fe Sr '^ BALLANTYNK, HANSON AND CO. EUINI3UUGH AND LONDON VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY CREATION WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HENRY MORIEY LL.D., TROFF.SSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON \\x LONDGN . . ' ' ■ GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS BROADV/AY, LUDGATE HILL GLASGOW AND N E W YORK 1887 MORLEY'S UNIVERSAL LIBRARY. Sheridan's Plays. Plays from Mo Here. By English Dramatists. MarloT.ve's Faustus and Goethe's Faust. Chronicle of the Cid. Rabelais' Gargantiia and the Heroic Deeds of Patitaoyuel. Machiavclli's Prince. Bacon's Essays. Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year. Locke on Civil Government and Fihners '^Patriarcha." Butler's A nalogy ofRelig ion . Dry den 's Virg il. Scott's Dcmonology and Witchcraft. Herriclis Hesperidcs. Coleridge's Table- Talk. Boccaccio's Decameron. Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Chapman's Homer s Iliad. Mediccval Tales. Voltaire's Candide, and \ 'yclwsofi'i ^aise^tas. -, Jd^is^K'i, ^l>z;n and Poems. ' fldbbet's Liviathan. , S^^"wl Butler's Hudibras. \ Ididl" -Cdminon-iuealths. .' CarJenki'shli '.Life of Wolsey. 25 & 26, Do7i Quixote. 2 7 . Burlesque Plays and Poems. 28. Dante's Divine Comedy. Longfellow's Translation. 29. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake- field, Plays, and Poems. 30. Fables and Proverbs from the Sanskrit. {Hito/>adesa.) 31. Lamb's Essays of Elm. 32. The History of Thomas Ellivood. Emerson's Essays, &'c. Southey's Life of Nelson. De Quincey's Confessions of an Opiian-Eater, d^c. Stories of Ireland. By Miss Edgeworth. Frere's Aristophanes: Acharnians, Knights, Birds. Burke's Speeches and Letters. Thomas ci Kempis. Popjdar Songs of Ireland. Potter's yEschylus. Goethe's Faust: Part II. Anster's Translation. Fa?nous I^atuphlets. Francklin' s Sophocles. M. G. Lezvis's Tales of Terror and Wonder. Vestiges of the Natural History oj Creation. 33- 34. 35- 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45- 46. '' Marvels Qf cjep type and general neatness."— i^rtz/y Telegraph. INTRODUCTION. RoBJiiiT Cii.vMJ5KRs pLibUslieJ lils " Vestiges of tlie Xatural History of Creation" in the year 1844. He did not put his name to the book, because, as he said afterwards in a volume of •' Explanations," jDublished in 1846, his "design was not onl}- to be personally removed from all praise or censure which it might evoke, but to write no more on the subject." Except the volume of "Explanations: a Sequel to 'Vestiges of the Xatural History of Creation,' by the Author of that Work," his subsequent writiug upon Science was confined to a book on "Ancient Sea Margins," published in 1848, to which he signed his name. Robert Chambers v/as a man with keen powers of intellectual inquiry, and a strong interest in scientific speculation. This had caused his election in 1840 to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, upon the nomination of Sir Charles pell. He took a particular interest in Geology, and made many excursions by shores of rivers and lakes, and by sea-coasts, in search of evidence of changes made on the earth's surface by lapse of time. He went in 1848 to Switzerland, and in 1849 to Xorway, to study glacial action. But Robert Chambers had yet stronger interest in the development of man. This drew him to a study of literature as the voice of life, and caused him to pay special attention to the records of earlier forms of civilisa- tion. Such widespreading activity of mind Robert Chambers had in common with his brother William, though William was more essentially the man of business, and Robert more essentially the author. It caused the two brothers to develop their business relations with literature, from a boardful of second-hand books :'^ " ^ ,.V ,,,5,,, -Wiri^o WITHDRAW %^l 6 INTRODUCTION. by the wayside to the creation of a groat firm, gathering a Land of writers to its aid in producing, printing, and distributing journals and books by millions through the world, all of them wholesome and instructive, all aiding in the development of men by healthy training of their minds. When a man does only one thing, however stupid he may be, if he keep on doing it, there are many ready to accept him as a master in his art. If he have a wide interest in all that touches him as man ; if he fix his mind with a keen intellectual activity on whatever is most worth attention in the world about him ; if he be as ready to study the great poet of his country and write a Life of Burns, as to inquire into the life of ]^^ature and explore sea margins; if it be at the same time known that ho is shrewd and energetic as a man of business, and head of a great commercial firm ; if he be gifted also with skill as a writer, which he is proud to use in bringing knowledge of all kinds within reach of the half-tanght — what is the world to make of him, the world that wants for every man a neat label devised in about ten words of a simple sentence which shall represent what is to be said of him b}^ those who wish to appear well informed ? There are few things in the world, if any — certainly there is not a man or woman in the world — whose nature can be told or character described in a few sentences. To understand a man fully, we must know all that he did and why each thing was done, all that he wrote and why each piece was written ; how the surroundings of his life affected tone and character of thought or action ; what, in each instance, determined action, and at every stage of life what was his age ; for the wisdom of a man of thirty-five may be the folly of a man of seventy. And when all is known that we can know of another human worker — at most half the truth mixed with a little error — the result is a body of impressions that lio label can express. We may talk of Eobert Chambers's capacity in any way we please; call him a Popular Writer who might have been a famous Geologist, if he had not been a Tublislier or a INlan of Letters ; say he might have been a lanious Man of Letters, if he had not been a Publisher or a Man of Science, and if his desire for the world's welfare had not led him to address the million instead of the select critical few. It really does not matter what wc say of INTRODUCTION. 7 him, or of any writer, if we have not actually read his books ; and if we have read them, it still does not matter what we say, if the opinion be one borrowed from without. A man has no opinions but those which are naturally formed within him and his ver}' own. All manner of opinion from without interfered in 1844, espe- cially in Scotland, with the fair reading of a book like this of '* Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation." It was met by a storm of prejudice that has now rolled away. It was a book written by a religious, earnest man who had seen and felt the harmony of Order in the works of God. He Avas driven to explain to those who misunderstood him, " The book is not primarily designed, as many have intimated in their criticisms, and as the Title might be thought partly to imply, to establish a new theory respecting the origin of animated nature ; nor are the chief arguments directed to that point. The object is one to which the idea of an organic creation in the manner of natural law is only subordinate and ministrative, as likewise are the nebular hypothesis and the doctrine of a fixed natural order in mind and morals. This purpose is to show that the whole revelation of the works of God, presented to our senses ond reason, is a system based on what we are compelled, for want of a better term, to call Law ; by which, however, is not meant a system independent or exclusive of Deity, but one which only proposes a certain mode of His working." To this fact, he said, science had long pointed, though it had hardly anywhere been broadly and fully contemplated. Robert Chambers was born in July 1802; Charles Darwin, in February 1809. '' Yestiges of the I^atural History of Creation '' appeared in 1844; "The Origin of Species" in 1859. Darwin prefaced his book with a long list of the pointings of science to the generalisation on which he insisted. But Charles Darwin's generalisation, worked out by a mind fully trained to science, and with rare and special power, was for a long time subject to as grave misunderstanding as the argument of the " Yestio-es." Yet, whether theories of development be right or wrong, certain it is that those who accept them do not touch one vital point of Christian faith. They can only add strength to our sense of the infinite Wisdom of the Creator. Do we deny our Maker because each one of us is developed from the germ to the infantj 8 INTRODUCTION. and again from the weak infant and its genus of undeveloped faculties and jiowers, to the strength and wisdom of the man, who yet looks forward to the passage into higher life to come ? Do we not rather wonder and adore ? And if the great universe without us was so framed that — to take an extreme view — all we see has, like man, been developed also from one germ, in sublimest order by lixed processes which we call Laws, have we not still more reason to wonder and adore 'i God works in a mysterious way His wonders to perform, and we canuot by wisdom search Him out. Our knowledge has its bounds; but we do know that there can be no law without a lawgiver. We may speculate idly, and opinion may go far astray. Xo one man's ways, whatever light beat on them, are fully compreliended by his fellow-men ; and when we seek to trace the ways of God in shaping the wide Earth He gives us to till and inhabit, our powers of comprehension, great as they may seem to us. canuot reach far. But the earth was given us to till not only with the plough and spade. All knowledge and wisdom of man is quarried out of the surrounding world, when we apply the minds God gave us to the traces of His Wisdom with which we are surrounded. The Laws of Xature that we seek to find are parts of the Divine Wisdom, which can be variously applied to our well-being when they have been discovered and made part of human knowledge. Bridge, mine, or tower, steam-engine or tele- scope, every work of applied science has this source. There is a revelation also in ^S'ature, as Kichard Hooker, on behalf of thg Church, wisely told those who decried the use of Reason. The groat harmonies of Xature yield us knowledge fruitful towards the development of man. Not to inquire is not to obey the will of the Creator, is to refuse submission to the hand of God, who also in this way shapes us to His image. U. M. 'laanarij 1887. COiNTENTS. PAGK Tiru noDiK.s or 8pace — riir.in auraxgemexts and Foinrvriox 1 1 f'OXSTITUEXT MATERIALS OF THE EARTH, AXD OF THE OTHER BODIE!« OF SPACE ........ 29 T1!E EARTH FOltMEO — ER.V nF IIIE l'l;i\IAK\' ItDCK.s . . -41 ( OMMEXC EMEXT OF OR(iAXI(; MIE — SKA l'I..VNrs, ( ORAl,?. ETC. . 4S ER.V OF IllK 0[,l) I:EI) .>< \XDST0XE — FISHES AIUNDANr . ^6 ,sK<'O.M>ARV ROCKS — EIJA OF THE CARnOXIFKROlS FuRMATIOX — 1>AM> FORMKP — (OMMEXCE.NfEXT OF I, AXD I'L.V.MS . . 64 i;iiA OF IIIE -NEW i:EI) . Centaur,''' and one of the third of that amount for the double star. 61 (,*ygni; which gave reason to presume that the distance of the former might be about nineteen millions of 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 hj even the comparatively small number * By I\lr. Ileiidcrsoii, Professor of Astronomy in the lul.inburgli Uiiiver.sitv, aiul l^icuteiiant ^leadows. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 13 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 thickl}- sown than elsewhere, Sir William Herschel reckoned that lifty thousand passed over a Held 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 astro- nomers, and some speculations of a most remarkable kind have been formed in connection 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 difierent 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 sys- tems parts of what may be called astral systems — that is, systems composed of a multitude of stars, bearing a cer- tain relation to each other. The astral system to which we belong, is conceived to be of an oblong, fiattish 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 stais, and see the Milky AVay much more clearly, in tliat direction, than towards the north, 14 VESTIGES OF THE in which line our eye hcas to traverse the vacant central space. Nor is this all. Sir William Ilerschel, 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 X, in the constellation Hercules. This has been generally verified by recent and more exact cal- culations,* which fix on a point in Hercules, near the star 143 of the lyth 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 in- habitants of our jDlanet, 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 tlic 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 Avith which they are put in motion. Our sun is probably one of those which depart furthest from it, and descend furthest into the empty S23ace within the ring."t According to this viev/, a time may come v/hen 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 mny be countless ages before the eyes which are to see this added resplendence shall exist. The evidence of the existence of other astral systems * Mado by M. Argelandci-, lute director of tlie Ob crvalory at Abo. t Professor Mossotti, on the Constitution of the Sidereal iSysteni, of wliicli tlie 8un forms a part : Londr. ^, Edinhurgli^ an:! Dublin J^hilosojjhica' Miujazinc, February 1843. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 15 besides our own is much more decided than might be ex- pected, when we consider that the nearest of them must needs be jilaced at a mighty interval beyond our own. The ekier Herschel, (Urecting 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 I'esolved 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 difierent degrees of telescopic power necessary to bring them into view. The farthest observed by the asti'onomer were estimated by him as thirty-five thousand times more remote than Sirius, supposing its distance to be about twenty millions of 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 jDlace in our astral system, but it also may be presumed to have the mightier duty of preserving a local arrange- ment 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 Hei'schels have in succession made some other remarkable observations on the legion.s 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 nehdce ; 1 6 VESTIGES OF THE 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 shows what are called nebulous stars — namely, luminous spherical objects, bright in the centre and dull towards the extremities. These apj^ear 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 hiir 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 difierent distances around it ; some of these, again, having smaller planets (satellites) re- volving around them. There are, however, some general features of the solar system which, when a })rofounder attention makes us acquainted with tliom, strike tlie mind verv forciblv. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 17 It is, in the first place, remarkable, that the planets all move nearly in one iDlane^ 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,* and the motions of all on their axes, are in one direction— nsLinely, from west to east. Had all these matters been left to accident, the chances against the uniformity which we find would have been, though cal- culable, 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 show a progressive increase of l)ulk 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 if, or less than half; Jupiter, i-^^^; Mars, ^f; Earth, 4^ ; Venus, 5 } 1 ; Mercury, 9 j-^^ ; 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 — o 3 6 12 24 48 96 192, and add four to each, we shall have a series denoting the * The oi'bitual revolutions of the satellites of LTranus 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 hoideversement of the primary, for the inclination of its equator to the ecliptic is admitled to be unusually high; but the subject is alto- v? ther so obscure, that nothing can bo founded on it. 1 8 VESTIGES OF THE respective distances of the planets from the sun. It will stand tlius — 4 7 lo i6 28 52 100 196 Mere. 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 du- plications, or multiplications by tw^o. 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 afterw%ards 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 tw^o 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 illustri- ous Kepler. Sir John Ilerschel truly observes — ^'When we contemplate the constituents of the planetary system from the point of view which this relation affords us, it is no lonirer mere analoixv which strikes us, no loncfer a general resemblance among them, as individuals inde- pendent of each other, and circulating about the sun, each accoi'ding to its own peculiar nature, and connected with it by its own peculiar tie. The resemblance is now perceived to be a true famihj likeness ; they are bound up in one chain — interwoven in one web of mutual I'elation and harmonious agreement, subjected to one pervading influence, which extends from the centre to tlie farthest limits of that great system, of which all of NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 19 them, the Earth inckided, must henceforth be regarded as members." * Connecting what has been observed of the series of nebulous stars Avith this wonderful relationship seen to exist among the constituents of our system, and further taking advantage of the light afibrded 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 estab- lished in it. But supposing thatj 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 tlie 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 apertui-e of a funnel. It thus becomes certain that when \xq 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 oj)position 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 *■ " Astronomy " : Lpa\Incr's " CycloproJla." 2 0 VESTIGES OF THE attended with the eifect 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 con- tnuie to revolve with the velocity possessed by the cen- tral mass at the moment of separation, but not neces- sarily participating in a-ny 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 con- stitution 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 under- stand 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 solidihcation 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 solidifijuKj 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 I'ing. 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 la\\-. but what NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATIOX. 21 we have seen assures us it is one observing and reducible to mathematical formuhe. 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 eliects of irregularity in their constitution would be to cause them to gatlier towards centres of superior solidity, by Avhich the annular form would, of course, be destroyed. The ring would, in short, break into several masses, the largest of wliich would be likely to attract the lesser into itself. The whole mass would then necessarily settle into a spherical form l\y virtue of the law of gravitation ; in short, would then become a planet re- volving round the sun. Its rotatory motion would, of course, continue, and satellites might then be thrown ort" 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 excejitions. While there are many chances against the matter of the rings being sufficiently equable to remain in the ainiular form till they were consolidated, it might nevertheless be otherwise in some instances ; that is to say, the equable- ness might, in those instances, be sutHciently grent. Huch Wiis 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 tli<-' 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, 2 2 VESTIGES OF THE 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 propor- tions 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 connection with the laws of centrifugal force and attrac- tion. M. Comte, 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 cor- resjjonded in every case with the actual sidereal revolution of the jj»/rt/i?^5, and that the rotation of the jorimarij j^lcmets ill nice manner corresponded with the orhitual 2^€riods of the secondaries. The process by which he arrived at this conclusion is not to bo readily comprehended by the unlearned ; but men of science allow that it is a powerful support to the present hypothesis of the formation of the globes of space. ""' * M. Conite comLincil Hiij-gens's tlicorenis for llic incasnvc of centrifugal force with the law of gravitation, and thus formed a f^imple fundamental equation between tlie duration of tlie rotation of what he calls the producing sta-, and the distance of the star pro- d'lccd. The constants of this equation were tlie radius of tlie central star, and the intensity of gravity at its surface, which is a direct con- sequence of its mass. It leads directly to the third law of Kepler, A^hich thus becomes susceptible of being conceived d priori in a cosmogonical point of view. M. Comte first applied it to the moon, and found, to his great delight, that the periodic time of that satellite agrees within nn linnr or two with the dm-allon which the revolution of the earth ought to Inve had at the lime when the hmar distance formed the limit of ihe earth's atmosphere, lie fouu 1 the coincidence NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION ^3 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 observa- tions 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 containijig 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 in- extricably with each other, though it might be at sufficient distances to allow of each distinct centre havinfir o 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 phe- Icss exact, but still very striking, in every other case. In those of the planets he obtained for the tluration of the corresponding solar rotations a value always a little less than their actual periodic times. '•It is remarkable,'' says he, "that this ditference, 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 " — showing, we may suppo.se, 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 sattdlites, Avhere it is proportionally greater than in the planets, and unqcual in the different systems. "From the whole of these comparisons," snys he, " 1 deduced the following general result : — Sii])posing the mathe- matical 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 tlie actual sidereal revolution of the corresponding planet ; and ihfi same is true for each planetary atmosphere in relation to the different satellites." — Couvs de P]uloso]_)Jite Ihsitif. 