hills of that fertile country, where, apparently secure from a renewal of the " war of elements," in which myriads of individuals and whole races of animals have been annihilated, man now pursues the peaceful occupations of industry, interrupted only by the revolutions of society, the convulsions of passion, and the contentions of party, the destructive and frightful operations of which this eventful region has also been the theatre.

The same succession of events which produced the series of rocks we have been examining, in France, occurred perhaps at the same geological period in this country, where, however, the mineralogical character and thickness of the masses is so distinct as almost to defy recognition. It is their position in isolated basins formed in the chalk, and the similarity of fossil organic contents, which prove their identity. No remains of mammalia are found in the London clay, (although in the corresponding formation in the Isle of Wight they have lately been observed), but skeletons of amphibious reptiles have been discovered, and in a detached portion of this bed, the Isle of Sheppey, at the mouth of the Thames, plants, fruit of the cocoa-nut species, and spices of tropical climates exist in great profusion.

Great commotions and convulsions appear to have affected the surface of this part of the earth, soon after the deposition of the tertiary* beds, which have upheaved or

* Tertiary is the term usually applied by geologists to the supracretaceous formations, but there seems so much impropriety in the use of a term which expresses neither the age nor the position in the series of this important group of rocks, that I have ventured, for the reasons before stated, to adopt, generally, the more approved term, supracretaceous.

depressed them in common with the lower rocks; thus, the now insulated basins of London and the Isle of Wight appear to have been originally continuous, but have been separated by the elevation of the intervening chalk hills, from which the upper formations have been subsequently washed away by the violent agency which scooped out our valleys: and the occurrence of the lower members of this series capping the older summits of hills in the west and other parts of England, precisely as they are found in the country intervening between London and the Isle of Wight, seems to indicate that they originally extended far beyond their present circumscribed limits. The general inference from all the facts connected with the supracretaceous rocks, is, that Europe at the period of their formation was partially covered with extensive lakes, into which the sea made occasional inroads, and from alterations in the surface effected by internal commotions, which were then frequent, was repeatedly admitted and excluded, while rivers emptying their waters into these great reservoirs, aided in accumulating the debris of land animals and plants. Some of these lakes continued to exist until a very late period in geological history, and the outlets by which they were drained and laid dry still remain: as for instance, at the mountain gorge of the Fort l'Ecluse, through which the Rhone now escapes from Switzerland; and the narrow pass of the Rhine at Bingen, previous to the forcing of which the waters of these Alpine rivers overspread a large expanse of country, in the superficial strata of which evident traces of their long and tranquil sojournment may be observed.

As we failed to identify the remains of the human

species with the caverned bones and relics buried in the diluvial and other beds, which belong to the most recent of geological periods, their entire absence in the solid strata will create no surprise. But when all the phenomena of fossil remains, whether dispersed on the surface or imbedded in rocks, were referred to the deluge, naturalists experienced great disappointment at not finding the bones of man associated with those of the animals which they regarded as his contemporaries: it was an anomaly which, prolific as was their age in theory, they were utterly unable to explain. Judge then of the satisfaction with which the announcement of Scheuchzer, of the discovery of a human skeleton imbedded in the limestone of Eningen, * was hailed by these enthusiastic theorists. Their hypothesis was no longer questionable, scepticism must hide its diminished head before this " preuve indubitable." Scheuchzer described it in a learned dissertation in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1726, entitled "Homo diluvii testis," or the man who witnessed

the deluge, accompanied by an engraving on wood on the natural scale; (the sketch in the margin is, however, copied from Cuvier's drawing.) And again, in a subsequent work, the "Physique Sacrée," he introduces the portrait and description, and assures us "that it is indubitable-and that it contains the moiety of the

*The rock of Eningen in which these remains were found, is a lacustrine formation of recent date, highly prolific in organic

skeleton of a man-that even the substance of the bones, and what is more, the flesh, and parts still softer than flesh, are incorporated in the stone; in fact, that it is one of the rarest relics that we can possess of the devoted race which perished at the flood!"* What must have been the state of science when a philosopher and an eminent physician knew so little of comparative anatomy? when the scientific world could be persuaded to believe that an arrangement of bones so dissimilar, resembled the human form? Our astonishment at the crudities and absurdities of the early theories of the earth ceases, when we regard the extraordinary ignorance which then prevailed. But how great had been the progress of comparative anatomy, and with what rapid strides it must have marched, when Cuvier could deduce from a single bone the form and species of the entire animal! Scheuchzer's imposture, however, did not long continue, it was soon discovered that this was the skeleton of an individual of some other 66 race maudite,"

relics of animals and plants; which are said to be of species belonging to a climate approximating to that of Europe at the present day, while in older deposits they are referrible exclusively to tropical species. The Rhine has cut a passage through this rock since its deposition.

* The deception might not have been originally so palpable, as the collateral parts of the skeleton were not developed until Cuvier, at the request of the director of the museum at Haarlem, in 1811, examined and chisseled away the stone, where from the model of a living species he expected to find other bones—a process which must have been singularly gratifying to the Baron, as hitherto concealed portions rose up as it were beneath his chisel, in accordance with his expectations, and in conformity with the model of the species of animal to which he had at first glance referred it.

and eventually the man who saw the deluge" was proved by Cuvier to be an aquatic salamander.

But this is not the only mistake into which philosophers have fallen, in their eagerness to discover some traces of the antediluvian population. Two real skeletons of human beings, discovered in a solid rock on the shores of the island of Guadaloupe, a few years ago, were for some time regarded as unequivocal remains of the unfortunate contemporaries of Noah; and to this day hundreds of those who view the well-known fossil skeleton in the British Museum, for want of better information, regard it as a genuine homo diluvii testis. But even this inference, sanctioned as it appears to be by probability, was too hasty, and is now abandoned by geologists. A careful examination of the spot where they were discovered, proves that the mass of rock which enclosed them is of very recent origin, and in fact, is still accumulating, being merely a bank raised by the sea at the foot of a slope on the shores of the island, and formed of sand, shells, coral, and other matter thrown up by the waves, and solidified in the manner of stalactites* and travertin, which we described among the effects of the existing operations of nature, so that in all probability these ancient relics, are merely the encrusted bones of some shipwrecked mariners of this or the preceding century. It is impossible to infer the age of any of these sedimentary rocks from their mineral character, the most recent and even contemporary deposits, as we have seen, being sometimes as completely indurated as the most ancient marbles.

* Solid matter deposited from water holding lime in solution.