rend Baden Powell and other scientific and religious men, that this reconciliation is impossible and unnecessary. Admit all that Geology teaches us as true, or holds out to us as probable, to be absolutely certain fact, and all the great doctrines of the Christian religion, nay, all the distinctive doctrines of its various sects, remain undisturbed and intact. We are compelled already to allow of other than literal interpretations of some portions of the Bible; why should we be afraid when we discover that Science-i.e., that Knowledge of Truth gives us another interpretation of other portions of it. Let us thankfully receive truth, whether it comes to us from the study of His Word or from that of His Works.

We do not consider it any disparagement to Mr. M'Causland that, where all others have failed, he also has not succeeded; neither is it any derogation from his character, as a man of intelligence and education, that, being a barrister, he is not a professed and practiced geologist, or that, as a reader of geological books, he is not acquainted with the most recent of geological discoveries.

He approaches the subject in such a candid spirit, and his object is so obviously the ascertainment of the truth, whatever it may be, that we confidently anticipate his own gratitude if we point out the places in which his knowledge of geology is defective or behind that of the day.

In the first place, he speaks of Granite as "primitive" or as a “primordial" rock (p. 14). Now, without denying that the primitive or primordial rock of the Earth's crust may have been granite, it is yet true that no one can point to any granite now at the surface, which formed part of the "primitive" rock. All our granite masses are intrusive, and therefore of subsequent origin to the rocks by which they are surrounded.

The

Wicklow granite is newer than the lower Silurian rocks, the Cornwall granite newer than the Coalmeasures; there are granites in the Alps and the Andes newer than some tertiary rocks. There is no known primitive granite, and it is very doubtful whether any primitive rock whatever is still existing on the Earth in its original form. It has either been worn down by water, or remelted and recast by fire long ago.

Mr. M'Causland speaks of the "Azoic" rocks, identifying them with the Cambrian. This term of " Azoic” was one proposed for these and other rocks some years ago, but never generally adopted. It was a bad term, since many rocks may be azoic or devoid of organic remains over large spaces, and contain them in other districts. The old red sandstone of Ireland for instance, over very wide areas and through a thickness of many thousand feet, might be called azoic, because no fossils have yet been found in it.

The Cambrian rocks were called Azoic, because they were then supposed by some to have been formed before life commenced upon the globe. No fossils had yet been found in them, and it was therefore assumed that no animals or plants existed during the Cambrian period.

Negative evidence is worth little or nothing in Geology, and yet more positive conclusions have been drawn from negative evidence in that than in any other science.

Fossils have now been found in the Cambrian rocks, since not only have we the Oldhamia azoophyte, from Bray Head and Carrick Mountain in Wicklow, which Mr. M'Causland mentions, but only last year Mr. Salter, of the Geological Survey, discovered, deep down, near the bottom of the 26,000 feet of the Cambrian rocks of the Long Mynd, fragments of trilobites and the tracks of annelids.*

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The few patches of undoubted and unaltered Cambrian rocks that have yet been examined were probably deep-water deposits; and, according to the distribution of life in our own seas at the present day, may have had few or no fragments of organic beings carried into them, however the shallow waters of the very same seas may have swarmed with life.

It is a still greater error to include all Gneiss and Mica Slate among either Azoic or Cambrian rocks, or to look upon their similarity to granite as resulting from their being the debris of the granite on which they rest. They are common clays and sands, indurated first into clay, slates and sandstones, and afterwards altered by the heat resulting from the intrusion of the granite into what they now are. The Mica schist of the Dublin and Wicklow mountains has been shown by the gentlemen of the Geological Survey to be altered Silurian rocks, and to be therefore of more recent date than the comparatively unaltered Cambrian rocks of Bray Head or Howth.

Organic remains have lately been discovered in the so called primary limestone, associated with the Gneiss and Mica schists of Scotland, which are probably of Devonian age.

