; True whites (apart from Albinoes) are not unfrequently
+born among the Negroes, and the tendency to this singularity is transmitted
+in families.&nbsp; There is, at least, one authentic instance of a set
+of perfectly black children being born to an Arab couple, in whose ancestry
+no such blood had intermingled.&nbsp; This occurred in the valley of
+the Jordan, where it is remarkable that the Arab population in general
+have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair, than any other
+tribes of the same nation. <a name="citation280"></a><a href="#footnote280">{280}</a></p>
+<p>The style of living is ascertained to have a powerful effect in modifying
+the human figure in the course of generations, and this even in its
+osseous structure.&nbsp; About two hundred years ago, a number of people
+were driven by a barbarous policy from the counties of Antrim and Down,
+in Ireland, towards the sea-coast, where they have ever since been settled,
+but in unusually miserable circumstances, even for Ireland; and the
+consequence is, that they exhibit peculiar features of the most repulsive
+kind, projecting jaws with large open mouths, depressed noses, high
+cheek bones, and bow legs, together with an extremely diminutive stature.&nbsp;
+These, with an abnormal slenderness of the limbs, are the outward marks
+of a low and barbarous condition all over the world; it is particularly
+seen in the Australian aborigines.&nbsp; On the other hand, the beauty
+of the higher ranks in England is very remarkable, being, in the main,
+as clearly a result of good external conditions.&nbsp; &ldquo;Coarse,
+unwholesome, and ill-prepared food,&rdquo; says Buffon, &ldquo;makes
+the human race degenerate.&nbsp; All those people who live miserably
+are ugly and ill-made.&nbsp; Even in France, the country people are
+not so beautiful as those who live in towns; and I have often remarked
+that in those villages where the people are richer and better fed than
+in others, the men are likewise more handsome, and have better countenances.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He might have added, that elegant and commodious dwellings, cleanly
+habits, comfortable clothing, and being exposed to the open air only
+as much as health requires, cooperate with food in increasing the elegance
+of a race of human beings.</p>
+<p>Subject only to these modifying agencies, there is, as has been said,
+a remarkable persistency in national features and forms, insomuch that
+a single individual thrown into a family different from himself is absorbed
+in it, and all trace of him lost after a few generations.&nbsp; But
+while there is such a persistency to ordinary observation, it would
+also appear that nature has a power of producing new varieties, though
+this is only done rarely.&nbsp; Such novelties of type abound in the
+vegetable world, are seen more rarely in the animal circle, and perhaps
+are least frequent of occurrence in our own race.&nbsp; There is a noted
+instance in the production, on a New England farm, of a variety of sheep
+with unusually short legs, which was kept up by breeding, on account
+of the convenience in that country of having sheep which are unable
+to jump over low fences.&nbsp; The starting and main taming a <i>breed</i>
+of cattle, that is, a variety marked by some desirable peculiarity,
+are familiar to a large class of persons.&nbsp; It appears only necessary,
+when a variety has been thus produced, that a union should take place
+between individuals similarly characterized, in order to establish it.&nbsp;
+Early in the last century, a man named Lambert, was born in Suffolk,
+with semi-horny excrescences of about half an inch long, thickly growing
+all over his body.&nbsp; The peculiarity was transmitted to his children,
+and was last heard of in a third generation.&nbsp; The peculiarity of
+six fingers on the hand and six toes on the feet, appears in like manner
+in families which have no record or tradition of such a peculiarity
+having affected them at any former period, and it is then sometimes
+seen to descend through several generations.&nbsp; It was Mr. Lawrence&rsquo;s
+opinion, that a pair, in which both parties were so distinguished, might
+be the progenitors of a new variety of the race who would be thus marked
+in all future time.&nbsp; It is not easy to surmise the causes which
+operate in producing such varieties.&nbsp; Perhaps they are simply types
+in nature, <i>possible to be realized under certain appropriate conditions</i>,
+but which conditions are such as altogether to elude notice.&nbsp; I
+might cite as examples of such possible types, the rise of whites amongst
+the Negroes, the occurrence of the family of black children in the valley
+of the Jordan, and the comparatively frequent birth of red-haired children
+amongst not only the Mongolian and Malayan families, but amongst the
+Negroes.&nbsp; We are ignorant of the laws of variety-production; but
+we see it going on as a principle in nature, and it is obviously favourable
+to the supposition that all the great families of men are of one stock.</p>
+<p>The tendency of the modern study of the languages of nations is to
+the same point.&nbsp; The last fifty years have seen this study elevated
+to the character of a science, and the light which it throws upon the
+history of mankind is of a most remarkable nature.</p>
+<p>Following a natural analogy, philologists have thrown the earth&rsquo;s
+languages into a kind of classification: a number bearing a considerable
+resemblance to each other, and in general geographically near, are styled
+a <i>group</i> or <i>sub-family</i>; several groups, again, are associated
+as a <i>family</i>, with regard to more general features of resemblance.&nbsp;
+Six families are spoken of.</p>
+<p>The Indo-European family nearly coincides in geographical limits
+with those which have been assigned to that variety of mankind which
+generally shews a fair complexion, called the Caucasian variety.&nbsp;
+It may be said to commence in India, and thence to stretch through Persia
+into Europe, the whole of which it occupies, excepting Hungary, the
+Basque provinces of Spain, and Finland.&nbsp; Its sub-families are the
+Sanskrit, or ancient language of India, the Persian, the Slavonic, Celtic,
+Gothic, and Pelasgian.&nbsp; The Slavonic includes the modern languages
+of Russia and Poland.&nbsp; 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 our own Anglo-Saxon.&nbsp;
+I give the name of Pelasgian to the group scattered along the north
+shores of the Mediterranean, the Greek and Latin, including the modifications
+of the latter under the names of Italian, Spanish, &amp;c.&nbsp; The
+Celtic was from two to three thousand years ago, the speech of a considerable
+tribe dwelling in Western Europe; but these have since been driven before
+superior nations into a few corners, and are now only to be found in
+the highlands of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and certain parts
+of France.&nbsp; The Gaelic of Scotland, Erse of Ireland, and the Welsh,
+are the only living branches of this sub-family of languages.</p>
+<p>The resemblances amongst languages are of two kinds, - identity of
+words, and identity of grammatical forms; the latter being now generally
+considered as the most important towards the argument.&nbsp; When we
+inquire into the first kind of affinity among the languages of the Indo-European
+family, we are surprised at the great number of common terms which exist
+amongst them, and these referring to such primary ideas, as to leave
+no doubt of their having all been derived from a common source.&nbsp;
+Colonel Vans Kennedy presents nine hundred words common to the Sanskrit
+and other languages of the same family.&nbsp; In the Sanskrit and Persian,
+we find several which require no sort of translation to an English reader,
+as <i>pader</i>, <i>mader</i>, <i>sunu</i>, <i>dokhter</i>, <i>brader</i>,
+<i>mand</i>, <i>vidhava</i>; likewise <i>asthi</i>, a bone, (Greek,
+<i>ostoun</i>;) <i>denta</i>, a tooth, (Latin, <i>dens</i>, <i>dentis</i>;)
+<i>eyeumen</i>, the eye; <i>brouwa</i>, the eye-brow, (German, <i>braue</i>;)
+<i>nasa</i>, the nose; <i>karu</i>, the hand, (Gr. <i>cheir</i>;)<i>
+genu</i>, the knee, (Lat. <i>genu</i>;)<i> ped</i>, the foot, (Lat.
+<i>pes</i>, <i>pedis</i>;) <i>hrti</i>, the heart; <i>jecur</i>, the
+liver, (Lat. <i>jecur</i>;)<i> stara</i>, a star; <i>gela</i>, cold,
+(Lat. <i>gelu</i>, ice;)<i> aghni</i>, fire, (Lat. <i>ignis</i>;)<i>
+dhara</i>, the earth, (Lat. <i>terra</i>, Gaelic, <i>tir</i>;)<i> arrivi</i>,
+a river; <i>nau</i>, a ship, (Gr. <i>naus</i>, Lat. <i>navis</i>;)<i>
+ghau</i>, a cow; <i>sarpam</i>, a serpent.</p>
+<p>The inferences from these verbal coincidences were confirmed in a
+striking manner when Bopp and others investigated the grammatical structure
+of this family of languages.&nbsp; Dr. Wiseman pronounces that the great
+philologist just named, &ldquo;by a minute and sagacious analysis of
+the Sanskrit verb, compared with the conjugational system of the other
+members of this family, left no doubt of their intimate and positive
+affinity.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was now discovered that the peculiar terminations
+or inflections by which persons are expressed throughout the verbs of
+nearly the whole of these languages, have their foundations in pronouns;
+the pronoun was simply placed at the end, and thus became an inflexion.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;By an analysis of the Sanskrit pronouns, the elements of those
+existing in all the other languages were cleared of their anomalies;
+the verb substantive, which in Latin is composed of fragments referable
+to two distinct roots, here found both existing in regular form; the
+Greek conjugations, with all their complicated machinery of middle voice,
+augments, and reduplications, were here found and illustrated in a variety
+of ways, which a few years ago would have appeared chimerical.&nbsp;
+Even our own language may sometimes receive light from the study of
+distant members of our family.&nbsp; Where, for instance, are we to
+seek for the root of our comparative <i>better</i>?&nbsp; Certainly
+not in its positive, good, nor in the Teutonic dialects in which the
+same anomaly exists.&nbsp; But in the Persian we have precisely the
+same comparative, <i>behter</i>, with exactly the same signification,
+regularly formed from its positive <i>beh</i>, good.&rdquo; <a name="citation287"></a><a href="#footnote287">{287}</a></p>
+<p>The second great family is the <i>Syro-Ph&oelig;nician</i>, comprising
+the Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic, Arabic, and Gheez or Abyssinian, being localized
+principally in the countries to the west and south of the Mediterranean.&nbsp;
+Beyond them, again, is the African family, which, as far as research
+has gone, seems to be in like manner marked by common features, both
+verbal and grammatical.&nbsp; The fourth is the Polynesian family, extending
+from Madagascar on the west through all the Indian Archipelago, besides
+taking in the Malayan dialect from the continent of India, and comprehending
+Australia and the islands of the western portion of the Pacific.&nbsp;
+This family, however, bears such an affinity to that next to be described,
+that Dr. Leyden and some others do not give it a distinct place as a
+family of languages.</p>
+<p>The fifth family is the Chinese, embracing a large part of China,
+and most of the regions of Central and Northern Asia.&nbsp; The leading
+features of the Chinese are, its consisting altogether of monosyllables,
+and being destitute of all grammatical forms, except certain arrangements
+and accentuations, which vary the sense of particular words.&nbsp; It
+is also deficient in some of the consonants most conspicuous in other
+languages, b, d, r, v, and z; so that this people can scarcely pronounce
+our speech in such a way as to be intelligible: for example, the word
+Christus they call <i>Kuliss-ut-oo-suh</i>.&nbsp; The Chinese, strange
+to say, though they early attained to a remarkable degree of civilization,
+and have preceded the Europeans in many of the most important inventions,
+have a language which resembles that of children, or deaf and dumb people.&nbsp;
+The sentence of short, simple, unconnected words, in which an infant
+amongst us attempts to express some of its wants and its ideas - the
+equally broken and difficult terms which the deaf and dumb express by
+signs, as the following passage of the Lord&rsquo;s Prayer: - &ldquo;Our
+Father, heaven in, wish your name respect, wish your soul&rsquo;s kingdom
+providence arrive, wish your will do heaven earth equality,&rdquo; &amp;c.
+- these are like the discourse of the refined people of the so-called
+Celestial Empire.&nbsp; An attempt was made by the Abb&eacute; Sicard
+to teach the deaf and dumb grammatical signs; but they persisted in
+restricting themselves to the simple signs of ideas, leaving the structure
+undetermined by any but the natural order of connexion.&nbsp; Such is
+exactly the condition of the Chinese language.</p>
+<p>Crossing the Pacific, we come to the last great family in the languages
+of the aboriginal Americans, which have all of them features in common,
+proving them to constitute a group by themselves, without any regard
+to the very different degrees of civilization which these nations had
+attained at the time of the discovery.&nbsp; The common resemblance
+is in the grammatical structure as well as in words, and the grammatical
+structure of this family is of a very peculiar and complicated kind.&nbsp;
+The general character in this respect has caused the term Polysynthetic
+to be applied to the American languages.&nbsp; A long many-syllabled
+word is used by the rude Algonquins and Delawares to express a whole
+sentence: for example, a woman of the latter nation, playing with a
+little dog or cat, would perhaps be heard saying, &ldquo;<i>kuligatschis</i>,&rdquo;
+meaning, &ldquo;give me your pretty little paw;&rdquo; the word, on
+examination, is found to be made up in this manner: <i>k</i>, the second
+personal pronoun; <i>uli</i>, part of the word wulet, pretty; <i>gat</i>,
+part of the word wichgat, signifying a leg or paw; <i>schis</i>, conveying
+the idea of littleness.&nbsp; In the same tongue, a youth is called
+pilape, a word compounded from the first part of pilsit, innocent, and
+the latter part of lenape, a man.&nbsp; Thus, it will be observed, a
+number of parts of words are taken and thrown together, by a process
+which has been happily termed <i>agglutination</i>, so as to form one
+word, conveying a complicated idea.&nbsp; There is also an elaborate
+system of inflection; in nouns, for instance, there is one kind of inflection
+to express the presence or absence of vitality, and another to express
+number.&nbsp; The genius of the language has been described as accumulative:
+it &ldquo;tends rather to add syllables or letters, making farther distinctions
+in objects already before the mind, than to introduce new words.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation291"></a><a href="#footnote291">{291}</a>&nbsp; Yet
+it has also been shewn very distinctly, that these languages are based
+in words of one syllable, like those of the Chinese and Polynesian families;
+all the primary ideas are thus expressed: the elaborate system of inflection
+and agglutination is shewn to be simply a farther development of the
+language-forming principle, as it may be called - or the Chinese system
+may be described as an arrestment of this principle at a particular
+early point.&nbsp; It has been fully shewn, that between the structure
+of the American and other families, sufficient affinities exist to make
+a common origin or early connexion extremely likely.&nbsp; The verbal
+affinities are also very considerable.&nbsp; Humboldt says, &ldquo;In
+eighty-three American languages examined by Messrs. Barton and Vater,
+one hundred and seventy words have been found, the roots of which appear
+to be the same; and it is easy to perceive that this analogy is not
+accidental, since it does not rest merely upon imitative harmony, or
+on that conformity of organs which produces almost a perfect identity
+in the first sounds articulated by children.&nbsp; Of these one hundred
+and seventy words which have this connexion, three-fifths resemble the
+Manchou, the Tongouse, the Mongal, and the Samoyed; and two-fifths,
+the Celtic and Tchoud, the Biscayan, the Coptic, and Congo languages.&nbsp;
+These words have been found by comparing the whole of the American languages
+with the whole of those of the Old World; for hitherto we are acquainted
+with no American idiom which seems to have an exclusive correspondence
+with any of the Asiatic, African, or European tongues.&rdquo; <a name="citation293"></a><a href="#footnote293">{293}</a>&nbsp;
+Humboldt and others considered these words as brought into America by
+recent immigrants; an idea resting on no proof, and which seems at once
+refuted by the common 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.&nbsp; I may here
+refer to a curious mathematical calculation by Dr. Thomas Young, to
+the effect, that if three words coincide in two different languages,
+it is ten to one they must be derived in both cases from some parent
+language, or introduced in some other manner.&nbsp; &ldquo;Six words
+would give more,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;than seventeen hundred to one,
+and eight near 100,000, so that in these cases the evidence would be
+little short of absolute certainty.&rdquo;&nbsp; He instances the following
+words to shew a connexion between the ancient Egyptian and the Biscayan:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<pre>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;BISCAYAN&nbsp;  EGYPTIAN.<br /></pre><pre><i>New</i></pre><pre>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  Beria&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Beri.<br /></pre><pre><i>A dog</i></pre><pre>&nbsp; &nbsp;  Ora&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Whor.<br /></pre><pre><i>Little</i></pre><pre>&nbsp; &nbsp; Gutchi&nbsp; &nbsp;  Kudchi.<br /></pre><pre><i>Bread</i></pre><pre>&nbsp; &nbsp;  Ognia&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Oik.<br /></pre><pre><i>A wolf</i></pre><pre>&nbsp; &nbsp; Otgsa&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Ounsh.<br /></pre><pre><i>Seven</i></pre><pre>&nbsp; &nbsp;  Shashpi&nbsp; &nbsp; Shashf.</pre>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Now, as there are, according to Humboldt, one hundred and seventy
+words in common between the languages of the new and old continents,
+and many of these are expressive of the most primitive ideas, there
+is, by Dr. Young&rsquo;s calculation, overpowering proof of the original
+connexion of the American and other human families.</p>
+<p>This completes the slight outline which I have been able to give,
+of the evidence for the various races of men being descended from one
+stock.&nbsp; It cannot be considered as conclusive, and there are many
+eminent persons who deem the opposite idea the more probable; but I
+must say that, without the least regard to any other kind of evidence,
+that which physiology and philology present seems to me decidedly favourable
+to the idea of a single origin.</p>
+<p>Assuming that the human race is <i>one</i>, we are next called upon
+to inquire in what part of the earth it may most probably be supposed
+to have originated.&nbsp; One obvious mode of approximating to a solution
+of this question is to trace backward the lines in which the principal
+tribes appear to have migrated, and to see if these converge nearly
+to a point.&nbsp; It is very remarkable that the lines do converge,
+and are concentrated about the region of Hindostan.&nbsp; The language,
+religion, modes of reckoning time, and some other peculiar ideas of
+the Americans, are now believed to refer their origin to North-Eastern
+Asia.&nbsp; Trace them farther back in the same direction, and we come
+to the north of India.&nbsp; The history of the Celts and Teutones represents
+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 at the same place.&nbsp;
+So does the line of Iranian population, which has peopled the east and
+south shores of the Mediterranean, Syria, Arabia, and Egypt.&nbsp; The
+Malay variety, again, rests its limit in one direction on the borders
+of India.&nbsp; Standing on that point, it is easy to see how the human
+family, originating there, might spread out in different directions,
+passing into varieties of aspect and of language as they spread, the
+Malay variety proceeding towards the Oceanic region, the Mongolians
+to the east and north, and sending off the red men as a sub-variety,
+the European population going off to the north-westward, and the Syrian,
+Arabian, and Egyptian, towards the countries which they are known to
+have so long occupied.&nbsp; The Negro alone is here unaccounted for;
+and of that race it may fairly be said, that it is the one most likely
+to have had an independent origin, seeing that it is a type so peculiar
+in an inveterate black colour, and so mean in development.&nbsp; But
+it is not necessary to presume such an origin for it, as much good argument
+might be employed to shew that it is only a deteriorated offshoot of
+the general stock.&nbsp; Our view of the probable original seat of man
+agrees with the ancient traditions of the race.&nbsp; There is one among
+the Hindoos which places the cradle of the human family in Thibet; another
+makes Ceylon the residence of the first man.&nbsp; Our view is also
+in harmony with the hypothesis detailed in the chapter before the last.&nbsp;
+According to that theory, we should expect man to have originated where
+the highest species of the quadrumana are to be found.&nbsp; Now these
+are unquestionably found in the Indian Archipelago.</p>
+<p>After all, it may be regarded as still an open question, whether
+mankind is of one or many origins.&nbsp; The first human generation
+may have consisted of many pairs, though situated at one place, and
+these may have been considerably different from each other in external
+characters.&nbsp; And we are equally bound to admit, though this does
+not as yet seem to have occurred to any other speculator, that there
+may have been different lines and sources of origination, geographically
+apart, but which all resulted uniformly in the production of a being,
+one in species, although variously marked.</p>
+<p>It has of late years been a favourite notion with many, that the
+human race was at first in a highly civilized state, and that barbarism
+was a second condition.&nbsp; This idea probably took its origin in
+a wish to support certain interpretations of the Mosaic record, and
+it has never yet been propounded by any writer who seemed to have a
+due sense of the value of science in this class of investigations.&nbsp;
+The principal argument for it is, that we see many examples of nations
+falling away from civilization into barbarism, while in some regions
+of the earth, the history of which we do not clearly know, there are
+remains of works of art far superior to any which the present unenlightened
+inhabitants could have produced.&nbsp; It is to be readily admitted
+that such decadences are common; but do they necessarily prove that
+there has been anything like a regular and constant decline into the
