was a period when the surface of the globe was continuous dry land; nor entirely covered with water, or any mixture of detrital matter in water. In other words: the stratified structure of the earth presents evidence that there have never been universal contemporaneous formations, but that, from the period of the production of the igneous rocks, and the commencement of the stratified, the surface has always consisted partly of limited areas depressed and holding water, and partly of lands rising up from the boundaries of those depressions.*

To this fact in the former periods of the earth, its present condition affords a clear resemblance. The actual Zoology and Botany of its surface exhibit several distinct regions, in each of which the indigenous animals and plants are, at least as to species and to a considerable amount as to genera, different from those of other zoological and botanical regions. Natural agency (such as that of winds and currents) and artificial means have done something towards confounding the distinctions of characters; but in the case of countries widely separated, the plants and animals proper to each region so differ from those of every other, as to impress us with the conviction that they have not been derived from a common ancestry for each species, in any one locality upon the face of the earth. They are respectively adapted to certain conditions of existence, such as climate, temperature, mutual relations, and no doubt other circumstances of favourable influence which men have not yet discovered, or which never may be discovered in the present state. These conditions cannot be transferred to other situations. The habitation proper to one description of vegetable or animal families would be intolerable, and speedily fatal, to others. Where the extreme of incongruity does not exist, there are causes of unsuitableness, whose action is less powerful, but slowly and surely effective. Even when, as in many parts of the two hemispheres, and on the contrary sides of the equator, there is apparently a similarity of climate; we find not an identity, but only an analogy, of animal and vegetable species.

It is confessedly difficult to fix with absolute precision the lines of demarcation for these independent domains of living organized nature. The general fact is established beyond the reach of * See the Tabular View; Supplementary Note D.

ZOOLOGICAL AND BOTANICAL DISTRICTS.

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doubt; but naturalists are waiting for a more complete acquaintance with the plants and animals of every part of the globe, before they deem the natural divisions finally determined. According to the degree of knowledge already attained, the following may be accepted as an approximation. A distinguished christian physiologist and philosopher, Dr. Prichard, was the first to bring forward correct views upon this interesting subject; and he proposes seven regions for the distribution of animals. Mr. Swainson pleads for five, but upon a ground of analogy which he has assumed without proof, and which is contrary to impregnable truth.† Others make eleven. With regard to the vegetable kingdom, some eminent naturalists have given their opinion in favour of ten for the old continents, and six for America: § but the great philosophical botanists of Geneva, Messieurs de Candolle, father and son, "than whom," says Professor Hitchcock, "no better judges can be named, reckon "the number of distinct botanical provinces at twenty-seven. "This estimate was the result of an examination of seventy or eighty thousand species." The Rev. J. S. Henslow, the Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge, a man to whom Geology, as well as the professional science which he adorns, is under great obligations, remarks that "We do not as "yet possess any very accurate information respecting the "number and exact extent of the well-defined botanical regions "into which the surface of the earth may be mapped out:"¶ but he proposes forty-fire as an approximating estimate.

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Hence it follows that there must have been separate original creations, perhaps at different and respectively distant epochs.

* Researches into the Physical History of Mankind ; vol. i. pp. 68—97, third ed. + Geography and Classification of Animals; pp. 14-18.

17;

1838.

Prof. Hitchcock, in the American Biblical Repository, vol. xi. p. § Von Schouw's Fundam. Princip. of a Universal Geography of the Veget. Kingd. German Transl. from the Danish, by the author, with an Atlas; Berlin, 1824.

Amer. Bibl. Repos. as above. Lyell's Principles of Geology, vol. iii. p. 7. Distributions into more numerous groups are ascribed to Von Schouw and De Candolle, in the Abridgment of Malte Brun's and Balbi's Geogr. Edin. 1840, part i. pp. 90-93 and into a smaller number, twenty, by De Candolle, as stated by Dr. Prichard in his Researches, vol. i. p. 32, third edit.; these differences may be owing to the consultation of different works or editions of the authors, independently of the inherent difficulties of the subject.

:

Descriptive and Physiological Botany; p. 305.

Man, whom the Creator formed to "have dominion over the "works of his hands," to a wide extent of the inferior natures, was brought into being in ONE pair; from which all the varieties of our kind have descended. They are only varieties, effected by circumstances, and not species, which would imply separate primary ancestors. This position, unhappily rejected by some persons, is not only a fact which lies at the foundation of revealed religion, but it is confirmed by an accumulation of proof from anatomical structure, from history, from the theory of language, and from the philosophy of intellectual and moral qualities. For this assertion I may appeal to the authority of the veteran Blumenbach,* who occupies a station among the highest, in the Comparative Anatomy of the different races of men; and to both the authority and the luminous arguments of Dr. Prichard in the work before referred to.t

Man, and a small number of animals peculiarly serviceable to man, are endowed with a capacity of adaptation to all the differences of climate and other circumstances, not indeed unlimited, but extending through a wide range. This capacity requires for its complete developement, a gradual proceeding in subjection to the agents of change; for which the life of no individual is sufficiently long, nor even the duration of several generations. The process must be carried on through many steps of descent; and in its course, considerable alterations of structure are slowly produced.