In his description of the Silurian rocks, at p. 34, Mr. M'Causland has fallen into some strange misconceptions. Lingulæ, Rhynconella and Terebratulæ are all Brachiopods : their tentacles or arms did not, in most cases, protrude from their shells, and were certainly not instruments of destruction; neither could the animals have been the scavengers of the ancient seas.

The passages he quotes from Sir R. Murchison's Siluria against the existence of an arborescent vegetation* and vertebrated animals during the Silurian period, are all instances of that drawing of rash conclusions from mere negative evidence which we have just protested against.

The assumption that there was no dry land during the Cambrian or Silurian periods is still more absurd and unfounded. The existence of mud, sand, and pebbles is just as

much proof of dry land as that of plants.

The fact that the Cambrian and Silurian rocks are made of these materials the waste of former lands-is undoubted. The Cambrian rocks of Wales contain conglomerates, or old shingle beds, with fragments of slates and grits very similar to themselves.

The assumption that the causes of disintegration were different then from what they are now is a perfectly gratuitous one, and has not even an atom of probability to support it. Volcanic action seems, if anything, to have been less intense, for the Trappean rocks of the Silurian period— massive as they are-are not to be compared in bulk or extent with those poured forth in our own day in Iceland, in the Andes, or in the Indian Archipelago.

At p. 40, Mr. M'Causland, in his chapter on Silurian rocks, speaks of "graptolites, lingulæ, and other bivalve mollusks crawling on the muddy beds of the shoreless ocean;" and of "various species of the Trilobites, Nautili, and Ammonites roaming about," and of "equally voracious Brachiopods, and Terebratulæ."

Now graptolites and lingulæ, at all events, could not crawl. There are neither nautili nor ammonites in Silurian formations. Ammonites were never contemporaneous with trilobites, and the term voracious is no more applicable to terebratulæ or any other genus of brachiopods than it is to the oysters or cockles of our own shores.

We must equally dissent from Mr. M'Causland's statements as to the volcanic origin of the oxide of iron colouring the old red sandstone; and that all the mountains he names were elevated during the Devonian period. On the contrary, some of the Welsh mountains, at all events, were not elevated till long after the Devonian period; while the Pyrenees, the Himmalayahs, and the Andes, are of much more recent origin, since they consist very largely of recent tertiary rocks.

We conclude that the "1600 species" of fossil fish mentioned at page

44 is a misprint. In Morrison's catalogue (second edition), there are given 741 species of fossil fish from the entire series of British rocks, of which 93 only are Devonian.

There is less to object to in Mr. Causland's account of the carboniferous rocks, though we cannot pass by, without a caution, such exaggerated expressions as "the most exuberant and luxuriant vegetation that has ever been witnessed by the eye of man in the most prolific regions of the now existing earth, is mere waste and barrenness when compared with the profuse and gi gantic vegetable productions of the primeval period, which formed the basis of the coal-measures."

The plants of the coal-measures are not gigantic, few fossil trees have been found in them so large as the average forest trees of our own day. As to luxuriance, those who have witnessed the mass of vegetation covering the ground of a tropical jungle will see at once the impossibility of there being room for many more plants, leaves, or branches of any sort or description whatsoever.

We must look too for the explanation of the more equable climate of the earth in those days, rather to the different distribution of land and water as shown by Sir C. Lyell, than to any great temperature proceeding from the interior of the earth.

The hypothesis of a thermal sea during Silurian and Devonian times, is one that could easily be shown to be untenable, however high may be the authorities adduced in its support.

Doubtless, ferns abounded in the shaded recesses of deep forests; but the supposition that there was any general shading of the earth from the direct rays of the sun during the carboniferious period is a mere dream.

