leaves is annual. Now, that many trees renew their leaves two or even three times a year in tropical climates, is a fact which I have myself ascertained by inquiry in the West Indies, where I spent a few months some years ago. I saw a tamarind-tree come out into full leaf, within six weeks after it had been entirely bared by the deciduation of the previous crop; and I was told that this happened three times in a year, or five times in two years. Now I cannot myself imagine but that the interruption must have been marked in the stem by a distinct line, in each of these instances.-I have in my possession sections of wood, of this country, in which a very thin ring intervenes between the ordinary annual layers; a ring so thin that no degree of unfavourableness of the season could account for it, supposing it to be of a year's growth." [Dr. Carpenter alludes to the phænomenon occasionally observed in this country, in a mild winter, especially after a remarkably dry summer, that some trees put forth leaves and blossoms, and bear fruit, though not well ripened. Usually, in such cases, the powers of the tree exhibit signs of exhaustion in the following year.-] "For the word years, in the ordinary statement, I should be inclined to read epochs of vegetation." July 26, 1841.

Yet I cannot but question whether the hard-wooded trees, of which remarkable species exist in hot climates, do not, in the periods of leafing, form exceptions to the rule of my accomplished friend.

Few of those who may read this book can consult the Genevese periodical work, La Bibliothèque Universelle; and therefore I do not hesitate to conclude this Note with another citation from A. P. De Candolle's papers.

"I have reason to believe that there now exist in our countries [Switzerland, France, England, &c.] oaks of fifteen to sixteen centuries old.-- Of all European trees, the yew appears to me to be that which attains the greatest age. [-Examples are given whence the author concludes that, through its first period of 150 years, the yew increases a little more than a line, i.e. one-tenth of an inch, a year, and, in the next period of 100 years, a little less than a line.—] If then, for very old yews, we take the mean of one line a year, it is probable that we are below the truth, and that, in reckoning the number of their years of age as equal to that of their lines of diameter, we make them younger than they are. come acquainted with the measurements of four celebrated yews in England. That of Fountain Abbey, near Ripon in Yorkshire, of which we have historical notices in 1133, was, according to Pennant, in 1770, 1214 lines in diameter, which will give above twelve hundred years of age. That in the churchyard of Crowhurst, Surrey, is stated by Evelyn, in 1660, to be 1287 lines of diameter. If still standing, as I am informed it is, the age will be fourteen centuries

Now I have be

and a half. That of Fotheringall in Scotland had, in 1770, a diameter of 2588 lines, and its age is consequently 25 to 26 centuries. That in the churchyard of Braburn in Kent had, in 1660, a diameter of 2880 lines; if then it be still in existence, it must have reached three thousand years.

"I [am anxious to] call the attention of travellers to the massive trees which have very hard wood; such as the Mahogany, which commonly attains to seven feet in diameter; the Courbaril of the Antilles, said to reach twenty feet of diameter, and which is so hard that we must admit of an extreme slowness in its growth; the different kinds of trees known under the name of iron-wood ;· -&c.- -But above all, I would recommend the verification of the accounts of the Taxodium (Cupressus disticha of Linnæus) of Mexico. Is this vast tree of Chapultepec, which is said to attain a circumference of 117 feet and ten inches, really one tree, or a union of several ?——I earnestly recommend a new examination of this gigantic tree, perhaps the most ancient vegetable on the globe.--" Biblioth. Univ. Sciences; vol. xlvii. p. 65-67.

In The Phytologist for January 1843, is an interesting account of the Adansonia, embodying almost all the existing information concerning it, by Mr. George Luxford: with a strikingly picturesque figure of the tree, and figures of its leaves, flowers, and fruits. The Phytologist and its companion the Zoologist are publications both very cheap and highly valuable to the students of nature.

