ruled the affairs of mankind, will also believe that a Providence has governed the material world. But any language in which the narrative of this government of the material world can be conveyed, must necessarily be very imperfect and inappropriate; being expressed in terms of those ideas which have been selected by men, in order to describe appearances and relations of created things as they affect one another. In all cases, therefore, where we have to attempt to interpret such a narrative, we must feel that we are extremely liable to err; and most of all, when our interpretation refers to those material objects and operations which are most foreign to the main purpose of a history of providence. If we have to consider a communication containing a view of such a government of the world, imparted to us, as we may suppose, in order to point out the right direction for our feelings of trust, and reverence, and hope, towards the Governor of the world, we may expect that we shall be in no danger of collecting from our authority erroneous notions with regard to the power, and wisdom, and goodness of His government; or with respect to our own place, duties, and prospects, and the history of our race so far as our duties and prospects are concerned. But that we shall rightly understand the detail of all events in the history of man, or of the skies, or of the earth, which are narrated for the purpose of thus giving a right direction to our minds, is by no means equally certain; and I do not think it would be too much to say, that an immunity from perplexity and error, in such matters, is, on general grounds, very improbable. It cannot then surprise us to find, that parts of such narrations which seem to refer to occurrences like those of which astronomers and geologists have attempted to determine the laws, have given rise to many interpretations, all inconsistent with one another, and most of them at variance with the best established principles of astronomy and geology. It may be urged, that all truths must be consistent with all other truths, and that therefore the results of true geology or astronomy cannot be irreconcileable with the statements of true theology. And this universal consistency of truth with itself must be assented to; but it by no means follows that we must be able to obtain a full insight into the nature and manner of such a consistency. Such an insight would only be possible if we could obtain a clear view of that central body of truth, the source of the principles which appear in the separate lines of speculation. To expect that we should see clearly how the providential government of the world is consistent with the unvarying laws by which its motions and developements are regulated, is to expect to understand thoroughly the laws of motion, of developement, and of providence; it is to expect that we may ascend from geology and astronomy to the creative and legislative centre, from which proceeded earth and stars; and then descend again into the moral and spiritual world, because its source and centre are the same as those of the material creation. It is to say that reason, whether finite or infinite, must be consistent with itself; and that, therefore, the finite must be able to comprehend the infinite, to travel from any one province of the moral and material universe to any other, to trace their bearing, and to connect their boundaries. One of the advantages of the study of the history and nature of science in which we are now engaged is, that it warns us of the hopeless and presumptuous character of such attempts to understand the government of the world by the aid of science, without throwing any discredit upon the reality of our knowledge;-that while it shows how solid and certain each science is, so long as it refers its own facts to its own ideas, it confines each science within its own limits, and condemns it as empty and helpless, when it pronounces upon those subjects which are extraneous to it. The error of persons who should seek a geological narrative in theological records, would be rather in the search itself than in their interpretation of what they might find; and in like manner the error of those who would conclude against a supernatural beginning, or a providential direction of the world, upon geological or physiological reasonings, would be, that they had expected those sciences alone to place the origin or the government of the world in its proper light. Though these observations apply generally to all the palætiological sciences, they may be permitted here, because they have an especial bearing upon some of the difficulties which have embarrassed the progress of geological speculation; and though such difficulties are, I trust, nearly gone by, it is important for us to see them in their true bearing. From what has been said, it follows that geology and astronomy are, of themselves, incapable of giving us any distinct and satisfactory account of the origin of the universe, or of its parts. We need not wonder, then, at any particular instance of this incapacity; as, for example, that of which we have been speaking, the impossibility of accounting by any natural means for the production of all the successive tribes of plants and animals which have peopled the world in the various stages of its progress, as geology teaches us. That they were, like our own animal and vegetable contemporaries, profoundly adapted to the condition in which they were placed, we have ample reason to believe; but when we inquire whence they came into this our world, geology is silent. The mystery of creation is not within the range of her legitimate territory; she says nothing, but she points upwards. Sect. 6.-The Hypothesis of the regular Creation and Extinction of Species. 1. Creation of Species.