In his account of the Permian rocks, Mr. M'Causland notices as if it were the earliest period of their occurrence-the rippled surfaces of sandstone. We could show him magnificent rippled surfaces in the sandstones of the Cambrian and Silurian rocks, as well as in those of all other formations. These rippled surfaces, however, do not necessarily prove a dry beach, or even shallow water, though the latter is probable. They are not caused by the rippling

of the waves, but are merely the mark of a current in the water, just as the ripple of the water is produced by a current in the air.

He afterwards confounds the new red sandstone with the Permian, and says that the Trias is the Muschelkalk whereas the Trias is merely the continental name for the new red sandstone, of which the Muschelkalk is the middle term.

We have not much fault to find with Mr. M'Causland's account of the other secondary and the tertiary. rocks and fossils, with the exception, perhaps, of the astounding assertion that the Deinotherium giganteum was of the mole species ;" and we are happy to say that we can speak of his chapter on the era of superficial deposits with almost unqualfied praise.

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After quoting Sir C. Lyell and Professor Hitchcock in proof of the vast periods of time required for the excavation of many river gorges, Mr. M'Causland proceeds :

"The Professor mentions many other analogous cases in different parts of the world, more especially in eastern climes; all of them evidencing that mighty periods of time must have elapsed since the commencement of our present geographical distribution of land and sea; during which those stupendous effects were produced by the slow and gradual processes we have been describing. this period at the lowest limit, and it must have commenced at a time incalculably more distant than what we have reason to know, even independently of revelation, to have been the dawn of the human era,

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"But though long the period which intervened between the formation of the tertiary deposits, and the human era, it is of impor tance to remark, that the researches of the geologist have proved, beyond doubt, that there has been no interruption in the animal or vegetable creation. Not only has there been no such blank as would require a resort to the theory of a new creation, to account for the present existence of an animal and vegetable world, but it is plain that many of the species which existed during the tertiary formations exist at the present day. Nothing is better established than that the specific forms of many of the now existing terrestrial animals, shells, and plants, are identical with those of the tertiary period, while others differ so slightly that they may be considered substantially the same.

neously with some of those of the succeeding systems.

"These facts establish the proposition that no blank or break of continuity has hitherto occurred in the animal kingdom from the beginning; and that there is nothing to favour the hypothesis that there has been, at any time, a death of existing races, and a new birth of those which followed. On the contrary, all the facts of geology prove that such an event has never occurred."—(Pages 88 to 90).

These sentences prove to us that Mr. M'Causland can reason logically and justly, and argue boldly where he thinks for himself, and has the facts plainly before him; and that the geological errors we have previously pointed out are the result, partly of a want of practice in the study of Geology, and partly of trusting to statements that are now antiquated, or being led astray by assertions and authorities that are no longer maintained or enforced. It has been well said of Geology, that "that which is its goal to-day is its starting point to-morrow;" and none but the professed geologist can hope to keep pace with the progress of newly-discovered facts, and the march of improved reasoning and enlarged results.

This is especially the case, as we have before remarked, with reasoning depending upon negative evidence. The mass of confident assertions, bold hypotheses, and sweeping generalisations depending on such evidence, that have been refuted and overturned by the subsequent appearance of positive evidence against them, is so great, that it behoves the geologist now, who wishes to walk prudently and philosophically, to withhold his assent to any proposition whatsoever that has merely negative evidence for its support.

In his attempt to reconcile Geology with the letter of Genesis, Mr. M'Causland largely depends on this evidence; and, quoting from an authority not more than two years old, it already fails him. Even if we grant (which we need not) that lingulæ had neither sight nor hearing, there is no early fossiliferous bed known in which lingulæ occur that

trilobites* do not accompany them, together with fenestellæ, and other fossils. Trilobites-creatures having delicate and complicated eyes-have now been found in the very bottom of the Cambrian rocks, many thousand feet below the Lingulæ flags. We have therefore no azoic rocks; and the very earliest rocks that have been preserved for our inspection, were formed since the creation of the atmosphere, and of light, and that very same adaptation of one to the other which still exists.

Under the weight of these facts, all the first part of Mr. M'Causland's explanation breaks down.