+present state, from a state more generally refined?&nbsp; May not these
+be only instances of local failures and suppressions of the principle
+of civilization, where it had begun to take root amongst a people generally
+barbarous?&nbsp; It is, at least, as legitimate to draw this inference
+from the facts which are known.&nbsp; But it is also alleged that we
+know of no such thing as civilization being ever self-originated.&nbsp;
+It is always seen to be imparted from one people to another.&nbsp; Hence,
+of course, we must infer that civilization at the first could only have
+been of supernatural origin.&nbsp; This argument appears to be founded
+on false premises, for civilization does sometimes rise in a manner
+clearly independent amongst a horde of people generally barbarous.&nbsp;
+A striking instance is described in the laborious work of Mr. Catlin
+on the North-American tribes.&nbsp; Far placed among those which inhabit
+the vast region of the north-west, and quite beyond the reach of any
+influence from the whites, he found a small tribe living in a fortified
+village, where they cultivated the arts of manufacture, realized comforts
+and luxuries, and had attained to a remarkable refinement of manners,
+insomuch as to be generally called the polite and friendly Mandans.&nbsp;
+They were also more than usually elegant in their persons, and of every
+variety of complexion between that of their compatriots and a pure white.&nbsp;
+Up to the time of Mr. Catlin&rsquo;s visit, these people had been able
+to defend themselves and their possessions against the roving bands
+which surrounded them on all sides; but, soon after, they were attacked
+by small-pox, which cut them all off except a small party, whom their
+enemies rushed in upon and destroyed to a man.&nbsp; What is this but
+a repetition on a small scale of phenomena with which ancient history
+familiarizes us - a nation rising in arts and elegances amidst barbarous
+neighbours, but at length overpowered by the rude majority, leaving
+only a Tadmor or a Luxor as a monument of itself to beautify the waste?&nbsp;
+What can we suppose the nation which built Palenque and Copan to have
+been but only a Mandan tribe, which chanced to have made its way farther
+along the path of civilization and the arts, before the barbarians broke
+in upon it?&nbsp; The flame essayed to rise in many parts of the earth;
+but there were always 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 to have attained
+a strength against which the powers of barbarism can never more prevail.&nbsp;
+The state of our knowledge of uncivilized nations is very apt to make
+us fall into error on this subject.&nbsp; They are generally supposed
+to be all at one point in barbarism, which is far from being the case,
+for in the midst of every great region of uncivilized men, such as North
+America, there are nations partially refined.&nbsp; The Jolofs, Mandingoes,
+and Kafirs, are African examples, where a natural and independent origin
+for the improvement which exists is as unavoidably to be presumed as
+in the case of the Mandans.</p>
+<p>The most conclusive argument against the original civilization of
+mankind is to be found in the fact that we do not now see civilization
+existing anywhere except in certain conditions altogether different
+from any we can suppose&rsquo; to have existed at the commencement of
+our race.&nbsp; To have civilization, it is necessary that a people
+should be numerous and closely placed; that they should be fixed in
+their habitations, and safe from violent external and internal disturbance;
+that a considerable number of them should be exempt from the necessity
+of drudging for immediate subsistence.&nbsp; Feeling themselves at ease
+about the first necessities of their nature, including self-preservation,
+and daily subjected to that intellectual excitement which society produces,
+men begin to manifest what is called civilization; but never in rude
+and shelterless circumstances, or when widely scattered.&nbsp; Even
+men who have been civilized, when transferred to a wide wilderness,
+where each has to work hard and isolatedly for the first requisites
+of life, soon shew a retrogression to barbarism: witness the plains
+of Australia, as well as the backwoods of Canada and the prairies of
+Texas.&nbsp; Fixity of residence and thickening of population are perhaps
+the prime requisites for civilization, and hence it will be found that
+all civilizations as yet known have taken place in regions physically
+limited.&nbsp; That of Egypt arose in a narrow valley hemmed in by deserts
+on both sides.&nbsp; That of Greece took its rise in a small peninsula
+bounded on the only land side by mountains.&nbsp; Etruria and Rome were
+naturally limited regions.&nbsp; Civilizations have taken place at both
+the eastern and western extremities of the elder continent - China and
+Japan, on the one hand; Germany, Holland, Britain, France, on the other
+- while the great unmarked tract between contains nations decidedly
+less advanced.&nbsp; Why is this, but because the sea, in both cases,
+has imposed limits to further migration, and caused the population to
+settle and condense - the conditions most necessary for social improvement.
+<a name="citation302"></a><a href="#footnote302">{302}</a>&nbsp; Even
+the simple case of the Mandans affords an illustration of this principle,
+for Mr. Catlin expressly, though without the least regard to theory,
+attributes their improvement to the fact of their being a small tribe,
+obliged, by fear of their more numerous enemies, to <i>settle in a permanent
+village</i>, so fortified as to ensure their preservation.&nbsp; &ldquo;By
+this means,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;they have advanced farther in the
+arts of manufacture, and have supplied their lodges more abundantly
+with the comforts and even luxuries of life than any Indian nation I
+know of.&nbsp; The consequence of this,&rdquo; he adds, &ldquo;is that
+the tribe have taken many steps ahead of other tribes in <i>manners
+and refinements</i>.&rdquo;&nbsp; These conditions can only be regarded
+as natural laws affecting civilization, and it might not be difficult,
+taking them into account, to predict of any newly settled country its
+social destiny.&nbsp; An island like Van Dieman&rsquo;s land might fairly
+be expected to go on more rapidly to good manners and sound institutions
+than a wide region like Australia.&nbsp; The United States might be
+expected to make no great way in civilization till they be fully peopled
+to the Pacific; and it might not be unreasonable to expect that, when
+that even has occurred, the greatest civilizations of that vast territory
+will be found in the peninsula of California and the narrow stripe of
+country beyond the Rocky Mountains.&nbsp; This, however, is a digression.&nbsp;
+To return: it is also necessary for a civilization that at least a portion
+of the community should be placed above mean and engrossing toils.&nbsp;
+Man&rsquo;s mind becomes subdued, like the dyer&rsquo;s hand, to that
+it works in.&nbsp; In rude and difficult circumstances we unavoidably
+become rude, because then only the inferior and harsher faculties of
+our nature are called into existence.&nbsp; When, on the contrary, there
+is leisure and abundance, the self-seeking and self-preserving instincts
+are allowed to rest, the gentler and more generous sentiments are evoked,
+and man becomes that courteous and chivalric being which he is found
+to be amongst the upper classes of almost all civilized countries.&nbsp;
+These, then, may be said to be the chief natural laws concerned in the
+moral phenomenon of civilization.&nbsp; If I am right in so considering
+them, it will of course be readily admitted that the earliest families
+of the human race, although they might be simple and innocent, could
+not have been in anything like a civilized state, seeing that the conditions
+necessary for that state could not have then existed.&nbsp; Let us only
+for a moment consider some of the things requisite for their being civilized,
+- namely, a set of elegant homes ready furnished for their reception,
+fields ready cultivated to yield them food without labour, stores of
+luxurious appliances of all kinds, a complete social enginery for the
+securing of life and property, - and we shall turn from the whole conceit
+as one worthy only of the philosophers of Utopia.</p>
+<p>Yet, as has been remarked, the earliest families might be simple
+and innocent, while at the same time unskilled and ignorant, and obliged
+to live merely upon such substances as they could readily procure.&nbsp;
+The traditions of all nations refer to such a state as that in which
+mankind were at first: perhaps it is not so much a tradition as an idea
+which the human mind naturally inclines to form respecting the fathers
+of the race; but nothing that we see of mankind absolutely forbids our
+entertaining this idea, while there are some considerations rather favourable
+to it.&nbsp; A few families, in a state of nature, living near each
+other, in a country supplying the means of livelihood abundantly, are
+generally simple and innocent; their instinctive and perceptive faculties
+are also apt to be very active, although the higher intellect may be
+dormant.&nbsp; If we therefore presume India to have been the cradle
+of our race, they might at first exemplify a sort of golden age; but
+it could not be of long continuance.&nbsp; The very first movements
+from the primal seat would be attended with degradation, nor could there
+be any tendency to true civilization till groups had settled and thickened
+in particular seats physically limited.</p>
+<p>The probability may now be assumed that the human race sprung from
+one stock, which was at first in a state of simplicity, if not barbarism.&nbsp;
+As yet we have not seen very distinctly how the various branches of
+the family, as they parted off, and took up separate ground, became
+marked by external features so peculiar.&nbsp; Why are the Africans
+black, and generally marked by coarse features and ungainly forms?&nbsp;
+Why are the Mongolians generally yellow, the Americans red, the Caucasians
+white?&nbsp; Why the flat features of the Chinese, the small stature
+of the Laps, the soft round forms of the English, the lank features
+of their descendants, the Americans?&nbsp; All of these phenomena appear,
+in a word, to be explicable on the ground of <i>development</i>.&nbsp;
+We have already seen that various leading animal forms represent stages
+in the embryotic progress of the highest - the human being.&nbsp; Our
+brain goes through the various stages of a fish&rsquo;s, a reptile&rsquo;s,
+and a mammifer&rsquo;s brain, and finally becomes human.&nbsp; There
+is 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.&nbsp;
+The face partakes of these alterations.&nbsp; &ldquo;One of the earliest
+points in which ossification commences is the lower jaw.&nbsp; This
+bone is consequently sooner completed than the other bones of the head,
+and acquires a predominance, which, as is well known, it never loses
+in the Negro.&nbsp; During the soft pliant state of the bones of the
+skull, the oblong form which they naturally assume, approaches nearly
+the permanent shape of the Americans.&nbsp; At birth, the flattened
+face, and broad smooth forehead of the infant, the position of the eyes
+rather towards the side of the head, and the widened space between,
+represent the Mongolian form; while it is only as the child advances
+to maturity, that the oval face, the arched forehead, and the marked
+features of the true Caucasian, become perfectly developed.&rdquo; <a name="citation307a"></a><a href="#footnote307a">{307a}</a>&nbsp;
+<i>The leading characters</i>, <i>in short</i>, <i>of the various races
+of mankind</i>, <i>are simply representations of particular stages in
+the development of the highest or Caucasian type</i>.&nbsp; The Negro
+exhibits permanently the imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw, and
+slender bent limbs, of a Caucasian child, some considerable time before
+the period of its birth.&nbsp; The aboriginal American represents the
+same child nearer birth.&nbsp; The Mongolian is an arrested infant newly
+born.&nbsp; And so forth.&nbsp; All this is as respects form; <a name="citation307b"></a><a href="#footnote307b">{307b}</a>
+but whence colour?&nbsp; This might be supposed to have depended on
+climatal agencies only; but it has been shewn by overpowering evidence
+to be independent of these.&nbsp; In further considering the matter,
+we are met by the very remarkable fact that colour is deepest in the
+least perfectly developed type, next in the Malay, next in the American,
+next in the Mongolian, the very order in which the degrees of development
+are ranged.&nbsp; <i>May not colour</i>, <i>then</i>, <i>depend upon
+development also</i>?&nbsp; We do not, indeed, see that a Caucasian
+f&oelig;tus at the stage which the African represents is anything like
+black; neither is a Caucasian child yellow, like the Mongolian.&nbsp;
+There may, nevertheless, be a character of skin at a certain stage of
+development which is predisposed to a particular colour when it is presented
+as the envelope of a mature being.&nbsp; Development being arrested
+at so immature a stage in the case of the Negro, the skin may take on
+the colour as an unavoidable consequence of its imperfect organization.&nbsp;
+It is favourable to this view, that Negro infants are not deeply black
+at first, but only acquire the full colour tint after exposure for some
+time to the atmosphere.&nbsp; Another consideration in its favour is
+that there is a likelihood of peculiarities of form and colour, since
+they are so coincident, depending on one set of phenomena.&nbsp; If
+it be admitted as true, there can be no difficulty in accounting for
+all the varieties of mankind.&nbsp; They are simply the result of so
+many advances and retrogressions in the developing power of the human
+mothers, these advances and retrogressions being, as we have formerly
+seen, the immediate effect of external conditions in nutrition, hardship,
+&amp;c., <a name="citation309"></a><a href="#footnote309">{309}</a>
+and also, perhaps, to some extent, of the suitableness and unsuitableness
+of marriages, for it is found that parents too nearly related tend to
+produce offspring of the Mongolian type, - that is, persons who in maturity
+still are a kind of children.&nbsp; According to this view, the greater
+part of the human race must be considered as having lapsed or declined
+from the original type.&nbsp; In the Caucasian or Indo-European family
+alone has the primitive organization been improved upon.&nbsp; The Mongolian,
+Malay, American, and Negro, comprehending perhaps five-sixths of mankind,
+are degenerate.&nbsp; Strange that the great plan should admit of failures
+and aberrations of such portentous magnitude!&nbsp; But pause and reflect;
+take time into consideration: the past history of mankind may be, to
+what is to come, but as a day.&nbsp; Look at the progress even now making
+over the barbaric parts of the earth by the best examples of the Caucasian
+type, promising not only to fill up the waste places, but to supersede
+the imperfect nations already existing.&nbsp; Who can tell what progress
+may be made, even in a single century, towards reversing the proportions
+of the perfect and imperfect types? and who can tell but that the time
+during which the mean types have lasted, long as it appears, may yet
+be thrown entirely into the shade by the time during which the best
+types will remain predominant?</p>
+<p>We have seen that the traces of a common origin in all languages
+afford a ground of presumption for the unity of the human race.&nbsp;
+They establish a still stronger probability that mankind had not yet
+begun to disperse before they were possessed of a means of communicating
+their ideas by conventional sounds - in short, speech.&nbsp; This is
+a gift so peculiar to man, and in itself so remarkable, that there is
+a great inclination to surmise a miraculous origin for it, although
+there is no proper ground, or even support, for such an idea in Scripture,
+while it is clearly opposed to everything else that we know with regard
+to the providential arrangements for the creation of our race.&nbsp;
+Here, as in many other cases, a little observation of nature might have
+saved much vain discussion.&nbsp; The real character of language itself
+has not been thoroughly understood.&nbsp; Language, in its most comprehensive
+sense, is the communication of ideas by whatever means.&nbsp; Ideas
+can be communicated by looks, gestures, and signs of various other kinds,
+as well as by speech.&nbsp; The inferior animals possess some of those
+means of communicating ideas, and they have likewise a silent and unobservable
+mode of their own, the nature of which is a complete mystery to us,
+though we are assured of its reality by its effects.&nbsp; Now, as the
+inferior animals were all in being before man, there was language upon
+earth long ere the history of our race commenced.&nbsp; The only additional
+fact in the history of language, which was produced by our creation,
+was the rise of a new mode of expression - namely, that by <i>sound-signs</i>
+produced by the vocal organs.&nbsp; In other words, speech was the only
+novelty in this respect attending the creation of the human race.&nbsp;
+No doubt it was an addition of great importance, for, in comparison
+with it, the other natural modes of communicating ideas sink into insignificance.&nbsp;
+Still, the main and fundamental phenomenon, language, as the communication
+of ideas, was no new gift of the Creator to man; and in speech itself,
+when we judge of it as a natural fact, we see only a result of some
+of those superior endowments of which so many others have fallen to
+our lot through the medium of an improved or advanced organization.</p>
+<p>The first and most obvious natural endowment concerned in speech
+is that peculiar organization of the larynx, trachea, and mouth, which
+enables us to produce the various sounds required in the case.&nbsp;
+Man started at first with this organization ready for use, a constitution
+of the atmosphere adapted for the sounds which that organization was
+calculated to produce, and, lastly, but not leastly, as will afterwards
+be more particularly shewn, a mental power within, prompting to, and
+giving directions for, the expression of ideas.&nbsp; Such an arrangement
+of mutually adapted things was as likely to produce sounds as an Eolian
+harp placed in a draught is to produce tones.&nbsp; It was unavoidable
+that human beings so organized, and in such a relation to external nature,
+should utter sounds, and also come to attach to these conventional meanings,
+thus forming the elements of spoken language.&nbsp; The great difficulty
+which has been felt was to account for man going in this respect beyond
+the inferior animals.&nbsp; There could have been no such difficulty
+if speculators in this class of subjects had looked into physiology
+for an account of the superior vocal organization of man, and had they
+possessed a true science of mind to shew man possessing a faculty for
+the expression of ideas which is only rudimental in the lower animals.&nbsp;
+Another difficulty has been in the consideration that, if men were at
+first utterly untutored and barbarous, they could scarcely be in a condition
+to form or employ language - an instrument which it requires the fullest
+powers of thought to analyse and speculate upon.&nbsp; But this difficulty
+also vanishes upon reflection - for, in the first place, we are not
+bound to suppose the fathers of our race early attaining to great proficiency
+in language, and, in the second, language itself seems to be amongst
+the things least difficult to be acquired, if we can form any judgment
+from what we see in children, most of whom have, by three years of age,
+while their information and judgment are still as nothing, mastered
+and familiarized themselves with a quantity of words, infinitely exceeding
+in proportion what they acquire in the course of any subsequent similar
+portion of time.</p>
+<p>Discussions as to which parts of speech were first formed, and the
+processes by which grammatical structure and inflections took their
+rise, appear in a great measure needless, after the matter has been
+placed in this light.&nbsp; The mental powers could readily connect
+particular arbitrary sounds with particular ideas, whether those ideas
+were nouns, verbs, or interjections.&nbsp; As the words of all languages
+can be traced back into roots which are monosyllables, we may presume
+these sounds to have all been monosyllabic accordingly.&nbsp; The clustering
+of two or more together to express a compound idea, and the formation
+of inflections by additional syllables expressive of pronouns and such
+prepositions as of, by, and to, are processes which would or might occur
+as matters of course, being simple results of a mental power called
+into action, and partly directed, by external necessities.&nbsp; This
+power, however, as we find it in very different degrees of endowment
+in individuals, so would it be in different degrees of endowment in
+nations, or branches of the human family.&nbsp; Hence we find the formation
+of words and the process of their composition and grammatical arrangement,
+in very different stages of development in different races.&nbsp; The
+Chinese have a language composed of a limited number of monosyllables,
+which they multiply in use by mere variations of accent, and which they
+have never yet attained the power of clustering or inflecting; the language
+of this immense nation - the third part of the human race - may be said
+to be in the condition of infancy.&nbsp; The aboriginal Americans, so
+inferior in civilization, have, on the other hand, a language of the
+most elaborately composite kind, perhaps even exceeding, in this respect,
+the languages of the most refined European nations.&nbsp; These are
+but a few out of many facts tending to shew that language is in a great
+measure independent of civilization, as far as its advance and development
+are concerned.&nbsp; Do they not also help to prove that cultivated
+intellect is not necessary for the origination of language?</p>
+<p>Facts daily presented to our observation afford equally simple reasons
+for the almost infinite diversification of language.&nbsp; It is invariably
+found that, wherever society is at once dense and refined, language
+tends to be uniform throughout the whole population, and to undergo
+few changes in the course of time.&nbsp; Wherever, on the contrary,
+we have a scattered and barbarous people, we have great diversities,
+and comparatively rapid alterations of language.&nbsp; Insomuch that,
+while English, French, and German are each spoken with little variation
+by many millions, there are islands in the Indian archipelago, probably
+not inhabited by one million, but in which there are hundreds of languages,
+as diverse as are English, French, and German.&nbsp; It is easy to see
+how this should be.&nbsp; There are peculiarities in the vocal organization
+of every person, tending to produce peculiarities of pronunciation;
+for example, it has been stated that each child in a family of six gave
+the monosyllable, fly, in a different manner, (eye, fy, ly, &amp;c.)
