Would you then, says the objector, have the lower classes instructed in literature and in the arts and sciences?-We would encourage them as far as possible to instruct themselves, being perfectly convinced that it would be for the benefit of all. The enemy scatters his tares among the good seed, in fields where the sower has been before him; but that enemy has the wastes to himself in full occupancy, and it is the unweeded garden which is possessed by things rank and gross in nature.' Give the people such moral and intellectual pleasures as can be given them, and you will in the same degree withdraw them from such as are injurious to themselves and others. No wise man would wish to see High Life below Stairs in reality; for this, which, upon the stage, is an excellent farce, leads to tragedy whenever it is no fiction. But the wise and the good, who see what men are, and rightly consider what they were created to be, must, as they love their country and their kind, wish to see intellectual life, moral life, spiritual life everywhere. ART. IV.-Principles of Geology, being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by Reference to Causes now in Operation. By Charles Lyell, Esq., F. R. S., Professor of Geology in King's College, London. Vol. II. London. 1832. O one, twenty years ago, would have conceived it possible that a work on the principles of geology' should appear, replete with discussions such as those into which Professor Lyell here enters. The alterations wrought in plants and animals by domestication, climate, and other conditions of existence;-the limits of the deviations which may thus take place from an original type; the phenomena of mixed races, and the possibility of their continued fertility;-the laws which regulate the geographical distribution of plants and animals;-the mode in which species may be diffused, and again, in which their limits may be contracted, and how at last they may be eliminated and become extinct;-the effects produced in the animal and vegetable world by the advance of human population;-these, and such as these, are the themes which enliven the pages of this interesting and instructive volume. And though our readers may, at first, think that the changes to which man himself, together with his works, is subjected, and the waves' that ' have rolled Above the cities of a world gone by;' and the sands' that have filled up the palaces of old,' and the ocean ocean bed strewed with treasures and skeletons, the tribute of our argosies and fleets,-fitter argument for the poet's dream than the geologist's reasoning; though they may marvel to find a Lyell exclaiming, with Clarence, 'Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks, A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon, Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, they will soon discover that the consideration of such subjects is most closely connected with the questions which the examination of the earth's surface has forced upon the notice of philosophers. Upon the most pregnant evidence geologists have arrived at the conviction that we can hope to understand the past operations which have formed the strata of the globe, and brought together their contents, only by making ourselves acquainted with the operations which are still in progress on the surface of the earth, by studying the whole range of organic life, the relations of its classes, and the laws of its mutations. The readers of our review of the Professor's first volume, are aware of the important discovery to which geology has owed its recent advance and form :—namely, that the organic fossils which the earth contains, offer a series of genera and species, so far fixed and constant, that they enable us to distinguish and identify the successive beds by indisputable evidence, in thousands of cases, where we should look in vain for light to those mineralogical characters which were mainly attended to by the geologists of an earlier school. All who have the slightest acquaintance with the recent additions to our knowledge of the earth, either in this or in other countries, know well that the study of organic remains, more than any other single class of facts, has instructed and can instruct us on questions of the contemporaneous or successive origin of mineral deposits. Those who have traced the history of this portion of geology know also, that, in this region at least, we owe the discovery of the importance of this criterion, and a vast body of the first examples of its successful application, to a countryman of our own, an early, though long unnoticed, labourer in this now favourite field. But though the merits of Mr. William Smith have long been familiar to the minds of geologists, they had not till recently found any official organ to give them their proper praise. It was, therefore, with peculiar satisfaction that we heard this gentleman, at the last anniversary meeting of the geologists of this country, saluted by their public voice as the father of English geology. The first of the prize medals which the Geological Society has, by the the donation of the late lamented Dr. Wollaston, the office of adjudging, was given to Mr. Smith, in consideration of his being a great original discoverer in English geology; and especially for his having been the first, in this country, to discover and to teach the identification of strata, and to determine their succession, by means of their imbedded fossils.' This honour was additionally graced by the dignified and philosophical eloquence of the address delivered on that occasion by the president, Professor Sedgwick; and by the singularly interesting account of the early history of Mr. Smith's discoveries, which it contained. This act of filial duty will give pleasure to all who desire that the utmost zeal and activity in pushing on the boundary of science should be combined with justice and gratitude towards those who have given the impulse to its progress, and the instruments to its achievements. That in attempting to trace the past history of the earth, we must use the study of organic fossils as the right-hand of our philosophy, is now so generally allowed, that it might appear superfluous to expend a word on the subject. Such, indeed, has of late been the general admission throughout geological Europe; and to find any one contesting the point at present, will probably be considered by geologists as an occurrence rather fitted to amuse our curiosity than to affect our opinions. Yet the atmosphere of the geological world has recently been startled by the authoritative accents of a voice uttering expressions of no small disdain and contempt against those who presume to classify strata on organic evidence. It ought surely to be obvious,' we are told, that when remote beds are said to be identified because their fossils are the same, the proposition is identical and nugatory; since it is simply to say, that similar fossils exist in two places.'