24 VESTIGES OE THE noinenon of n small whirlpool or dimple in the surface of a stream. iSuch dimples are not always single. Upon the face of a liver 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 legularity. These fantastic eddies, which the musing poet will sometimes w^atch 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 so many calculations of exact science, that it may be con- sidered as verging upon the region of our ascertained truths. Home further support I trust 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. ileverting to a former illustration — if we could sup- pose a number of persons of Aarious 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 l)oys had once been infants, and, linally, that all had been brought into the world in exactly the same circumstances. Precisely thus, seeing in our astral system many thou- sands 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 unavoidal)le 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 iirmamerit was at one time a diti'usod mass of upbidous MATCRAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 25 mattei', extending through the space which it still occupies. 80 also, of course, must have been the other astral systems, indeed, we nuist presume the whole to have been originally in one connected mass, the astral systems being only the lirst division into parts, and solar systems the second. The first idea which all this impresses upon us is, that the formation of l)odies in space is still and at 2)?'ese7it in jn'orjre8)<. AVe live at a time when many have been formed, and many ai-e still forming. Our own solar system is to be regarded as completed, supposing its per- fection 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, ac- cording to the laws of the system, exist. But there are other soL'ir 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 tovv'ards the stellar form. On the other hand, there are vast numbers of stars which have all the appearance of being fully foimed systems, if we ai-e 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 pro- bability of the comparative youth of our system, alto- gether apart from human traditions and the geognostic appeai'ances of the surface of our planet. This consists in a thin nebulous matter, which is dilVused 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 pro- jecting upwards in the line of the sun's path, and which ^6 VESTIGES OE THE 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 confi- dence 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 myiiads of others were fully fashioned and in comj^lete ari-angeinent. Thus, in the sublime chronology to which we are direct- ing our inquiries, we first hnd ourselves called upon to consider the globe which we inhabit as a cliild of the sun, elder than Venus and her younger brother Mercury, but posterior in date of birth to Mars, Jupiter, Saturix, 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 oui- ordinary conceptions of time. From evi- dence 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, far less how much more aged may be many of the stars of our iirmament, or the stars of othei- firma- ments than ours. Another and moi-e 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATIOX. 27 motion, are sot into a coupled revolution in ellipses. Next, centrifugal force comes into play, flinging off por- tions of the rotating masses, which become spheres by virtue of the same law of attraction, and are held in orbits of i-evolution round the central body by means of a com- position 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 ai-e 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 Avind 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 vast- ness 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 28 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. operate, so that only the proper conditions are presented, afford matter for the gravest consideration. Nor should it escape careful notice that the regulations on which all the laws of matter proceed, are established on a rigidly accurate mathematic;d 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 la^^'s, even though we do not go a single step further in the investigation. But it is impossible for an intelligent mind to stop there. Wo advance from law to tlie cause of law, and ask, What is that? Whence have come all these beautiful regula- tions? 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 man- dates. That great Being, who shall say where is his dwelling-place, or what his history ! Man pauses breath- less at the contemplation of a subject so much above his finite faculties, and only can wonder and adore ! ( 29 COXSTITUEXT MATEELVLS OF THE EAETH AND OF THE OTIIEK BODIES OF SPACE. The nebular hypothesis ahnost 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 1 — that is to say, that the whole con- sisted of similar elements. It seems difficult to avoid coming to this conclusion, at least under the qualification that, possibly, various bodies, under peculiar circum- stances 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 com- binations, 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 unrlor certain conditions; but if this 30 VESTIGES OF THE sliould prove to be the case, it would little affect tlie view which we are taking of cosmieal 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 centiifugal 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 ingre- dients, or only one, is liable to iniinite 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 sub- jected 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 bo 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 31 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 s\ibstances, 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 tempera- ture 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 circum- scribed by the orbit of Uranus, Ave 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 ixebulous matter of space, pre- viously 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 1)y 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 v.e 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 tlic exceeding diffuseness of the matter of those elder planets, Saturn being not more dense or heavy than the substance cork. It 32 VESTIGES OF THE 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 enjo3'ment of the sun's rays is no more than a comj)ensa- tion. 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 diifused through the system over and above what remains in the planets'? May we not rationally presume it to have gone to con- stitute 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 con- stitute, 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 considera- tions 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 arc possihhj shades of variation with respect to the component materials, and undouhtedbj with respect to the conditions under which the laws operate, and consequently the effects wdiicli they produce. Thus, there may be substances hei-e which are not in some other bodies, and substances here solid may be elsewhere licjuid or vapoiiform. We ai-e 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^ NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. i^ 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 con- stitutional 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 diffu- sion 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, hydro- gen, and nitrogen being the chief. Forty-two are metals, of which eleven are remarkable as composing, in com- bination with oxygen, certain earths, as magnesia, lime, alumina. The remainder, 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, eight-ninths of the weight of water, and a large proportion of every kind of rock in the crust of the earth. Hydrogen, which forms the remaining part 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 B 34 VESTIGES OF THE metallic l)asis of alumina, 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 prin- ciples 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 bo left over, if such there should be. It is hence supposed that matter is com- posed 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 amonf^st substances for encli NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 35 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 perhnps 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 cosmogonic 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, showing 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 satel- lite) to rotate on its axis. The innermost satellite must have been formed when the planet was reduced to a cir- cumference of 309,075 miles, and rotated in about forty- two hours and a half. From similar inferences, we find that the mass of the B 2 36 VESTIGES 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 revolu- tionary period of the moon), instead of as now, rather less than twenty-four hours. The time intervening betwen the formation of the moon and the earth's diminution to its present size, was probably one of those vast sums in Avhich 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 rufi^o-edness on the surface of our earth. The volcanic operations are on a stupendous scale. They are NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 37 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 largo 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-moun- tains, mounts like those of the craters of earthly vol- canoes, surrounded immediately by vast and jorofound 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 ^tna. 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 pro- gress through which the earth has already gone. The elements which seem wanting may be only in combina- tions different from 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 38 VESTIGES OE THE spread over the whole. Shoukl these events take place, meteorological phenomena, and all the phenomena of organic life, will commence, and the moon, like tlio 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 pre- cisely the departure from a correct sphere which might be predicted 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, a very short way down, but varying in different climes, where all effect from the NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 39 sun's rays ceases. Then, however, commences a tem- perature from an entirely different cause, one which evidently has its source in the interior of the earth, and wliich regularly increases as we descend to gi-eater and greater depths, the rate of increment being about one degree Fahi-enheit 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,*' and the support which it gives to ' Herschel's explanation of the formation of worlds is highly important. AVe shall hereafter see what appear to be traces of an operation of this heat - The researches on this subject were conducted chiefly by the late Laron Fourier, perpetual secretary to the Academy of Sciences of I';u'i.«. .Sec his TliCorlc AnaJytlque de la ChaUur. 1822. 40 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 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-con- ducting quality of the cool crust absolutely prevents it from suffering any diminution. (41 ) THE EARTH FORMED. EEA OF THE PRIMArtY ROCKS. ALTnouc4ii 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-by 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 rocks of these two mountains, and by calculating the thickness right through these strata, could 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. 42 VESTIGES OF THE Tlie 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 tilled up lateral chinks in these rents. There are even instances where it has Ijeen 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 prol3ably 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 43 observation, wo readily detect in it a regulavity and order from which much instruction in the history of our globe is to be derived. The deposition of the aqueous rocks, and tlie projec- tion 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 tliei-e- fore 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 pro- bably 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 ^^•hich 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 emi- nently of combination, for such rock is invariably com- posed 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 44 VESTIGES OF THE 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 sojne in the open air^ which contingencies are found to have made considerable difference in its texture and appearance. The gi-eat stores of subterranean heat also served an important purpose in the formation of the aqueous rocks. These i-ocks 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, the mass 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, wdiich 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 hrst originally was. In speaking of sedimentary rocks, we may be said to be anticipating. It is necessaiy, first, to show 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, NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 45 with air and water playing round it. There were vast irregidarities in tlie surface — irregularities trifling, per- haps, compared with the wdiole bulk of the globe, but assuredly vast in comj^arison with any which now exist upon it. These irregularities might be occasioned by inequalities in the cooling of the substance, or by acci- dental and local sluggishness of the materials, or by local effects of the concentrated internal heat. From what- ever cause they arose, there they were — enormous granitic mountains, interspersed w^ith seas which sunk to a depth equally profound, and by which, perhaps, the mountains w^ere 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 becom- ing 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 magnifi- cent scale. There is tolerably good 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 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 seiies 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 suggests the profoundness of the primeval oceans in which they were formed ; the Penn- sylvanian grauwacke, a member of the next highest 46 VESTIGES OF THE series, is not less than a hundred miles in direct thick- ness. 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 lamino3 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 temperatui'e. 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, etc. % 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 droj:) the larger particles, and carry the lightest farthest on. To such a cause is it owing that some of the mn.terials of the worn-down granite have settled in one place and some in another.* 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 chemi- cal laws, that certain of these materials would be pre- cipitated singly, or in modified combinations, to the bottom, so as to form rocks by themselves. The rocks hitherto spoken of contain none of those remains of vegetables and animals which nboniid so * Do la Decile's " Gcolocrical ll-iscavclics."' NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 47 much in subsequently formed rocks, find tell so v/ondrous a tale of the past history of our globe. They simply contain, as luis 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 i^ocks of all traces of vegetable and animal life, joined to a consideration of the excessive tempera- ture 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 en- deavoured to show 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 un- likely 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. ( 48 ) COMMENCEMENT OF OPtGANIC LIFE. SEA PLANTS, CORALS, ETC. "VVe 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 w^hich has not hitherto appeared. Lime- stone is a carbonate of lime, a secondary compound, of w^hich one of the ingredients, carbonic acid gas, presents tlie 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 mainly that of a gas diffused in the atmosphere, although portions of it are also found occasionally issuing from the interior of the earth. 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, NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 49 when we hear of carbon beginning to appear in the ascending series of rocks, we are nnavoidably 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 poh^pes) which are capable of appro- priating it, in connexion wdth 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 is also fully ascertained of many strata of limestone higher in the series, that they are simply reefs of that kind changed by subjection to heat and pressure. The appearance, then, of limestone beds in the early part of the stratified series, strongly suggests the fact of the commencement of organic life upon our planet, though we cannot say that any of its special forms are made clear to our eyes. 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 rhall have to revert to it as a matter greatly concerning our subject. Sir Henry De la Beche 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 its basis, carbon, forms from 64 to 5° VESTIGES OF THE 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 coarse, be incapable of supporting life in land animals. It is important, however, to observe that such an atmo- sphere 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 i66 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 pi'imary non-fossiliferous rocks to the termination of the carboniferous series, for there w^e see vast deposits (coal) containing carbon as a large ingredient, while, at the same time, the leaves of the Stone Booh 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 we soon after, in ascending through the series of rocks, find the first dis- tinct remains of the bodies of animated creatures. And what w^ere those creatures? It might well be \vith 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 miglit have been expected that vegetables would first make theii- appearance, as NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 51 they form a necessary first link in the chain of nutrition ; but their not being found first, is no proof that animals of any kind existed before them, seeing that, however abundantly they might be developed, their forms and substance were too slight to have a chance of being pre- served with any distinctness amidst rocks which appear to have undergone a considerable degree of heat. And the same cause, it is obvious, would prevent our having any memorial of the very lowest forms of animal life. 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 con- tains some seams of grauwacke, in which are organic re- mains ; 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. AI10V0 the gneiss and mica slate system, or group of strata, is the Clay Slate and Grauicacke Slate System; that is to say, it is higher in the order of siiprajmsit'wn, though very often it rests immediately on the primitive granite. The sub-groups of this system are in the follow- ing succession upwards: — i, hornblende slate; 2, chiast- olite slate ; 3, clay slate ; 4, Snow don rocks (grauwacke and conglomerates) ; 5, Bala limestone; 6, Plynlymmon rocks (grauwacke and grauwacke slates, with beds of con- glomerates). 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 52 VESTIGES OF THE quarried for domestic purposes. If we ovei-look 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 con- fined to the slate beds, those named from Bala, in Wales, being the most prolific. Zoo2)kyta, jyohjinaria, cri7ioidea, conchifera, and Crustacea* are the orders of the animal kingdom thus found in the earliest of earth's sepulchres. The orders are distinguished, without difliculty, from the general characters of the creatures whose remains are found ; but it is only in this general character that they bear a resemblance to any creatures now existing. When we come to consider specific characters, we see that a difiierence 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 compara- tively 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 compara- tively 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 lamina3 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 moi-e abundant, the number of species extended, and important additions made in certain * In iJie Cumbi'ian limestone occur " calamopora?, litliodendra, cyathopli_ylla, and orbicula." — Phillips. The asapliusand trinucleus (cnistacea) have been found respectively in the slate rocks of Wales, and tlie h'mcstone beds of the i^rauwacke group in Bohemia. That fragments of crinoidea, thougli of no determinate species, occur in this system, we have the authority of Mr. Murchison. — Silurian Syatcm, p. 710. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 53 vestiges of fuci, or sea-plants, and of fishes. This group of rocks has been called by English geologists, the Silurian St/stem, 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 : — i, Llandeilo 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 ; brachiopo- dous mollusks, a vast number of genera (including terebratula, pentamerus, spirifer, orthis, leptsena) ; cephalopoda, of several orders and many genera (includ- ing turritella, orthoceras, nautilus, bellerophon) ; Crus- tacea, all of them trilobites (including trinucleus, asaphus, calymene). The cephalopoda are the most highly organised of the mollusca, possessing in some families an internal osseous skeleton, together with a heart, and a head having some resemblance in form and armature to that of the parrot tribes. This order was carnivorous, and acted the part of a police in keeping down the redundant life of the early seas. The trilobites have attracted much attention in consequence of the gi-eat variety of species, and the peculiar structure of the eye, Avhich unequivocally tells that the sea was a clear medium at that time as at the present, and that light was then, in its general nature and relation to the vision of animals, the same as it now is. A little above the Llandeilo rocks, there have been discovered certain convoluted forms, 54 VESTIGES OF THE vvliicli are now established as annelides, 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 annelides is im- portant, on account of their character and status in the animal kingdom. They are red-blooded and hermaphro- dite, and form a link of connexion between the annulosa (white-ljlooded worms) and a humble class of the verte- brata."