+until, when the organs were more advanced, correct example induced the
+proper pronunciation of this and similar words.&nbsp; Such departures
+from orthoepy are only to be checked by the power of such example; but
+this is a power not always present, or not always of sufficient strength.&nbsp;
+The able and self-devoted Robert Moffat, in his work on South Africa,
+states, without the least regard to hypothesis, that amongst the people
+of the towns of that great region, &ldquo;the purity and harmony of
+language is kept up by their pitchos or public meetings, by their festivals
+and ceremonies, as well as by their songs and their constant intercourse.&nbsp;
+With the isolated villages of the desert it is far otherwise.&nbsp;
+They have no such meetings; they are compelled to traverse the wilds,
+often to a great distance from their native village.&nbsp; On such occasions,
+fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a burden, often set out for
+weeks at a time, and leave their children to the care of two or three
+infirm old people.&nbsp; The infant progeny, some of whom are beginning
+to lisp, while others can just master a whole sentence, and those still
+farther advanced, romping and playing together, the children of nature,
+through the live-long day, <i>become habituated to a language of their
+own</i>.&nbsp; The more voluble condescend to the less precocious, and
+thus, from this infant Babel, proceeds a dialect composed of a host
+of mongrel words and phrases, joined together without rule, and <i>in
+the course of a generation the entire character of the language is changed</i>.&rdquo;
+<a name="citation317"></a><a href="#footnote317">{317}</a>&nbsp; I have
+been told, that in like manner the children of the Manchester factory
+workers, left for a great part of the day, in large assemblages, under
+the care of perhaps a single elderly person, and spending the time in
+amusements, are found to make a great deal of new language.&nbsp; I
+have seen children in other circumstances amuse themselves by concocting
+and throwing into the family circulation entirely new words; and I believe
+I am running little risk of contradiction when I say that there is scarcely
+a family, even amongst the middle classes of this country, who have
+not some peculiarities of pronunciation and syntax, which have originated
+amongst themselves, it is hardly possible to say how.&nbsp; All these
+things being considered, it is easy to understand how mankind have come
+at length to possess between three and four thousand languages, all
+different at least as much as French, German, and English, though, as
+has been shewn, the traces of a common origin are observable in them
+all.</p>
+<p>What has been said on the question whether mankind were originally
+barbarous or civilized, will have prepared the reader for understanding
+how the arts and sciences, and the rudiments of civilization itself,
+took their rise amongst men.&nbsp; The only source of fallacious views
+on this subject is the so frequent observation of arts, sciences, and
+social modes, forms, and ideas, being not indigenous where we see them
+now flourishing, but known to have been derived elsewhere: thus Rome
+borrowed from Greece, Greece from Egypt, and Egypt itself, lost in the
+mists of historic antiquity, is now supposed to have obtained the light
+of knowledge from some still earlier scene of intellectual culture.&nbsp;
+This has caused to many a great difficulty in supposing a natural or
+spontaneous origin for civilization and the attendant arts.&nbsp; But,
+in the first place, several stages of derivation are no conclusive argument
+against there having been an originality at some earlier stage.&nbsp;
+In the second, such observers have not looked far enough, for, if they
+had, they could have seen various instances of civilizations which it
+is impossible, with any plausibility, to trace back to a common origin
+with others; such are those of China and America.&nbsp; They would also
+have seen civilization springing up, as it were, like oases amongst
+the arid plains of barbarism, as in the case of the Mandans.&nbsp; A
+still more attentive study of the subject would have shewn, amongst
+living men, the very psychological procedure on which the origination
+of civilization and the arts and sciences depended.</p>
+<p>These things, like language, are simply the effects of the spontaneous
+working of certain mental faculties, each in relation to the things
+of the external world on which it was intended by creative Providence
+to be exercised.&nbsp; The monkeys themselves, without instruction from
+any quarter, learn to use sticks in fighting, and some build houses
+- an act which cannot in their case be considered as one of instinct,
+but of intelligence.&nbsp; Such being the case, there is no necessary
+difficulty in supposing how man, with his superior mental organization,
+(a brain five times heavier,) was able, in his primitive state, without
+instruction, to turn many things in nature to his use, and commence,
+in short, the circle of the domestic arts.&nbsp; He appears, in the
+most unfavourable circumstances, to be able to provide himself with
+some sort of dwelling, to make weapons, and to practise some simple
+kind of cookery.&nbsp; But, granting, it will be said, that he can go
+thus far, how does he ever proceed farther unprompted, seeing that many
+nations remain fixed for ever at this point, and seem unable to take
+one step in advance?&nbsp; It is perfectly true that there is such a
+fixation in many nations; but, on the other hand, all nations are not
+alike in mental organization, and another point has been established,
+that only when some favourable circumstances have settled a people in
+one place, do arts and social arrangements get leave to flourish.&nbsp;
+If we were to limit our view to humbly endowed nations, or the common
+class of minds in those called civilized, we should see absolutely no
+conceivable power for the origination of new ideas and devices.&nbsp;
+But let us look at the inventive class of minds which stand out amongst
+their fellows - the men who, with little prompting or none, conceive
+new ideas in science, arts, morals - and we can be at no loss to understand
+how and whence have arisen the elements of that civilization which history
+traces from country to country throughout the course of centuries.&nbsp;
+See a Pascal, reproducing the Alexandrian&rsquo;s problems at fifteen;
+a Ferguson, making clocks from the suggestions of his own brain, while
+tending cattle on a Morayshire heath; a boy Lawrence, in an inn on the
+Bath road, producing, without a master, drawings which the educated
+could not but admire; or look at Solon and Confucius, devising sage
+laws, and breathing the accents of all but divine wisdom, for their
+barbarous fellow-countrymen, three thousand years ago - and the whole
+mystery is solved at once.&nbsp; Amongst the arrangements of Providence
+is one for the production of original, inventive, and aspiring minds,
+which, when circumstances are not decidedly unfavourable, strike out
+new ideas for the benefit of their fellow-creatures, or put upon them
+a lasting impress of their own superior sentiments.&nbsp; Nations, improved
+by these means, become in turn <i>foci</i> for the diffusion of light
+over the adjacent regions of barbarism - their very passions helping
+to this end, for nothing can be more clear than that ambitious aggression
+has led to the civilization of many countries.&nbsp; Such is the process
+which seems to form the destined means for bringing mankind from the
+darkness of barbarism to the day of knowledge and mechanical and social
+improvement.&nbsp; Even the noble art of letters is but, as Dr. Adam
+Fergusson has remarked, &ldquo;a natural produce of the human mind,
+which will rise spontaneously, wherever men are happily placed;&rdquo;
+original alike amongst the ancient Egyptians and the dimly monumented
+Toltecans of Yucatan.&nbsp; &ldquo;Banish,&rdquo; says Dr. Gall, &ldquo;music,
+poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, all the arts and sciences,
+and let your Homers, Raphaels, Michael Angelos, Glucks, and Canovas,
+be forgotten, yet let men of genius of every description spring up,
+and poetry, music, painting, architecture, sculpture, and all the arts
+and sciences will again shine out in all their glory.&nbsp; Twice within
+the records of history has the human race traversed the great circle
+of its entire destiny, and twice has the rudeness of barbarism been
+followed by a higher degree of refinement.&nbsp; It is a great mistake
+to suppose one people to have proceeded from another on account of their
+conformity of manners, customs, and arts.&nbsp; The swallow of Paris
+builds its nest like the swallow of Vienna, but does it thence follow
+that the former sprung from the latter?&nbsp; With the same causes we
+have the same effects; with the same organization we have the manifestation
+of the same powers.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>It has been one of the most agreeable tasks of modern science to
+trace the wonderfully exact adaptations of the organization of animals
+to the physical circumstances amidst which they are destined to live.&nbsp;
+From the mandibles of insects to the hand of man, all is seen to be
+in the most harmonious relation to the things of the outward world,
+thus clearly proving that <i>design</i> presided in the creation of
+the whole - design again implying a designer, another word for a CREATOR.</p>
+<p>It would be tiresome to present in this place even a selection of
+the proofs which have been adduced on this point.&nbsp; The Natural
+Theology of Paley, and the Bridgewater Treatises, place the subject
+in so clear a light, that the general postulate may be taken for granted.&nbsp;
+The physical constitution of animals is, then, to be regarded as in
+the nicest congruity and adaptation to the external world.</p>
+<p>Less clear ideas have hitherto been entertained on the mental constitution
+of animals.&nbsp; The very nature of this constitution is not as yet
+generally known or held as ascertained.&nbsp; There is, indeed, a notion
+of old standing, that the mind is in some way connected with the brain;
+but the metaphysicians insist that it is, in reality, known only by
+its acts or effects, and they accordingly present the subject in a form
+which is unlike any other kind of science, for it does not so much as
+pretend to have nature for its basis.&nbsp; There is a general disinclination
+to regard mind in connexion with organization, from a fear that this
+must needs interfere with the cherished religious doctrine of the spirit
+of man, and lower him to the level of the brutes.&nbsp; A distinction
+is therefore drawn between our mental manifestations and those of the
+lower animals, the latter being comprehended under the term instinct,
+while ours are collectively described as mind, mind being again a received
+synonyme with soul, the immortal part of man.&nbsp; There is here a
+strange system of confusion and error, which it is most imprudent to
+regard as essential to religion, since candid investigations of nature
+tend to shew its untenableness.&nbsp; There is, in reality, nothing
+to prevent our regarding man as specially endowed with an immortal spirit,
+at the same time that his ordinary mental manifestations are looked
+upon as simple phenomena resulting from organization, those of the lower
+animals being phenomena absolutely the same in character, though developed
+within much narrower limits. <a name="citation326"></a><a href="#footnote326">{326}</a></p>
+<p>What has chiefly tended to take mind, in the eyes of learned and
+unlearned, out of the range of nature, is its apparently irregular and
+wayward character.&nbsp; How different the manifestations in different
+beings! how unstable in all! - at one time so calm, at another so wild
+and impulsive!&nbsp; It seemed impossible that anything so subtle and
+aberrant could be part of a system, the main features of which are regularity
+and precision.&nbsp; But the irregularity of mental phenomena is only
+in appearance.&nbsp; When we give up the individual, and take the mass,
+we find as much uniformity of result as in any other class of natural
+phenomena.&nbsp; The irregularity is exactly of the same kind as that
+of the weather.&nbsp; No man can say what may be the weather of to-morrow;
+but the quantity of rain which falls in any particular place in any
+five years, is precisely the same as the quantity which falls in any
+other five years at the same place.&nbsp; Thus, while it is absolutely
+impossible to predict of any one Frenchman that during next year he
+will commit a crime, it is quite certain that about one in every six
+hundred and fifty of the French people will do so, because in past years
+the proportion has generally been about that amount, the tendencies
+to crime in relation to the temptations being everywhere invariable
+over a sufficiently wide range of time.&nbsp; So also, the number of
+persons taken in charge by the police in London for being drunk and
+disorderly on the streets, is, week by week, a nearly uniform quantity,
+shewing that the inclination to drink to excess is always in the mass
+about the same, regard being had to the existing temptations or stimulations
+to this vice.&nbsp; Even mistakes and oversights are of regular recurrence,
+for it is found in the post-offices of large cities, that the number
+of letters put in without addresses is year by year the same.&nbsp;
+Statistics has made out an equally distinct regularity in a wide range,
+with regard to many other things concerning the mind, and the doctrine
+founded upon it has lately produced a scheme which may well strike the
+ignorant with surprise.&nbsp; It was proposed to establish in London
+a society for ensuring the integrity of clerks, secretaries, collectors,
+and all such functionaries as are usually obliged to find security for
+money passing through their hands in the course of business.&nbsp; A
+gentleman of the highest character as an actuary spoke of the plan in
+the following terms:- &ldquo;If a thousand bankers&rsquo; clerks were
+to club together to indemnify their securities, by the payment of one
+pound a year each, and if each had given security for 500<i>l</i>.,
+it is obvious that two in each year might become defaulters to that
+amount, four to half the amount, and so on, without rendering the guarantee
+fund insolvent.&nbsp; If it be tolerably well ascertained that the instances
+of dishonesty (yearly) among such persons amount to one in five hundred,
+this club would continue to exist, subject to being in debt in a bad
+year, to an amount which it would be able to discharge in good ones.&nbsp;
+The only question necessary to be asked previous to the formation of
+such a club would be, - may it not be feared that the motive to resist
+dishonesty would be lessened by the existence of the club, or that ready-made
+rogues, by belonging to it, might find the means of obtaining situations
+which they would otherwise have been kept out of by the impossibility
+of obtaining security among those who know them?&nbsp; Suppose this
+be sufficiently answered by saying, that none but those who could bring
+satisfactory testimony to their previous good character should be allowed
+to join the club; that persons who may now hope that a deficiency on
+their parts will be made up and hushed up by the relative or friend
+who is security, will know very well that the club will have no motive
+to decline a prosecution, or to keep the secret, and so on.&nbsp; It
+then only remains to ask, whether the sum demanded for the guarantee
+is sufficient?&rdquo; <a name="citation331"></a><a href="#footnote331">{331}</a>&nbsp;
+The philosophical principle on which the scheme proceeds, seems to be
+simply this, that, amongst a given (large) number of persons of good
+character, there will be, within a year or other considerable space
+of time, a determinate number of instances in which moral principle
+and the terror of the consequences of guilt will be overcome by temptations
+of a determinate kind and amount, and thus occasion a certain periodical
+amount of loss which the association must make up.</p>
+<p>This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully establishes their
+being under the presidency of law.&nbsp; Man is now seen to be an enigma
+only as an individual; in the mass he is a mathematical problem.&nbsp;
+It is hardly necessary to say, much less to argue, that mental action,
+being proved to be under law, passes at once into the category of natural
+things.&nbsp; Its old metaphysical character vanishes in a moment, and
+the distinction usually taken between physical and moral is annulled,
+as only an error in terms.&nbsp; This view agrees with what all observation
+teaches, that mental phenomena flow directly from the brain.&nbsp; They
+are seen to be dependent on naturally constituted and naturally conditioned
+organs, and thus obedient, like all other organic phenomena, to law.&nbsp;
+And how wondrous must the constitution of this apparatus be, which gives
+us consciousness of thought and of affection, which makes us familiar
+with the numberless things of earth, and enables us to rise in conception
+and communion to the councils of God himself!&nbsp; It is matter which
+forms the medium or instrument - a little mass which, decomposed, is
+but so much common dust; yet in its living constitution, designed, formed,
+and sustained by Almighty Wisdom, how admirable its character! how reflective
+of the unutterable depths of that Power by which it was so formed, and
+is so sustained!</p>
+<p>In the mundane economy, mental action takes its place as a means
+of providing for the independent existence and the various relations
