by every wave; and sand wetted with ordinary sea water and dried is not converted into millstone. The great hardness is due to the silicious part.

I brought a mass of sand from the sea at Dumbarton, inclosing a recent razor shell with its epidermis on it, and fragments of coal, cemented to stone by carbonate of lime, so that the calabrain process takes place on that coast.

In limestones consisting of considerable-sized fragments of shells, the sparry cement which connects them is perfectly evident. It is this cement which appears as regular crystals where cavities occur in the mass too large to have been filled by it.

Beds of sediment can by this means become rock at the utmost depths of the ocean, and it is in all probability there that most of them have done so. The workings of contiguous volcanos have supplied the carbonic acid.

Oolites have been evidently formed in a sea much loaded with dissolved carbonate of lime, and which on the escape of the dissolving acid has crystallized round floating particles. When the weight of the grains has become such as to occasion their subsidence, they have been cemented together, every thing taking place in all respects as in the case of the pisolites of Carlsbaden. The Kirkdale rock being composed of oolites must have had this origin.

Such a formation cannot be assigned to the time of the deluge. Besides the violence of bringing within the compass of a few months, operations whose accomplishment seems to have required centuries of centuries, the necessary conditions must have been wanting. Had not all the volcanos become extinguished, they could not, and in such a time, have poured forth carbonic acid to saturate the immensity of its waters; and it is also utterly impossible to believe that the beings in the ark, already not a little inconvenienced for respiration, could withstand the suffocating effluvium.

Coming of the Animals by Sea.

Of the animals having been tropical ones no testimony is offered. The elephant of Siberia being now ascertained to have been a very hairy animal may be supposed to have been a northern one, and if there were formerly northern elephants, there may have been northern hyænas and northern tigers.

If the bodies were brought by water, no reason appears why they are, with the exception of a few birds, exclusively those of quadrupeds. Reptiles, insects, trees, even fish, for all of them must have perished from the mixture of salt and fresh water, must have entangled in the clusters.

As the bodies must have been macerated for about a year in the tropical seas, before the retreat of the waters transported

them towards the north, those of the smaller animals, as the water-rats, must have been so completely decayed as to be reduced to the bones solely, which water would not float.

The voyage from the tropics of the balls of album græcum in an entire state, is what will not, under any circumstances, be easy to admit; to suppose it amidst "turbulent vortices, by which the framework of the animals was shattered, dislocated, fractured within the integuments," reduced to splinters, is utterly impossible. The entire state of the balls of album græcum, and the extremely fractured one of the bones, are totally incompatible on Mr. Penn's system. And such an ablution would not have left in these balls a trace of the triple phosphate.

But quadrupeds are not the only animals of tropical features found in northern latitudes. Every shell in the strata, the nautili, the cornu ammones, the belemnites, the anomia, are now as foreign to the surrounding seas, as are the others to the land. If one then came from afar, both did.

What must have been the mass and impetuosity of the wave which could buoy a huge oyster, a massive brain stone, from the equator to the British Islands, and at an elevation to deposit it on Shotover Hill, or at Kingsweston? Such waves had tumbled down the mountains of the earth, shivered its islands and its continents, and choked up the bed of the ocean with their ruins. Surely it is a far less difficulty to "bring the climate to the exuviæ, than the exuviæ to the climate."

The existence together of the bones of many species does not necessitate the conclusion of the animals having been associates in the cave. If hyænas "do not always resort to the same den," neither is it probable do other wild beasts. A succession of inhabitants is admissible.

Nor is it required to believe that any of the animals whose bones were found in the cave died there. If hyænas collect bones round their dens, it must be allowed not very improbable that they sometimes, often even, carry them a little further. Alarmed by the roar of a more mighty devourer, or even by that of one of equal strength, it seems natural for them to retreat with their spoil to their last refuge. Why, but to be able to do this, do they bring them near their dens?

The smallness of the cave's mouth, admitting it to have been always what it now is, would indeed oppose the idea of elephants having walked into it, but no entire skeleton requires the admission of their having done this; and hyænas who feed on putrid carcases, may have found no difficulty in parceling such; or they may have collected "the Bushman's harvest," or the bones may have been carried into the cave by animals more powerful than hyænas.

If animals as ravenous of bones as hyænas are said to be did not, in any hour of dearth, devour those of the water-rats, it may

be because those became tenants of the cave only when the water had expelled the hyænas. It is alike improbable that animals of such contrary habits should dwell together, and that hyænas should carry so diminutive a prey as a water-rat, to their den to devour it.

The small quantity of the album græcum can afford no argument against the animals who produced it having lived in the cave. So brittle a substance could not last long under the trample of numerous animals of such bulk. The water which subsequently entered the cave may have destroyed a part. The existence of any is a strong circumstance in favour of the supposition of their having lived in the cave, and such as it would scarcely have dared to hope for, in its support.

If bones of quadrupeds are found inclosed in no rocks but limestone ones, which it may, however, require more extended observation to establish, the reason may be, that in no other rocks are caverns, in which wild beasts can take shelter, so common. These are likewise the only rocks in which the formation of stalactite would close the openings, and preserve the bones through a long course of ages, and so as to have reached our times, from the decay and all the accidents to which in an open cave they would be exposed.