^ 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 polyj^iaria, and there is little reason to doubt that some beds of it are wholly the production of the latter creatures, or are, in other words, coral i-eefs transformed by heat and pressure into rocks. Kemains of fishes, of a very minute size, have been detected by Mr. Phillips 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 obscure character have Ijeen foi- a longer period known. The traces of f uci in this system are all but sufiicient 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 shown 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 * Sudi as ami)liioxus anil myxeno (lamprey.^). NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION, 55 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 geiieral uniformity of organic life over the surface of the earth, at the time when each particular system of rocks was formo^^'^^odact}jlus was another lizard, but furnished with bat-like 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 are also numerous tortoises ^ some of them reach- ing a great size ; and Professor Owen has found in War- wickshire some remains of an animal of the batrachian order,* to which, from the peculiar form of the teeth, he has given the name of labyrinthodon. Thus, three of Cuvier's four orders of reptilia (sauria, chelonia, and 'batrachia) are represented in this formation, the serpent order ioj^hidia) being alone wanting. The variegated marl beds which constitute the upper- most group of the formation, present two additional genera of huge saurians — the phytosaurus and masto- donsaurus. It is in the upper beds of the red sandstone tliat beds of salt first occur. These are sometimes of such thick- ness, 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 difiicult to * The order to which frou-s and toads bflonir. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. Si luulerstund how such strata were foniiod in an age marked by ultra-tropical heat and frequent volcanic dis- turbances. 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 re- specting 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 suggest 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 sub- sequent formations : in those of the new red, at mor6 82 VESTIGES OF THE 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 soixie 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 thn-ty-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 occa- sion 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 Clieshire, are farther 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 deejD an impression being made. At Ilessberg, in Saxony, tlie vestiges of four distinct animals have been traced, one of them a web-footed animal of small size, con- sidered as a congener of the crocodile ; another, whose NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 83 footsteps having a resemblance to an impression of a swelled human hand, has caused it to be named the cheirotlierlum. The footsteps of the cheirotherium have been found also in the Stouvton quarries above men- tioned. Professor Owen, who stands at the head of comparative anatomy in the pi-esent day, has expressed his belief that this last animal was the same batrachian of which he has found fragments in the new red sand- stone of Warwickshire. At Kuncorn, near Manchester, and elsewhere, have been discovered the tracks of an animal which Mr. Owen calls the rhynchosaurus_, 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 grail??, 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. Pne 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. iNIany 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."* ^- Dr. Buckland, quoting an article by Professor Hitchcock, in the American Journal of Science and Arts, 1836. 84 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION, Some of these prints indicate small animals, but others denote lairds 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 (jig aniens. ( 85 ) EEA OF THE OOLITE. COMMENCEMENT OF MAMMALIA. TfiE chronicles of this period consist of a series of beds, mostly calcareous, taking their general name (polite System) from a consj^icuous 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 Ush. This texture of stone is novel and striking. It is supposed to be of chemical origin, each spherule being an aggre- gation of particles round a central nucleus. The oolite system is largely developed in England, France, West- phalia, and ISTorthern 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 dis- covered in many other parts of the world. The series, as shown in the neighbourhood of Bath, is (beginning with the lowest) as follows : — i, Lias, a set of strata variously composed of limestone, clay, marl, and shale, clay being predominant ; 2, Lower oolitic forma- tion, 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 woi-ks of the coral polype ; 4, tapper oolitic 86 VESTIGES OF THE 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 (moor- lands) 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, showina* 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 shows compara- tively 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 con- spicuous 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 Ptun of Cutch, and other parts of Hindostan, fossils have been NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 87 discovered, which, as far as English naturalists who have seen them can determine, are undistinguishable from certain oolite and lias fossils of Europe." ^■'' The dry land of this age presented cycadea^, '* a beautiful class of plants between the palms and conifers, having a tall, straight trunk, terminating in a magni- ficent crown of foliage." t There were tree ferns, but in smaller proportion than in former ages ; also equisetacere, lilia, and coniferte. The vegetation was generally ana- logous 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 tempei-ate. 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 algse, 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 wxre also extremely numerous. Shell mollusks, in hundreds of new species, occupied the bottoms of the seas of those ages, while of the swimming shell-iish, ammonites and belemnites, there were also many scores of varieties. The belemnite here calls for some particular notice. It commences in tlie 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 foi- the residence of the animal, with a series of air-chambers below. The animal^ placed in the upper cavit}- , could raise or dejiress itself in the water at pleasure by a pneumatic operation '■■- ^Iiirchison's "Silurian System," p. 583. t Bucklantl. SS VESTIGES OF THE 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 {cicrodus, 2^sammodus, &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 in- habitant 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 ichthyo- saurus, plesiosaurus, and other huge saurian carnivora of the preceding age, plied, in increased numbers, their destructive vocation.* 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 * In some instances, these fos.sils arc fonnJ with the contents of the stomach faithfully preserved, and even with pieces of the external skin. The pellets ejected hy them (coproh'tes) are found in vast numbers, each generally enclosed in a nodule of ironstone, and some- times showing remains of the fishes which had formed their food. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 89 to have formed a link lietween the pk^siosaurus 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 tlio 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 eai-ly ; 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 pre}-. The first glimpse of the highest class of the vertebrate sub-kingdom — mcuiimaVia — is obtained from the Stones- field slate, where there have been found several specimens of the lower jaw-bone of a quadruped evidently insecti- vorous, and inferred, from peculiarities of structure, 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 * Fragments attributed to a cetaceous animal, another humble form of the mammal class, have likewise been found in the great oolite, near Oxford. 90 VESTIGES OF THE 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 par- ticularly 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-heel, 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 exuvias 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, 1 le imbedded on the surface of the soil in which they grew: NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 91 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 con- nected 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 com- prehends 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 inter- stratified with mud; and, finally, muddy matter pre- vailed. 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 superincumljcnt cretaceous series — but so quietly, that the mud contain- ing the remains of terrestrial and fresh-w^ater creatures was tranquilly covered up by sands replete with marine exuvia?."* 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 inter- mixture of pebbles of the special appearance of those worn in rivers, it is also inferred that the estuary which * Dc la Bcche's " Geological Eescarchcs," p. 344. 92 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 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 par- ticular one here spoken of may have flowed from a point not nearer than the site of the present Newfound- land. Professor Phillips has suggested, from the analogy of the mineral composition, that anciently elevated coal sti'ata 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. ( 93 ) ERA OF THE CRETACEOUS EOEMATIOK 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 for- mation. 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 I'ising into bold escarpments to- wards 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 de- posit, it establishes that seas existed at the time of its formation on the tracks occupied by it, while some of its organic remains prove that, in the neighbourhood of those seas, there wer-e 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): i, SJtankland or greensand, "a 94 VESTIGES OF THE tri2:)le alternation of sands and sandstones with clay;" 2, Gait, " 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, show- ing 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 Hght 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 explana- tion of the production of chalk, if we admit some more recent discoveries of Professor Ehrenberg. Tliat 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 propor- tion of the inorganic matter ; that of the south, a larger NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 95 pi^oportion 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 loith flint abounds in the north of Europe ; that ivithout flints in the south ; while in the northern chalk siliceous animal- cules 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 afiinity 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 ascer- tained 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 96 VESTIGES OF THE 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. Down to this period, the placoid and ganoid fishes had, as far as we have evidence, flourished alone ; now they decline, and we begin to find in their place fishes of two orders of superior organisa- tion, the orders which predominate in the present creation. These are osseous in internal structure, with corneous scales, the latter being circular in the one case, and pectinated or indented at one side in the other ; hence the two orders are called respectively cycloid and ctenoid by M. Agassiz, who, as has been remarked, asserts that the outer covering of fishes is a suflicient indication of NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 57 their whole structure. In Europe, remains of the marine saurians have been found; they may be presumed to have become extinct in that part of the glol^e before this time, their place and destructive ofiice 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 mosiesaurus, seems to have held an intermediate place bet\\een the monitor and iguana, and to have been about twenty- five feet long, with a tail calculated to assist it power- fully in swimming. Crocodiles and turtles existed, and amongst the fishes were some of a saurian character. Fuel abounded in the seas of this era. Conferv^e are found enclosed in flints. Of terrestrial vegetation, as of terrestrial animals, the specimens in the European urea 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 showing 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 frag- ments of drilled wood ; showing 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 rq)tiles, the American formation adds a gigantic one, D 98 VESTIGES OF THE styled the saurodoii, from the Uzard-Hke churacter of its teeth. We have seen that footsteps of birds are considered to have been discovered in America, in the new red sand- stone. 8ome simihir isolated phenomena occur in tlie subsequent formations. Br. Mantell discovered some bones of birds, apparently w.-iders, in tlie Wealden. Tho 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 Glaris, in Switzerland, cor- responding to the English gait, 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 sti-ong traces of the birds than we possess of the reptiles and otliei- 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 circum- stance of their being little liable to be carried do\\'n 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 p(nnt. We see, from what remain> have been found in tlie whole series, a clear ])rogress throughout, from humble to superior tyi)es of being. Hence we derive a light as to what animals may have NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 99 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. ( loo ) ERA OF THE TERTIARY FOR]\IATION. MAMMALIA ABUNDANT. The chalk-beds are the highest Avhich extend over a considerable space ; but in hollows of these beds, com- paratively limited in extent, there have been formed series of vstrata — clays, limestones, marls, alternating — to which the name of the Terfiarij 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. A stripe of it extends along the east coast of North America, from Massachusetts to Florida. It is also found in Sicily and Italj^, 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 nnist bo considered as the beds of estuaries left at the conclusion of the ci-etaceous 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. loi an estuary again. 811011 changes the Paris l)asin appears to have undergone oftener than once, for, lh>t. we have there a fresh-water formation of cLay and lime- stone beds; then, a marine limestone formation; next. a second fresh-water formation, in which the material of the celebrated i)lasteT 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 tlio 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 rjws, the dawn ; ;(oii/oy, recent) ; second, tlie miocene (fieioiv, less) ; third, older pliocene (nXecoiv, 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, showing that the lanc^ 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 I02 VESTIGES OF THE considerable number are pachydermata,* of a character approximating to the South American tapir : the names, palaeotherium, anthracotherium, anoplotherium, lophi- odon, &c., have been appHed to them with a considera- tion 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 unpro- vided with claws. These animals were all herbivorous. Amongst an immense number of others are found many new reptiles, some of them adapte'd for fiesh 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, showing 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 dinotlmnum, 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, * Thick- skinned aninmls. This tonn lins been given by (hivior to an order in which the hog, elephant, horse, and rhinoceros are iDcluded. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. \ox 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 luae in this era animals allied to the glutton, the bear, the do;:, the horse, the hog, and lastly, several felime (creatures of "which the lion is the type) ; all of which ai-e 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-PEllIOD. The shells of the older pliocene give from thirty-live to fifty ; those of the newer, from ninety to ninety-tive per cent, of existing species. The pachydermata of the preceding era now disappear and are replaced by others belonging to still existing families — elephant, hippopota- mus, 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 pecu- liarities 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, .is a specimen, in all respects entire, WMs found in iSoi, prcsci-ved in ice, in Siberia. We are more sui-pris(.'d by finding such gigantic [n'o[)0)- tions in an animal called the megatherium, whicli raid^s in an order now assuming much humbler forms — the edentata — to which the sloth, ant-eater, and armailillo belong. The megatherium had a skeleton of enormous solidity, with an armour-clad l3ody, and five toes, termina- I04 VESTIGES OF THE ting in huge claws, wherewith to grasp the branches, from which, Hke its existing congener, the sloth, it derived its food. The inegalonyx was a similar animal, only some- what less than the preceding. Finally, the pliocene gives us for the tirst time, oxen, deer, camels, and other speci- mens of the rnniinaniia. 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 l>rings us up to the felinne, or carnivora, a considerably elevated point in the animal scale, but still leaving a bl ink 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 ol' animals are in time found in formations originally thoaght 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 ordei', 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 mail surmounted by compact limestone, in the department of Clers, at the foot of the Pyrenees. Associated with this last were i-emains of not less that thirty mammiferous quadrupeds, including three species of rhinoceros, a large anoplothe- rium, three species of deer, two antelopes, a true dog, a Lu'ge cat, an animal like a weazel, a small hare, and a liuge species of the edentata. Both of these places are considerably to the nortli of any region now iidiabited 1)V the monkey tribes. Fossil remains of quadrumana have NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 105 been found in at least two other parts of tlie eartli — 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 tlie Ameiican group of monkeys, but a new genus, and denominated by its discoverer, Dr. Lund, protopitheeus. The latter would be four feet in height. One remarkable circumstance connected with the ter- tiary formation remains to be noticed — namely, the pre- valence 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 lacus- trine as well as marine tertiaries. The suj^erficies c»f tertiaries in England is disturbed by two great swell,;, 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 a violent inclination towards the north, as if the subterranean disturbing force had iravJ forward in that direction. The Pyrenees, too, and Al}).s, have both undergone elevation since the deposition of the tertiaries ; and in 8icily 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 eartli for the reception of higher classes of animals. ( io6 ) EEA OF THE SUPERFICIAL FORMATIONS. COMlVrENCEMENT OF PEESENT SrEflES. We liave now completed our survey of the series of stra- tified rocks, and ti'aced in their fossils tlie progress of organic creation down to a time whicli seems not long antecedent to tlie appearance of man. There are, never- theless, monuments of still another era or space of time which it is all ])ut 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. thei*e 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 diluviiun, 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 parti- cular parent beds at considerable distances. Connected witli these phenomena are certain rock surfaces on the slopes of hills and elsewhere, which exhil)it groovings and scratchings, such as we might suppose would be pi'oduced by a quantity of loose blocks luiriied along over them by NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 107 a flood. Another associated phenomenon is that called crag and tall, 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, Kdiii- l)urgh, 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 trav^ellers 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 Eui-ope. It is very remarkable that the direction from which the diluvial blocks have generally come, the hnes of the gi-ooved 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-ioest towards the south-east. We thus acquire the idea of a powerful cui-rent 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 direc- tion uninjured, and in some instances forming long ridges of detritus along the surface. These are curious considerations, and it lias 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 i]idicate that these have at one time extended to lower levels, and existed in regions (the Scottisli Highlands an (•i;aiijj)lc) where there is now no perennial >now. it has ]o8 VESTIGES OF THE been surmised that there was a time, subsequent to the tertiary era, when the circumpolar ice extended far into tlio temperate zone, and formed a lofty, as well as exten- .sive 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 How of this deluge, joined to the dii-ection which it would obtain from the rotatory mo- tion of the globe, would of course produce that com- pound or south-easterly direction which the phenomena i-equire. 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 ossife- rous caverns, of which specimens singly exist at Kirk- dale in Yorkshire, Gailenreuth in Franconia, and other places. They occur in the calcareous strata, as the great (avei-ns generally do, but have in all instances been naturally closed up till the recent period of their dis- covery. 