+of animals, each species being furnished according to its special necessities
+and the demands of its various relations.&nbsp; The nervous system -
+the more comprehensive term for its organic apparatus - is variously
+developed in different classes and species, and also in different individuals,
+the volume or mass bearing a general relation to the amount of power.&nbsp;
+In the mollusca and crustacea we see simply a ganglionic cord pervading
+the extent of the body, and sending out lateral filaments.&nbsp; In
+the vertebrata, we find a brain with a spinal cord, and branching lines
+of nervous tissue. <a name="citation333"></a><a href="#footnote333">{333}</a>&nbsp;
+But here, as in the general structure of animals, the great principle
+of unity is observed.&nbsp; The brain of the vertebrata is merely an
+expansion of one of the ganglions of the nervous cord of the mollusca
+and crustacea.&nbsp; Or the corresponding ganglion of the mollusca and
+crustacea may be regarded as the rudiment of a brain; the superior organ
+thus appearing as only a farther development of the inferior.&nbsp;
+There are many facts which tend to prove that the action of this apparatus
+is of an electric nature, a modification of that surprising agent, which
+takes magnetism, heat, and light, as other subordinate forms, and of
+whose general scope in this great system of things we are only beginning
+to have a right conception.&nbsp; It has been found that simple electricity,
+artificially produced, and sent along the nerves of a dead body, excites
+muscular action.&nbsp; The brain of a newly-killed animal being taken
+out, and replaced by a substance which produces electric action, the
+operation of digestion, which had been interrupted by the death of the
+animal, was resumed, shewing the absolute identity of the brain with
+a galvanic battery.&nbsp; Nor is this a very startling idea, when we
+reflect that electricity is almost as metaphysical as ever mind was
+supposed to be.&nbsp; It is a thing perfectly intangible, weightless.&nbsp;
+Metal may be magnetized, or heated to seven hundred of Fahrenheit, without
+becoming the hundredth part of a grain heavier.&nbsp; And yet electricity
+is a real thing, an actual existence in nature, as witness the effects
+of heat and light in vegetation - the power of the galvanic current
+to re-assemble the particles of copper from a solution, and make them
+again into a solid plate - the rending force of the thunderbolt as it
+strikes the oak; see also how both heat and light observe the angle
+of incidence in reflection, as exactly as does the grossest stone thrown
+obliquely against a wall.&nbsp; So mental action may be imponderable,
+intangible, and yet a real existence, and ruled by the Eternal through
+his laws. <a name="citation335"></a><a href="#footnote335">{335}</a></p>
+<p>Common observation shews a great general superiority of the human
+mind over that of the inferior animals.&nbsp; Man&rsquo;s mind is almost
+infinite in device; it ranges over all the world; it forms the most
+wonderful combinations; it seeks back into the past, and stretches forward
+into the future; while the animals generally appear to have a narrow
+range of thought and action.&nbsp; But so also has an infant but a limited
+range, and yet it is mind which works there, as well as in the most
+accomplished adults.&nbsp; The difference between mind in the lower
+animals and in man is a difference in degree only; it is not a specific
+difference.&nbsp; All who have studied animals by actual observation,
+and even those who have given a candid attention to the subject in books,
+must attain more or less clear convictions of this truth, notwithstanding
+all the obscurity which prejudice may have engendered.&nbsp; We see
+animals capable of affection, jealousy, envy; we see them quarrel, and
+conduct quarrels, in the very manner pursued by the more impulsive of
+our own race.&nbsp; We see them liable to flattery, inflated with pride,
+and dejected by shame.&nbsp; We see them as tender to their young as
+human parents are, and as faithful to a trust as the most conscientious
+of human servants.&nbsp; The horse is startled by marvellous objects,
+as a man is.&nbsp; The dog and many others shew tenacious memory.&nbsp;
+The dog also proves himself possessed of imagination, by the act of
+dreaming.&nbsp; Horses, finding themselves in want of a shoe, have of
+their own accord gone to a farrier&rsquo;s shop where they were shod
+before.&nbsp; Cats, closed up in rooms, will endeavour to obtain their
+liberation by pulling a latch or ringing a bell.&nbsp; It has several
+times been observed that in a field of cattle, when one or two were
+mischievous, and persisted long in annoying or tyrannizing over the
+rest, the herd, to all appearance, consulted, and then, making a united
+effort, drove the troublers off the ground.&nbsp; The members of a rookery
+have also been observed to take turns in supplying the needs of a family
+reduced to orphanhood.&nbsp; All of these are acts of reason, in no
+respect different from similar acts of men.&nbsp; Moreover, although
+there is no heritage of accumulated knowledge amongst the lower animals,
+as there is amongst us, they are in some degree susceptible of those
+modifications of natural character, and capable of those accomplishments,
+which we call education.&nbsp; The taming and domestication of animals,
+and the changes thus produced upon their nature in the course of generations,
+are results identical with civilization amongst ourselves; and the quiet,
+servile steer is probably as unlike the original wild cattle of this
+country, as the English gentleman of the present day is unlike the rude
+baron of the age of King John.&nbsp; Between a young, unbroken horse,
+and a trained one, there is, again, all the difference which exists
+between a wild youth reared at his own discretion in the country, and
+the same person when he has been toned down by long exposure to the
+influences of refined society.&nbsp; On the accomplishments acquired
+by animals it were superfluous to enter at any length; but I may advert
+to the dogs of M. Leonard, as remarkable examples of what the animal
+intellect may be trained to.&nbsp; When four pieces of card are laid
+down before them, each having a number pronounced <i>once</i> in connexion
+with it, they will, after a re-arrangement of the pieces, select any
+one named by its number.&nbsp; They also play at dominoes, and with
+so much skill as to triumph over biped opponents, whining if the adversary
+place a wrong piece, or if they themselves be deficient in a right one.&nbsp;
+Of extensive combinations of thought we have no reason to believe that
+any animal is capable - and yet most of us must feel the force of Walter
+Scott&rsquo;s remark, that there was scarcely anything which he would
+not believe of a dog.&nbsp; There is a curious result of education in
+certain animals, namely, that habits to which they have been trained
+in some instances become hereditary.&nbsp; For example, the accomplishment
+of pointing at game, although a pure result of education, appears in
+the young pups brought up apart from their parents and kind.&nbsp; The
+peculiar leap of the Irish horse, acquired in the course of traversing
+a boggy country, is continued in the progeny brought up in England.&nbsp;
+This hereditariness of specific habits suggests a relation to that form
+of psychological demonstration usually called instinct; but instinct
+is only another term for mind, or is mind in a peculiar stage of development;
+and though the fact were otherwise, it could not affect the postulate,
+that demonstrations such as have been enumerated are mainly intellectual
+demonstrations, not to be distinguished as such from those of human
+beings.</p>
+<p>More than this, the lower animals manifested mental phenomena long
+before man existed.&nbsp; While as yet there was no brain capable of
+working out a mathematical problem, the economy of the six-sided figure
+was exemplified by the instinct of the bee.&nbsp; Ere human musician
+had whistled or piped, the owl hooted in B flat, the cuckoo had her
+song of a falling third, and the chirp of the cricket was in B.&nbsp;
+The dog and the elephant prefigured the sagacity of the human mind.&nbsp;
+The love of a human mother for her babe was anticipated by nearly every
+humbler mammal, the carnaria not excepted.&nbsp; The peacock strutted,
+the turkey blustered, and the cock fought for victory, just as human
+beings afterwards did, and still do.&nbsp; Our faculty of imitation,
+on which so much of our amusement depends, was exercised by the mocking-bird;
+and the whole tribe of monkeys must have walked about the pre-human
+world, playing off those tricks in which we see the comicality and mischief-making
+of our character so curiously exaggerated.</p>
+<p>The unity and simplicity which characterize nature give great antecedent
+probability to what observation seems about to establish, that, as the
+brain of the vertebrata generally is just an advanced condition of a
+particular ganglion in the mollusca and crustacea, so are the brains
+of the higher and more intelligent mammalia only farther developments
+of the brains of the inferior orders of the same class.&nbsp; Or, to
+the same purpose, it may be said, that each species has certain superior
+developments, according to its needs, while others are in a rudimental
+or repressed state.&nbsp; This will more clearly appear after some inquiry
+has been made into the various powers comprehended under the term mind.</p>
+<p>One of the first and simplest functions of mind is to give consciousness
+- consciousness of our identity and of our existence.&nbsp; This, apparently,
+is independent of the <i>senses</i>, which are simply media, and, as
+Locke has shewn, the only media, through which ideas respecting the
+external world reach the brain.&nbsp; The access of such ideas to the
+brain is the act to which the metaphysicians have given the name of
+perception.&nbsp; Gall, however, has shewn, by induction from a vast
+number of actual cases, that there is a part of the brain devoted to
+perception, and that even this is subdivided into portions which are
+respectively dedicated to the reception of different sets of ideas,
+as those of form, size, colour, weight, objects in their totality, events
+in their progress or occurrence, time, musical sounds, &amp;c.&nbsp;
+The system of mind invented by this philosopher - the only one founded
+upon nature, or which even pretends to or admits of that necessary basis
+- shews a portion of the brain acting as a faculty of comic ideas, another
+of imitation, another of wonder, one for discriminating or observing
+differences, and another in which resides the power of tracing effects
+to causes.&nbsp; There are also parts of the brain for the sentimental
+part of our nature, or the affections, at the head of which stand the
+moral feelings of benevolence, conscientiousness, and veneration.&nbsp;
+Through these, man stands in relation to himself, his fellow-men, the
+external world, and his God; and through these comes most of the happiness
+of man&rsquo;s life, as well as that which he derives from the contemplation
+of the world to come, and the cultivation of his relation to it, (pure
+religion.)&nbsp; The other sentiments may be briefly enumerated, their
+names being sufficient in general to denote their functions - firmness,
+hope, cautiousness, self-esteem, love of approbation, secretiveness,
+marvellousness, constructiveness, imitation, combativeness, destructiveness,
+concentrativeness, adhesiveness, love of the opposite sex, love of offspring,
+alimentiveness, and love of life.&nbsp; Through these faculties, man
+is connected with the external world, and supplied with active impulses
+to maintain his place in it as an individual and as a species.&nbsp;
+There is also a faculty, (language) for expressing, by whatever means,
+(signs, gestures, looks, conventional terms in speech,) the ideas which
+arise in the mind.&nbsp; There is a particular state of each of these
+faculties, when the ideas of objects once formed by it are revived or
+reproduced, a process which seems to be intimately allied with some
+of the phenomena of the new science of photography, when images impressed
+by reflection of the sun&rsquo;s rays upon sensitive paper are, after
+a temporary obliteration, resuscitated on the sheet being exposed to
+the fumes of mercury.&nbsp; Such are the phenomena of memory, that handmaid
+of intellect, without which there could be no accumulation of mental
+capital, but an universal and continual infancy.&nbsp; Conception and
+imagination appear to be only intensities, so to speak, of the state
+of brain in which memory is produced.&nbsp; On their promptness and
+power depend most of the exertions which distinguish the man of arts
+and letters, and even in no small measure the cultivator of science.</p>
+<p>The faculties above described - the actual elements of the mental
+constitution - are seen in mature man in an indefinite potentiality
+and range of action.&nbsp; It is different with the lower animals.&nbsp;
+They are there comparatively definite in their power and restricted
+in their application.&nbsp; The reader is familiar with what are called
+instincts in some of the humbler species, that is, an uniform and unprompted
+tendency towards certain particular acts, as the building of cells by
+the bee, the storing of provisions by that insect and several others,
+and the construction of nests for a coming progeny by birds.&nbsp; This
+quality is nothing more than a mode of operation peculiar to the faculties
+in a humble state of endowment, or early stage of development.&nbsp;
+The cell formation of the bee, the house-building of ants and beavers,
+the web-spinning of spiders, are but primitive 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
+where our labours are in vain, or nearly so.&nbsp; The storing of provisions
+by the ants is an exercise of acquisitiveness, - the faculty which with
+us makes rich men and misers.&nbsp; A vast number of curious devices,
+by which insects provide for the protection and subsistence of their
+young, whom they are perhaps never to see, are most probably a peculiar
+restricted effort of philoprogenitiveness.&nbsp; The common source of
+this class of acts, and of common mental operations, is shewn very convincingly
+by the melting of the one set into the other.&nbsp; Thus, for example,
+the bee and bird will make modifications in the ordinary form of their
+cells and nests when necessity compels them.&nbsp; Thus, the alimentiveness
+of such animals as the dog, usually definite with regard to quantity
+and quality, can be pampered or educated up to a kind of epicurism,
+that is, an indefiniteness of object and action.&nbsp; The same faculty
+acts limitedly in ourselves at first, dictating the special act of sucking;
+afterwards it acquires indefiniteness.&nbsp; Such is the real nature
+of the distinction between what are called instincts and reason, upon
+which so many volumes have been written without profit to the world.&nbsp;
+All faculties are instinctive, that is, dependent on internal and inherent
+impulses.&nbsp; This term is therefore not specially applicable to either
+of the recognised modes of the operation of the faculties.&nbsp; We
+only, in the one case, see the faculty in an immature and slightly developed
+state; in the other, in its most advanced condition.&nbsp; In the one
+case it is <i>definite</i>, in the other <i>indefinite</i>, in its range
+of action.&nbsp; These terms would perhaps be the most suitable for
+expressing the distinction.</p>
+<p>In the humblest forms of being we can trace scarcely anything besides
+a definite action in a few of the faculties.&nbsp; Generally speaking,
+as we ascend in the scale, we see more and more of the faculties in
+exercise, and these tending more to the indefinite mode of manifestation.&nbsp;
+And for this there is the obvious reason in providence, that the lowest
+animals have all of them a very limited sphere of existence, born only
+to perform a few functions, and enjoy a brief term of life, and then
+give way to another generation, so that they do not need much mental
+guidance.&nbsp; At higher points in the scale, the sphere of existence
+is considerably extended, and the mental operations are less definite
+accordingly.&nbsp; The horse, dog, and a few other rasorial types, noted
+for their serviceableness to our race, have the indefinite powers in
+no small endowment.&nbsp; Man, again, shews very little of the definite
+mode of operation, and that little chiefly in childhood, or in barbarism
+or idiocy.&nbsp; Destined for a wide field of action, and to be applicable
+to infinitely varied contingencies, he has all the faculties developed
+to a high pitch of indefiniteness, that he may be ready to act well
+in all imaginable cases.&nbsp; His commission, it may be said, gives
+large discretionary powers, while that of the inferior animals is limited
+to a few precise directions.&nbsp; But when the human brain is congenitally
+imperfect or diseased, or when it is in the state of infancy, we see
+in it an approach towards the character of the brains of some of the
+inferior animals.&nbsp; Dr. G. J. Davey states that he has frequently
+witnessed, among his patients at the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, indications
+of a particular abnormal cerebration which forcibly reminded him of
+the specific healthy characteristics of animals lower in the scale of
+organization; <a name="citation346"></a><a href="#footnote346">{346}</a>
+and every one must have observed how often the actions of children,
+especially in their moments of play, and where their selfish feelings
+are concerned, bear a resemblance to those of certain familiar animals.