Of the Deluge.

Should every argument which has been adduced to establish that the animals were not brought from remote regions by water, that they lived and died in the countries in which their remains now lie, have appeared insufficient for the purpose, yet, that it is not to the Mosaical flood that their existence, where they now are, is to be referred, two great facts appear to place beyond controversy.

One is the total absence in the fossil world of all human remains of every vestige of man himself and of his arts.

The magnitude of the chastisement, the order of nature subverted to produce it, proclaim the multitudes of the criminal. Human bodies by millions must then have covered the waters; they must have formed a material part, if not the principal one, of every group, and human bones be now consequently met with everywhere blended with those of animals.

Objects of human industry and skill must likewise continually occur among the bones. Of the miserable victims of the disaster numbers would be clothed, and have on their persons articles of the most imperishable materials; and the dog would retain his collar, the horse his bit and harness, the ox his yoke. To men who wrought iron and bronze, who manufactured harps and organs, these things must have been familiar.

But more; embalmed within the substance of the diluvian mud, entire cities, with their monuments, with a great part of

their inhabitants, with an infinity of things to their use, would remain. Every limestone quarry should daily present us with some of these most precious of all antiquities, before which those of Italy and Egypt would shrink to nothing.

How greatly must we regret that this is not the case, that we must relinquish the delightful hope of some day finding in the body of a calcareous mountain, the city of Enoch built by Cain, at the very origin of the world, with what awful sentiments had not present generations contemplated objects which once had been looked upon by eyes which had seen the divinity!

The other great fact which forcibly militates against the diluvian hypothesis is, that the fossil animals are not those which existed at the time of the deluge. The diluvian species must have been the same as the present. The multifarious wonders of the ark had for sole object their preservation; while of the fossil kinds, not perhaps one, or quadruped, or bird, or fish, or shell, or insect, or plant, is now alive.

"Amazing proofs of inundations at high levels " are appealed to. Had they being, of the deluge they could at most speak but to the existence; on its influence in the contested cases, they would be silent; but it appears that this stupendous prodigy,

"Like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Left not a wreck behind."

Of the occurrence of marine depositions at great altitudes, the elevation of the stratum by volcanic efforts, furnishes a far more easy solution than the elevation of the sea, as it refers the phenomenon to a natural cause, and does not require the immediate interposition of the divine hand; and the ruptured state and erect position of the strata on all these occasions, testify strongly in favour of the simpler supposition.

To collate the revered volume with the great book of nature, and show in their agreement one author to both, was an undertaking worthy of the union of piety and science. If the result has not been what was anticipated; if we look in vain over the face of our globe for those mighty impressions of an universal deluge, which reason tells us that it must have produced and left behind itself, to some cause as out of the natural course of things as was that event, must this doubtless be attributed.

By his entering into a covenant with man and brute animals, and having for ever "set his bow in the cloud," as a token that the direful scene should never be renewed, the Creator appears to have repined at the severity of his justice.

The spectacle of a desolated world,-of fertility laid waste,-of the painful works of industry and genius overthrown,-of infantine innocence involved in indiscriminate misery with the hardened offender,—of brute nature whose want of reason precluded it from the possibility of all offence, made share in the

forfeit of human depravity, may be supposed to have touched his

heart.

Under the impression of these paternal feelings, to obliterate every trace of the dreadful scourge, remove every remnant of the frightful havoc, seem the natural effects of his benevolence and power. As a lesson to the races which were to issue from the loins of the few who had been spared,-races which were to be wicked indeed as those which had preceded them, but which were promised exemption from a like punishment, to have prememento of them would have been useless. To a miracle then which swept away all that could recall that day of death when "the windows of heaven were opened" upon mankind, must we refer what no natural means are adequate to explain.

served any

ARTICLE XII.

ANALYSES OF Books.

An Epitome of Chemistry, wherein the Principles of the Science are illustrated in 100 Entertaining and Instructive Experiments, &c. &c. By the Rev. John Topham, MA. (of St. John's College, Cambridge) Head Master of Bromsgrove Grammar School, Worcestershire. Second Edition. 24mo. pp. 134. CONTRARY to the expectations we had formed when we first saw this publication, it has (according to the title page at least) reached a second edition; we consider it, therefore, proper to exhibit its true nature to the public, and to warn them of the numerous errors which it contains:-errors greater in number and importance than in any work of the same size that ever appeared on the subject of which it treats.

We shall not pretend to go minutely through the book; a few passages, taken almost at random, will be sufficient to show the nature of the work, and that the author, without intending to be original, is so greatly in error, that he does not possess even the slender requisites for a copyist.

With respect, first, to chemical action, it is stated, in p. 4,that "chemical action will not take place between two bodies, except one of them be in a fluid state, or at least contain water." Now this is not the fact; numerous examples might be given of the contrary, but one will suffice, viz. the mutual action of lime and muriate of ammonia. In p. 5, it is asserted that "if two bodies, x and y, unite in the proportion of 4 to 6, then these numbers express the weight of their atoms." This again is an error; oxygen and phosphorus unite in the proportion of 4 to 6, but these numbers do not express the weights of their atoms; they only show that phosphorus combines with two-thirds of its