earlier authority, he has placed the formations of transition, in the limestones of which are found several species of shells, intermediately between the primitive formations and those containing bituminous coal; and his table would thus indicate that an animal creation had preceded any vegetable one. We shall not need to discuss the question, whether the formations named Transition are considered in a right point of view, when they are placed between the primitive and pit-coal strata, since it is sufficient for our present purpose to remark, that several observations, among which we may particularly refer to those of Thomas Weaver, Esq. F. R. S. on the geological relations of the south of Ireland, have proved that the anthracite or glancecoal of the transition formations, with some of its accompanying strata, are full of impressions of various plants; so that in the transition strata a vegetable creation is discovered as well as an animal.

In the following table we have taken the geological facts from various authorities. The passages quoted are selected chiefly on account of their brevity. In the quotation from and reference to Genesis, the events on which geology can throw no certain light are in italics.

TABLE of Coincidences between the Order of Events as described in Genesis, and that unfolded by Geological Investigation.

20. Creation of the inhabitants of the waters.

4

Creation of flying things.

5

Discovered by Geology.

1. Cryptogamous plants in the coal strata (Many observers.)

2. Species of the most perfectly developed class, the Dicotyledonous, already appear in the period of the secondary formations, and the first traces of them can be shewn in the oldest strata of the secondary formation; while they uninterruptedly increase in the successive formations. (Professor Jameson's remarks on the Ancient Flora of the Earth.)

Shells in alpine and Jura limestone. (Humboldt's tables.)

Fish in Jura limestone. (Do.) Teeth and scales of fish in Tilgate sandstone. (Mr Mantel.)

Bones of birds in Tilgate sandstone. (Mr Mantel, Geological Transactions, 1826.)

Elytra of winged insects in calcareous slate at Stonesfield. (Mr Mantel.)

It will be impossible not to acknowledge as a certain truth, the number, the largeness, and the variety of the reptiles, which inhabited the seas or the land at the epoch in 21. The creation of 6 which the strata of Jura were deposited. great reptiles. (Cuvier's Ossem. Foss.)

There was a period when the earth was peopled by oviparous quadrupeds of the most appalling magnitude. Reptiles were the lords of the creation. (Mr Mantel.)

Bones of mammiferous land quadrupeds,

24, 25. Creation of the 7 found only when we come up to the formamammalia.

26, 27. Creation of man. 8

Genesis VII. The flood of Noah 4200 years ago.

tions above the coarse limestone, which is above the chalk *. (Cuvier's Theor. sect. 20.)

No human remains among extraneous fossils. (Cuvier's Theor. sect. 32.)

But found covered with mud in caves of Bize. (Journal.)

The crust of the globe has been subjected to a great and sudden revolution, which can9 not be dated much farther back than five or six thousand years ago. (Cuvier's Theory, sects. 32, 33, 34, 35, and Buckland's Reliq. Diluv.)

*Note.-One solitary exception is since discovered, in the calcareous slate of Stonesfield, in the bones of a didelphis, a tribe whose position may be held intermediate between the oviparous and mammiferous races.

In the above Table, we have not taken advantage of the distinction which, we conceive, we have gone far to prove, is expressed in the Hebrew text between the cryptogamous and the other classes of plants, but have set down the whole vegetable kingdom as forming only one element in the table. We shall also allow that the 4th, 5th, and 6th Nos. may be liable to be interchanged among themselves, in respect of place, and shall hinge no argument upon them, farther than what arises from the circumstance that they are all placed in one group. Yet, after these abatements from the number of particulars, the coincidences here shewn between the order of the epochs of creation assigned in Genesis, and that discovered by geology, are calculated to excite the deepest attention. Human science, in the probability of chances, as illustrated by La Place, has put us in possession of an instrument for estimating their value; and we feel amply entitled to take advantage of it for that purpose, for no case could well be pointed out, where it would be more correctly applicable than in this, where the coincidences assume a definitely successive numerical form. We are entitled to adopt even the very language of Laplace, and to say, subjecting the probability of these coincidences to computation, it is found that there is more than sixty thousand to one against the hypothesis that they are the effect of chance *."

