strata several hundred species are now described; and it appears that the same kinds are, with few exceptions, common to England, France, and Germany. It has been conjectured that the trees of these ancient forests were swept by torrents into friths and estuaries, and there buried, sometimes unmixed with foreign matter, but often with sand or with argillaceous and calcareous sediment. The accompanying shells are generally of a fluviatile character, but sometimes (as is perfectly consistent with the hypothesis) of marine genera. In whatever manner these strata originated, the arrangement of their materials was evidently goverued by the laws of gravitation, and they must therefore have been at first nearly horizontal. By various convulsions they were subsequently thrown into an inclined and often vertical position, and at other times fractured or violently contorted; at a still later period the truncated edges of these strata were covered, in a variety of instances, by marine deposits of great thickness, inclosing shells, zoophytes, and many gigantic reptiles before described, and plants differing almost as widely from the Flora of the coal as from existing vegetable productions. To describe the various formations occurring in England, for the most part of marine origin, all evidently more recent than the carboniferous series, would require a separate treatise. We shall merely add that their organic contents indicate successive changes in animal and vegetable life, and the study of the whole phenomena attending them has uniformly impressed the minds of naturalists with an idea that periods of great duration elapsed during their accumulation.

After so many changes in position, the result apparently of alternate elevation and subsidence, we now find a large portion of the coal measures in Great Britain at various heights above the level of the ocean-sometimes exceeding 1000 feet; but a great portion still remain beneath that level, as is demonstrated by the dip of the strata on our coast. In consequence of the abundance and accessibility of this mineral in our island, and its opportune association with beds of iron ore, and the invariable contiguity of limestone, employed to flux the iron ore, we are enabled to surpass all other nations in the cheapness of machinery. Without this advantage not only would the great superiority of our manufacturing system be impaired, but we should be incapable of availing ourselves of a great part of our metallic riches. Independently therefore of the comfort derived from an economical source of fuel for domestic purposes, we may safely affirm that, without the aid of coal, neither the population nor the commerce or maritime power of the British empire could be maintained on their present extensive scale.

If we pause for a moment and consider how intimately the degree

degree of moral advancement, and the comparative political power of our own and many other countries is thus shown to be connected with the former existence of a race of plants now extinct, which bore but a faint analogy to living species, and flourished at periods of immense antiquity, probably under a climate and in a state of the earth widely distinct from the present, the mind is elevated to an exalted conception of the magnificent extent of the whole system of nature, and of the wonderful relations subsisting between its remotest parts. The present disposition of the strata in the carboniferous series, and indeed in every other formation, is the best, if not the only conceivable, arrangement, by which each might be made to rise in succession to the surface, and present in its turn a variety of useful minerals or of soils adapted for different agricultural purposes. Had the strata been permitted to remain horizontal, they would have invested the nucleus of the earth,' as Dr. Buckland has justly observed, ' in concentric coats, and the inferior must have been buried for ever beneath the highest.'* Now it scarcely admits of a doubt that the agents employed in effecting this most perfect and systematic arrangement have been earthquakes, operating with different degrees of violence and at various intervals of time during a lapse of ages. The order that now reigns has resulted therefore from causes which have generally been considered as capable only of defacing and devastating the earth's surface, but which we thus find strong grounds for suspecting were, in the primeval state of the globe, and perhaps still are, instrumental in its perpetual renovation. The effects of these subterranean forces prove that they are governed by general laws, and that these laws have been conceived by consummate wisdom and forethought. Their consequences were formerly enumerated amongst the signs of anarchy and misrule, whence the Epicurean hypothesis originated that the earth was first formed, and has been since maintained, by Chance; and in later times they have been appealed to as the visible manifestations of God's wrath and of a penal dispensation.

After the unexpected discoveries, for which we may already thank the Science of Geology, it can no longer be matter of surprize, that we remain in ignorance of the ends answered by many of the operations of nature and of her living works, in whose form and structure such infinite variety, contrivance and beauty are displayed. The zoophytes and testacea, whose exuviæ are entombed by millions in stratified rocks, contribute to our wants and enjoyments perhaps in a far greater degree than the analogous races that now fill the great deep with life. The fossil species have

* Inaugural Lecture, p. 11. Oxford. 1819.

not

not only enriched the soil by their decomposition, and probably occasioned the universal contrast between the sterile wastes of primary formation and the rich tracts composed of strata replete with organic remains; they also enable the geologist to determine with accuracy that regular order and succession of rocks, of which the knowledge, as we have shown, may often be so important in its practical application.-But is this all?-Those who have speculated on the probable final causes of the creation of inferior animals have generally assumed, as the basis of their reasoning, that the support, gratification, or instruction of mankind are the chief, if not the sole ends proposed in their existence, The rebuke given by geology to this proud assumption is striking, but is no other than the contemplation of the present constitution of nature might have afforded to any but the most superficial and unphilosophical observers. Milton has warned us against the vanity of indulging this train of thought,

'Nor think, though man were none,

That heaven would want spectators.'
And when, giving the reins to his imagination, he added,

• Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen,'

he must have felt conscious that no adequate purposes, worthy of so many mighty exertions of creative power, have been yet discerned, and that since they will perhaps remain for ever mysterious to man, he was justified as a poet in invoking to his assistance the intervention of supernatural agents.