-We have already seen, how untenable, as a physiological doctrine, is the principle of the transmutability and progressive tendency of species; and therefore, when we come to apply to theoretical geology the principles of the present chapter, this portion of the subject will easily be disposed of. I hardly know whether I can state that there is any other principle which has been applied to the solution of the geological problem, and which, therefore, as a general truth, ought to be considered here. Mr. Lyell, indeed, has spoken" of an hypothesis that "the successive creation of species may constitute a regular part of the economy of nature:" but he has nowhere, I think, so described this process as to make it appear in what department of science we are to place the hypothesis. Are these new species created by the production, at long intervals, of an offspring different in species from the parents? Or are the species so created produced without parents? Are they gradually evolved from some embryo substance? or do they suddenly start from the ground, as in the creation of the poet? Perfect forms Limbed and full-grown: out of the ground up rose As from his lair, the wild beast where he wons In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den; . . . The grassy clods now calved; now half appeared The tawny lion, pawing to get free His hinder parts; then springs as broke from bounds, Paradise Lost, B. vii. Some selection of one of these forms of the hypothesis, rather than the others, with evidence for the selection, is requisite to entitle us to 12 B. II. c. xi. p. 234. place it among the known causes of change which in this chapter we are considering. The bare conviction that a creation of species has taken place, whether once or many times, so long as it is unconnected with our organical sciences, is a tenet of Natural Theology rather than of Physical Philosophy. [2nd Ed.] [Mr. Lyell has explained his theory" by supposing man to people a great desert, introducing into it living plants and animals; and he has traced, in a very interesting manner, the results of such a hypothesis on the distribution of vegetable and animal species. But he supposes the agents who do this, before they import species into particular localities, to study attentively the climate and other physical conditions of each spot, and to use various precautions. It is on account of the notion of design thus introduced that I have, above, described this opinion as rather a tenet of Natural Theology than of Physical Philosophy. Mr. Edward Forbes has published some highly interesting speculations on the distribution of existing species of animals and plants. It appears that the manner in which animal and vegetable forms are now diffused requires us to assume centres from which the diffusion took place by no means limited by the present divisions of continents and islands. The changes of land and water which have thus occurred since the existing species were placed on the earth must have been very extensive, and perhaps reach into the glacial period of which I have spoken above." According to Mr. Forbes's views, for which he has offered a great body of very striking and converging reasons, the present vegetable and animal population of the British Isles is to be accounted for by the following series of events. The marine deposits of the meiocene formation were elevated into a great Atlantic continent, yet separate from what is now America, and having its western shore where now the great semi-circular belt of gulf-weed ranges from the 15th to the 45th parallel of latitude. This continent then became stocked with life, and of its vegetable population, the flora of the west of Ireland, which has many points in common with the flora of Spain and the At 19 B. 1. c. viii. p. 166. 14 See, in Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 336, Professor Forbes's Memoir "On the Connection between the Distribution of the existing Fauna and Flora of the British Isles, and the Geological Changes which have affected their area, especially during the epoch of the Northern Drift." lantic islands (the Asturian flora), is the record. The region between Spain and Ireland, and the rest of this meiocene continent, was destroyed by some geological movement, but there were left traces of the connexion which still remain. Eastwards of the flora just mentioned, there is a flora common to Devon and Cornwall, to the southeast part of Ireland, the Channel Isles, and the adjacent provinces of France; a flora passing to a southern character; and having its course marked by the remains of a great rocky barrier, the destruction of which probably took place anterior to the formation of the narrower part of the channel. Eastward from this Devon or Norman flora, again, we have the Kentish flora, which is an extension of the flora of North-western France, insulated by the breach which formed the straits of Dover. Then came the Glacial period, when the east of England and the north of Europe were submerged, the northern drift was distributed, and England was reduced to a chain of islands or ridges, formed by the mountains of Wales, Cumberland, and Scotland, which were connected with the land of Scandinavia. This was the period of glaciers, of the dispersion of boulders, of the grooving and scratching of rocks as they are now found. The climate being then much colder than it now is, the flora, even down to the water's edge, consisted of what are now Alpine plants; and this Alpine flora is common to Scandinavia and to our mountain-summits. And these plants kept their places, when, by the elevation of the land, the whole of the present German Ocean became a continent connecting Britain with central Europe. For the increased elevation of their stations counterbalanced the diminished cold of the succeeding period. Along the dry bed of the German Sea, thus elevated, the principal part of the existing flora of England, the Germanic flora, migrated. A large portion of our existing animal population also came over through the same region; and along with those, came hyenas, tigers, rhinoceros, aurochs, elk, wolves, beavers, which are extinct in Britain, and other animals which are extinct altogether, as the primigenian elephant or mammoth. But then, again, the German Ocean and the Irish Channel were scooped out; and the climate again changed. In our islands, so detached, many of the larger beasts perished, and their bones were covered up in peat-mosses and caves, where we find them. This distinguished naturalist has further shown that the population of the sea lends itself to the same view. Mr. Forbes says that the writings of Mr. Smith, of Jordan-hill, “On the last Changes in the relative Levels of the Land and Sea in the British Islands," published in the Memoirs of the Wer |