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 Ix^en found, under the clay bed, assemblages of the l)(mes of animals, of many various kinds. At Kirkdale, for example, the i-emains of twenty-four species wei"e ascertained — namely, pigeon, lark, raven, duck, and par- tridge ; mouse, water-rat, rabbit, hare, deer (three f^pecies), ox, horse, liippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 109 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 8hap 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 Sol way estuary ; so also are fragments of the Alps found far u[) tlie slopes of the Jura. There are even blocks on the east coast of England, supposed to have no VESTIGES OF THE 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 tlie space between their original and final sites was under ocean. Icebergs do even now carry oft* 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 tind the erratic blocks of the present day. As the diluvium and erratic blocks clearly suppose one last long submersion of the surface (^«s^, geologically speaking), there is another set of appearances w^hich as manifestly show 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 ter- races, 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, not- withstanding the cuts and scoopings wdiich have at frequent intervals 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 itnd thro\\n inland. Then, upon NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. rir another elevation, the sea began to form, at its new point of contact witli the land, the third higliest beach, and so on down to the ])la.t-foi'm nearest to tlie present sea-beach. Plienoniena of this kind become compaiativelv 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 foi'ty- 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 1832. Subterranean forces, of the kind then exemplified in Cliili, supply a ready explanation of the whole pheno- mena, 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 ob- served that the level continues the same along a con- siderable 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 c|uiet 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 ca.se. In the present sea, as is well knowTi, there are difterent levels at difterent 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 112 VESTIGES OF THE the ancient lieaclies miijjlit be occasioned by some such causes. But, whatever doubt may i-est on this minoi- point, enough has been ascertained to settle the main one, that we have in these platforms indubitable monu- ments of the last rise of the land from the sea, and the concluding great event of the geological histoiy. The idea of such a widespread and possibly universal submersion unavoidably suggests some considerations as to the efiect 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 tlie 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 incline 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 wdde range. I must thei-efore be con- tent to leave this point, as far as geological evidence is concerned, for future affirmation. There are some other superficial deposits, of less con- sequence on the present occasion than the diluvium — namely, lacustrine deposits, or tilled-up lakes ; alluvium, or the deposits of rivers beside their margins ; deltas, the deposits made by great ones at their effiux into the sea ; peat mosses; and the vegetable soil. The animal re- mains 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 113 a lacustrine deposit at Market-Weigliton, in tlie Vale of York, there have been found bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, bison, wolf, horse, felis, deer, birds, all or nearly all belonging to 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 tlie mammoth, mastodon, buffalo, and other a.nimals of extinct and living types. In short, these superficial deposits show precisely such remains as might be ex- pected from a time at which the present system of things (to use a vague but not unexpressive phra'^e) 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. ( 114 ) GE^^:rtAL con"sideratioxs HESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. Thus concludes the wondrous chapter of the earth's liistor}^ 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 aiford, 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 anything more than another impressed cm our minds by the course of the geological history, it is^ that the same laws and conditions of N'ature now ap- parent 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 .YA TVRAL HISTOR V OF CREA TION. 1 1 5 their sui-fjices, 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. Tlie washing down of detached matter from elevated grounds, which we see rivers constantly engaged in at the present time, and which is daily shal- lowing the seas adjacent to their mouths, only appears to have proceeded on a. greater scale in earlier epochs. The volcanic sul)terranean force, wliicli we see belching forth lavas on the sides of mountains, and throwing up new elevations by land and sea, was only more pov.erfuUy operative in distant ages. To turn to organic nature, vegetation seems to have proceeded then exactly as now. The very alternation 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 sphei'es 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 modihed by conditions. At one early age, if there was any diy land at all, it was perhaps enveloped in an atmosphere luitit for the existence of tei-restrial animals, and which had to go thi-ough 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 li6 VESTIGES OF THE appear to liave prevailed at the close of the coal formation ill P_]ngland and thi'oiighout 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 — or, it may l)e, lines — leading to the higher forms of organisation. Amongst plants, we have first sea-weeds, afterwards land plants; and amongst these the simpler (cellular and cryptogamic) before the more complex. In the depart- ment 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 sufiicient to convince us. Indeed the doctrine of the gradation of animal forms has received a remark- able support from the discoveries of tliis science, as f-everal types formerly wanting to a completion of the series have been found in a fossil state.* It is scarcely less evident, from the geological record, •'• Intervals in tVie scries were nuinerous in the department of the jniehyck'nnata ; many of these gaps are now filled np from the extinct genera found in the tertiary formation. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 117 that the progi'ess of organic life has observed some cor- respondence with the progress of physical conditions on the sui'face. We do not know for certain that the sea, at the time when it supported radiated, molluscous, and arti- culated 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 fiud Australia, the i-egion where they now live in the greatest abundance, and one which has no highei' 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 car- bonic 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 vege- tation 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 histor}-, strong traces of a parallel advance of the physical conditions and the organic forms. In examining the fossils of the lower marine creation* ii8 VESTIGES OF THE 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 ex- pected, since lime is necessary for the formation of the shells of the mollusks and articulata, and the hard sub- stance of the crinoidea and corals ; next in the carboni- ferous series ; next in the tertiary ; next in the new red sandstone ', next in slates ; and lastly, least of all, in the primary rocks.* 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 appear- ances as if, throughout all the changes of the surface, the various kinds of organic life invariably iwessed 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 with- drawn 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 flouiished before the tertiary (Ehrenberg's infusoria excepted) now exists ; and of the mammalia which arose (hiring tliai s«^ries. many forms are altogether gone, - See napci- l)y IV(»lcssor lulwanl Fork's, read to the Briti.sh Atisocialidii, 1839. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 119 while of others we have now only kindred species. Thus we find not only frequent additions to the previously existing forms, but frequent M'ithdrawals of forms which had apparently become inappropriate — a constant shift- ing as well as advance — a fact calculated very foi^cibly 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 re- ceived, that I at once take it for granted. But in the particulars of this so highly supported idea, we sureh^ 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 progenitoi-s 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 zooph}T:es, another time to add a few marine mollusks, another to bring in one or two Crustacea, again to produce crusta- ceous fishes, again perfect fishes, and so on to the end % This w^ould surely be to take a very mean view of the Creative Power — to, in short, anthropomorphise 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 evi- dence which nothing can overturn or gainsay. Some I20 VESTIGES OF THE other idea must tlien be come to with regard to th<> inoda ill which the Divine Author proceeded in the organic creation. Let us seek in the history of the earth's for- mation 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 imme- diate 01- 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 ci'ea- tion 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 law, is a powerful argument for the organic arrangements being so likewise, for how can we su})pose that the august Being who brought all these countless w^orlds into form by the simple establishment of a natural principle flowing from his mind, was to interfere per- sonally and specially on every occasion when a new shell- fish 01' rej)tile 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 hypo- thesis. But the fact is, however startling the present announcement of it may Ije, that the first chapter of the Mosaic record is not oidy not in harmony with the ordinary ideas of mankind resjjecting cosmical and organic creation, but is opposed to them, and only in accordance with the views here taken. When we care- NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 121 fully peruse it with awakened minds, we lind that all the procedure is represented primarily and pre-eminently as flowing from commands and expressions of ivill, 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 herlj, 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 — Uod 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 thi^ in view, the words used in a subsequent place, ''God formed man in his own image," cannot well be under- stood 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 etiect. Thus, the scriptural objection quickly vanishes, and the pre- valent 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 1 do not think it right to adduce the Mosaic record, either in objection to, or support of, any natural hypo- thesis, and this for many reasons, but particularly for this, that there is not the least appearance of an inten- tion 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 intiuitely exalted. It 122 VESTIGES OF THE is the narrowest of all views of the Deity, and charac- teristic of a humble class of intellects, to suppose him acting constantly in particular ways for particular occasions. It, for one thinfj-, greatly detracts from his foresiiiht, Ww most undeni;i,l)le of all the attributes of Onniipotence. 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 com- missioned Ijy 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 s}'stem 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 ai'rangements wdiich, 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 aiiairs, while the ignorant suppose every act of the greatest public functionaiy to be the result of some special consideration and care on his part alone. Are we to suppose the Deity adopting plans which harmonise only with the modes of procedure of the less enlightened of our i-ace? Those who would oliject to the hypothesis of a creation by the intei-vention of law, do not perhaps considei- how powerful an argument in favour of the existence of (lod is lost by rejecting tliis doctrine. When all is seen io be the result of law, the idea of an Ahniglity Author becouies irresistible, fo]' the creation of u law for an endless series of phenomeua — an act of intelligence above all else tliat we can conceive — could have no other imaginable source, and tells, moreover, as strongly for a sustaining as for an originating power. On this point a remark of Dr. Buckland seems applicable : NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATTON. 123 '' If the properties adopted b}' the elements :it the moment of their creation adapted them beforehand to the infinity of compHcated useful purposes which they have aheady answered and may have still farther to answer, undei* many dispensations of the material world, such an aboriginal constitution, so far from superseding an in- telligent agent, would only exalt our conceptions of the consummate skill and power that could comprehend such an intinity of future uses under future systems, in the original groundwork of his creation/' A late writer, in a work embi-acing a vast amoiuit 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 Avorks 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. Kxv allotted instinct may permit each polypus to construct its Own cell, but there is no superintending one to direct the pattern, nor can the woi'kers 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 numerousl}' diverse. Still less, then, here is an instinct possible. The Gre«.t Architect himself must execute Avhat he planned, in each case equally. He uses these little and senseless animals as 124 VESTIGES OF THE hands; but they are hands which himself must direct, lie must (Urect eacli one everywhere, and therefore he is ever actuig."* This is a most notable example of a dano-erous kind of reasonine^. 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 detei'minate general forms than in those of other animals. It may here be remarked that there is in our doctrine that harmony iu 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 re- marked, wherever there is room and encouragement for it, the forms being always such as suited the circum- stances, and in a certain relation to them, as, for example, where the limestone-forming seas produced an abundance of corals, crinoidea, and shell-tish. How well the exten- sive changes of species wdiich are evidenced by geology, comport with our view of the details of law-creation, will be seen when these come to be explained. The more solitary commencements of species, which would have been the most inconceivably paltry exei-cise for an imme- diately creative power, are sufficiently worthy of one operating by laws. It is also to be observed, that the thing to be ac- counted 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 * Macculloch on the Attributes of the Deity, iii. 569. XATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 1-5 globe-peopled space, where all seems analogous. ^^\> 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 addi- tion 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 variou^^ species which may be required in each situation at par- ticular times 1 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 notioji wdiich we must form, if we adhere to the doctrine of special exercise. Let us see, on the other hand, how the doctrine of a ci'eation by law agrees with this expanded view^ of the organic world. Unprepared as most men may be for such an announce- ment, 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 w^hich 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, in- telligence to guide them from one place to another — in short, beings in all respects like themselves, or only showing 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 126 VESTIGES OE THE diftiised in one mass, of which the splieres 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 tibre, that Hesh 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 prin- ciple : therefore there must be a relation between the spheres and theii- 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. Elec- tricity 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 ai-e universal agents, and that, as they benr marked relations to organic life and structure on eartli. tliey may be presumed to do so in other splieres also. Tlie considera- tions as to light are particularly interesting, for, on our globe, the structure of one imjjortunt organ, almost universally distributed in the animal kingdom, is in direct and precise relation to it. Where there is light NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 127 there will be oyes, and these, in other spheres, will be tlie same in all respects as the eyes of telhuian .inimals, with only such differences as may be necessary to accord with minor peculiarities of condition and of situation. It is but a small stretcli of the ariufument to suppose that, one conspicuous organ of a large portion of our :iuim;il 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 inha])itants 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 con- formable to that principle, acknowledged to be so generally visible in the aftairs 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. ( 128 ) PARTICULAK CONSIDEKATIOXS r.ESPECTIXG THE OEIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. The general likelihood of an organic creation by law having been shown, 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. Crystallisation is confessedly a phenomenon of in- organic matter ; yet the simplest rustic observer is struck ]>y 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 J)lana\ An amalgam of four parts of silver and two of mercury being dissolved in nitric acid, and water ecpial to thirty weights of the metals being added, a small piece of soft amalgam of silver suspended in the solution, (juickly gathers to itself the })articles of the silver of tlie amalgam, which form upon it n cr //stall imtum pre- cludj/ re.sfiiiblu/f/ ti s/tri'f'. \'cgctable figures are also presented in some of the most unUnary nppcarauces NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 129 of tlie 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, recall the bulbous or the spread- ing 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 realised. 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 £ 13© VESTIGES OF THE 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, allantoin, &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. Allantoin has also been produced artificially. Two of the proximate principles being realisable by human care, the possibility of realising or forming all is established. Thus the chemist may be said to have it in his power to perform the first step in organisation.* 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 per- vade 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 result of his analysis will show that they are combined precisely according to the same plan as the elements of mineral bodies are known to be."t A particular fact is here worthy of attention. ''The conversion of fecula into sugar, as one of the ordinary processes of vegetable economy, is efiected by the production of a secretion termed diastase, which occasions both the rupture of the starch vesicles, and the change of their contained gum into sugar. This diastase may be separately obtained by the chemist, and * Fatty matter has also been formed in the hiboratory. The pro- cess consisted in passing a njixture of carbonic acid, pnre 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. t " Supplement to the Atomic Theory." NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 131 it acts as effectually in his laboratory as in the vegetable oi'ganisation. He can also imitate its effects by other chemical agents." * 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 an}^ organic compound, in their requisite states and proportions, the result would Ido any other than that wliich 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 granule.s within them. Nutri- ment 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 origin; illy 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 ma- turity by the exercise of its orgiuiic functions, bursts, and liljerates its contained granules. These, at once thrown upon their own resources, and entirely depen- dent 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 - Carpenter on Lite : Todd's " Cjcloprediu of Physiology." E 2 132 VESTIGES OF THE cryptogamia, the reproductive cell does not burst, but the lirst 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." * Here the little cell becomes directly a iilant^ 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 resem- blance 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 fcetal 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, pro- ducing 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.t It has likewise been noted that the glo- bules of the blood are reproduced by the expansion of contained granules ; they are, in short, distinct organisms multiplied by the same fsslparous generation. So that all animated nature may be said to be based on this mode of origin; the fundamental form of organic being Is * Carpenter's "Kepoit on the Results obtained b^ the Microscope in the 8tudy of Anatomy and Physiology,'' 1843. t See Dr. Martin Barry on " Fissiparous Generation: '' Jamenon's Journal, Oct. 1S43. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 133 a (jlobide, haviiKj a ncio globule forniln assimilated. A novelty, however true, if there be no received truths with which it can be shown in har- monious relation, has little chance of a favourable hear- ing. In fact, as has been often o1)served, there is a measure of incredulity from our ignorance as well as from our knowledge, and if the most distinguished philo- sopher three hundred years ago had ventured to develop any striking new fact which only could harmonise with the as yet unknown Copernican solar system, we cannot * See a Pamplilet circulated by Mr. Weekes, in 1842. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 143 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 hy human skill. The more likely account of the phenomena w^as said to be, that the insects were only develoj^ed from ova, resting either in the fiuid, 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 ex- perimentalist could never be considered as the author of the existence of these creatures, except by the most un- reasoning 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 fiowing from the primordial appointment of the Divine Author of all things — was pleased to work in that in- stance. On the hypothesis here brought forward, the acarus Crossii was a type of being ordained from the beginning, and destined to be realised 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 land mammalia are different organs. The whale, in embryo, shows the rudiments of teeth ; but these, not being wanted, are not developed, and tlie baleen is brought forward instead. The land animals, we may also be sure, have the rudiments of baleen in their organisation. In many instances, a pai-ticular structure is found advanced to a certain point in a particular set of animals (for instance, feet in the serpent tribe), al- though 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 mamma' 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, show theii- affinity to the oviparous vertebrata, by the rudiments of two canals passing from near the anus to the external surfaces of the viscera, whicli 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 struthionid^e (birds of the ostrich type) form a link between birds and mammalia, and in them we find the wings imperfectly or 148 VESTIGES OF THE not at all developed, a diaphragm and urinary sac (organs wanting in other birds), and feathers approach- ing the nature of hair. Again, the ornithovhynchus 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. * 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 the almost solitary ex- ception 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. * D'Aubenton established the rule, that all the viviparous quad- rupeds have seven vertebrae in the neck. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 149 In tlie paddles of the wliale 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 tiibes, 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 sufliciency 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 modifi- cation of a common one, which she has eftected in development. Thus, for instance, some jilants 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. ISTow the iiitcher, as this is called, is not a new organ, but simply the metamor- phosis of a leaf. These facts clearly show how all the various organic forms of our world are bound up in one — how a funda- mental unity pervades and embraces them all, collecting them, from the humblest lichen up to the highest mam- mifer, 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 I50 VESTIGES OF THE of abortive or rudimentary organs condemns it ; for these, on such a supposition, could be regarded in no other Hght 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 develop- ment, 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 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 inrmmuid forms, first of the various orders inferior to it in the entire scale, and then of its own order. This is a depart- ment of natural history in which only a few facts have been collected ; but these are of such a nature, that we cannot doubt of their being the indications of some great general law. Thus, for instance, the comatula, a free-swimming star-fish, is, at one stage of its early progress, a crinoid — that is, a star-fish fixed upon a stalk to the bottom of the sea. It advances from the form of one of the lower to that of one of the higher echinoder- mata. The animals of its first form were, as we have seen, among the most abundant in the earliest fossili- ferous I'ocks : they began to decline in the new red sand- stone era, and they w^ere succeeded in the oolitic age by animals of the form of tlie mature comatula. Thus, too, the insect, standing at the head of the articulated animals, is, in the larva state, an annelid or worm, the annelida being the lowest in the same class. The higher Crustacea, as the crab or lobster, at their escape from the NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 151 ovum, resemble the perfect animal of the inferior order entomostraea, and pass through all the forms of transi- tion which characterise the intermediate tribes of Crus- tacea. The salmon, a highly organised lish, exhibits, in its early stages, as has been remarked, the gelatinous dorsal cord, the heterocercal tail, and inferior position of tlie moutli, which mai'k the mature example of the lower tribes of lishes, the placoids and ganoids. The frog, again, for some time after its l)irth, is a fish with ex- ternal 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 animal- cule. - His organisation gradually passes through con- ditions 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 pei'feet 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 vve see the adult Caucasian, the highest point yet attained in the animal scale. To come to particular points of the organisation. The brain of man, which exceeds that of all other .animals in complexity of organisation 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 prolongatioii towards the hinder parts, and which had l)een the first to appear, 15^ VESTIGES OF THE is the only representation of a spinal marrow. Now in this state it perfectly resembles the brain of an adult fish, thus assuming hi transitu the form that in the tish is permanent. In a short time, however, the structure is become more complex, the pai-ts more distinct, the spinal marrow better marked ; it is now the brain of a reptile. The change continues ; by a singular motion, certain parts {cor2)ora quadrigemina) which had hitherto ap- peared 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 organised 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." * 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 * Lord's "Popular Physiology." It is to Tietk'iiiannlliat avc chietly owe these curious observations ; but ground was lirst broken in this branch of physiological science by John Hunter. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 153 heart of the reptiles tribes ; lastly, the ventricle being also subdivided, it becomes a full mammal heart. It is certainly very remarkable that, corresponding generally to these progressive forms in the development of individuals, has been the succession of animal forms in the course of time. Our earth, as we have seen, bore crinoidea before it bore the higher echinodermata. It presented Crustacea before it bore tislies, and when fishes came, the first forms were those ganoidal and placoidal types which correspond with the early foetal condition of higher orders. Afterwards there were reptiles, then mammifers, and finally, as we know, came man. 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 extend- ing 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 our faith. 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 appro- priate. I contemplate the whole phenomena as having been in the first place arranged in the counsels of Divine 154 VESTIGES OP THE Wisdom, to take pla(?e, not only upon this sphere, but upon all the others in space under necessary modifica- tions, and as being carried on, from first to last, here and elsewhere, under immediate favour of the creative will or energy.* The nucleated vesicle, the fundamental form of all organisation, 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 there is some reason to believe 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. Re- membering these things, we are drawn on to the sup- position that the first step in the creation of life upon this planet was a chemico-electric operation^ hy which simjiHe (jerrninal 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-pro- ducing powers of the infusion are exhausted. Are we to " When I formed this idea, I was not aware of one which seems i'aiutly to forcsliadow it — namely, Socrates' 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 cr(>ated." NA TURA L HIS TOR V OF CREA TION. 1 5 5 presume that, in this case, the simple engender the comphcatecn Undoubtedly, this would not be more vvo-nderful 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, i-eptile, Arc. — the one may, with scarcely a metaphor, be said to be the progenitor of the other. 1 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 j)ryo. It is not the different food which eflfects a metamor- phosis. 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 par- ticular stage — that early one at Avhich 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 tliat there is, from the period of oviposition, a destined distinction between the sexes of the young bees. The queen lays the wdiole 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 s^^stem 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 M'hich 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 tlie * Kill)}' and Sponco. F 2 1 64 VESTIGES OF 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 cha- racter 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 bar- barism. In a more temperate clime, and higher social state, the face and figure become greatly refined. The few African nations which possess any civilisation also exhibit forms approaching the European ; and when the same people in the United States of America have en- joyed 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 pecu- liarities 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 eflects are simply the result of the operation of the law of development in the generative system. Give good conditions, it advance:^ ; bad ones, it recedes. Now, NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 165 perhaps, it is only because there is no longer a possi- bihty, in the higher ty2)es 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 iish-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, and bearing with force upon that sub-stage of the gestation at which the perfecting of the heart to its i-iglit form ought properly to have taken place. Here we have apparently a realisation 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 i-etrogression in this one point, how easy it is to suj^jDOse an access of favourable conditions sufficient to reverse the phenome- non, 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 ornithorhynchus, or might give the progeny of an ornithorhynchus 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 1 66 VESTIGES OF THE 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 I'ecord be taken of them, for so strong is the prepossession for the doctrine of invariable like-pro- duction, that such circumstances, on occurring, would be almost sure to be explained away on some other supposi- tion, 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 dis- creditable 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, represent- ing 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."^ 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 secah * See an article by Dr. Weissenborn, in the New Series oi' "Magazine of Natural History," vol. i. p. 574. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 167 cereale is the crop reaped where the avena saliva, a recognised diiferent genus, 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, kej^t 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 ajDplicable to all similar theatres of vital being — is, that the simplest and most jyt'iniitive tf/jje, under a laio to lohich that of like- 2)roduction is sichordinate, 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 1 68 VESTIGES OF THE 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 shown 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 re- membered, the wdiole 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 table on pages 170, 171, was suggested to me, in conse- quence of seeing the scale of animated nature presented in Dr. Fletcher's " Rudiments of Physiology." Taking that scale as its basis, it shows the wonderful parity observed in the progress of creation, as presented to our observa- tion in the . succession of fossils, and also in the fa^tal progress of one of the principal human organs.* * " It is a fact of the higliest interest and moment that as the biain 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 throngh the types of those of every tribe in the creation. It ret)resents, accordingly, before the second month of utero-gestation, that of an avertebrated animal ; at the second month, that of au NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 169 Dr. Fletcher's scale, it may be remarked, was not made up with a view to support such an hypothesis as tlie present, nor with any apparent regard to the history of fossils, but merely to express the appearance of advance- ment in the orders of the Cuvierian system, assuming, as the criterion of that adv^ancement, '^ an increase in the number and extent of the manifestations of life, or of the relations which an organised being bears to the external woi-ld." Excepting in the relative situation of the annelida and a few of the mammal orders, the parity 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, tliat of one of the ruminautia ; 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 saj, 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 fatus 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 fipLh, the tuber 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 sc^venth. This, then, is another example of an increase in the complexity of an organ succeeding its centralisation ; 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 " Eudiments of Physiology." lyo VESTIGES OF THE SCALE OF ANTMAL KINGDOM. (The numbers indicate orders :) Eadi.vta (i, 2, 3, 4, 5) • MoLLuscA (6, 7, 8, 9, lo, ii) . ORDER OF ANIMALS IN [ Zoophyta ( Polypiaria [ Conchifera 1 Pouble-shelled Moll asks I Crustacea (Annelida (i2, 13, 14) TatT'I ^''"«^<^'cert(i5,i6,i7,iS,i9,20) \ Annelida 'cichnida & Insecta{2i-;^i) [Crustaceons Fishes [Ar, ^Pisces (32, 33, 34, 35» 36) Vektk- UKATA Be2)til!a (37, 38, 39, 40) True Fishes . /Piscine Saurians{ichthyosaurus,&c.) Pterodactyles Crocodiles Tortoises Patrachians . Aves (41, 42, 43» 44, 45> 46) . Bii'ds . /47 Cetacea . . Pones of a cetaceous animal Pones of a marsupial . 48 Ruminantia 49 Pachydermata. Pachydermata (tapirs, &c.) . 50 Edentata 51 Rodentia . Eodentia (dormouse, squirrel, &c.) 52 Marsupialia . Marsupialia (racoon, opossum, &c.) 5-; Amphibia Mammalia 54 Digitigrada . Digitigrada(gcnette,fox,wolf, &c.) 55 Plantigrada . Plantigrada (bear) . . 56 Insectivora Edentata (sloths, &c.) Puminantia (oxen, deer, &c.) 57 Cheiroptera 58 Quadrumana . Quadrumana . , . . v59 Pimana . . Pimana (man) . . . . NA TURA L HISTOR Y OF CREA TION. 1 7 : ASCENDING SEUIES OF HOCKS. I Gneiss and Mica Slate system ^ FCETAL HUMAN BRAIN RESEMBLES, IN I, n Clay Slate and Giauwacke system 3 Silurian system 4 Old Ked Sandstone 5 Carboniferous formation \ist month, that of an aveitcbrated animal 2nd month, thai of a fish r6 New Ked Sandstone 3rd month, that of a turtle : 4th month, that of a bird ; 7 Oolite S Cretaceous formation -9 Lower Eocene f 10 Miocene - 1 1 Pliocene 12 Superficial deposits 5th month, that of a rodent ; 6th month, that of a ruminant ; 7th monthj that of a uigitigrade animal : 8th month, that of the quadrumana ; 9tli month, attains full human cha- racter. 172 VESTIGES OF THE is perfect ; nor may even tliese small discrepancies appear Avhen the order of fossils shall have been further in- vestigated, or a moi'e 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 harmonise so well with the view given by modern physiologists of the embryotic progress of one of the organs of the highest order of animals. The reader has seen physical conditions several times referred to, as to be presumed to have in some way governed the progress of the develoi^ment of the zoo- logical 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, 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 173 defective children,* we can appreciate the important effects of both these physical conditions in ordinary re- production. Now there is nothing to forbid the sup- position 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 sup- posing that the proportion of carbonic acid gas (the element fatal to animal life) w^as larger at the time of the carboniferous formation than it afterwards became. We have also seen that astronomei-s i-egard 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 Ave 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 sphei'es of being, as well as on this. I do not indeed present these ideas as furnishing the true explanation of the progress of oi-ganic 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. * Some poor people having taken up tlieir abode in the cells under the fortifications of Lisle, tlie 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. 174 VESTIGES OF THE Early in this century, M. Lamarck, a naturalist of the highest character, suggested an hypothesis of organic progress which deservedly incuri-ed much ridicule, al- though it contained a glimmer of the truth. He sur- mised, and endeavoured, with a great deal of ingenuity, to 23rove, 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 facul- ties in a particular direction, by which exercise new developments of organs to©k 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 out- stretching 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 ex- ercise 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 tD account for the rise of the ors-anic kinijdoms, that we only can place it with pity among the follies of the wise. Had tlio 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 show them to have been capable of producing all the existing organisms, with the simple and easily conceiv- able aid of a highei- 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 natviral laws were only instruments in working out and realising. The actuality of such a NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION, 175 conception receives a remarkable support from the glimpses which we obtain, through the medium of the discoveries of Mr. Macleay, with regard to the affinities and analogies of animal (and by implication vegetable) organisms.* Such a regularity in the structure, as we may call it, of the classification of animals^ as is there beginning to be revealed to us, 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 avl^itrary necessarily are. But, lo, the whole plan of being appears to be 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 ! For let us only for a moment consider how various are the external physical conditions in which animals live — cHmate, soil, temperature, land, water, air; the peculiarities of food, and the vaiious ways in which it is to be sought ; the peculiar circum- stances in which the business of reproduction and the care-taking of the young are to be attended to : all these requiring to be taken into account, and thousands of animals to be formed suitable in organisation 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 network instead ; tliore to arrange for a bronchial ap- paratus, 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 * These affinities find analogies are explained in the next chapter. 176 VESTIGES OF THE 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 philo- sophy which would have us to draw back from the in- vestigation 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 pre- judices which prevent its notions from being invariably correct. Were we acquainted for the first time with the cir- cumstances 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 diffi- culty 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. If it has pleased Providence to arrange that one species should give birth to another, vintil the second highest gave birth to man, who is the very highest ; bo it so, it is our pai-t to admire and to submit. The very faintest notion of NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 177 there being anything ridiculous or degrading in the theor}^ — 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 I But such notions are mere emanations of false pride and ignorant prejudice. He who conceives them little reflects that they, in reality, involve 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 genei-ative medium for the pro- duction 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 Gi-eat 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. ( i7« ) ]\IACLEAY SYSTEM OF ANIMATED NATUEE. Tins SYSTEIM COXSIDEEED IN CONNEXION WITH THE PEOGRESS OF ORGANIC CREATION, AND AS INDI- CATING THE NATURAL STATUS OF MAN. It is now time to advert to the system formed by the animated tribes, both with a view to the possible illus- tration 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 organised forms, and going on to the more complex, each of these forms being but slightly diflerent 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; showing a beautiful, though as yet obscure relation between the two grand forms of being, and consequently NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION, 179 a unity in the laws wliicli brought them both into existence. It is as yet but a few years since a system of sub- ordinate 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 w^e 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, wdiose labours have certainly involved much ingenious obser- vation and reasoning, whatever we may think of some of their conclusions. 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 arrange- ment 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 invariahhj Jive in number: thus, in the animal kingdom, there are five i8o VESTIGES OF THE sub-kingdoins--tlie vertebrata, annulosa,* radiata, acrita,t mollusca. Take, again, one of these sub-king- doms, the vertebrata, and we find it composed of five classes — the mammaUa, 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, j ferne, cetacea, glires, ungulata. Even in this numerical uniformity, which goes down to the lowest ramifica- tions 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 w^liich they were first traced — namely, the class aves, or birds. This gives for its five orders — insessores (perching birds), raptores (birds of prey), natatores (swimming birds), grallatores (waders), rasores (scrapers). In these orders our natu- ralists 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 siih-typical. In this are comprehended the chief noxious and destructive animals of the circle to which it belongs. The other three groups were called aberi-ant, as exhibiting a much * Corresponding to tlic articulata of (^ivicr. t A new sub-kingdom, made out of part of the radiata of Cuvicr. % This is a newly applied term, the reasons for which will be explained in the sequel. