the effect of so partial a view of the operations of Providence. He saw an apparently confused and unwieldy mechanism, of which he neither understood the principle nor the use. Wheels on wheels, moving in seeming disorder, -valves opening and shutting,-levers straining, beanis revolving,while fire and water combined their mysterious powers. He perceived, in short, an im~ mense expense of labour and ingenuity, and all for what? He could not tell: He observed amazing powers in operation; he heard a grating and astounding noise, and that was all. But were he admitted into the upper apartments, where the effect of all these operations is displayed, what a different opinion would he form? How would he admire the talents which could so control the powers of nature, as to give man a force immensely superior to his own, and add to the resources, and ensure the prosperity, not of individuals only, but of the whole empire!

And so it is with the operations of Providence. Here we see but a part, and that a very small part, of the machinery by which He conducts the moral government of the world. Even if we could understand all the relations of temporal things, we could not understand their bearings on eternity. Some glimpses, indeed, Revelation has afforded us into that upper apartment, where the whole scheme is consummated, and where the ways of God are vindicated to his creatures; but how imperfect and how inadequate! Let us look forward with eagerness and hope to the approaching period, when the veil shall be removed from our eyes, and " we shall know even as we are known."

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or to zreiter jo odt to wi¥ & Intreg op to toto ods zblojz (THIRTEENTH WEEK-MONDAY. 19909biv ang sdt hoog-1bou rodtion d dude to L-insibom IL GEOLOGY. SUCCESSIVE PERIODS OF DEPOSIT.on olqis deemde bits qutqgo 297187--,nbro-ib ASSUMING the existence of matter from an indefinite poli riod before the commencement of the Mosaic creation, let us attend to the opinions which have been adopted by modern geologists, from views founded on the know ledge they have acquired of the crust of the earth.oqo ni

It should seem, according to these inquiries, that there are three well marked periods in the primitive history of our globe, during which the most extensive changes have taken place on its surface, and fresh deposits have been made. The order of time in which these changes have been effected, can be fixed, as is supposed, with considerable precision. We are first informed, that there was what may be called the primitive era, or period of granite, when this species of rock, with other stony substances, and the wide-spread ocean from which, in the process of ages, extensive deposits of sand were made, seem to have covered the whole face of the earth, form ing a cheerless and gloomy waste, destitute of organi ized existences, and void of life. This epoch is said to have been followed by another period of long dura tion, in which some violent convulsions have taken place, and active powers have been at work, effecting) extensive changes, without appearing, during its cons tinuance, to have settled down into a permanent state g hence called the transition period. It is during this pe riod, that the first rudiments of vegetable and animal existences seem to have taken their origin, as the lowest kind of organized beings are found embedded in its deposits.

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Beginning with the animal kingdom," says Dr Buckland, we find the four great existing divisions of Vertebrata, Mollusca, Articulata, and Radiata, to have been coeval with the commencement of organic life upon our

globe. No higher condition of Vertebrata has yet been discovered in the transition formation than that of fishes." *The Mollusca, in the transition series, afford examples of several families, and many genera, which seem at that time to have been universally diffused over all parts of the world.” “The earliest examples of Articulated animals are those a afforded by the extinct family of Trilobites." "These seem to have perished at the end of this series. The Radiated animals are among the most frequent organic remains in the transition strata. They present numerous forms of great beauty.” Of the vegetable kingdom in this earliest period of organized existences, Dr Buckland says, "In the inferior regions of this series, plants are few in number, and principally marine; but in its inferior regions, the remains of land plants are accumulated in prodigious quantities." They form, in their destruction, a great part of our present coal fields, and many strata of the carboniferous order contain subordinate beds of a rich argillaceous iron ore A formation," adds our author, that is at once the vehicle of two such valuable mineral productions as coal and iron, assumes a place of the first importance among the sources of benefit to mankind; and this benefit is the direct result of physical changes which affected the earth at those remote periods of time, when the first forms of vegetable life appeared upon its surface.”

Resting on the transition rocks, and therefore believed immediately to succeed them in the era of their deposition, come the rocks of what has been called the secondary epoch, during which, along with a distinct and peculiar vegetation, animals have existed, chiefly the inhabitants of the waters, or saurian reptiles, of gigantic forms, partly marine, partly amphibious, and partly terrestrial; and, at the same period also, have lived mammalia of the marsupial order, and some testudinata and feathered tribes; as, not only their petrified remains, but, what is still more remarkable, the marks of their footsteps on sandstone have recently been found to testify. Dr

Buckland, in speaking of fossil Testudinata, says, “The remains of land tortoises have been more rarely observed in a fossil state. Cuvier mentions but two examples, and these in very recent formations, at Aix, and in the Isle of France. Scotland has recently afforded evidence of the existence of more than one species of these terrestrial reptiles, during the period of the new red or variegated sandstone formation. The nature of this evidence is almost unique in the history of organic remains." In a foot note he states that a discovery of fossil footmarks, similar to that made at Corncocklemuir, which was communicated by me in 1828, to the Edinburgh Royal Society, has recently been made in Saxony, at the village of Hessberg, near Hildburghausen, in several quarries of grey quartzose sandstone, alternating with beds of red sandstone, nearly of the sa same age with that of Dumfriesshire, of which notices have been given by Dr Hohnbaum, Professor Caup, and Dr Sickler. In another place he also mentions foot-marks of several extinct species of birds, having very lately been found by Professor Hitchcock, in the new red sandstone of the Valley of Connecticut, one of them of a species of enormous dimensions, which took a stride of six feet. On the subject of these discoveries, with particular allusion to that in Corncocklemuir, Dr Buckland has the follow

ing elegant observations: The historian or the antiquary may have traversed the fields of ancient or of modern battles, and may have pursued the line of march of triumphant conquerors, whose armies trampled down the most mighty kingdoms of the world. The winds and storms have utterly obliterated the ephemeral impressions of their course. Not a track remains of a single foot or a single hoof, of all the countless millions of men and beasts, whose progress spread desolation over the earth. But the reptiles that crawled upon the halffinished surface of our infant planet, have left memorials of their passage enduring and indelible, No history has recorded their creation or destruction their very

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bones are found no more among the fossil relics of a former world. Centuries and thousands of years may have rolled away, between the time in which these footsteps were impressed by tortoises upon the sands of their native Scotland, and the hour when they are again laid bare, and exposed to our curious and admiring eyes. Yet we behold them stamped upon the rock, distinct as the track of the passing animal upon the recent snow; as if to show that thousands of years are but as nothing amidst eternity;—and, as it were, in mockery of the fleeting perishable course of the mightiest potentates among mankind.”

To the secondary period, again, is believed to have succeeded another epoch, during which rocks, of what is called the tertiary formation, have been deposited, and animals, as well as plants, of a larger and more perfect kind, and approaching nearer to those of our own era, have existed.

The Tertiary epoch has recently been divided into four periods, founded on the proportions which their fossil shells bear to marine shells of existing species. During the first period, these productions exhibit but a small resemblance to our present orders, but this resemblance increases through each successive period, till the greater proportion of the fossil species come to bear a distinctly marked affinity to present existences. A similar remark may be made with regard to the inhabitants of the land. By far the greater proportion of the genera which existed during the earliest period of this epoch, are now extinct, while the terrestrial animals of the latest period have very generally antitypes in the living species of our own era. "It appears," says Dr Buckland," that at this epoch the whole surface of Europe was densely peopled by various orders of Mammalia, that the numbers of the herbivora were maintained in due proportion by the controlling influence of carnivora; and that the individuals of every species were constructed in a manner fitting each to its own enjoy