We shall not attempt to follow him step by step through the remainder, however ingenious it may appear in its reasoning, or interesting in its subject. He is compelled, in fact, to resort to non-literal and conjectural interpretations, and to evolve meanings from words which are not the obvious and simple meanings. If we once depart from the simple and literal meaning, one man's interpretation becomes as valid as another's, unless, indeed, we could appeal to some infallible authority, which we hardly think Mr. M'Causland would wish to arrogate to himself, or would allow in another.

It is, in our opinion, the wiser and the safer plan not to inquire too cụriously and too minutely into prob lems which, by their very nature, do not admit of a final and demonstrative solution. If we are satisfied with the grounds on which our faith reposes, let us hold fast by it, and trust in it, even if some of those grounds should appear to be a little shaken and disturbed by our knowledge. Who can dispel the mystery which hangs over the connexion between the mortal body and the immortal soul?-who can draw a clear and absolute boundary between the reason of man and the instinct of animals ?-who can tell us what mind is as distinct from soul?-who can explain distinctly what is meant by the very terms "inspiration" and "revelation" ?-what were the limits of the supernatural action in the soul or the mind of the inspired writers? -how much or how little was re

vealed of what could have been told? Mr. M'Causland holds that Moses wrote what was conveyed to him by certain "visions." If that was all, can we be sure that he described those visions correctly, and that these descriptions have been handed down through many written copies without a single error on the part of the copier, and have been translated without a single mistake on the part of the interpreters? Mr. M'Causland himself gives us a new translation of certain passages, which he says conveys more accurately the sense of the original than the received version

does. Who is to decide upon these differences?

We mention these questions as but a few of those which crowd upon us for answering, as soon as we attempt to explain everything and decide all things. They are matters of belief, not of knowledge. We act with equal wisdom when we purify the one from error, and extend and enlarge the bounds of the other. Happy is the man who can sometimes do both, and who keeps both separate and both steadfast, rather than he who seeks to antagonise them, or vainly tries to fuse them together.

THE public must necessarily acknowledge in Professor Creasy's work, the ablest historical treatise which has yet appeared in this country, on the government of an Empire whose religious and political constitution forms the strangest phenomenon in the annals of Europe, and of whose civil polity there exists no example even in the checkered history of Asia.Considered in reference to the earlier works by which Mr. Creasy's name is known to the literary world, it certainly is that by which his abilities will be best appreciated. There may be other writings which convey a more vivid portraiture of Turkey, as she now exists. But to present such a portraiture of these times alone was not the aim of the author; and it would be an aim irreconcilable with historical pretensions. What we conceive Mr. Creasy to have aimed at, and to have accomplished, is, the drawing of a continuous portraiture of the Turkish Government and of the Turkish national character, in their military, their civil, their moral or religious, and their social relations. And if it be urged that this work is a compilation, it is not less true that all histories are essentially compilations and that that history is the best which imparts, from whatever sources, the clearest view of political

events, and of the springs of action from which those events are ultimately produced.

If there is one question more deeply shrouded in obscurity than another, in the political future of the world, it is perhaps the final destiny of those bordering territories of the two continents, which, for traditionary ages, have been the theatre of conflict between the power and civilization of Europe and of Asia. The whole history of mankind exhibits a continual struggle for subjugation and repression, in which the impulse of conquest has sent forth population after population upon the plains of Europe from the remotest regions of the East. If we look back through that long vista of twenty-three centuries of history, during which the ancient city of the Bosphorus has watched the progress or the retrogression of mankind, we find the regions of Eastern Europe the scene not only of convulsions so gigantic, but of changes so rapid and complete, as to have baffled, even from century to century, the clearest political speculation. That the Byzantium of the early Greek, imperilled only, in one age, by the advancing tide of the Persian dominion, should have been destined to assume the gorgeous splendour and the imperial polity of Rome-that the Constan