Fourth ed. Our idea of the tree is aided by two sentences in Sir James Ross's admirable work, Voyage of Research and Discovery in the Southern and Polar Regions in 1839-43; 2 vols, 1847. "Not far from the town [Port Praya, Madeira] we saw a fine specimen of the gigantic tropical tree of Africa, the Baobab (Adansonia digitata). Its short, pear-shaped trunk, not more than ten feet high, exceeded 38 feet in circumference, and at this period its fruit was forming." Vol. I. p. 11. No doubt this is a young tree: perhaps but two or three centuries old!?

[M.]
Referred to at page 159.

UPON DR. YOUNG'S SCRIPTURAL GEOLOGY.

In perusing this book, I have been not a little grieved at the sight which it presents of a pious and amiable man, struggling to give credit and currency to opinions which, to my full conviction, cannot be supported by evidence; but the advocacy of which is likely to

mislead some, and to confirm the sceptical prejudices of others. It appears a duty to offer a few observations; but to go over the whole ground which he has opened, would require a treatise of considerable length. Erroneous statements and fallacious arguments can seldom be duly examined, and refuted satisfactorily, without much expenditure of time and labour. I shall select what appear the principal parts of the argument.

A layer of oyster-shells, with the valves separated, and exhibiting other marks of water transport, is found in the Whitby lias, extending for many miles along the coast, and ten or twelve into the interior; and Dr. Y. lays this instance as a principal foundation for the inference of a diluvial origin to shelly beds generally; and he extends his conclusion to vertebrated animals. (p. 15.) Yet he says not a word upon a fact, of which he seems to have had a glimpse a dozen years ago,* that beds occur of a peculiar valve, which all confess to be a stranger to the present condition of the seas, Gryphæa incurva, presenting the clearest evidence that the shells had never been drifted, and that the countless individuals lie, as family groups, in their native seats;—and that these beds may be traced, in the same geological position, from Whitby northward to the mouth of the Tees, and southward to the lias of Dorsetshire, and further appearing on the western coasts of Scotland, and again extensively in Germany and in France. If the worthy author could make so much of his seam of disparted oyster-shells, washed over a small piece of land, what ought he not to have concluded from the case of the opposite character, and covering an area a thousand times more extensive?

In like manner, because it is probable that some, or let us say even a large proportion, of the coal-beds, and their sandy and shaly accompaniments, have been the results of transportation, he reasons as if all the coal had been formed in this manner. (pp. 10, 14.) But there are eminent geologists, who attribute only the smaller proportion of coal formations to this mode of origin; and conceive that the greater masses have been derived from trees of vast size and close contiguity, submerged in their native seats, without being removed from their place of growth, and marking their scarcely disturbed prostration by the well-known impressions, on the shale-roofs and bottoms, of their most delicate parts, which would have been greatly defaced or quite obliterated by even a little tossing and drifting. Detached pieces of trunks do indeed occur, whose denuded and broken state suggests a derivation from neighbouring high land, and whose forms and position prove them to have been accidental intruders; but the idea of

* Geol. Survey of the Yorkshire Coast, p. 242. After briefly describing the species, Dr. Y. says, "Numbers are often found clustering together." This I call a glimpse of the truth. It deserved to have been followed out.