+<a name="citation347"></a><a href="#footnote347">{347}</a>&nbsp; Behold,
+then, the wonderful unity of the whole system.&nbsp; The grades of mind,
+like the forms of being, are mere stages of development.&nbsp; In the
+humbler forms, but a few of the mental faculties are traceable, just
+as we see in them but a few of the lineaments of universal structure.&nbsp;
+In man the system has arrived at its highest condition.&nbsp; The few
+gleams of reason, then, which we see in the lower animals, are precisely
+analogous to such a development of the fore-arm as we find in the paddle
+of the whale.&nbsp; Causality, comparison, and other of the nobler faculties,
+are in them <i>rudimental.</i></p>
+<p>Bound up as we thus are by an identity in the character of our mental
+organization with the lower animals, we are yet, it will be observed,
+strikingly distinguished from them by this great advance in development.&nbsp;
+We have faculties in full force and activity which the animals either
+possess not at all, or in so low and obscure a form as to be equivalent
+to non-existence.&nbsp; Now these parts of mind are those which connect
+us with the things that are not of this world.&nbsp; We have veneration,
+prompting us to the worship of the Deity, which the animals lack.&nbsp;
+We have hope, to carry us on in thought beyond the bounds of time.&nbsp;
+We have reason, to enable us to inquire into the character of the Great
+Father, and the relation of us, his humble creatures, towards him.&nbsp;
+We have conscientiousness and benevolence, by which we can in a faint
+and humble measure imitate, in our conduct, that which he exemplifies
+in the whole of his wondrous doings.&nbsp; Beyond this, mental science
+does not carry us in support of religion: the rest depends on evidence
+of a different kind.&nbsp; But it is surely much that we thus discover
+in nature a provision for things so important.&nbsp; The existence of
+faculties having a regard to such things is a good evidence that such
+things exist.&nbsp; The face of God is reflected in the organization
+of man, as a little pool reflects the glorious sun.</p>
+<p>The affective or sentimental faculties are all of them liable to
+operate whenever appropriate objects or stimuli are presented, and this
+they do as irresistibly and unerringly as the tree sucks up moisture
+which it requires, with only this exception, that one faculty often
+interferes with the action of another, and operates instead by force
+of superior inherent strength or temporary activity.&nbsp; For example,
+alimentiveness may be in powerful operation with regard to its appropriate
+object, producing a keen appetite, and yet it may not act, in consequence
+of the more powerful operation of cautiousness, warning against evil
+consequences likely to ensue from the desired indulgence.&nbsp; This
+liability to flit from under the control of one feeling to the control
+of another, constitutes what is recognised as free will in man, being
+nothing more than a vicissitude in the supremacy of the faculties over
+each other.</p>
+<p>It is a common mistake to suppose that the individuals of our own
+species are all of them formed with similar faculties - similar in power
+and tendency - and that education and the influence of circumstances
+produce all the differences which we observe.&nbsp; There is not, in
+the old systems of mental philosophy, any doctrine more opposite to
+the truth than this.&nbsp; It is refuted at once by the great differences
+of intellectual tendency and moral disposition to be observed amongst
+a group of young children who have been all brought up in circumstances
+perfectly identical - even in twins, who have never been but in one
+place, under the charge of one nurse, attended to alike in all respects.&nbsp;
+The mental characters of individuals are inherently various, as the
+forms of their persons and the features of their faces are; and education
+and circumstances, though their influence is not to be despised, are
+incapable of entirely altering these characters, where they are strongly
+developed.&nbsp; That the original characters of mind are dependent
+on the volume of particular parts of the brain and the general quality
+of that viscus, is proved by induction from an extensive range of observations,
+the force of which must have been long since universally acknowledged
+but for the unpreparedness of mankind to admit a functional connexion
+between mind and body.&nbsp; The different mental characters of individuals
+may be presumed from analogy to depend on the same law of development
+which we have seen determining forms of being and the mental characters
+of particular species.&nbsp; This we may conceive as carrying forward
+the intellectual powers and moral dispositions of some to a high pitch,
+repressing those of others at a moderate amount, and thus producing
+all the varieties which we see in our fellow-creatures.&nbsp; Thus a
+Cuvier and a Newton are but expansions of a clown, and the person emphatically
+called the wicked man, is one whose highest moral feelings are rudimental.&nbsp;
+Such differences are not confined to our species; they are only less
+strongly marked in many of the inferior animals.&nbsp; There are clever
+dogs and wicked horses, as well as clever men and wicked men, and education
+sharpens the talents, and in some degree regulates the dispositions
+of animals, as it does our own.&nbsp; Here I may advert to a very interesting
+analogy between the mental characters of the types in the quinary system
+of zoology and the characters of individual men.&nbsp; We have seen
+that the pre-eminent type is usually endowed with an harmonious assemblage
+of the mental qualities belonging to the whole group, while the sub-typical
+inclines to ferocity, the rasorial to gentleness, and so on.&nbsp; Now,
+amongst individuals, some appear to be almost exclusively of the sub-typical,
+and others of the rasorial characters, while to a limited number is
+given the finely assorted assemblage of qualities which places them
+on a parallel with the typical.&nbsp; To this may be attributed the
+universality which marks all the very highest brains, such as those
+of Shakespeare and Scott, men of whom it has been remarked that they
+must have possessed within themselves not only the poet, but the warrior,
+the statesman, and the philosopher; and who, moreover, appear to have
+had the mild and manly, the moral and the forcible parts of our nature,
+in the most perfect balance.</p>
+<p>There is, nevertheless, a general adaptation of the mental constitution
+of man to the circumstances in which he lives, as there is between all
+the parts of nature to each other.&nbsp; The goods of the physical world
+are only to be realized by ingenuity and industrious exertion; behold,
+accordingly, an intellect full of device, and a fabric of the faculties
+which would go to pieces or destroy itself if it were not kept in constant
+occupation.&nbsp; Nature presents to us much that is sublime and beautiful:
+behold faculties which delight in contemplating these properties of
+hers, and in rising upon them, as upon wings, to the presence of the
+Eternal.&nbsp; It is also a world of difficulties and perils, and see
+how a large portion of our species are endowed with vigorous powers
+which take a pleasure in meeting and overcoming difficulty and danger.&nbsp;
+Even that principle on which our faculties are constituted - a wide
+range of freedom in which to act for all various occasions - necessitates
+a resentful faculty, by which individuals may protect themselves from
+the undue and capricious exercise of each other&rsquo;s faculties, and
+thus preserve their individual rights.&nbsp; So also there is cautiousness,
+to give us a tendency 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 function which obviously has a certain legitimate range of action,
+however liable to be abused.&nbsp; The constitution of the mind generally
+points to a state of intimate relation of individuals towards society,
+towards the external world, and towards things above this world.&nbsp;
+No individual being is integral or independent; he is only part of an
+extensive piece of social mechanism.&nbsp; The inferior mind, full of
+rude energy and unregulated impulse, does not more require a superior
+nature to act as its master and its mentor, than does the superior nature
+require to be surrounded by such rough elements on which to exercise
+its high endowments as a ruling and tutelary power.&nbsp; This relation
+of each to each produces a vast portion of the active business of life.&nbsp;
+It is easy to see that, if we were all alike in our moral tendencies,
+and all placed on a medium of perfect moderation in this respect, the
+world would be a scene of everlasting dulness and apathy.&nbsp; It requires
+the variety of individual constitution to give moral life to the scene.</p>
+<p>The indefiniteness of the potentiality of the human faculties, and
+the complexity which thus attends their relations, lead unavoidably
+to occasional error.&nbsp; If we consider for a moment that there are
+not less than thirty such faculties, that they are each given in different
+proportions to different persons, that each is at the same time endowed
+with a wide discretion as to the force and frequency of its action,
+and that our neighbours, the world, and our connexions with something
+beyond it, are all exercising an ever-varying influence over us, we
+cannot be surprised at the irregularities attending human conduct.&nbsp;
+It is simply the penalty paid for the superior endowment.&nbsp; It is
+here that the imperfection of our nature resides.&nbsp; Causality and
+conscientiousness are, it is true, guides over all; but even these are
+only faculties of the same indeterminate constitution as the rest, and
+partake accordingly of the same inequality of action.&nbsp; Man is therefore
+a piece of mechanism, which never can act so as to satisfy his own ideas
+of what he might be - for he can imagine a state of moral perfection,
+(as he can imagine a globe formed of diamonds, pearls, and rubies,)
+though his constitution forbids him to realize it.&nbsp; There ever
+will, in the best disposed and most disciplined minds, be occasional
+discrepancies between the amount of temptation and the power summoned
+for regulation or resistance, or between the stimulus and the mobility
+of the faculty; and hence those errors, and shortcomings, and excesses,
+without end, with which the good are constantly finding cause to charge
+themselves.&nbsp; There is at the same time even here a possibility
+of improvement.&nbsp; 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 be habitually
+humane, frank, and truthful.&nbsp; So is human society, in its earliest
+stages, sanguinary, aggressive, and deceitful, but in time becomes just,
+faithful, and benevolent.&nbsp; To such improvements there is a natural
+tendency which will operate in all fair circumstances, though it is
+not to be expected that irregular and undue impulses will ever be altogether
+banished from the system.</p>
+<p>It may still be a puzzle to many, how beings should be born into
+the world whose organization is such that they unavoidably, even in
+a civilized country, become malefactors.&nbsp; Does God, it may be asked,
+make criminals?&nbsp; Does he fashion certain beings with a predestination
+to evil?&nbsp; He does not do so; and yet the criminal type of brain,
+as it is called, comes into existence in accordance with laws which
+the Deity has established.&nbsp; It is not, however, as the result of
+the first or general intention of those laws, but as an exception from
+their ordinary and proper action.&nbsp; The production of those evilly
+disposed beings is in this manner.&nbsp; The moral character of the
+progeny depends in a general way, (as does the physical character also,)
+upon conditions of the parents, - both general conditions, and conditions
+at the particular time of the commencement of the existence of the new
+being, and likewise external conditions affecting the f&oelig;tus through
+the mother.&nbsp; Now the amount of these conditions is indefinite.&nbsp;
+The faculties of the parents, as far as these are concerned, may have
+oscillated for the time towards the extreme of tensibility in one direction.&nbsp;
+The influences upon the f&oelig;tus may have also been of an extreme
+and unusual kind.&nbsp; Let us suppose that the conditions upon the
+whole have been favourable for the development, not of the higher, but
+of the lower sentiments, and of the propensities of the new being, the
+result will necessarily be a mean type of brain.&nbsp; Here, it will
+be observed, God no more decreed an immoral being, than he decreed an
+immoral paroxysm of the sentiments.&nbsp; Our perplexity is in considering
+the ill-disposed being by himself.&nbsp; He is only a part of a series
+of phenomena, traceable to a principle good in the main, but which admits
+of evil as an exception.&nbsp; We have seen that it is for wise ends
+that God leaves our moral faculties to an indefinite range of action;
+the general good results of this arrangement are obvious; but exceptions
+of evil are inseparable from such a system, and this is one of them.&nbsp;
+To come to particular illustration - when a people are oppressed, or
+kept in a state of slavery, they invariably contract habits of lying,
+for the purpose of deceiving and outwitting their superiors, falsehood
+being a refuge of the weak under difficulties.&nbsp; What is a habit
+in parents becomes an inherent quality in children.&nbsp; We are not,
+therefore, to be surprised when a traveller tells us that black children
+in the West Indies appear to lie by instinct, and never answer a white
+person truly even in the simplest matter.&nbsp; Here we have secretiveness
+roused in a people to a state of constant and exalted exercise; an over
+tendency of the nervous energy in that direction is the consequence,
+and a new organic condition is established.&nbsp; This tells upon the
+progeny, which comes into the world with secretiveness excessive in
+volume and activity.&nbsp; All other evil characteristics may be readily
+conceived as being implanted in a new generation in the same way.&nbsp;
+And sometimes not one, but several generations, may be concerned in
+bringing up the result to a pitch which produces crime.&nbsp; It is,
+however, to be observed, that the general tendency of things is to a
+limitation, not the extension of such abnormally constituted beings.&nbsp;
+The criminal brain finds itself in a social scene where all is against
+it.&nbsp; It may struggle on for a time, but the medium and superior
+natures are never long at a loss in getting the better of it.&nbsp;
+The disposal of such beings will always depend much on the moral state
+of a community, the degree in which just views prevail with regard to
+human nature, and the feelings which accident may have caused to predominate
+at a particular time.&nbsp; Where the mass was little enlightened or
+refined, and terrors for life or property were highly excited, malefactors
+have ever been treated severely.&nbsp; But when order is generally triumphant,
+and reason allowed sway, men begin to see the true case of criminals
+- namely, that while one large department are victims of erroneous social
+conditions, another are brought to error by tendencies which they are
+only unfortunate in having inherited from nature.&nbsp; Criminal jurisprudence
+then addresses itself less to the direct punishment than to the reformation
+and care-taking of those liable to its attention.&nbsp; And such a treatment
+of criminals, it may be farther remarked, so that it stop short of affording
+any encouragement to crime, (a point which experience will determine,)
+is evidently no more than justice, seeing how accidentally all forms
+of the moral constitution are distributed, and how thoroughly mutual
+obligation shines throughout the whole frame of society - the strong
+to help the weak, the good to redeem and restrain the bad.</p>
+<p>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 be developed from inherent qualities, and to have a mode of action
+depending solely on its own organization.&nbsp; Thus the whole is complete
+on one principle.&nbsp; The masses of space are formed by law; law makes
+them in due time theatres of existence for plants and animals; sensation,
+disposition, intellect, are all in like manner developed and sustained
+in action by law.&nbsp; It is most interesting to observe into how small
+a field the whole of the mysteries of nature thus ultimately resolve
+themselves.&nbsp; The inorganic has one final comprehensive law, GRAVITATION.&nbsp;
+The organic, the other great department of mundane things, rests in
+like manner on one law, and that is, - DEVELOPMENT.&nbsp; Nor may even
+these be after all twain, but only branches of one still more comprehensive
+law, the expression of that unity which man&rsquo;s wit can scarcely
+separate from Deity itself.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF THE ANIMATED CREATION.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>We have now to inquire how this view of the constitution and origin
+of nature bears upon the condition of man upon the earth, and his relation
+to supra-mundane things.</p>
+<p>That enjoyment is the proper attendant of animal existence is pressed
+upon us by all that we see and all we experience.&nbsp; Everywhere we
+perceive in the lower creatures, in their ordinary condition, symptoms
+of enjoyment.&nbsp; Their whole being is a system of needs, the supplying
+of which is gratification, and of faculties, the exercise of which is
+pleasurable.&nbsp; When we consult our own sensations, we find that,
+even in a sense of a healthy performance of all the functions of the
+animal economy, God has furnished us with an innocent and very high
+enjoyment.&nbsp; The mere quiet consciousness of a healthy play of the
+mental functions - a mind at ease with itself and all around it - is
+in like manner extremely agreeable.&nbsp; This negative class of enjoyments,
+it may be remarked, is likely to be even more extensively experienced
+by the lower animals than by man, at least in the proportion of their
+absolute endowments, as their mental and bodily functions are much less
+liable to derangement than ours.&nbsp; To find the world constituted
+on this principle is only what in reason we would expect.&nbsp; We cannot
+conceive that so vast a system could have been created for a contrary
+purpose.&nbsp; No averagely constituted human being would, in his own
+limited sphere of action, think of producing a similar system upon an
+opposite principle.&nbsp; But to form so vast a range of being, and
+to make being everywhere a source of gratification, is conformable to
+our ideas of a Creator in whom we are constantly discovering traits
+of a nature, of which our own is but a faint and far-cast shadow at
+the best.</p>
+<p>It appears at first difficult to reconcile with this idea the many
+miseries which we see all sentient beings, ourselves included, occasionally
+enduring.&nbsp; How, the sage has asked in every age, should a Being
+so transcendently kind, have allowed of so large an admixture of evil
+in the condition of his creatures?&nbsp; Do we not at length find an
+answer to a certain extent satisfactory, in the view which has now been
+given of the constitution of nature?&nbsp; We there see the Deity operating
+in the most august of his works by fixed laws, an arrangement which,
+it is clear, only admits of the main and primary results being good,
+but disregards exceptions.&nbsp; Now the mechanical laws are so definite
+in their purposes, that no exceptions ever take place in that department;
+if there is a certain quantity of nebulous matter to be agglomerated
+and divided and set in motion as a planetary system, it will be so with
+hair&rsquo;s-breadth accuracy, and cannot be otherwise.&nbsp; But the
+laws presiding over meteorology, life, and mind, are necessarily less
+definite, as they have to produce a great variety of mutually related
+results.&nbsp; Left to act independently of each other, each according
+to its separate commission, and each with a wide range of potentiality
+to be modified by associated conditions, they can only have effects
+generally beneficial: often there must be an interference of one law
+with another, often a law will chance to operate in excess, or upon
+a wrong object, and thus evil will be produced.&nbsp; Thus, winds are
+generally useful in many ways, and the sea is useful as a means of communication
+between one country and another; but the natural laws which produce
+winds are of indefinite range of action, and sometimes are unusually
+concentrated in space or in time, so as to produce storms and hurricanes,
+by which much damage is done; the sea may be by these causes violently