"By

It is thus, then, that the discoveries of geology, when more matured, instead of throwing suspicion on the truths of revelation, as the first steps in them led some persons to maintain, have furnished the most overpowering evidence in behalf of one branch of these truths. The result of these discoveries has been in this respect similar to those of the Chinese and Egyptian histories, and the Indian astronomy, but much more striking. Eminent men had pledged their fame in setting up these histories, and that astronomy, in opposition to the chronology of Genesis; but further and more careful inquiry into their true characters, discovered that, when rightly understood, they only tend to confirm it.

We are not afraid that we shall have here quoted against us the words of Bacon, "Tanto magis hæc vanitas inhibenda venit, et

· Syst. du Monde, book v. chap. 6.

coercenda, quia ex divinorum et humanorum, male sana admixtione, non solum educitur, philosophia phantastica, sed etiam religio hæretica." We have only endeavoured to illustrate and point out the consequences of the statement of Baron Cuvier, "that the order which the cosmogony of Moses assigns to the different epochs of creation, is precisely the same as that which has been deduced from geological considerations." We have been guilty of no improper mixing up of divine and human things. We have examined the meaning of the terms in the first chapter of Genesis, in consistency with the acknowledged rules of criticism, and only by the light contained within itself, or that thrown upon it by the other books, in the same language with which it is associated. The human science we have not extracted from any part of the Holy Scriptures; we have taken it simply as we find it in the works of eminent geologists. As the latter is not a philosophia phantastica, but a deeply interesting science, constructed by that method of careful observation and cautious induction, which Bacon was himself the first to recommend; so neither can the sense of the Scriptures present to us a religio hæretica. If our science, thus constructed, and our religion speak so obviously the same language, as we have seen they do on one important point, what else, in the strictest application of Bacon's philosophy, can we deduce from the circumstance, but that both are certainly true?

It does not come under our present subject to discuss the historical and moral evidences of the divine revelation of the Scriptures; but both are so full, even to overflowing, and impose upon us so many insuperable difficulties, in the way of our being able to account for the quality and consistency of these remarkable books, excepting on the ground which has been all along assumed by themselves, that they are of more than human origin, that in estimating the accuracy of any part of the matters contained in them, the fastidiousness of human science appears to be carried to an unreasonable extent, not to take these evidences into calculation. In this country, where for a long period we have had the Scriptures in our hands as a popular book, they among us who have been the most eminent for human learning and science, and whose fame has been in every view the most unsullied, have been so convinced by the force of

these evidences, that they have in general been the most strenuous defenders of revelation.

Will not human science, then, condescend to borrow some light, to direct the steps of its own inquiries, from a record, the accuracy of which it has itself proved, and which is supported by other proofs of the highest order? or, what should we say to the illustrator of the relics of Pompeii and Herculaneum, who should reject the light thrown on them by the Letters of Pliny, authenticated as these are by the existing remains of the buried cities, as well as the historical evidence which is proper to themselves?

Among the questions which geology is at present attempting to solve, is that of a different temperature of some regions of the earth at a remote age. The discoveries of Pallas and Adams, of a rhinoceros and elephant in Siberia, having coverings of hair fit to protect them from the cold of the northern regions, would seem to decide the question, so far at least as to shew, that there has been no change of temperature since the creation of animals. But the question does not seem yet so satisfactorily answered, so far back as to the age of the creation of vegetables. Does not the statement in Genesis, that the establishment of our present days and seasons was intermediate between the creation of vegetables and that of animals, give us a clew to direct our path in the inquiry?

On the Fundamental Types of Organization. By G. R. TREVIRANUS, M. D. &c.

THE doctrine of organization is founded on comparative anatomy, or the systematic distribution of living bodies, and on organic chemistry. It is not to be expected that we are to give here any thing but a mere outline of these sciences; a few landmarks, which I think have some pretensions to novelty, and are more correct then those which have been hitherto most generally admitted.

We can arrive at no mutual understanding in biology until accurate definitions are given of the classes, families, genera, and species of living beings. Ever since natural history has