* Now, the observer * M'Culloch's Geology, vol. ii. By the bye, we are the last persons who would decry the liberality of government in grants for scientific purposes, when these are properly applied; but we have yet to learn what adequate harvest is to be reaped from the expenditure of more than 70007. on this gentleman's mineralogical survey of Scotland. From a return to an address of the House of Commons, dated 23d December, 1830, it appears that Dr. M'Culloch, having been allowed 17. per diem for personal expenses, 21. per diem as remuneration, and 2s. per mile for travelling expenses, solemnly declared before the Scotch Barons of Exchequer, that his average rate of travelling, throughout one of his scientific excursions among the rugged mountains of the Highlands, was forty-five miles per diem-and in another of them fifty-two! When we consider that the doctor must have travelled hammer in hand, knocking at every crag, and peering into every crevice-that he worked, by his own account, so hard for many months in each of these summers as never to allow himself a Sunday-and that the region he was exploring presents very considerable obstacles, both over head and under foot, to the locomotiveness of ordinary mortals-we cannot wonder that the canny barons should have begun to suspect him of being in actual possession of the seven-league boots. The correspondence in which he answers their inquiries is embodied in the Return, and we cannot sufficiently express our surprise that it should have so long escaped the notice of Mr. Joseph Hume. 7000%!!! who who knows that he can recognise strata in remote countries by groups of plants, shells, and animals, is not likely to be disturbed by this epigram, or by the many similar sententious sayings which accompany it. The association of the members of such groups, given partly as a constant fact of observation, partly as a circumstance traceable to the condition of the earth at the time of their existence, is so far from being an identical or trivial proposition, that it is one of the most startling and weighty, as it is one of the most certain and universal, of geological data. But if we are tempted to smile when we are told that such facts are insufficient for the identification of strata, the smile becomes quite irrepressible when the belief which is thus denied to a most complex and peculiar combination of evidence, is claimed for the single circumstance of the rocks containing beds of muriate of soda or sulphate of lime. We venture, therefore, to retain our belief that we shall best discharge the duty of exhibiting the most recent advances towards a knowledge of the earth's past history, by following those who have endeavoured to trace it by the aid of organic fossils. But before we proceed to give an account of this train of speculations, we must notice the course of discovery which has led the geologist to subjects, as we have already observed, apparently so foreign to his original aim. It being ascertained that strata can be identified over a wide extent of country, by means of their materials and contents, two very remarkable general facts are found to offer themselves in the phenomena of these masses. In the first place, the strata are in a great variety of positions with regard to the earth's surface, and to each other: some are highly inclined, some horizontal; some mutually parallel, others placed upon the edges or against the slopes of the subjacent beds; some continuous and of uniform inclination, others contorted and disturbed, broken and separated. The arrangement of the beds irresistibly suggests the belief that each was deposited at first horizontally, and that then, by the action of mechanical violence, the masses were variously shattered and disturbed. In the next place, the species of organised beings which are contained in each formation, or main division of beds, are, for the most part, different. We trace a succession of several conditions of the animal and vegetable world which had little or nothing in common. Each of many periods appears to have had its own Flora and Fauna, and none of these seem to have included the animals and plants with which we are now surrounded. A geological theory should obviously include these two capital classes of facts. That such a theory is at present attainable, may, we think, well be doubted. But though we should not be so sanguine as to look look to known causes for an explanation of such appearances, or to define the mode in which the unknown have acted, it may still be interesting and instructive to follow out the most promising of the analogies which present themselves. The differences of position and the mutations of organic forms which have taken place in the pre-existing earth, appear, at first sight, to have but a dim and remote resemblance to anything which is at present occurring. There seems to be little chance of identifying what is now going on with an era when the Andes were raised from the bottom of the ocean, or with the state of our earth when that flying dragon, the pterodactyl, succeeded the trilobite. But the theorist is not so easily daunted. In matters of change, as all know, a beginning is everything. If he can once shake the stability of the existing order, it is difficult to say what revolutions he may not produce. The adventure is, at least, worth a trial. Now, it appears that, in the present order of things, certain changes do go on, both in the position of portions of the earth, and in the forms of certain organised beings. The volcano and the earthquake are seldom long idle; the ocean is an unremitting assailant of the solid earth; the countless host of streams and showers second his attack, on the other side, by efforts formidable from their multitude and perseverance. The coast yields; the crest of the mountain descends; large tracts of the earth tremble and change their elevation: the volcanic island lifts its head above the waves. Here, at least, are some elements of mutations in the form of the earth and of the bed of the sea. The more we examine such causes, the more constant, the more extensive, the more powerful, does their operation appear. In the course of progressive ages, what effects may they not produce? And what limit are we to place to the time during which their work has proceeded? We know that this past period must be long; we know not how long. Who shall prove to us that the forces which we ourselves witness are too weak, or unfit, to produce all the facts of position which the earth's crust exhibits? Such is the reasoning of the advocate of the geological adequacy of the existing dynamical laws of the world. But changes also take place in the organic creation: by cultivation and domestication, by climate and food, by mixture of races and perpetuation of peculiarities, plants, brutes, and man undergo extensive changes. The various breeds of domestic animals, the results of chance or care, are monuments * We restrict the word dynamical here to its usual scientific sense,—that which relates to forces producing motion. of |