masses of such vegetation as composes the coal-beds having floated from different quarters, and then, which must have been of necessity, irregularly and confusedly heaped together, appears to be absolutely irreconcileable with the facts exhibited in the impressions of the plants upon the shale, just now mentioned. My kind readers will give themselves pleasure and do justice to the argument, by consulting the specimens of this kind in most of the Museums of Natural History, which happily are multiplied in our country. An excellent suite is in the Adelaide Gallery, presented by my young friend, Mr. Edward Charlesworth, a gentleman whose devotedness to Natural History from his very childhood has produced important results, and promises more. For this purpose, I cannot but also wish that studious attention were given to the accurate and beautiful figures in the Fossil Flora of Great Britain, by Dr. Lindley and Mr. William Hutton; and in Mr. Artis's Antediluvian Phytology.- "That any considerable part of the plants which formed the beds of coal were drifted at all, appears to be highly improbable: that they should have been brought by equatorial currents from the regions of the tropics, is perfectly chimerical." Fossil Flora, vol. ii. pref. p. xxi. In the same splendid work, an accumulation of facts is brought in proof of this doctrine, and to illustrate the alternations of material in the coal measures, a circumstance on which Dr. Y. lays great stress, (p. 11,) but which those eminent naturalists account for in a way which his objections do not touch. Foss. Flor. vol. iii. pp. 28-35. On the other hand, Prof. Phillips deems it "the most probable view, that the plants forming coal were, with the arenaceous and argillaceous substances, swept into the sea by inundations from the land, and subsided into strata on the bed of the sea." Treatise in Cabinet Cyclop. vol. i. p. 160. But it is important to consider that this must have been from neighbouring land, probably clusters of islands overgrown by succulent trees of exceedingly great magnitude, resembling families chiefly cryptogamic, which now exist in only small species, except in hot climates, and which we have great reason to think must have flourished in an atmosphere essentially different from that which is necessary to animal life, under the existing system of creation; all of which conditions will agree with Mr. Phillips's hypothesis, understanding a very small distance of removal by the flooding off. On the contrary, Dr. Y.'s object is to establish that all this vegetation had grown in the sixteen or seventeen centuries before the deluge, and that the coal-beds are due to its being floated away and deposited by the diluvial waters; and his whole reasoning seems to imply the transport from considerable distances. This is the object for which he proposes his theory. But apart from all the reasons furnished by the phenomena of stratification and animal remains, those naturalists

A A

whom all reason binds us to regard as the best qualified to form a correct judgment, draw the opposite conclusion. "That the face of the globe has successively undergone total changes, at different remote epochs, is now a fact beyond all dispute; as also that, long anterior to the creation of man, this world was inhabited by races of animals to which no parallels are now to be found; and those animals themselves made their appearance, after the lapse of ages, during which no warmblooded creatures had an existence. It has been further remarked by zoologists, that the animals which first appeared in these latitudes were analogous to such as now inhabit tropical climates exclusively; and that it was only at a period immediately antecedent to the creation of the human race, that species similar to those of the existing æra began to appear in northern latitudes. Similar peculiarities have been also found to mark the vegetation of correspondent periods." Foss. Flor. vol. i. pref. ix. x.

I annex a passage from a high American authority:-"Coal, being peculiarly limited in its local relations, and often contained in basins, it seems probable that it generally arose from local circumstances, with all its attendant and alternating strata of shales, sandstones, limestones, clays, iron ores, pudding-stones, &c., and, as these depositions are often repeated several times in the same coal-basin, and the mines are occasionally worked to a great depth, (even to 1200 feet, in some places in England,) it is plain that no sudden and transient event, like the deluge, could have produced such deposits, although it might bury wood and trees, which, in the course of time, might approximate to the condition of lignite, or bituminized, or partially mineralized, wood, which is often found under circumstances indi

cating a diluvian origin." Prof. Silliman's Outline of Geology, p. 122.*

*Third ed. A remarkable instance of this phenomenon has been communicated to the Royal Society, (in a letter read April 1, 1841,) by Mr. Mac Cormick, one of the band of scientific men whom Her Majesty's enlightened and judicious government had sent upon the Antarctic expedition under Capt. James Ross. It is a description of Kerguelen's Land, two very small islands with a few islets, at so high a latitude as must, in that hemisphere, ensure perpetual storms and cold, producing no vegetation above lichens, mosses, and a few grasses and water-plants. "From its sterility," says Capt. Cook, "I should with great propriety call it the Island of Desolation, but that I would not rob M. de Kerguelen of the honour of its bearing his name." These isles are masses of basaltic rock, with fossilized wood imbedded in it, and coal beds or seams overlaid by it. Thus there is evidence that the locality was once an extent of dry land on which grew large trees, that the climate must have been much warmer than is its present condition, that submergence took place, and then pressure under stratified deposits, that such a succession was effected at least once, perhaps oftener, and that, at last, an outburst of melted rock from the fiery gulf below elevated, shattered, enwrapped, and overtopped the whole.

Fourth ed. The best and most recent account, historical and descriptive, is