be denoted by 2, that of the lowest human brain will be de noted by 5; and that the variations in volume within the limits of the human race range as from 2 to 3.

H.

ON THE DEVOTION OF THE LOWER ANIMALS TO MAN.

"Take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man who to him is instead of a God, or melior natura-which courage is manifestly such as that creature without that confidence [firm belief] of a better nature than his own, could never attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon divine protection and favour, gathereth a force and faith which human nature in itself could not obtain; therefore as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty." (See Bacon, Essay xvi., in the valuable edition of Archbishop Whately.)

As at once illustrating and qualifying this noble passage, the reader may remember the verses in which Wordsworth has embalmed "FIDELITY."

From those abrupt and perilous rocks
The Man had fallen, that place of fear!
At length upon the shepherd's mind

It breaks, and all is clear:

He instantly recalled the name,

And who he was, and whence he came;
Remembered too the very day

On which the traveller passed this way.

But hear a wonder, for whose sake
This lamentable tale I tell !

A lasting monument of words

This wonder merits well.

The Dog, which still was hovering nigh,
Repeating the same timid cry,

This Dog had been, through three months' space,
A dweller in that savage place.

Yes! proof was plain that since the day

When this ill-fated traveller died,

The Dog had watched about the spot,
Or by his master's side:

How nourished here through such long time
He knows who gave that love sublime,
And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate!

NOTES AND REFERENCES.

1. It is sufficient to refer to the masterly critique on the "Vestiges" by Sir David Brewster in Vol. III. of the North British Review, and to the thoughtful and suggestive work of Drs. MacCosh and Dickie, "Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation.

Constable, 1856.)

2. Mr. Baden Powell, Essays and Reviews, p. 139.

3. Owen, Reade Lecture, 1859: Appendix.

(Edinr.

4. Since the above was written, it appears from a note in Professor Phillips' Life on the Earth (Reade Lecture, 1860), p. 203, that we may hope for such from Professor Sedgwick.

5. Origin of Species, pp. 484-490.

6. Id. p. 40.

7. Cornhill Magazine, March, 1860.

8. Genesis xxx. 37-43.

9. Origin of Species, p. 31.

10. Id. p. 22. Compare, however, Lyell, Principles of Geology, Bk. III. ch. ii.

11. See, for example, Hugh Miller's description of the "Lias of Eathie. -The almost infinitesimal results of the attacks of the sea on the dry land have furnished mankind, since poetry began, with their stock image at once for fierce impetuosity and fierce futility. The former is the idea in the noble lines of the Iliad (IV. 425–428) thus finely rendered by Mr. Gladstone :

:

As when the billow gathers fast

With slow and sullen roar

Beneath the keen north-western blast

Against the sounding shore;

First far at sea it rears its crest,
Then bursts upon the beach,

Or, with proud arch and swelling breast,
Where headlands outward reach,

It smites their strength, and bellowing flings
Its silver foam afar ;

So, stern and thick, the Danaan kings

And soldiers marched to war.

-Translations, 1861.

Horace paints the imbecility of the sea with one of his wonderful master-strokes :

Seu plures hiemes, seu tribuit Jupiter ultimam
Quæ nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
Tyrrhenum. *

-Carm. I. xi.

12. See Principles of Geology, Bk. II. chapters v. and vi. ; and Life on the Earth, p. 126, &c.

13. A recent writer, Mr. Mackie, First Traces of Life on the Earth, allows only three inches for ten thousand years; which would give us 40,000 multiplied by 80,000, as the age in years of the sedimentary strata !

14. Life on the Earth, p. 130.

15. See Lyell, Bk. III. ch. iii.—"Notwithstanding the variety of forms presented by the several races of Dogs, we never see any which present so strong a resemblance to a Fox as to be at all in danger of being mistaken for that animal; and they may always be distinguished by this obvious character-that the pupil of the eye of the Dog is always round whilst that of the Fox is oval when contracted." -Carpenter's Zoology, Vol. I. p. 33.

* "Tis impious: seek not thou to know
The doom that waits thyself or me:
Chaldea's mystic art forego,

Inquisitive Lenconie !

"Tis better far in peace to bide

Whate'er may be for each in store;
To take content whate'er betide,

Yet not to feel the ill before:

Whether the winter be our last

That shatters on the unshrinking shore
The billow maddened by the blast,

Or Heaven in kindness wills us more:
&c.