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 181 wider dejmrtiire 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 exist- ence, and the birds composing it are in general of com- paratively large bulk. The second (grallatores) are long- limbed and long-billed, that they may wade and pick up their sul)sistence in the shallows and marshes, in which they chiefly live. The third (rasores) are distinguished by strong feet, for walking of running on the ground, and for scraping in it for their food; also by wings designed to scarcely raise them off the earth; and, further, by a general domesticity of character, and use- fulness 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 insessores (typical order of aves) being reduced to its constituent circles or tribes, it w^as found that these strictly repre- sented the five orders. In the conirostres are the perfec- tions which belong to the insessores as an order, with the cons23icuous 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 jissirostres came into analogy with the natatores in the slight development of their feet and their great powers of flight ; the tenui- rosires 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 i82 VESTIGES OF THE having strong limbs and a Inll entire at the tip. This parity of quaUties becomes clearer when placed in a tabular form : — Orders of Birds. Characters. Tribes of Insessores . T f Most perfect of their circle ; notch I , v.,.;.-^c.f,v>a Insessores . .- „/.„ „ ' - Louiiostres. ( of bill small J Raptores . . Notch of bill like a tooth . . . Deutirostres. Natatores . . fSliglit^y developed feet ; strong ] pjggirostres. ( fligbt j Grallatores . . Small mouths ; long soft bills . Tenuirostres. ,^ f Strong feet, short wings ; docile ) ^^ Easores ... - , ■, ^. f Scausores. i and Qomestic ) Some comprehensive terms are much wanted to describe these five characters, so curiously repeated (if we are to put faith in the theory) throughout the whole of the animal, and probably also the vegetable kingdom. Meanwhile, Mr. Swainson calls them typical, sub-typical, natatorial, suctorial,* and rasorial. Some of his illustra- tions of the principle are exceedingly interesting. He shows 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 com- prise the largest individuals in bulk, but always those which are the most powerfully armed, either for inflict- ing injury on their own class, for exciting terror, pro- ducing 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, symboli- cally types of evil." This symbolical character is most * This is preferred to gi-iUalorla], as more comprehensively descriptive. There is the same need for a substitute for rasorial, which is only applicable to birds. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. icSs conspicuous about the centre of the series of grada- tions : — Kingdom Annulosa. Sub-kingdom Eeptilia. Class (Mammaha) .... Fera?. (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 ferje 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 van- ishes. 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 showing an innate detestation of man." In equus, we have, in the same situation, the zebra, which actually shows the stripes of the tiger, and is as remarkable for its wildness as its congeners — the Jiorse and ass — are for their docility and usefulness. To quote again from Mr. Swainson, " the singular threat- ening 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 t84 vestiges of THE associations little prepare iis 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 limd 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.'"* 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 * "Distribution and Classification of Animals," p. 24S. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 185 the head, and the absence, or shght 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 corre- sponding 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, ttc.) in the annulosa ; the owl (which often duck for fish) in the raptores ; the enaliosauria (ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, (tc), 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 organisation, 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 tenui- rostres, among birds; the coleoptera (bug, louse, fiea, ttc.) among insects; the gastrobranchus, among fishes ; are examples which will illustrate the special characters 1 86 VESTIGES OF THE of this type. These are smaUness, 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 ferse. Gentleness, familiarity with man, and a peculiar approach to human intelli- gence, 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 king- dom, the mollusca are the rasorial type, w^hich, however, only shows 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 some other parts of the animal kingdom, and as a general feature of that part of nature, that hardly a doubt can exist of some such rule being NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 187 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 organisation. Now, this sub-kingdom consists, like the rest, of five groups (classes), and these are respectively representa- tions 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 cover- ing 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 I'udes, we are reminded of the radlata. The onollusca 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 vertehrata. The acrita thus appear as a prophecy of the higher events of animal development. They show that the nobler orders of being, including man himself, w^ere contemplated from the first, and came into existence by virtue of a law, the operation of which had commenced ages before their forms were, upon this globe at least, realised. The system of representation, taking it as one so far proved, must be regarded as a poimrful additional j^roof of the hypothesis of organic progress hy virtue of laio. 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 com- i88 VESTIGES OE THE parison more apt than digiiilied, we may be said to be placed liere as we can conceive a sect of insects to be in a garden of the old style. Our first nnassisted view^ is limited, and we perceive only the irregularities of the minute surface, and single shrubs which appear capri- ciously 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 Powder, 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 arti- ficiality 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 develop- ment, and in a system of both afiinities 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 Avell known, require various kinds of soil, forms of geographical surface, climate, and other con- ditions, 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 189 country, tlio inarsli round a salt spriug far inland, or an island placed far apart in the ocean — appropriate plants liave 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 toriid 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 ques- tion— Are the plants of the various isolated regions which enjoy a parity of climate and other conditions, identical or the reversed The answer is — that in such regions the vegetation bears a general resemblance, but the species are nearly all difterent, 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 lati- tudes, which, from their elevation, possess the same cold climate, there is always a similar or analogous vegeta- tion, but few species are common to the various situa- tions. In like manner, the intertropical vegetation of Asia, Africa, and America, ai-e specifically difi'erent, though generally similar. The southern region of America is equally diverse from that of Afiica, 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 T90 VESTIGES OF THE we discover that, in most instances, the plants of one region have thriven when transplanted to another of parallel clime. This would show that parity of con- ditions does not lead to a parity of productions so exact as to include identity of species, or even genera. Be- sides 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 w^iich 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 viniversal, 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 fre- quently, the same genus is found in two separate continents; but the species wliicli are natives of one region are not identical with corresponding races indi- genous in the opposite hemisphere. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 191 "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 simia? (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 tind that the bruta, or edentata (sloths^ armadillos, etc.), of Africa, are differently organised from those of America, and these again from the tribes found in the Malayan archipelago and Terra Australis." * It does not appear that the diversity between the similar regions of Africa, Asia, and America, is occa- sioned in all instances by any disqualification of these countries to support precisely the same genera or species. The ox, horse, goat, A: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 organisation, are American. The zoology of America may be said, * " liescavclics,'' 4th edition, i. 95. 192 VESTIGES OF THE 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 vegeta- tion, 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 stiflness of the other vegetables. The greater part of the plants of ]Sre\s^ Holland belong to new genera ; and those included in the genera already known are of new species. The natural families which prevail aie those of the heaths, the protese, composita^, leguminosa?, and myrtacea3; the larger trees all belong to the last family." * The prevalent animals of Australia are not less peculiar. It is well known that none above the mar- supialia, 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 organisation the monotremata largely partake, the ornithorhynchus presenting the bill and feet of a duck, * Pricliard. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 193 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 prev^alent fishes are of the early kinds, having a carti- laginous 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 10 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 develop- ment. 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. (i) 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 194 VESTIGES OF THE 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 oi'ganic de\^elopment a particular direction in the lower subdivisions of the two kingdoms. (4) Development has not gone on to equal results in the various con- tinents, 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 conceiv- able possibility of one having been connected with the other in the way of ancestry. The two great families of quadrumana, cebidse and simiadie, 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 con- tinents. 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 195 World, is not much different fi-om saying tlia*: tlie rasorial type is there peculiarly abundant. It should not escape notice that, if it shall be proved that there are detached lines of progress, that these were iso'a'cd in different regions of the earth, and yet the succession of beings was the same in each, as far, at least, as classes and orders are concerned, we shall be furnished with one of the most pow^erf ul proofs of design or pre-arrangement that could be imagined. 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 ha\'ing 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 dis- tribution of plants and animals was very difterent in the geological ages from what it is now, Down to a time not long antecedent to man, the same vegetation over- spread every clime, and a similar uniformity marked the zoology. This is conceived by M. Brogniart, wdth 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 Ijc asked — G 3 ir6 VESTIGES OF THE Consideiiiig 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 ah initio after that time? To this it may be answered — Xot 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 unit'urm climate had passed away. It may have only been wlien a. varied climate arose, that the originally few species branclied off into the present extensive variety. A question of a very interesting kind will now pro- bably aris^3 in the reader's mind — ]V/i at place or status is assigned to man in the new natural si/stem ? 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 (jrades 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 . Yertebrata. Class .... Aves. Order .... Insessorcs. Tribe .... Conirostres. Family .... Corvidie Sub-Family . ('orvinaj. Genus .... Corvus. Sub-(ienus, or species . Pica. This l)ringi us down to species, the subdivision where intermarriage or breeding is usually considered as natural to animals, and where a i-esemblance of ofispring NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 197 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 has been traced in species and higher denominations. In canis, for instance, the bull- dog and mastitt' represent the ferocious sub-typical group; the water-dog is natatorial; we see the speed and length of muzzle of the suctorial group in the greyhound ; and the bushy tail and gentle and service- able chai-acter of the rasorial in the shepherd's dog and spaniel. Even the striped 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 predomi- nance 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 suh-fcunihj. This, however, is much to be regretted, as it introduces an irregularity into the 198 VESTIGES OF 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 mam- malia 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, wdio 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 mam- malia is therefore to be received with great hesitation. It is as follows : — Typical . Quaclrumana . Pre-eminently organised for grasping. Sub-typical Fcrse . . Claws retractile ; carnivorous. Natatorial Cetacea . . Pre-eminently aquatic ; feet very sliorL Suctorial . Glires . . Muzzle lengthened and pointed. Easorial . Ungulata . Crests and other processes on the head. He then takes the quadrumana, and places it in the following arrangement : — Typical Simiadffi . (.Monkeys of Old World). Sub-typical . Cebidffi . (Monkeys of New World). Natatorial . Unknown. Suctorial Vespertilionidre . (Bats). Easorial Lemur idse . (Lemurs). He considers the simiadae as a complete circle, and argues thence that there is no room in the i-ange of the animal kingdom for man. Man, he says, is not a con- stituent 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 ourangs NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION, 199 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 simiadai than the bats do from the lemurs — in spite also of that resemblance of analogy to the ourangs which he himself admits, and wdiich, 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 simiadre — 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 mer- men ! * Another argument against 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 cha- racter which is universal amongst them, their possessing hands, and w^ith a regard to that pre-eminent qualifica- tion 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 : — * Mr. Swainsou's arguments about the entireness of the circle simiadse are only too rigid, for fossil geology has since added new genera to this group and the cebida?, and there may be still farther additions. 200 VESTIGES OF THE Typical .... Bimana. Sub-typical .... Himiada^. Natatorial .... YospertilioniLlcG. Suctorial .... Lcmuridse. Easoiial .... Cebida}. Here man is put into tlie typical place, as the genuine head, not only of this order, but of the whole animal world. The double affinity which is requisite is ob- tained, for here he has the simiadie on one hand, and the cebidre on the other. The five tribes of the order are completed, the vespertilionid?e being shifted (pro- visionally) into the natatorial place, for which their ap- propriateness is so far evidenced by the aquatic habits of several of the tribe,* and the lemurid.© into the suctorial, to which their length of muzzle and remarkable salta- tory power are highly suitable. At the same time, the simiada^ are degraded from the typical place, to which they have no sort of pretension, and placed where their mean character seems to require; the cebidas again being assigned that situation which their comparatively inofiensive 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 under- stand 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 * " It is probable tliat the pterodactyle had the power of swiraiuitig, which is so common in reptiles, and which is now possessed by the pteropus pselaphon, or vampire bat, of the island of Benin." — Buck- land's " Bridgewater Treatise." This is the more valuable as a testi- mony to the natatorial character of the vespertilionidse, that Dr. Buckland wrote without the least regard to, or perhaps knowledge of, the ]\racleay system. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 201 that they must be, in some instances, much mixed up with each otlier, 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 Avhieh in its turn is rasorial, its qualities must evidently be greatly mingled and ill to define. Bat, on the other hand, if we take the rapa- cious 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 i-eally the case with the vultures, in the rapacious birds, a family remarkable above all of their order for tlieir carnivorous and foul habits. So, also, if we take the typical group of the birds, the insessores 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 organisation 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, whilst 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 gi\'cs it 202 VESTIGES OF THE 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 per- fection 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 occasion- ally catching it.* In this wonderful manner do we find the crow partially invested with the united properties cf all other birds, while in its own order, that of the in- sessores or perchers, it stands the pre-eminent type. We cannot also fail to regard it as a remarkable proof of the superior organisation and character of the corvidre, 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 corvidie 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 corvidic as a typical group is above an aberrant one, the mammalia above the aves. Can any of the simiada? pretend to such a place, narrowly and imper- fectly endowed as these ci'eatures are — a humble reflec- tion apparently of something higher? Assuredly not; and in this consideration alone Mr. Swainson's arrange- ment must fall to the ground. To fill worthily so lofty * See AVilson's " American Ornithology :" article, " Fishing Crow." NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 203 a station in the animated families, man alone is com- petent. 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 grasp- ing power, which has l)een 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 simiadaB 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 ravage for his gratification ? 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 204 VESTIGES OE THE 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. Here the upright lines, i, 2, 3, 4, 5, may represent the comparative height and grade of organisation 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 i and the line 5 gives an idea of the difference of being the head type of the aves (corvida^), 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; d, 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 1 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 impor- tance, which presents but one species. The corvidcT, 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 1 Are there yet to be species superior to us in organisation, NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATIJ.W r>o5 1. 2. S. 4. abed 2o6 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. purer in feoling, 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, lude and impulsive as it is, is perhaps the best adapted to the present state of things in the world; but the external woi'ld 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 realise some of the dreams of the purest spirits of the present race. ( 207 ) 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 lan- guages. This lias 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, insomiich 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 : — i. 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 Seas 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 con- spicuous : the Caucasians are generally white, the Mon- golians 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 2o8 VESTIGES OF THE 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 shown that the human race might have had one origin, for anything that can be inferred from external pecu- liarities. It appears from this inquiry,"^ that colour and other physiological characters are of a more superficial and acci- dental 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 inhabi- tants. There are also facts which seem to show 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 un- frequently 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 * See Dr. Prichnrd's " Kesearclies intotlio Pliysicil Ilistorv of Man." NATURAL HISTORY OF CRF.ATIOX. 209 valley of the Jordan, where it is remarkable that the Arab population in general liave flatter features, darker skins, and coai-ser hair, tlian any other tribes of the same nation.* 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 tlie 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 parti- culai'ly seen in the Australian aborigines. On the other hand, the beauty of the higher ranks in England is very remarkal^le, 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 ai-e 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 tJiat in those villages where the people are richer and better fed than in others, the men are likewise more handsome, and have better coun- tenances." He might liave added, that elegant and commodious dwellinL^s, cleanly habits, comfortable cloth- ^- Bucldngliani's " Travels among the Arubs."' Tliis Tact is the more vahiab'c to the argument, tis liaving been set down with no rr-gard to any kind of liypothesls. 