The facts now ascertained have convinced those naturalists who

:

are most competent to form an opinion on the subject, that successive races of distinct plants and animals have inhabited this earth-a phenomenon perhaps not more unaccountable than one with which we are familiar, that successive generations of living species perish, some after a brief existence of a few hours, others after a protracted life of many centuries. None of these fossil plants or animals appear referable to species now in being, with the exception of a few imbedded in the most recent strata; yet they all belong to genera, families, or orders established for the classification of living organic productions. They even supply links in the chain, without which our knowledge of the existing systems would be comparatively imperfect. It is therefore clear to demonstration, that all, at whatever distance of time created, are parts of one connected plan. They have all proceeded from the same Author, and bear indelibly impressed upon them the marks of having been designed by One Mind. There is a gradation of animated beings, from those of the simplest to those of the most complicated organization; from the invertebrated to the vertebrated; brated; and, ascending in the scale from the lowest of the vertebrated class to the most perfect, we find at length, in the mammalia, all the most striking characters of osteological structure, and all the leading features of the physiology of the human frame fully displayed. When we have ascertained that animals of that class in which the type of our physical organization is so unequivocally developed, existed at distant, though not the most remote, periods in the history of this planet, and that a scheme, of which man forms an inseparable part, is of such high antiquity, the remarks of Bishop Butler on the connection of the course of things which come within our view, with the past, the present, and the future, are forcibly recalled to our recollection:

We are placed (he observes) in the middle of a scheme, not a fixed but a progressive one, every way incomprehensible-incomprehensible in a manner equally with respect to what has been, what now is, and what shall be hereafter.'*

Indeed no department of science has ever illustrated and confirmed the line of argument adopted by that truly philosophical writer in a more satisfactory manner than geology. Relations between different portions of the system, however distant, are proved sometimes to subsist, and to extend even from extinct to living races of plants and animals. Sources of apparent derangement in the system appear, when their operation throughout a series of ages is brought into one view, to have produced a great preponderance of good; and to be governed by fixed general laws, conducive, perhaps essential, to the preservation of the habitable state of the globe. If the analogy between the constitution and government of the natural and moral worlds, supposed by Butler, be admitted as highly credible, the certainty that the former, so far as regards this planet, is a scheme of infinitely greater extent than we before had reason to imagine, greatly strengthens the presumption that of the latter also we as yet survey but an insignificant part; and that if the whole could be seen and comprehended by us, difficulties insurmountable by human reason, which now present themselves to every contemplative mind, would disappear; for 'things which we call irregularities may not be so at all;'† and some unknown relation, or some unknown impossibility, may render what is objected against, just and good; nay, good in the highest practicable degree.'‡

In a word, the farther we advance in the study of each branch of natural philosophy, the more our admiration of the grandeur and variety of nature's operations is called forth, while proofs of design and contrivance in all her works are multiplied. We are

to the successful labours of our less mercurial neighbours of the Low Countries; And lastly comes a rather unexpected reproach to our own country-that, with all her unrivalled pretensions in the science of government, England has nevertheless suffered herself to be preceded even by the Papal State in the recent reform of her civil institutions, as she formerly was in that of her calendar.

In this part of his treatise, it may be thought by some that our author should have cast a glance across the Atlantic, and alluded to the principle of periodical revision, introduced into the legislative systems of some of our former colonies. Of these the most distinguished is the legislative report of 1821, upon the revision of the constitution of the state of New York. That country, like our own, has felt the grievance of a distinct equitable jurisdiction, styled with them, in imitation of England, the Court of Chancery. Some members proposed its abolition-others, its amalgamation with the courts of law; but, in this respect also resembling us, they have viewed only the visible evil, the court itself, with its dilatory and expensive forms; its imperfect mode of extracting truth; its capricious selections of topics for jurisdiction, and its interference with legal proceedings on the same subject. Both the parent and its offspring, contemplating only remedies, have hitherto been alike regardless, that rights form an anterior and more important portion of jurisprudence, that remedies, in which the judiciary functions wholly exist, are employed only to the enforcement of rights, and that in proportion as rights are simple and well defined on the one hand, or vague and complicated on the other, are remedies prompt and of easy access, or tardy and costly.

Still (returning to our author) he conceives that it at least is due to the vast importance of such a subject to ponder well whether the defects in our laws of real property may not be corrected by judicious curtailment and occasional alteration, before we resort to the bold experiment of total abrogation and remodelling. And with this object he proposes to take a rapid review of the causes to which these defects are attributable, distinguishing those which may admit of correction from such as, in his view of the case, absolutely call for extirpation. In an inquiry of so much delicacy as well as of such deep concern, it is fit that the reasons on which such an author has brought himself to a conclusion, which we are ourselves averse from admitting, unless upon compulsion, should speak for themselves.

'The three great causes,' he observes, 'to which I have attributed the redundancy of these laws are tenures, uses, and passive, or mere formal trusts, as contradistinguished from operative or active ones. The.