+agitated, so that many barks and many lives perish.&nbsp; Here, it is
+evident, the evil is only exceptive.&nbsp; Suppose, again, that a boy,
+in the course of the lively sports proper to his age, suffers a fall
+which injures his spine, and renders him a cripple for life.&nbsp; Two
+things have been concerned in the case: first, the love of violent exercise,
+and second, the law of gravitation.&nbsp; Both of these things are good
+in the main.&nbsp; In the rash enterprises and rough sports in which
+boys engage, they prepare their bodies and minds for the hard tasks
+of life.&nbsp; By gravitation, all moveable things, our own bodies included,
+are kept stable on the surface of the earth.&nbsp; But when it chances
+that the playful boy loses his hold (we shall say) of the branch of
+a tree, and has no solid support immediately below, the law of gravitation
+unrelentingly pulls him to the ground, and thus he is hurt.&nbsp; Now
+it was not a primary object of gravitation to injure boys; but gravitation
+could not but operate in the circumstances, its nature being to be universal
+and invariable.&nbsp; The evil is, therefore, only a casual exception
+from something in the main good.</p>
+<p>The same explanation applies to even the most conspicuous of the
+evils which afflict society.&nbsp; War, it may be said, and said truly,
+is a tremendous example of evil, in the misery, hardship, waste of human
+life, and mis-spending of human energies, which it occasions.&nbsp;
+But what is it that produces war?&nbsp; Certain tendencies of human
+nature, as keen assertion of a supposed right, resentment of supposed
+injury, acquisitiveness, desire of admiration, combativeness, or mere
+love of excitement.&nbsp; All of these are tendencies which are every
+day, in a legitimate extent of action, producing great and indispensable
+benefits to us.&nbsp; Man would be a tame, indolent, unserviceable being
+without them, and his fate would be starvation.&nbsp; War, then, huge
+evil though it be, is, after all, but the exceptive case, a casual misdirection
+of properties and powers essentially good.&nbsp; God has given us the
+tendencies for a benevolent purpose.&nbsp; He has only not laid down
+any absolute obstruction to our misuse of them.&nbsp; That were an arrangement
+of a kind which he has nowhere made.&nbsp; But he has established many
+laws in our nature which tend to lessen the frequency and destructiveness
+of these abuses.&nbsp; Our reason comes to see that war is purely an
+evil, even to the conqueror.&nbsp; Benevolence interposes to make its
+ravages less mischievous to human comfort, and less destructive to human
+life.&nbsp; Men begin to find that their more active powers can be exercised
+with equal gratification on legitimate objects; for example, in overcoming
+the natural difficulties of their path through life, or in a generous
+spirit of emulation in a line of duty beneficial to themselves and their
+fellow-creatures.&nbsp; Thus, war at length shrinks into a comparatively
+narrow compass, though there certainly is no reason to suppose that
+it will be at any early period, if ever, altogether dispensed with,
+while man&rsquo;s constitution remains as it is.&nbsp; In considering
+an evil of this kind, we must not limit our view to our own or any past
+time.&nbsp; Placed upon the earth with faculties prepared to act, but
+inexperienced, and with the more active propensities necessarily in
+great force to suit the condition of the globe, man was apt to misuse
+his powers much in this way at first, compared with what he is likely
+to do when he advances into a condition of civilization.&nbsp; In the
+scheme of providence, thousands of years of frequent warfare, all the
+so-called glories which fill history, may be only an exception to the
+general rule.</p>
+<p>The sex passion in like manner leads to great evils; but the evils
+are only an exception from the vast mass of good connected with this
+affection.&nbsp; Providence has seen it necessary to make very ample
+provision for the preservation and utmost possible extension of all
+species.&nbsp; The aim seems to be to diffuse existence as widely as
+possible, to fill up every vacant piece of space with some sentient
+being to be a vehicle of enjoyment.&nbsp; Hence this passion is conferred
+in great force.&nbsp; But the relation between the number of beings,
+and the means of supporting them, is only on the footing of general
+law.&nbsp; There may be occasional discrepancies between the laws operating
+for the multiplication of individuals, and the laws operating to supply
+them with the means of subsistence, and evils will be endured in consequence,
+even in our own highly favoured species.&nbsp; But against all these
+evils, and against those numberless vexations which have arisen in all
+ages from the attachment of the sexes, place the vast amount of happiness
+which is derived from this source - the basis of the whole circle of
+the domestic affections, the sweetening principle of life, the prompter
+of all our most generous feelings, and even of our most virtuous resolves
+- and every ill that can be traced to it is but as dust in the balance.&nbsp;
+And here, also, we must be on our guard against judging from what we
+see in the world at a particular era.&nbsp; As reason and the higher
+sentiments of man&rsquo;s nature increase in force, this passion is
+put under better regulation, so as to lessen many of the evils connected
+with it.&nbsp; The civilized man is more able to give it due control;
+his attachments are less the result of impulse; he studies more the
+weal of his partner and offspring.&nbsp; There are even some of the
+resentful feelings connected in early society with love, such as hatred
+of successful rivalry, and jealousy, which almost disappear in an advanced
+stage of civilization.&nbsp; The evils springing, in our own species
+at least, from this passion, may therefore be an exception mainly peculiar
+to a particular term of the world&rsquo;s progress, and which may be
+expected to decrease greatly in amount.</p>
+<p>With respect, again, to disease, so prolific a cause of suffering
+to man, the human constitution is merely a complicated but regular process
+in electro-chemistry, which goes on well, and is a source of continual
+gratification, so long as nothing occurs to interfere with it injuriously,
+but which is liable every moment to be deranged by various external
+agencies, when it becomes a source of pain, and, if the injury be severe,
+ceases to be capable of retaining life.&nbsp; It may be readily admitted
+that the evils experienced in this way are very great; but, after all,
+such experiences are no more than occasional, and not necessarily frequent
+- exceptions from a general rule of which the direct action is to confer
+happiness.&nbsp; The human constitution might have been made of a more
+hardy character; but we always see hardiness and insensibility go together,
+and it may be of course presumed that we only could have purchased this
+immunity from suffering at the expense of a large portion of that delicacy
+in which lie some of our most agreeable sensations.&nbsp; Or man&rsquo;s
+faculties might have been restricted to definiteness of action, as is
+greatly the case with those of the lower animals, and thus we should
+have been equally safe from the aberrations which lead to disease; but
+in that event we should have been incapable of acting to so many different
+purposes as we are, and of the many high enjoyments which the varied
+action of our faculties places in our power: we should not, in short,
+have been human beings, but merely on a level with the inferior animals.&nbsp;
+Thus, it appears, that the very fineness of man&rsquo;s constitution,
+that which places him in such a high relation to the mundane economy,
+and makes him the vehicle of so many exquisitely delightful sensations
+- it is this which makes him liable to the sufferings of disease.&nbsp;
+It might be said, on the other hand, that the noxiousness of the agencies
+producing disease might have been diminished or extinguished; but the
+probability is, that this could not have been done without such a derangement
+of the whole economy of nature as would have been attended with more
+serious evils.&nbsp; For example - a large class of diseases are the
+result of effluvia from decaying organic matter.&nbsp; This kind of
+matter is known to be extremely useful, when mixed with earth, in favouring
+the process of vegetation.&nbsp; Supposing the noxiousness to the human
+constitution done away with, might we not also lose that important quality
+which tends so largely to increase the food raised from the ground?&nbsp;
+Perhaps (as has been suggested) the noxiousness is even a matter of
+special design, to induce us to put away decaying organic substances
+into the earth, where they are calculated to be so useful.&nbsp; Now
+man has reason to enable him to see that such substances are beneficial
+under one arrangement, and noxious in the other.&nbsp; He is, as it
+were, commanded to take the right method in dealing with it.&nbsp; In
+point of fact, men do not always take this method, but allow accumulations
+of noxious matter to gather close about their dwellings, where they
+generate fevers and agues.&nbsp; But their doing so may be regarded
+as only a temporary exception from the operation of mental laws, the
+general tendency of which is to make men adopt the proper measures.&nbsp;
+And these measures will probably be in time universally adopted, so
+that one extensive class of diseases will be altogether or nearly abolished.</p>
+<p>Another large class of diseases spring from mismanagement of our
+personal economy.&nbsp; Eating to excess, eating and drinking what is
+noxious, disregard to that cleanliness which is necessary for the right
+action of the functions of the skin, want of fresh air for the supply
+of the lungs, undue, excessive, and irregular indulgence of the mental
+affections, are all of them recognised modes of creating that derangement
+of the system in which disease consists.&nbsp; Here also it may be said
+that a limitation of the mental faculties to definite manifestations
+(<i>vulgo</i>, instincts) might have enabled us to avoid many of 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 lower animals are,
+wanting that transcendently higher character of sensation and power,
+by which our enjoyments are made so much greater.&nbsp; In making the
+desire of food, for example, with us an indefinite mental manifestation,
+instead of the definite one, which it is amongst the lower animals,
+the Creator has given us a means of deriving far greater gratifications
+from food (consistently with health) than the lower animals appear to
+be capable of.&nbsp; He has also given us reason to act as a guiding
+and controlling power over this and other propensities, so that they
+may be prevented from becoming causes of malady.&nbsp; We can see that
+excess is injurious, and are thus prompted to moderation.&nbsp; We can
+see that all the things which we feel inclined to take are not healthful,
+and are thus exhorted to avoid what are pernicious.&nbsp; We can also
+see that a cleanly skin and a constant supply of pure air are necessary
+to the proper performance of some of the most important of the organic
+functions, and thus are stimulated to frequent ablution, and to a right
+ventilation of our parlours and sleeping apartments.&nbsp; And so on
+with the other causes of disease.&nbsp; Reason may not operate very
+powerfully to these purposes in an early state of society, and prodigious
+evils may therefore have been endured from disease in past ages; but
+these are not necessarily to be endured always.&nbsp; As civilization
+advances, reason acquires a greater ascendancy; the causes of the evils
+are seen and avoided; and disease shrinks into a comparatively narrow
+compass.&nbsp; The experience of our own country places this in a striking
+light.&nbsp; In the middle ages, when large towns had no police regulations,
+society was every now and then scourged by pestilence.&nbsp; The third
+of the people of Europe are said to have been carried off by one epidemic.&nbsp;
+Even in London the annual mortality has greatly sunk within a century.&nbsp;
+The improvement in human life, which has taken place since the construction
+of the Northampton tables by Dr. Price, is equally remarkable.&nbsp;
+Modern tables still shew a prodigious mortality among the young in all
+civilized countries - evidently a result of some prevalent error in
+the usual modes of rearing them.&nbsp; But to remedy this evil there
+is the sagacity of the human mind, and the sense to adopt any reformed
+plans which may be shewn to be necessary.&nbsp; By a change in the management
+of an orphan institution in London, during the last fifty years, an
+immense reduction in the mortality took place.&nbsp; We may of course
+hope to see measures devised and adopted for producing a similar improvement
+of infant life throughout the world at large.</p>
+<p>In this part of our subject, the most difficult point certainly lies
+in those occurrences of disease where the afflicted individual has been
+in no degree concerned in bringing the visitation upon himself.&nbsp;
+Daily experience shews us infectious disease arising in a place where
+the natural laws in respect of cleanliness are neglected, and then spreading
+into regions where there is no blame of this kind.&nbsp; We then see
+the innocent suffering equally with those who may be called the guilty.&nbsp;
+Nay, the benevolent physician who comes to succour the miserable beings
+whose error may have caused the mischief, is sometimes seen to fall
+a victim to it, while many of his patients recover.&nbsp; We are also
+only too familiar with the transmission of diseases from erring parents
+to innocent children, who, accordingly suffer, and perhaps die prematurely,
+as it were for the sins of others.&nbsp; After all, however painful
+such cases may be in contemplation, they cannot be regarded in any other
+light than as exceptions from arrangements, the general working of which
+is beneficial.</p>
+<p>With regard to the innocence of the suffering parties, there is one
+important consideration which is pressed upon us from many quarters,
+namely - that moral conditions have not the least concern in the working
+of these simply physical laws.&nbsp; These laws proceed with an entire
+independence of all such conditions, and desirably so, for otherwise
+there could be no certain dependence placed upon them.&nbsp; Thus it
+may happen that two persons ascending a piece of scaffolding, the one
+a virtuous, the other a vicious man, the former, being the less cautious
+of the two, ventures upon an insecure place, falls, and is killed, while
+the other, choosing a better footing, remains uninjured.&nbsp; It is
+not in what we can conceive of the nature of things, that there should
+be a special exemption from the ordinary laws of matter, to save this
+virtuous man.&nbsp; So it might be that, of two physicians, attending
+fever cases, in a mean part of a large city, the one, an excellent citizen,
+may stand in such a position with 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 and father, and who, unlike the other, only attends
+such cases with selfish ends, takes care to be as much as possible out
+of the stream of infection, and accordingly escapes.&nbsp; In both of
+these cases man&rsquo;s sense of good and evil - his faculty of conscientiousness
+- would incline him to destine the vicious man to destruction and save
+the virtuous.&nbsp; But the Great Ruler of Nature does not act on such
+principles.&nbsp; He has established laws for the operation of inanimate
+matter, which are quite unswerving, so that when we know them, we have
+only to act in a certain way with respect to them, in order to obtain
+all the benefits and avoid all the evils connected with them.&nbsp;
+He has likewise established moral laws in our nature, which are equally
+unswerving, (allowing for their wider range of action,) and from obedience
+to which unfailing good is to be derived.&nbsp; But the two sets of
+laws are independent of each other.&nbsp; Obedience to each gives only
+its own proper advantage, not the advantage proper to the other.&nbsp;
+Hence it is that virtue forms no protection against the evils connected
+with the physical laws, while, on the other hand, a man skilled in and
+attentive to these, but unrighteous and disregardful of his neighbour,
+is in like manner not protected by his attention to physical circumstances
+from the proper consequences of neglect or breach of the moral laws.</p>
+<p>Thus it is that the innocence of the party suffering for the faults
+of a parent, or of any other person or set of persons, is evidently
+a consideration quite apart from that suffering.</p>
+<p>It is clear, moreover, from the whole scope of the natural laws,
+that the individual, as far as the present sphere of being is concerned,
+is to the Author of Nature a consideration of inferior moment.&nbsp;
+Everywhere we see the arrangements for the species perfect; the individual
+is left, as it were, to take his chance amidst the <i>m&ecirc;l&eacute;e</i>
+of the various laws affecting him.&nbsp; If he be found inferiorly endowed,
+or ill befalls him, there was at least no partiality against him.&nbsp;
+The system has the fairness of a lottery, in which every one has the
+like chance of drawing the prize.</p>
+<p>Yet it is also to be observed that few evils are altogether unmixed.&nbsp;
+God, contemplating apparently the unbending action of his great laws,
+has established others which appear to be designed to have a compensating,
+a repairing, and a consoling effect.&nbsp; Suppose, for instance, that,
+from a defect in the power of development in a mother, her offspring
+is ushered into the world destitute of some of the most useful members,
+or blind, or deaf, or of imperfect intellect, there is ever to be found
+in the parents and other relatives, and in the surrounding public, a
+sympathy with the sufferer, which tends to make up for the deficiency,
+so that he is in the long run not much a loser.&nbsp; Indeed, the benevolence
+implanted in our nature seems to be an arrangement having for one of
+its principal objects to cause us, by sympathy and active aid, to remedy
+the evils unavoidably suffered by our fellow-creatures in the course
+of the operation of the other natural laws.&nbsp; And even in the sufferer
+himself, it is often found that a defect in one point is made up for
+by an extra power in another.&nbsp; The blind come to have a sense of
+touch much more acute than those who see.&nbsp; Persons born without
+hands have been known to acquire a power of using their feet for a number
+of the principal offices usually served by that member.&nbsp; I need
+hardly say how remarkably fatuity is compensated by the more than usual
+regard paid to the children born with it by their parents, and the zeal
+which others usually feel to protect and succour such persons.&nbsp;
+In short, we never see evil of any kind take place where there is not
+some remedy or compensating principle ready to interfere for its alleviation.&nbsp;
+And there can be no doubt that in this manner suffering of all kinds
+is very much relieved.</p>
+<p>We may, then, regard the globes of space as theatres designed for
+the residence of animated sentient beings, placed there with this as
+their first and most obvious purpose - namely, to be sensible of enjoyments
+from the exercise of their faculties in relation to external things.&nbsp;
+The faculties of the various species are very different, but the happiness
+of each depends on the harmony there may be between its particular faculties
+and its particular circumstances.&nbsp; For instance, place the small-brained
+sheep or ox in a good pasture, and it fully enjoys this harmony of relation;
+but man, having many more faculties, cannot be thus contented.&nbsp;
+Besides having a sufficiency of food and bodily comfort, he must have
+entertainment for his intellect, whatever be its grade, objects for
+the domestic and social affections, objects for the sentiments.&nbsp;
+He is also a progressive being, and what pleases him to-day may not
+please him to-morrow; but, in each case he demands a sphere of appropriate
+conditions in order to be happy.&nbsp; By virtue of his superior organization,
+his enjoyments are much higher and more varied than those of any of
+the lower animals; but the very complexity of circumstances affecting
+him renders it at the same time unavoidable, that his nature should
+be often inharmoniously placed and disagreeably affected, and that he
+should therefore be unhappy.&nbsp; Still unhappiness amongst mankind
+is the exception from the rule of their condition, and an exception
+which is capable of almost infinite diminution, by virtue of the improving