2IO VESTIGES OF THE ing, and being exposed to the open air only as much as health requires, co-operate 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 fea- tures 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 maintaining a hreed 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 indi- viduals similarly characterised, in order to establish it. Early in the last century, a man named Lambert w^as born in Suftblk, with semi-horny excrescences of about half an inch long, thickly growing all over his body. The peculiai-ity 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 tradi- tion 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 2TI 02)inioii, that a pair, in wliifli lootli parties were so distin- guished, mip^ht 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 realised under certain apiwopriate 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 Mongoliaii and Malayan families, but amongst the Negroes. We are ignorant of the laws of variety-production ; but we see it going on as a prin- ciple in nature, and it is obviously favourable to the sup- position 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 geogi-aphically near, are styled a groirj^ or sid)-family ; several groups, again, are associated as a family, with regard to more general features of resem- blance. Six families are spoken of. The Indo-Eurojoean family nearly coincides in geo- graphical limits with those which have been assigned to that variety of mankind which generally shows 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 2 12 VESTIGES OF THE 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 Hussia and Poland. Under the Gothic, are (i) 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, Arc. 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, Irehind, 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 w^ords, and identity of grammatical forms ; the latter being now generally considered as the most important towards the argument. When we inquii-e 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 liaving 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 ikkIqt^ mader, sunu, doUiter, hrader, mcnrp, NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 213 vulJidva ; likewise ast/ii,ii bono, (Greek, ostoun ;) denfa, a tooth, (Latin, dens, dentis ;) eyeumen, the eye ; hrouvxi, the eyebrow, (German, hraue ;) nasa, the nose ; Imric, the hand, (Gr. clieir ;) genu, the knee, (Lat. genu ;) ]>ed, the foot, (Lat. 7^65, j;ef/zs;) hrti, the heart; jecur, the liver, {Ln.t. jecicr ;) stara, a star; gela, cold, (Lat. gelu, ice;) aglnii, fire, (Lat. ignis;) dhara, the earth, (Lat. ^err«, Gaelic, ^/r ;) arrivi, a river ; ^lait, a ship, (Gr. 7iaus, Lat. navis ;) ghau, a cow; srwpam, a serpent. The inferences from these verbal cohicidences 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 con- jugational system of the other members of this family, left no doubt of their intimate and jDositive 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 inflection. " 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 comj^arative 2 14 VESTIGES OF THE 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 com- parative, hehter, with exactty the same signification, regularly formed from its positive heh^ good." * The second great family of languages is the Syro- Phoenician, comprising the Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic, Arabic, and Gheez or Abyssinian, being localised prin- cipally 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 * Wisemtin's " Lectures on the Connexion between Science and Revealed lieligion," i. 44. The Celtic lias been established as a member or group of the Indo-European family, by the work of Dr. Pnchard, "On the Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations." " First," says Dr. Wiseman, "he has examined the lexicon resemblances, and shown 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 show its analu^i-^s with other languages, and they are such as manifest no casnal coincicloncc, 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 satis- factorily explained some of the conjugational endings in the other languages. For instance, the third person plural of the Latin, Persian, Greek, and Sanskrit ends in nt, nd, vtl, vto, nti, or nt. Now, supposing, with most grammarians, that the inflections arose from the pronouns of the respective persons, it is only in ( 'eltic 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.'^ NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 215 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 language are, its consisting altogether of monosyllables, I and being destitute of all grammatical forms, except ! certain arrangements and accentuations, Avhich 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-00-suh. The Chinese, strange to say, though they early attained to a remarkable degree of ci\dlisation, 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 tho 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 gram- matical signs J but they persisted in restricting themselves to the simple signs of ideas, leaving the structure un- determined by any but the natural order of connexion. Such is exactly the condition of the Chinese language. 2i6 VESTIGES OF THE ■ Crossing the Pacific, we come to the last great family in the lansfuao^es of the aborijjfinal Americans, which have all of them features in common, proving them to con- stitute a group by themselves, without any regard to the very different degrees of civilisation v*'hich these nations had attained at the time of the discovery. Tlie 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 Poly- synthetic 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, " hidigatschis" 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 inllection ; 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." '^ Yet it '* Rchoolcruft. NA TURA L HIS TOR V OF CREA TION. 2 1 7 has also been shown very distinctly, that these lan^i^unges 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 agglutinatioti is shown 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 shown, that between the structure of the American and other families, sufficient affinities exist to make a common origin or early connexion extremely likely. The vei-bal affinities are also very considerable. Humboldt says, " In eighty-three American languages examined by Messrs. Barton and Vatei-, 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 pi-oduces 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 lan- guages. These words have been found by comjoaring 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." * 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 * "Views ot' the (.'ordilleraH." 2l8 VESTIGES OF THE 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 calcu- lation by Dr. Thomas Young, to the elFect, that if three words coincide in two different languages, it is ten to one they must be derived in both cases from some parent laniifuaofe, 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 cer- tainty." He instances the following words to show a connexion between the ancient Egyptian and the Biscayan : — Biscayan. Egyptiax. New Beria . . . Bevi. Adog . Ora . . . Whor. Little . Gutchi . . . Kudcln*. Bread . . Ognia . . . Oik. A wolf . Otgsa . . Ounsh. Seven . . Shashpi^ . . Shashf. w, as there are, f iccording 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 wliich physiology and philology present NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 219 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 ma};- most probably be supposed to have originated. One obvious mode of approximating to a solution of this ques- tion is to trace backward the lines in wdiicli 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 J\Ialay variety proceeding towards the Oceanic region, the IMongolians 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 2 20 VESTIGES OF 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 show that it is only a deteriorated offshoot of the general stock. Our view of the pi'obable original seat of man ao-rees 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 high- est species of the quadrumana are to be found. Now these are unquestionably found in the Indian Arclii- i pelago. 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 cha- racters. 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 several writers, that the human race w^as at first in a highly civi- lised state, and that barbarism was a second condition. The principal argument for it is, that we see many examples of nations falling away from civilisation into barbarism, while, in some regions of the earth, the history of which we do not clearly know, thei-e are NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 221 remains of works of art far superior to any which the present unenlightened inhabitants coukl have produced. It is to be ]-eadily 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 i-elined % May not these be only instances of local failures and sup- pressions of the ]?rinciple of civilisation, where it had bL'gun to take root amongst a people generally barbarous'? This, at least, were as legitimate an inference from the facts which are known. But it is also alleged that we know of no such thing as civilisation being ever self- originated. It is always seen to be imparted from one people to another. Hence, of course, we must infer tliat civilisation at the first could only have been of super- natural origin. This argument appears to be founded on false premises, for civilisation 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, realised 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 moi'e 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 w^ere attacked by small-2)ox, which cut 22 2 VESTIGES OF THE 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 familiarises iis — 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? AVhat can we suppose the nation which built Palenque and Copan to have been but only a kind of Mandan tribe, which chanced to have made its way farther along the path of civilisation and the arts, before the barbarians broke in upon it ? The flame essayed to rise in many parts of the earth ; but there were con- siderable agencies working against it, and down it accord- ingly w^ent, times without number ; yet 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 uncivilised nations is very apt to make us fall into error on this subject. They aie generally supposed to be all at one point in barbarism, which is far from being the case, for in the midst of evei-y great region of uncivilised men, such as ISTorth 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 aoainst the oriirinal civilisation of mankind is to be found in the fact that we do not now see civilisation existing anywhere except in certain conditions altogether diffei-ent from any we can suppose to have existed at the commencement of our race. To have civilisation, it is necessary that a people NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 227, slioLild be numerous and closely placed ; that they should be fixed in their habitations, and safe from violent ex- ternal 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, includ- ing self-preservation, and daily subjected to that in- tellectual excitement which society produces, men begin to manifest what is called civilisation ; but never in rudo and shelterless circumstances, or when widely scattered. Even men who have been civilised, when transferred to a wide wilderness, where each has to work hard and isolatedly for the first requisites of life, soon show 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 civilisa- tion, and hence it will be found that all civilisations 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 moun- tains. Etruria and Kome were naturally limited regions. Civilisations 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 farther migration, and caused the population to settle and condense — the conditions most necessary for social improvement."^ Even the simple case of the * The problem of Chinese civilization, such as it is — so puzzling when wc consider that they arc only, as will be presently seen, the 2 24 VESTIGES 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 hi a j^f^^^nicLnent 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 luxuiies 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 ti-ibes in manners and refinfiements.'^ These conditions can only be regarded as natural laws affecting civilisation, and it might not be difficult, taking them into account, to predict of any newly settled country its social destiny. An island like Yan 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 civilisation till they be fully peopled to the Pacific ; and it might not be unreasonable to expect that, when that even has occurred, the greatest civilisations of tliat 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 civili- sation that at least a portion of the community should ])e placed above mean and engrossing toils. Man's mind is 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 exei'cise. When, on the child race of niankiiitl — is solved when we look to geograpbical position producing fixity of residence and density of population. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION, 225 coutnirv, 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 civilised countries. These, then, may be said to be the chief natural laws concerned in the moral phenomenon of civilisation. 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 civilised 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 civilised — namely, a set of elegant homes ready furnished for their reception, tields 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 i)liilos()phers 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 sub- stances as they could readily procure. The traditions of all nations refer to such a state as that in which mankind were at lirst : 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; considoratious rather favour- able to it. A few families, in a state of nature, living near each other, in a country supplying the means (.f livelihood abundantly. ;n(' genei'ally sini})le and innocent; 11 2 26 VESTIGES OF THE their instinctive and perceptive faculties are also apt to be very active, altlioiigli the higher intellect may be dor- mant. 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 ten- dency to true civilisation 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 liave not seen very distinctly how the various branches of the family, as they parted ofi*, and took up separate ground, became marked by external features so peculiar. AVhy are the Africans black, and generally marked by coarse features and ungainly forms % "Why are the Mongolians generally yellow, the Americans red, the Caucasians w^hite ? 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 developiunit . 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 l)eoomes human. There is more than this, for, after completing the animal transformations, it passes through the characters in which it appears in the Negro, IMalay, 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION, 227 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 smootli forehead of the infant, the position of the eyes rather towards the side of the head, and the widened space between, repre- sent the Mongolian form ; while it is only as the child advances to maturity, that the oval face, the arched fore- head, and the marked features of the true Caucasian, become perfectly developed."* The leadimj characters, in short, of the various races of mankind, are simply representations of particidar stages in the development of the highest or Caucasian type. The Negi'o exhibits per- manently the imperfect brain, projecting lower jaw, and slender bent limbs, of a Caucasian child, some consider- able 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 ;t but whence colour. This might be supposed to have depended on climatal tLgencies only ; but it has been shown by overpowering evidence to be independent of these. In further con- sidering 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 tliat a * Lord's "Popular Physiology," explaining observations by M. Serres. t Conformably to this view, the beard, that peculiar attribute of maturity, is scanty in the Mongolian, and scarcely exists in the Americans and Negroes. 11 2 2 28 ]'ES77GES OF THE Caucasian fVi'tus at the stage \vliich the African repre- sents is anything like ])h\ck ; 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. Develop- ment being arrested at so immature a stage in the case of the Negro, the skin may take on the colour as an un- avoidable consequence of its imperfect organisation. It is favourable to this view, that Negro infants ai'e not deeply black at first, but only acquire the full colour tint after exposure for some time to the atmosphere ; also that the parts of the body concealed by clothing are never of so deep a hue as the face and hands. Perhaps the phenomenon is identical in character with the photo- graphic process ; a result of the action of light, not (as has been so long blunderingly supposed) of heat. If this view be admitted, 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 retro- gressions being, as we have formerly seen, the immediate effect of external conditions in nutrition, hardship, itc.,* and also, perhaps, to some extent, of the suitableness and unsuitableness of marriages, for it \^ found that parents too nearly related tend to produce oftspring of the Mon- * Of this wc have peihaps an ilhistration in the peculiarities wliich distinguish the Arabs residing in the valley of the .Ionian. They have flatter features, darker skins, and coarser hair than other tribes of their nation ; and we have seen one instance of a thorough Negro family being'ljorn to an ordinary couple. It may be presumed that the conditions of the life of these people tend to arrest development. AVe thus see how an ollshoot of the human family migrating at an early period into Africa, might in time, from subjection to similar influences, become Negroes. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATIOX, 229 golian type — that is, persons wlio in maturity still are a kind of children. According to this view, the greater part of the human race must be considei'ed as having lapsed or declined from the original type. In the Cau- casian or Indo-European family alone has the primitive organisation 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 man- kind 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 ty^^e, 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 j^re- dominant % We have seen that the traces of a common origin in all languages afibrd 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 remark- able, that there is a great inclination to surmise a mira- culous 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 230 VESTIGES OF THE 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 dis- cussion. 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 asstired of its reality by its effects. Now, as the inferior animals were all in being before man, there was lan- guage upon earth long ere the history of our race com- menced. The only additional fact in the history of lan- guage, 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 are insignificant. Still, the main and fundamental phe- nomenon, language, as the communication of ideas, was no new gift of the Creator to man ; and in sjDeech 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 a superior organisation. The first and most obvious natural endowment con- cerned in speech is that peculiar organisation of the larynx, trachea, and mouth, which enables us to produce the various sounds required. Man started at first with NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. ;i this organisation ready for use, a constitution of the atmosphere adapted for tlie sounds wliich that orgfanisa- tion was calculated to produce, and lastly, but not leastly, as mil afterwards be more particularly shown, a mental power within, prompting to, and giving directions foi-, the expression of ideas. 8uch an arrangement of mu- tually adajDted 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 organised, 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 organisation of man, and had they possessed a true science of mind to show 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 instru- ment wliich it requires the fullest powers of thought to analyse and speculate upon. But tliis difficulty also v'anishes 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 tlie things least difficult to be acquu-ed, if we can form any judg- ment from what we see in children, most of whom have, by three years of age, while their information and judg- ment are still as nothing, mastered and familiarised themselves with a quantity of words, infinitely exceeding 232 VESTIGES OF THE in propoi'tion what tliey acquire in the course of any subsoquent similar portion of time. Discussions as to which parts of speech were first formed, and the processes by which grammatical struc- ture 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 arbitrai-y sounds Mdth 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 expres- sive 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 diflerent 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 mul- tiply in use by mere variations of accent, and which they liave 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 civilisation, have, on the other hand, a lan- guage of the most elaborately composite kind, perhaps even exceeding, in this ]-espect, the languages of the NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 233 most refined European nations. These are but a few out of many facts tending to show that language is in a great measure independent of civilisation, 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 uni- form 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 altera- tions of language. Insomuch that, while English, French and German are each spoken with little variation by many millions, there are islands in the Indian Archi- pelago, 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 peculiarites in the vocal organisation of every person, tending to produce pecu- liarities 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 moi-e advanced, correct example induced the proper pronunciation of this and similar words. Such departures from orthoepy are only to be checked ])y the power of such example ; but this is a power not always present, or not always of sufficient sti-ength. The able and self-devoted Robert Moffat, in his work on South Africa, states, without the least i-egard to hypo- thesis, that amongst the people of the towns of that great region, " the purity and harmony of language is kept up 234 ]'ES7'JGES OF THE by their pitchos or ]>ublic 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 bui-den, often set out for weeks at a time, and leave their chil- dren 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 livelong day, become hahitimted to a language of their oivn. 