*Born 1752; appointed Professor of Medicine in the University of Göttingen in 1778; and died, Jan. 22, 1840.

+ Supplementary Note E, on the Varieties of the Human Species.

Sec. ed. On the borders of the sandy deserts of Africa, and in many other portions of the hot regions of the globe, men live where the ground under their feet is often 140° and even more (Fahr.), and the mean heat of the air around them is from 80° to 90°. On the other hand, in the inhabited country of the Tschutschoi, a little within the Arctic circle, Admiral Von Wrangell, in the winter of 1820, had in his house, 40°, i.e. 72° below the freezing point of water. "The people moved about in the frost of 41°, as gaily as if it were summer. The Yakuts are still

more hardy than the Tschutschoi: lying on the ground in the open air, and often insufficiently protected by clothing, they can endure, without the least injury, a degree of cold which would be inevitably [and almost instantaneously] fatal to a European.-Athenæum, June 13, 1840; Review of Von Wrangell's Expedition to the Polar Sea; edited by Colonel Sabine from the Translation of his accomplished lady. The greatest natural cold known is, from the observation of Sir Edward Parry, - 55°, or even, - 59°; of Sir John Ross, but the accuracy is not quite free from question, 60o.

XXVIII. In every part of the earth, the succession of the strata, and the character and effects of the non-stratified rocks, are the same. Of this fact, the actual observation has been so extensively accomplished, and the operation of mechanical and chemical causes is so certainly understood, that no jealousy or scepticism can avail to prevent the induction from being made universal.

"A few years ago only, when unable to indicate the first created animals, or the exact relative places occupied by some of the earliest formations, we were compelled to trace the sequence downwards, by commencing with deposits previously analysed, proceeding thence to those of anterior date ;" [-of which method Sir Roderick's Silurian System furnishes a luminous example;-] "but now, having learned to decipher the very first letters in the long records of animal life, we assume a more distinct position as historians, and exhibit in their natural order, the successive organic features which appear in the stony legend of the earth, from their earliest dawn to the present condition of the planet.

“In a word,—we can now fearlessly assert, that the geological history of sequence of the earliest races of fossil animals is firmly established. Its truth is sustained by the display of forms, which mark the period when the first vestiges of life can be discovered, as well as the following SUCCESSIVE CREATIONS; and thus, whilst, with the exception of one sacred record, we can truly say that the origin of the greatest empires of man is buried in fable and superstition, the hard and indelible register, as preserved for our inspection in the great book of ancient nature, is at length interpreted and read off with clearness and precision." Sir Rod. Murchison's Geol. Russ. vol. i. p. 9. 1845.]

The eminent geologist Alcide d'Orbigny, has ascertained, by extensive and accurate study of the requisite authorities, that the geological structure of South America bears a strong resemblance to that of Europe, and that the differences are few and not very striking. Report to the Paris Acad. of Sc. stated in the Athenæum, Sept. 9, 1843. Combining this information with the labours of the North American geologists, Sir R. M. says, "We can now therefore affirm that, throughout the western hemisphere, from the far north to isles almost within the antarctic circle, the paleozoic deposits succeed each other in the same order as in the British Isles." Geol. of Russia, vol. i. p. 6. Observation has also shewn that the same characters and succession obtain in Asia both North and South, in Africa, and in Australasia. Ib.

LECTURE III.

ROMANS XI. 36. Of HIM, and through HIM, and to HIM, are all things: to whom be glory for ever.

SOME of the most important positions affirmed in the preceding lecture could not fail to be perceived by my attentive hearers, to be at variance with certain sentiments or interpretations, which are extensively received under the supposition of their being declared, or at least implied, in the Holy Scriptures. It is now my duty to state, in particular detail, what those sentiments and opinions are; and in what manner they stand in contradiction to the facts in the natural history of the earth, to which we have adverted.

My auditors will do me the favour to observe, that I speak of opinions and interpretations; the sentiments which men have taken up, and promulgated as the declarations of the Bible. We have not yet arrived at the part of these lectures in which we shall have to examine whether those interpretations are the genuine sense of the divine oracles. It would not be proper to anticipate that inquiry: yet I cannot but be anxious that my friends should keep constantly in mind the avowal made in the first lecture; namely, my conviction that those interpretations are erroneous. I solicit this favour as a protection to myself from being understood, in this and the following lecture, to cast any doubt upon the truth and authority of the Scriptures. It is not the word of God, but the expositions and deductions of men, from which I am compelled to dissent.

I. It is a prevailing opinion that the dependent universe, in all its extent, was brought into existence by the almighty power of its Creator, within the period of the six days laid down in the first portion of the Book of Genesis; chap. i. throughout, and ii. 1-3, where the editorial division should have been made, as the whole is evidently a connected and complete narrative.