+reason of man, and the experience which he acquires in working out the
+problems of society.</p>
+<p>To secure the immediate means of happiness it would seem to be necessary
+for men first to study with all care the constitution of nature, and,
+secondly, to accommodate themselves to that constitution, so as to obtain
+all the realizable advantages from acting conformably to it, and to
+avoid all likely evils from disregarding it.&nbsp; It will be of no
+use to sit down and expect that things are to operate of their own accord,
+or through the direction of a partial deity, for our benefit; equally
+so were it to expose ourselves to palpable dangers, under the notion
+that we shall, for some reason, have a dispensation or exemption from
+them: we must endeavour so to place ourselves, and so to act, that the
+arrangements which Providence has made impartially for all may be in
+our favour, and not against us; such are the only means by which we
+can obtain good and avoid evil here below.&nbsp; And, in doing this,
+it is especially necessary that care be taken to avoid interfering with
+the like efforts of other men, beyond what may have been agreed upon
+by the mass as necessary for the general good.&nbsp; Such interferences,
+tending in any way to injure the body, property, or peace of a neighbour,
+or to the injury of society in general, tend very much to reflect evil
+upon ourselves, through the re-action which they produce in the feelings
+of our neighbour and of society, and also the offence which they give
+to our own conscientiousness and benevolence.&nbsp; On the other hand,
+when we endeavour to promote the efforts of our fellow-creatures to
+attain happiness, we produce a re-action of the contrary kind, the tendency
+of which is towards our own benefit.&nbsp; The one course of action
+tends to the injury, the other to the benefit of ourselves and others.&nbsp;
+By the one course the general design of the Creator towards his creatures
+is thwarted; by the other it is favoured.&nbsp; And thus we can readily
+see the most substantial grounds for regarding all moral emotions and
+doings as divine in their nature, and as a means of rising to and communing
+with God.&nbsp; Obedience is not selfishness, which it would otherwise
+be - it is worship.&nbsp; The merest barbarians have a glimmering sense
+of this philosophy, and it continually shines out more and more clearly
+in the public mind, as a nation advances in intelligence.&nbsp; Nor
+are individuals alone concerned here.&nbsp; The same rule applies as
+between one great body or class of men and another, and also between
+nations.&nbsp; Thus if one set of men keep others in the condition of
+slaves - this being a gross injustice to the subjected party, the mental
+manifestations of that party to the masters will be such as to mar the
+comfort of their lives; the minds of the masters themselves will be
+degraded by the association with beings so degraded; and thus, with
+some immediate or apparent benefit from keeping slaves, there will be
+in a far greater degree an experience of evil.&nbsp; So also, if one
+portion of a nation, engaged in a particular department of industry,
+grasp at some advantages injurious to the other sections of the people,
+the first effect will be an injury to those other portions of the nation,
+and the second a re-active injury to the injurers, making their guilt
+their punishment.&nbsp; And so when one nation commits an aggression
+upon the property or rights of another, or even pursues towards it a
+sordid or ungracious policy, the effects are sure to be redoubled evil
+from the offended party.&nbsp; All of these things are under laws which
+make the effects, on a large range, absolutely certain; and an individual,
+a party, a people, can no more act unjustly with safety, than I could
+with safety place my leg in the track of a coming wain, or attempt to
+fast thirty days.&nbsp; We have been constituted on the principle of
+only being able to realize happiness for ourselves when our fellow-creatures
+are also happy; we must therefore both do to others only as we would
+have others to do to us, and endeavour to promote their happiness as
+well as our own, in order to find ourselves truly comfortable in this
+field of existence.&nbsp; These are words which God speaks to us as
+truly through his works, as if we heard them uttered in his own voice
+from heaven.</p>
+<p>It will occur to every one, that the system here unfolded does not
+imply the most perfect conceivable love or regard on the part of the
+Deity towards his creatures.&nbsp; Constituted as we are, feeling how
+vain our efforts often are to attain happiness or avoid calamity, and
+knowing that much evil does unavoidably befall us from no fault of ours,
+we are apt to feel that this is a dreary view of the Divine economy;
+and before we have looked farther, we might be tempted to say, Far rather
+let us cling to the idea, so long received, that the Deity acts continually
+for special occasions, and gives such directions to the fate of each
+individual as he thinks meet; so that, when sorrow comes to us, we shall
+have at least the consolation of believing that it is imposed by a Father
+who loves us, and who seeks by these means to accomplish our ultimate
+good.&nbsp; Now, in the first place, if this be an untrue notion of
+the Deity and his ways, it can be of no real benefit to us; and, in
+the second, it is proper to inquire if there be necessarily in the doctrine
+of natural law any peculiarity calculated materially to affect our hitherto
+supposed relation to the Deity.&nbsp; It may be that while we are committed
+to take our chance in a natural system of undeviating operation, and
+are left with apparent ruthlessness to endure the consequences of every
+collision into which we knowingly or unknowingly come with each law
+of the system, there is a system of Mercy and Grace behind the screen
+of nature, which is to make up for all casualties endured here, and
+the very largeness of which is what makes these casualties a matter
+of indifference to God.&nbsp; For the existence of such a system, the
+actual constitution of nature is itself an argument.&nbsp; The reasoning
+may proceed thus: The system of nature assures us that benevolence is
+a leading principle in the divine mind.&nbsp; But that system is at
+the same time deficient in a means of making this benevolence of invariable
+operation.&nbsp; To reconcile this to the recognised character of the
+Deity, it is necessary to suppose that the present system is but a part
+of a whole, a stage in a Great Progress, and that the Redress is in
+reserve.&nbsp; Another argument here occurs - the economy of nature,
+beautifully arranged and vast in its extent as it is, does not satisfy
+even man&rsquo;s idea of what might be; he feels that, if this multiplicity
+of theatres for the exemplification of such phenomena as we see on earth
+were to go on for ever unchanged, it would not be worthy of the Being
+capable of creating it.&nbsp; An endless monotony of human generations,
+with their humble thinkings and doings, seems an object beneath that
+august Being.&nbsp; But the mundane economy might be very well as a
+portion of some greater phenomenon, the rest of which was yet to be
+evolved.&nbsp; It therefore appears that our system, though it may at
+first appear at issue with other doctrines in esteem amongst mankind,
+tends to come into harmony with them, and even to give them support.&nbsp;
+I would say, in conclusion, that, even where the two above arguments
+may fail of effect, there may yet be a faith derived from this view
+of nature sufficient to sustain us under all sense of the imperfect
+happiness, the calamities, the woes, and pains of this sphere of being.&nbsp;
+For let us but fully and truly consider what a system is here laid open
+to view, and we cannot well doubt that we are in the hands of One who
+is both able and willing to do us the most entire justice.&nbsp; And
+in this faith we may well rest at ease, even though life should have
+been to us but a protracted disease, or though every hope we had built
+on the secular materials within our reach were felt to be melting from
+our grasp.&nbsp; Thinking of all the contingencies of this world as
+to be in time melted into or lost in the greater system, to which the
+present is only subsidiary, let us wait the end with patience, and be
+of good cheer.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>NOTE CONCLUSORY.</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Thus ends a book, composed in solitude, and almost without the cognizance
+of a single human being, for the sole purpose (or as nearly so as may
+be) of improving the knowledge of mankind, and through that medium their
+happiness.&nbsp; For reasons which need not be specified, the author&rsquo;s
+name is retained in its original obscurity, and, in all probability,
+will never be generally known.&nbsp; I do not expect that any word of
+praise which the work may elicit shall ever be responded to by me; or
+that any word of censure shall ever be parried or deprecated.&nbsp;
+It goes forth to take its chance of instant oblivion, or of a long and
+active course of usefulness in the world.&nbsp; Neither contingency
+can be of any importance to me, beyond the regret or the satisfaction
+which may be imparted by my sense of a lost or a realized benefit to
+my fellow-creatures.&nbsp; The book, as far as I am aware, is the first
+attempt to connect the natural sciences into a history of creation.&nbsp;
+The idea is a bold one, and there are many circumstances of time and
+place to render its boldness more than usually conspicuous.&nbsp; But
+I believe my doctrines to be in the main true; I believe all truth to
+be valuable, and its dissemination a blessing.&nbsp; At the same time,
+I hold myself duly sensible of the common liability to error, but am
+certain that no error in this line has the least chance of being allowed
+to injure the public mind.&nbsp; Therefore I publish.&nbsp; My views,
+if correct, will most assuredly stand, and may sooner or later prove
+beneficial; if otherwise, they will as surely pass out of notice without
+doing any harm.</p>
+<p>My sincere desire in the composition of the book was to give the
+true view of the history of nature, with as little disturbance as possible
+to existing beliefs, whether philosophical or religious.&nbsp; I have
+made little reference to any doctrines of the latter kind which may
+be thought inconsistent with mine, because to do so would have been
+to enter upon questions for the settlement of which our knowledge is
+not yet ripe.&nbsp; Let the reconciliation of whatever is true in my
+views with whatever is true in other systems come about in the fulness
+of calm and careful inquiry.&nbsp; I cannot but here remind the reader
+of what Dr. Wiseman has shewn so strikingly in his lectures, how different
+new philosophic doctrines are apt to appear after we have become somewhat
+familiar with them.&nbsp; Geology at first seems inconsistent with the
+authority of the Mosaic record.&nbsp; A storm of unreasoning indignation
+rises against its teachers.&nbsp; In time, its truths, being found quite
+irresistible, are admitted, and mankind continue to regard the Scriptures
+with the same respect as before.&nbsp; So also with several other sciences.&nbsp;
+Now the only objection that can be made on such ground to this book,
+is, that it brings forward some new hypotheses, at first sight, like
+geology, not in perfect harmony with that record, and arranges all the
+rest into a system which partakes of the same character.&nbsp; But may
+not the sacred text, on a liberal interpretation, or with the benefit
+of new light reflected from nature, or derived from learning, be shewn
+to be as much in harmony with the novelties of this volume as it has
+been with geology and natural philosophy?&nbsp; What is there in the
+laws of organic creation more startling to the candid theologian than
+in the Copernican system or the natural formation of strata?&nbsp; And
+if the whole series of facts is true, why should we shrink from inferences
+legitimately flowing from it?&nbsp; Is it not a wiser course, since
+reconciliation has come in so many instances, still to hope for it,
+still to go on with our new truths, trusting that they also will in
+time be found harmonious with all others?&nbsp; Thus we avoid the damage
+which the very appearance of an opposition to natural truth is calculated
+to inflict on any system presumed to require such support.&nbsp; Thus
+we give, as is meet, a respectful reception to what is revealed through
+the medium of nature, at the same time that we fully reserve our reverence
+for all we have been accustomed to hold sacred, not one tittle of which
+it may ultimately be found necessary to alter.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Footnotes:</p>
+<p><a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3">{3}</a>&nbsp; By Mr.
+Henderson, Professor of Astronomy in the Edinburgh University, and Lieutenant
+Meadows.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5">{5}</a>&nbsp; Made by
+M. Argelander, late director of the Observatory at Abo.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote6"></a><a href="#citation6">{6}</a>&nbsp; Professor
+Mossotti, on the Constitution of the Sidereal System, of which the Sun
+forms a part. - <i>London</i>, <i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>and Dublin Philosophical
+Magazine</i>, February, 1843.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote9"></a><a href="#citation9">{9}</a>&nbsp; The orbitual
+revolutions of the satellites of Uranus have not as yet been clearly
+scanned.&nbsp; It has been thought that their path is retrograde compared
+with the rest.&nbsp; Perhaps this may be owing to a <i>bouleversement</i>
+of the primary, for the inclination of its equator to the ecliptic is
+admitted to be unusually high; but the subject is altogether so obscure,
+that nothing can be founded on it.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote12"></a><a href="#citation12">{12}</a>&nbsp; Astronomy,
+Lardner&rsquo;s Cyclop&aelig;dia.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote17"></a><a href="#citation17">{17}</a>&nbsp; M.
+Compte combined Huygens&rsquo;s theorems for the measure of centrifugal
+force with the law of gravitation, and thus formed a simple fundamental
+equation between the duration of the rotation of what he calls the producing
+star, and the distance of the star produced.&nbsp; The constants of
+this equation were the radius of the central star, and the intensity
+of gravity at its surface, which is a direct consequence of its mass.&nbsp;
+It leads directly to the third law of Kepler, which thus becomes susceptible
+of being conceived <i>&agrave; priori</i> in a cosmogonical point of
+view.&nbsp; M. Compte first applied it to the moon, and found, to his
+great delight, that the periodic time of that satellite agrees within
+an hour or two with the duration which the revolution of the earth ought
+to have had at the time when the lunar distance formed the limit of
+the earth&rsquo;s atmosphere.&nbsp; He found the coincidence less exact,
+but still very striking in every other case.&nbsp; In those of the planets
+he obtained for the duration of the corresponding solar rotations a
+value always a little less than their actual periodic times.&nbsp; &ldquo;It
+is remarkable,&rdquo; says he, &ldquo;that this difference, though increasing
+as the planet is more distant, preserves very nearly the same relation
+to the corresponding periodic time, of which it commonly forms the forty-fifth
+part,&rdquo; - shewing, we may suppose, that only some small elements
+of the question had been overlooked by the calculator.&nbsp; The defect
+changes to an excess in the different systems of the satellites, where
+it is proportionally greater than in the planets, and unequal in the
+different systems.&nbsp; &ldquo;From the whole of these comparisons,&rdquo;
+says he, &ldquo;I deduced the following general result: - Supposing
+the mathematical limit of the solar atmosphere successively extended
+to the regions where the different planets are now found, the duration
+of the sun&rsquo;s rotation was, at each of these epochs, sensibly equal
+to that of the actual sidereal revolution of the corresponding planet;
+and the same is true for each planetary atmosphere in relation to the
+different satellites.&rdquo; - <i>Cours de Philosophie Positif</i>.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote42"></a><a href="#citation42">{42}</a>&nbsp; The
+researches on this subject were conducted chiefly by the late Baron
+Fourier, perpetual secretary to the Academy of Sciences of Paris.&nbsp;
+See his <i>Th&eacute;orie Analytique de la Chaleur</i>.&nbsp; 1822.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote52"></a><a href="#citation52">{52}</a>&nbsp; Delabeche&rsquo;s
+Geological Researches.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote60"></a><a href="#citation60">{60}</a>&nbsp; In
+the Cumbrian limestone occur &ldquo;calamopor&aelig;, lithodendra, cyathophylla,
+and orbicula.&rdquo; - <i>Philips</i>.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; That
+fragments of crinoidea, though of no determinate species, occur in this
+system, we have the authority of Mr. Murchison. - <i>Silurian System</i>,
+p. 710.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote62"></a><a href="#citation62">{62}</a>&nbsp; Such
+as amphioxus and myxene.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote64"></a><a href="#citation64">{64}</a>&nbsp; Miller&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;New Walks in an Old Field.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote68"></a><a href="#citation68">{68}</a>&nbsp; June,
+1842.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote84a"></a><a href="#citation84a">{84a}</a>&nbsp;
+The principal families are named sphenopteris, neuropteris, and pecopteris.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote84b"></a><a href="#citation84b">{84b}</a>&nbsp;
+A specimen from Bengal, in the staircase of the British Museum, is forty-five
+feet high.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote93"></a><a href="#citation93">{93}</a>&nbsp; &ldquo;Some
+of the most considerable dislocations of the border of the coal fields
+of Coalbrookdale and Dudley happened after the deposition of a part
+of the new red sandstone; but it is certain that those of Somersetshire
+and Gloucestershire were completed before the date of that rock.&rdquo;
+- <i>Philips.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote97"></a><a href="#citation97">{97}</a>&nbsp; The
+immediate effects of the slow respiration of the reptilia are, a low
+temperature in their bodies, and a slow consumption of food.&nbsp; Requiring
+little oxygen, they could have existed in an atmosphere containing a
+less proportion of that gas to carbonic acid gas than what now obtains.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote99"></a><a href="#citation99">{99}</a>&nbsp; The
+order to which frogs and toads belong.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote103"></a><a href="#citation103">{103}</a>&nbsp;
+Dr. Buckland, quoting an article by Professor Hitchcock, in the American
+Journal of Science and Arts, 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote108a"></a><a href="#citation108a">{108a}</a>&nbsp;
+Murchison&rsquo;s Silurian System, p. 583.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote108b"></a><a href="#citation108b">{108b}</a> Buckland.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote110"></a><a href="#citation110">{110}</a>&nbsp;
+In some instances, these fossils are found with the contents of the
+stomach faithfully preserved, and even with pieces of the external skin.&nbsp;
+The pellets ejected by them (<i>coprolites</i>) are found in vast numbers,
+each generally enclosed in a nodule of ironstone, and sometimes shewing
+remains of the fishes which had formed their food.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote114"></a><a href="#citation114">{114}</a>&nbsp;
+De la Beche&rsquo;s Geological Researches, p. 344.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote127"></a><a href="#citation127">{127}</a>&nbsp;
+Thick-skinned animals.&nbsp; This term has been given by Cuvier to an
+order in which the hog, elephant, horse, and rhinoceros are included.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote149"></a><a href="#citation149">{149}</a>&nbsp;
+Intervals in the series were numerous in the department of the pachydermata;
+many of these gaps are now filled up from the extinct genera found in
+the tertiary formation.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote151"></a><a href="#citation151">{151}</a>&nbsp;
+See paper by Professor Edward Forbes, read to the British Association,