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 with- out rule, and in the course of a generation the entire character of the language is changed''''' I have been told, that in like manner the children of the Manchestei* 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 \\'ords ; and 1 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 con- sidered, it is easy to understand how mankind have * " Missionary Scenes and Labours in South Africa." NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 235 come at length to possess between three and four thou- sand languages, all different at least as much as French, German, and English, though, as has been shown, the traces of a common origin are observable in them all. What has been said on the question whether mankind were originally barbarous or civilised, will have prepared the reader for understanding how the arts and sciences, and the rudiments of civilisation 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 sup- posed 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 civilisation 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 civilisations which it is impossible, with any plausibiUty, to trace back to a common origin with others ; such are those of China and America. They would also have seen civihsa- tion 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 w^ould have shown, amongst living men, the very psychological pro- cedure on which the origination of civilisation and the arts and sciences depended. These things, like language, are simply the effects of 236 VESTIGES OF THE the spontaneous working of certain mental faculties, each in relation to tlie 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 organisation (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 organisation, and another point has been established, that only when some favourable circum- stances 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 civilised, we should see absolutely no conceivable power for the origination of new ideas and devices. But let us look at the in- ventive 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 civilisation which history NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 237 traces from country to coiintiy 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 tlie Bath road, producing, without a mtister, drawings wliich the educated coidd 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, in- ventivCj and aspii-ing minds, which, when circumstances are not decidedly unfavourable, strike out new ideas for the benefit of their fellow-ci-eatures, or put upon them a lasting impress of their own superior sentiments. Nations, improved by these means, become in turn/oa* for the diftusion 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 civilisation 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 improve- ment. Even the noble art of letters is but, as Dr. Adam Fergusson has remarked, " a natural produce of the human mind, which will lise spontaneously, wherever men are happily placed ; " original alike amongst the ancient Egyj^tians 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, archi- 23S NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. tecture, 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 bar- barism been followed by a higher degree of refinement. It is a great mistake to suppose one people to have pro- ceeded 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 th^ same causes we have the same efi'ects ; with the same organisation we have the manifestation of the same powers." ( ^39 ) MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. It has been one of the most agreeable tasks of modern science to trace the wonderfully exact adaptations of the organisation of animals to the physical circumstances amidst which they are destined to live. From the man- dibles of insects to the hand of man, all is seen to be in the most harmonious relation to the things of the out- ward 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 240 VESTIGES OF THE science, for it doos not so much as pretend to have nature for its basis. There is a general disinchnation to regard mind in connexion with organisation, from a fear that this must needs interfere with the cherished reUgious 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 immoi'tal 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 show 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 pheno- mena resulting from organisation, those of the lower animals being phenomena absolutely the same in cha- racter, though developed within narrower limits.* * "Is not God the first cause of matter as well as of mind? Do not the first attributes of matter lie as inscrutable in tlie bosom of God — of its first author — as those of mind? Has not even matter confessedly received from (Jod the power of experiencing, in conse- quence 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 destroyhig our hopes of im- mortality, can establish that doctrine on a train of inferences and inductions more firmly established and mere 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 241 What has cliiefly tended to take mind, in tlie eyes of learned and unlearned, out of the range of nature, is its apparently irregular and wayward character. Ifovv different the manifestations in different beings ! how unstable in all ! — at one time so calm, at another so wild than we can look forward the other way into the h^st developments of mind? Can we say that (rod has not in matter itself hiid the seeds of every {acuity of mind, rather than that he has made the first prin- ciple of mind entirely distinct from that of matter ? Cannot the first cause of all we see and know \\^sq frawjld matter itself, from its re.ri/ herjinning, with all the attributes necessarf/ to decelop into mimh 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 develops, 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 Xew 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 su})plied by different globes, is consequently able to see farther into the past, and to think farther into the future, than any ruind 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 ai3 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.'' — Horn, On the Origin and Prospects of Man, 1 83 1 . 242, VESriGES OF THE and impulsive ! It seemed impossible that anything so 8u]:)tle 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 French- man 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 tempta- tions being everywhere invariable ovei- a sufliciently wide range of time. So also^ the number of persons taken in charge by the police in London for being drunk and dis- orderly in the streets is, week by week, a nearly uniform quantity, showing 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 dis- tinct 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. .343 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 gentle- man 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 ;£"5oo, it is obvious that two in each year might become defaulters to that amount, four to half the amount, and so on, w^ithout rendering the guarantee fund insolvent. If it be tolerably well ascer- tained 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 whicli they would otherwise have been kept out of by the impossibility of obtaining security among those who know them? Suppose this be suffi- ciently 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 per- sons 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 w^ell 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 1 " * •* Dublin Hevieic, Aug. 1840. The Guarantee Society has since been established, and is likely to become a useful and prosperous institution. 244 VESTIGES OF THE 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 afiairs fully estab- lishes 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 neces- sary to say, much less to argue, thnt 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. This view agrees with what all observation teaches, that mental phenomena flow directly from the brain. They are seen to be depen- dent on naturally constituted and naturally conditioned organs, and thus oliedient, like all other organic phe- nomena, to law\ And how wondrous must the constitu- tion of this apparatus be, which gives us conciousness of thought and of affection, which makes us familiar with the numberless things of earth, and enables us to rise in conception and connnunion to the councils of (lod 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 cha- racter ! how reflective of the unutterable depths of tliat Power by which it was so foi'med, and is so sustained ! In the mundane economy, mental action takes its place NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 245 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 difierent classes and species, and also in difierent individuals, the volume or mass bearing a general relation to the amount of power. Passing over the humblest orders, where nervous appa- ratus is so obscure as hardly to be traceable, we see it in the nematoneura of Owen * in filaments and nuclei, the mere rudiments of the system. In the articulata, it is advanced to a double nervous cord, with ganglia or little masses of nervous matter at frequent intervals, and fila- ments branching out towards each side ; the ganglia near the head being apparently those which send out nerves to the organs of the senses ; and this arrangement is only less symmetrical in the mollusca. Ascending to the ver- tebrata, we find a spinal cord, with a brain at the upper extremity, and numerous branching lines of nervous tissue,t an organisation strikingly superior; yet 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 the anterior pair of the ganglia of the articulata, or these ganglia 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 * Including rotifora, entozoa, cchinodermata, &c. t The ray, which is considered tlie 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. 246 VESTIGES OF THE surjirising 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, showing 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 magnetised, or heated to seven hundred of Fah- renheit, 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. ►^^ee also how both heat and light observe the angle of incidence in reflection, as exactly as does the grossest stone thrown ol)liquely against a wall. 80 mental action may be im- ponderable, intangible, and yet a real existence, and ruled by the Eternal through his laws.* * If mental action is electric, the proverbial quickness of tlionglit — 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 shown that the electric agent travels (if I may so speak) at the same rate, thus showing a likelihood that one law rules the movements of all the "imponderable bodies." Mental action may accordingly be pro- NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 247 Common observation sliows a great general superiority of the liuman 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 Kmited range, and yet it is mind which works there, as well as in the most accomplished adults. The difference beiween 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 aflection, jealousy, envy ; we see them quarrel, and conduct quarrels in the very manner pursued by the ruder and less educated 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 show 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, sumcd 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. 248 VESTIGES OF THE will endeavour to obtain their liberation by pulling a latch or rinffingf 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 oft' the ground. The members of a rookeiy 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 civilisation 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 difterence 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 pro- nounced 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 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 249 much skill as to triumph over biped opponents, whining if the adversary plays a wrong piece, or if they them- selves be deficient in a right one. Of extensive com- binations 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 sug- gests a relation to that form of psychological demonstra- tion usually called instinct ; but instinct is only another term for mind, or is mind in a peculiar stage of develop- ment ; and though the fact were otherwise, it could not afiect 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 bi'ain 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 pre-figured the sagacity of the human mind, 'i'he love of a human mother for her babe was anticipated by nearly 250 VESTIGES OF THE every humbler inaiiiinal, the carnaiia not excepted. The peacock .strutted, the turkey bkistered, 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 wo see the comicality and mischief -making of our character so curiously exaggerated. The unity and simplicity which characterise nature give great antecedent probability to what observation seems about to establish, that, as the brain of the vetebrata generally is just an advanced condition of a particular ganglion in the mollusca and Crustacea, so are the brains of the higher and more intelHgent 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, appai-ently, is independent of the senses, which are simply media, and, as Locke has shown, the only media, through which ideas respecting the ex- ternal 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. Oall, however, has shown, 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 diffei-ent sets of NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 251 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 — shows 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, conscientious- ness, 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 hap- piness of man's life, as well as that which he derives from the contemplation of the world to come, and the cultiva- tion of his relation to it (pure religion). The other sen- timents may be briefly enumerated, their names being sufficient in general to denote their functions — firm- ness, hope, cautiousness, self-esteem, love of approbation, secretiveness, marvellousness, constructiveness, imitation, combativeness, destructiveness, concentrativeness, adhe- siveness, love of the opposite sex, love of offspring, alimentiveness, and love of life. Through these facul- ties, 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 pheno- 252 VESTIGES OF THE mena 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 intel- lect, 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 un- prompted 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 NATL'RAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 253 of acquisitiveness — the faculty wliich with us makes ricli 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 philopro- genitiveness. The common source of this class of acts, and of common mental operations, is shown very con- vincingly by the melting of the one set into the other. Thus, for example, the bee and bird will make moditica- tions in the ordinary form of their cells and nests when necessity compels them. Thus,, tho 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 dev^eloped 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 facul- ties. Generally speaking, as we ascend in the scale, we see more and more of the faculties in exercise, and these 254 VESTIGES OF THE 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, shows 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 com- mission, it may be said, gives large discretionary powers, v/hile that of the inferior animals is limited to a few precise directions. But when the human brain is con- genitally imperfect or diseased, or when it is in the state of infancy, we see in it an approach towards the charac- ter of the brains of some of the inferior animals. Dr. J. G. 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 character- istics of animals lower in the scale of organisation ; * 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 * Phrenolofjical Jovrnnl, xv. 338. NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 255 to those of certain familiar animals."* Behold, then, the wonderful unity of the wliole system. The grades of mind, like the forms of being, are mere stages of develop- ment, 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 rudmiental. Bound up as we thus are by an identity in the character of our mental organisation 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 luimble measure imitate, in our conduct, that which he exemplifies in the whole of his wondrous doings. •" 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 hy-place, designing to enjoy it afterwards. I have seen children do the same thing. 256 VESTIGES OF THE Beyond this, mental science does not cany 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 re- flected in the organisation of man, as a little pool reflects the glorious sun. The aftective or sentimental faculties are all of them liable to operate whenever appropriate objects or stimuli are presented, and this they do as irresistibly and un- erringly as the tree sucks up moisture which it recpiires, 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 a(;tivity. For example, alimentiveness may be in powerful opei-ation with regard to its a23propriate 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 in- dulgence. 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 moi-e than a vicissitude in the supi-emacy of the faculties o^•er 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 diff'erences 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 dilVcrences of intellectual tendency and moral disposition to l)e observed amongst .1 groiq) of young NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 257 children wlio liave 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 indi- viduals are inherently various, as the forms of their per- sons 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 cha- racters, 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 un- preparedness of mankind to admit a functional connexion between mind and body. The different mental cha- racters of individuals may be presumed from analogy to depend on the same law of development which we have seen determining fornis of being and the mental cha- racters 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 diameters 258 VESTIGES OF THE of the t3'pes in the quinary system of zoology and the characters of individual men. We have seen that the pre-eminent type is usually endowed with a 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 indi- viduals, some appear to be almost exclusively of the sub- typical, and others of the rasorial character, 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 re- marked 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 realised by ingenuity and industrious exertion ; be- hold, 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 pre- sents 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 wdiich our faculties are constituted — a NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 259 wide range of freedom in which to ;icl for nil vaiious occasions — necessitates a resentful faculty, by which in- dividuals may protect themselves from the undue and capricious exercise of each other's faculties, and thus preserve their individual rights. So also there is cau- tiousness, 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 oftensive to others or injurious to ourselves — a function which obviously has a certain legitimate range of action, however liable to be abused. The con- stitution of the mind generally points to a state of inti- mate 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 didness and apathy. It requires the variety of individual con- stitution 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 eri-or. If we consider for a moment that there are not less than thirty such faculties, that they are each given in difterent pro- portions to difterent persons, that each is at the same I 2 26o VESTIGES OF THE time endowed with m 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 tlie rest, and partake accortlingly 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 glol)e formed of diamonds, pearls, and rubies), though his constitution forbids him to realise 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 Ijetween the stimulus and the mobility of the faculty ; and hence those errors, and shortcomings, and excesses, without end, with which the good are con- stantly finding cause to charge tliemselves. There is at the same time even here a possibility of improvement. In infancy, the imjoulses are all of them irregular ; a child is cruel, cunning, and false, under the slightest temptation, but in time learns to control these inclina- tions, 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, faith- ful, and benevolent. To such improvements there is a natural tendency which will operate in all fair cii'cum- stances, though it is not to be expected that iri-egular and NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 261 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 organisation is such that they unavoidably, even in a civilised country, become malefactors. Does God, it may be asked, make crimi- nals % Does he fashion certain beings with a predestina- tion 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 pioper action. The production of those evilly disposed beings is in this manner. The moral character of the pi-ogeny dej)ends 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 fcjetus through the mother. Now the amount of these conditions is indefinite. The faculties of the parents, as far as these are concerned, may have oscil- lated for the time towards the extreme of tensibility in one direction. The influences upon the f