+1839.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote159"></a><a href="#citation159">{159}</a>&nbsp;
+Macculloch on the Attributes of the Deity, iii. 569.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote166"></a><a href="#citation166">{166}</a>&nbsp;
+&ldquo;A glass tube is to be bent into a syphon, and placed with the
+curve downwards, and in the bend is to be placed a small portion of
+mercury, not sufficient to close the connexion between the two legs;
+a solution of nitrate of silver is then to be introduced until it rises
+in both limbs of the tube.&nbsp; The precipitation of the mercury, in
+the form of an Arbor Dian&aelig;, will then take place, slowly, only
+when the syphon is placed in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic meridian;
+but if it be placed in a plane coinciding with the magnetic meridian,
+the action is rapid, and the crystallization particularly beautiful,
+taking place principally in that branch of the syphon towards the north.&nbsp;
+If the syphon be placed in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic meridian,
+and a strong magnet brought near it, the precipitation will commence
+in a short time, and be most copious in the branch of the syphon nearest
+to the south pole of the magnet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote169a"></a><a href="#citation169a">{169a}</a>&nbsp;
+Fatty matter has also been formed in the laboratory.&nbsp; The process
+consisted in passing a mixture of carbonic acid, pure hydrogen, and
+carburetted hydrogen, in the proportion of one measure of the first,
+twenty of the second, and ten of the third, through a red-hot tube.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote169b"></a><a href="#citation169b">{169b}</a>&nbsp;
+Supplement to the Atomic Theory.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote170"></a><a href="#citation170">{170}</a>&nbsp;
+Carpenter on Life; Todd&rsquo;s Cyclop&aelig;dia of Physiology.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote171"></a><a href="#citation171">{171}</a>&nbsp;
+Carpenter&rsquo;s Report on the results obtained by the Microscope in
+the Study of Anatomy and Physiology, 1843.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote172"></a><a href="#citation172">{172}</a>&nbsp;
+See Dr. Martin Barry on Fissiparous Generation; Jameson&rsquo;s Journal,
+Oct. 1843.&nbsp; Appearances precisely similar have been detected in
+the germs of the crustacea.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote175"></a><a href="#citation175">{175}</a>&nbsp;
+Mr. Leonard Horner and Sir David Brewster, on a substance resembling
+shell. - <i>Philosophical Transactions</i>, 1836.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote179a"></a><a href="#citation179a">{179a}</a>&nbsp;
+Dr. Allen Thomson, in the article <i>Generation</i>, in Todd&rsquo;s
+Cyclop&aelig;dia of Anatomy and Physiology.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote179b"></a><a href="#citation179b">{179b}</a>&nbsp;
+The term aboriginal is here suggested, as more correct than spontaneous,
+the one hitherto generally used.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote182"></a><a href="#citation182">{182}</a>&nbsp;
+Article &ldquo;Zoophytes,&rdquo; Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica, 7th
+edition.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote187"></a><a href="#citation187">{187}</a>&nbsp;
+See a pamphlet circulated by Mr. Weekes, in 1842.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote195"></a><a href="#citation195">{195}</a>&nbsp;
+Daubenton established the rule, that all the viviparous quadrupeds have
+seven vertebr&aelig; in the neck.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote201"></a><a href="#citation201">{201}</a>&nbsp;
+Lord&rsquo;s Popular Physiology.&nbsp; It is to Tiedemann that we chiefly
+owe these curious observations; but ground was first broken in this
+branch of physiological science by Dr. John Hunter.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote204"></a><a href="#citation204">{204}</a>&nbsp;
+When I formed this idea, I was not aware of one which seems faintly
+to foreshadow it - namely, Socrates&rsquo;s doctrine, afterwards dilated
+on by Plato, that &ldquo;previous to the existence of the world, and
+beyond its present limits, there existed certain archetypes, the embodiment
+(if we may use such a word) of general ideas; and that these archetypes
+were models, in imitation of which all particular beings were created.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote208"></a><a href="#citation208">{208}</a>&nbsp;
+The numbers 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, &amp;c. are formed by adding the
+successive terms of the series of natural numbers thus:</p>
+<p>1=1<br />1+2=3<br />1+2+3=6<br />l+2+3+4=10, &amp;c.&nbsp; They are
+called triangular numbers, because a number of points corresponding
+to any term can always be placed in the form of a triangle; for instance
+-</p>
+<p>.<br />1<br />.<br />..<br />3<br />.<br />..<br />...<br />6<br />.<br />..<br />...<br />....<br />10</p>
+<p><a name="footnote215"></a><a href="#citation215">{215}</a>&nbsp;
+Kirby and Spence.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote221"></a><a href="#citation221">{221}</a>&nbsp;
+See an article by Dr. Weissenborn, in the New Series of &ldquo;Magazine
+of Natural History,&rdquo; vol. i. p. 574.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote224"></a><a href="#citation224">{224}</a>&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It is a fact of the highest interest and moment that as the brain
+of every tribe of animals appears to pass, during its development, in
+succession through the types of all those below it, so the brain of
+man passes through the types of those of every tribe in the creation.&nbsp;
+It represents, accordingly, before the second month of utero-gestation,
+that of an avertebrated animal; at the second month, that of an osseous
+fish; at the third, that of a turtle; at the fourth, that of a bird;
+at the fifth, that of one of the rodentia; at the sixth, that of one
+of the ruminantia; at the seventh, that of one of the digitigrada; at
+the eighth, that of one of the quadrumana; till at length, at the ninth,
+it compasses the brain of Man!&nbsp; It is hardly necessary to say,
+that all this is only an approximation to the truth; since neither is
+the brain of all osseous fishes, of all turtles, of all birds, nor of
+all the species of any one of the above order of mammals, by any means
+precisely the same, nor does the brain of the human f&oelig;tus at any
+time precisely resemble, perhaps, that of any individual whatever among
+the lower animals.&nbsp; Nevertheless, it may be said to represent,
+at each of the above-mentioned periods, the aggregate, as it were, of
+the brains of each of the tribes stated; consisting as it does, about
+the second month, chiefly of the mesial parts of the cerebellum, the
+corpora quadrigemina, thalami optici, rudiments of the hemispheres of
+the cerebrum and corpora striata; and receiving in succession, at the
+third, the rudiments of the lobes of the cerebrum; at the fourth, those
+of the fornix, corpus callosum, and septum lucidum; at the fifth, the
+tubor annulare, and so forth; the posterior lobes of the cerebrum increasing
+from before to behind, so as to cover the thalami optici about the fourth
+month, the corpora quadrigemina about the sixth, and the cerebellum
+about the seventh.&nbsp; This, then, is another example of an increase
+in the complexity of an organ succeeding its centralization; as if Nature,
+having first piled up her materials in one spot, delighted afterwards
+to employ her abundance, not so much in enlarging old parts as in forming
+new ones upon the old foundations, and thus adding to the complexity
+of a fabric, the rudimental structure of which is in all animals equally
+simple.&rdquo; - <i>Fletcher&rsquo;s Rudiments of Physiology.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote226"></a><a href="#citation226">{226}</a>&nbsp;
+[Gutenberg note: the table in the book is very wide.&nbsp; Since it
+won&rsquo;t fit within the normal Gutenberg margins, and cannot be reproduced
+typographically, the rows of the table have been broken out as follows.]</p>
+<p><a name="footnote229"></a><a href="#citation229">{229}</a>&nbsp;
+Some poor people having taken up their abode in the cells under the
+fortifications of Lisle, the proportion of defective infants produced
+by them became so great, that it was deemed necessary to issue an order
+commanding these cells to be shut up.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote232"></a><a href="#citation232">{232}</a>&nbsp;
+These affinities and analogies are explained in the next chapter.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote239a"></a><a href="#citation239a">{239a}</a>&nbsp;
+Corresponding to the articulata of Cuvier.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote239b"></a><a href="#citation239b">{239b}</a>&nbsp;
+A new sub-kingdom, made out of part of the radiata of Cuvier.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote239c"></a><a href="#citation239c">{239c}</a>&nbsp;
+This is a newly applied term, the reasons for which will be explained
+in the sequel.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote242"></a><a href="#citation242">{242}</a>&nbsp;
+This is preferred to grallatorial, as more comprehensively descriptive.&nbsp;
+There is the same need for a substitute for rasorial, which is only
+applicable to birds.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote246"></a><a href="#citation246">{246}</a>&nbsp;
+Distribution and Classification of Animals, p. 248.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote255"></a><a href="#citation255">{255}</a>&nbsp;
+Researches, 4th edition, i. 95.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote257"></a><a href="#citation257">{257}</a>&nbsp;
+Prichard.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote266"></a><a href="#citation266">{266}</a>&nbsp;
+Mr. Swainson&rsquo;s arguments about the entireness of the circle simiad&aelig;
+are only too rigid, for fossil geology has since added new genera to
+this group and the cebid&aelig;, and there may be still farther additions.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote270"></a><a href="#citation270">{270}</a>&nbsp;
+See Wilson&rsquo;s American Ornithology; article, <i>Fishing Crow.</i></p>
+<p><a name="footnote274"></a><a href="#citation274">{274}</a>&nbsp;
+[Gutenberg note: in the diagram the triangles extending from the 1,2,3,4
+and the a,b,c,d meet at the same point - the line from the 1,2,3,4 being
+at around 45&deg; and the line from the a,b,c,d being at around 60&deg;.&nbsp;
+It isn&rsquo;t possible to reproduce this using normal characters.&nbsp;
+Despite what the text says there is no line labelled 5 in the diagram.
+- DP]</p>
+<p><a name="footnote278"></a><a href="#citation278">{278}</a>&nbsp;
+See Dr. Prichard&rsquo;s Researches into the Physical History of Man.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote280"></a><a href="#citation280">{280}</a>&nbsp;
+Buckingham&rsquo;s Travels among the Arabs.&nbsp; This fact is the more
+valuable to the argument, as having been set down with no regard to
+any kind of hypothesis.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote287"></a><a href="#citation287">{287}</a>&nbsp;
+Wiseman&rsquo;s Lectures on the Connexion between Science and Revealed
+Religion, i. 44.&nbsp; The Celtic has been established as a member or
+group of the Indo-European family, by the work of Dr. Prichard, <i>on
+the Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations</i>.&nbsp; &ldquo;First,&rdquo;
+says Dr. Wiseman, &ldquo;he has examined the lexical resemblances, and
+shewn that the primary and most simple words are the same in both, as
+well as the numerals and elementary verbal roots.&nbsp; Then follows
+a minute analysis of the verb, directed to shew its analogies with other
+languages, and they are such as manifest no casual coincidence, but
+an internal structure radically the same.&nbsp; The verb substantive,
+which is minutely analysed, presents more striking analogies to the
+Persian verb than perhaps any other language of the family.&nbsp; But
+Celtic is not thus become a mere member of this confederacy, but has
+brought to it most important aid; for, from it alone can be satisfactorily
+explained some of the conjugational endings in the other languages.&nbsp;
+For instance, the third person plural of the Latin, Persian, Greek,
+and Sanscrit ends in nt, nd, &nu;&tau;&iota;, &nu;&tau;&omicron;, nti,
+or nt.&nbsp; Now, supposing, with most grammarians, that the inflexions
+arose from the pronouns of the respective persons, it is only in Celtic
+that we find a pronoun that can explain this termination; for there,
+too, the same person ends in nt, and thus corresponds exactly, as do
+the others, with its pronoun, <i>hwynt</i>, or <i>ynt</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p><a name="footnote291"></a><a href="#citation291">{291}</a>&nbsp;
+Schoolcraft.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote293"></a><a href="#citation293">{293}</a>&nbsp;
+Views of the Cordilleras.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote302"></a><a href="#citation302">{302}</a>&nbsp;
+The problem of Chinese civilization, such as it is - so puzzling when
+we consider that they are only, as will be presently seen, the child
+race of mankind - is solved when we look to geographical position producing
+fixity of residence and density of population.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote307a"></a><a href="#citation307a">{307a}</a>&nbsp;
+Lord&rsquo;s Popular Physiology, explaining observations by M. Serres.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote307b"></a><a href="#citation307b">{307b}</a>&nbsp;
+Conformably to this view, the beard, that peculiar attribute of maturity,
+is scanty in the Mongolian, and scarcely exists in the Americans and
+Negroes.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote309"></a><a href="#citation309">{309}</a>&nbsp;
+Of this we have perhaps an illustration in the peculiarities which distinguish
+the Arabs residing in the valley of the Jordan.&nbsp; They have flatter
+features, darker skins, and coarser hair than other tribes of their
+nation; and we have seen one instance of a thoroughly Negro family being
+born to an ordinary couple.&nbsp; It may be presumed that the conditions
+of the life of these people tend to arrest development.&nbsp; We thus
+see how an offshoot of the human family migrating at an early period
+into Africa, might in time, from subjection to similar influences, become
+Negroes.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote317"></a><a href="#citation317">{317}</a>&nbsp;
+Missionary Scenes and Labours in South Africa.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote326"></a><a href="#citation326">{326}</a>&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Is not God the first cause of matter as well as of mind?&nbsp;
+Do not the first attributes of matter lie as inscrutable in the bosom
+of God - of its first author - as those of mind?&nbsp; Has not even
+matter confessedly received from God the power of experiencing, in consequence
+of impressions from the earlier modifications of matter, certain consciousnesses
+called sensations of the same?&nbsp; Is not, therefore, the wonder of
+matter also receiving the consciousnesses of other matter called ideas
+of the mind a wonder more flowing out of and in analogy with all former
+wonders, than would be, on the contrary, the wonder of this faculty
+of the mind not flowing out of any faculties of matter?&nbsp; Is it
+not a wonder which, so far from destroying our hopes of immortality,
+can establish that doctrine on a train of inferences and inductions
+more firmly established and more connected with each other than the
+former belief can be, as soon as we have proved that matter is not perishable,
+but is only liable to successive combinations and decombinations.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Can we look farther back one way into the first origin of
+matter than we can look forward the other way into the last developments
+of mind?&nbsp; Can we say that God has not in matter itself laid the
+seeds of every faculty of mind, rather than that he has made the first
+principle of mind entirely distinct from that of matter?&nbsp; Cannot
+the first cause of all we see and know have <i>fraught matter itself</i>,
+<i>from its very beginning</i>, <i>with all the attributes necessary
+to develop into mind</i>, as well as he can have from the first made
+the attributes of mind wholly different from those of matter, only in
+order afterwards, by an imperceptible and incomprehensible link, to
+join the two together?</p>
+<p>&ldquo; * * [The decombination of the matter on which mind rests]
+is this a reason why mind must be annihilated?&nbsp; Is the temporary
+reverting of the mind, and of the sense out of which that mind developes,
+to their original component elements, a reason for thinking that they
+cannot again at another later period, and in another higher globe, be
+again recombined, and with more splendour than before? * * The New Testament
+does not after death here promise us a soul hereafter unconnected with
+matter, and which has no connexion with our present mind - a soul independent
+of time and space.&nbsp; That is a fanciful idea, not founded on its
+expressions, when taken in their just and real meaning.&nbsp; On the
+contrary, it promises us a mind like the present, founded on time and
+space; since it is, like the present, to hold a certain situation in
+time, and a certain locality in space.&nbsp; But it promises a mind
+situated in portions of time and of space different from the present;
+a mind composed of elements of matter more extended, more perfect, and
+more glorious: a mind which, formed of materials supplied by different
+globes, is consequently able to see farther into the past, and to think
+farther into the future, than any mind here existing: a mind which,
+freed from the partial and uneven combination incidental to it on this
+globe, will be exempt from the changes for evil to which, on the present
+globe, mind as well as matter is liable, and will only thenceforth experience
+the changes for the better which matter, more justly poised, will alone
+continue to experience: a mind which, no longer fearing the death, the
+total decomposition, to which it is subject on this globe, will thenceforth
+continue last and immortal.&rdquo; - HOPE, <i>on the Origin and Prospects
+of Man</i>, 1831.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote331"></a><a href="#citation331">{331}</a>&nbsp;
+Dublin Review, Aug. 1840.&nbsp; The Guarantee Society has since been
+established, and is likely to become a useful and prosperous institution.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote333"></a><a href="#citation333">{333}</a>&nbsp;
+The ray, which is considered the lowest in the scale of fishes, or next
+to the crustaceans, gives the first faint representation of a brain
+in certain scanty and medullary masses, which appear as merely composed
+of enlarged origins of the nerves.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote335"></a><a href="#citation335">{335}</a>&nbsp;
+If mental action is electric, the proverbial quickness of thought -
+that is, the quickness of the transmission of sensation and will - may
+be presumed to have been brought to an exact measurement.&nbsp; The
+speed of light has long been known to be about 192,000 miles per second,
+and the experiments of Wheatstone have shewn that the electric agent
+travels (if I may so speak) at the same rate, thus shewing a likelihood
+that one law rules the movements of all the &ldquo;imponderable bodies.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Mental action may accordingly be presumed to have a rapidity equal to
+one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles in the second - a rate evidently
+far beyond what is necessary to make the design and execution of any
+of our ordinary muscular movements apparently identical in point of
+time, which they are.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote346"></a><a href="#citation346">{346}</a>&nbsp;
+Phrenological Journal, xv. 338.</p>
+<p><a name="footnote347"></a><a href="#citation347">{347}</a>&nbsp;
+A pampered lap-dog, living where there is another of its own species,
+will hide any nice morsel which it cannot eat, under a rug, or in some
+other by-place, designing to enjoy it afterwards.&nbsp; I have seen
+children do the same thing.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
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+</pre></body>
+</html>
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