that many of them are but the bodies of defunct species of teeming generations of animalculæ, amongst which are occasionally found the more massive remains of those of larger growth; so that we find them varying in size from forty-one millions of the infusoria to the cubic inch in the Welsh polishing slate, to one billion in the cubic inch of the Rasencisen or iron clods, up to the crocodile Megalosaurus seventy feet long, and to that ancient monster of the main called the Dinotherium gigantium, the largest yet discovered.

Strange, however, it is, that the great animals built nothing except so far as their huge bones and massive frames are found piled up with fossil plants in the mountains piled on mountains built by the monadae, the least of the infusoria. We find miles on miles of lime-stone rock from one hundred to one thousand feet strata, composed of defunct generations of the coralline species, mingled with innumerable testaceous forms of life, consolidated by immense pressure. Indeed, these are but marble monuments reared in honour of the lower classes of animated nature, which after building immense stone houses for the wants of man, passed into eternal oblivion.

But these animated atoms that have reared for us the everlasting hills and mountains are not the only genera or species that have wholly passed away. Professor Agazsiz, to whom Baron Cuvier, the first of naturalists, bequeathed his early collection of fossil fish, has found seventeen hundred species of deceased or fossil fish, not one of which is now known to live in salt water or fresh. No virtuoso, no geologist, it is farther affirmed, has found in the transition, secondary or tertiary formations of the earth, a single species of fish exactly similar to any one of the eight thousand species of fish now living.

When, then, we sum up the present inhabitants of the ocean-its seven thousand tribos of shell-fish-its infinitely varied, elegantly formed, and beautifully adorned billions of billions of testaceous tenantry, with its eight thousand species of fishes, many of which would seem to be countless as its sands, may we not say that they who "go down to the sea in ships, that do business in the great waters-these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep?"

But while musing on the wonders of this ocean of waters, I am led to reflect on that ocean which is under it, whose fiery waves, and whose billows of lava occasionally have their spring tides, and inundate the sea and sometimes the land, with floods of ruin. You have long since learned that fire and water are God's two mighty agents both of mercy and of wrath to man; and that they were both predestined to inundate the world. David, the bard of Israel, used to sing and play upon his harp-"The Lord has founded the earth upon the seas and established it upon the floods." And Peter, according to Moses, affirms, "the heavens were of old, created by the word of God,—and the earth standing in and out of the water,' "by which water," he adds, "it was once deluged, but is now reserved for fire against the day of judgment, and perdition of ungodly men."

Of these, God has two immense oceans one of water, designated according to the shores it washes-Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Medi

terranean, &c. &c., all composing one continuous ocean.

So has he,

in the bosom of the earth, one great ocean, which has, in the form of warm springs, boiling springs, and volcanoes, given some three hundred indications of its existence and of its ubiquity in the whole interior area of the earth.

The habitable globe is every where strewed with volcanie rocks, solidified lava, fused metals, and other vestiges of its eternal fires. Earthquakes, as well as igneous rocks, and the rapidly increasing temperature as we descend, warrant the belief that in less than ten miles beneath our domicils, it is one immense caldron of boiling lava, into which rocks are constantly falling and dissolving. Seas will, doubtless, yet find their way into this unquenchable fire, which, when converted into gas, may, in an instant, convulse the earth from pole to pole, and at some unexpected moment cause it to dissolve, and "like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind."

If not to you, there are some who may read this letter, to whom it might be expedient to dilate upon the evidences that leave not the shadow of a doubt, that the earth has been for ages consuming itself by the very fires whose fuel it supplies. There is not a mountain of any note on the face of the earth, which does not indicate to the eye of intelligence, indubitable proofs that it has been upheaved from the depths of the ocean by the agency of fire.

When we find an oyster, a lobster, or a trilobite in the heart of a rock, on the top of a mountain, we very rationally conclude that it was not created in that place, but that some fearful convulsion of the earth had raised it out of the depths of the sea. And when we find

imbedded in rocks, recently cast up from the bottom of the ocean, trees and plants of other zones and climes, we as properly conclude that these, too, were not created, and did not grow where they are now found. Instances of both of these facts are literally innumerable; and as innumerable the proofs of the agency of flood and fire in the formation of the surface of the present earth. There is not, indeed, a pit dug deep into the earth, nor a tunnel carried through a hill or mountain; there is not a miner's shaft deeply penetrating the earth, nor a gap in a mountain, that does not prove that all the upper strata of the earth were laid in water, and that convulsions from beneath have one day occurred to break these strata, and to disturb those layers of rock upon rock, sometimes by raising, and sometimes by undermining and depressing them.

Sweden has been rising above the level of the sea for ages. It gives proof, abundant and clear, that it has been in some places raised four hundred feet. In one century it has risen almost seven feet by a pressure from beneath. Greenland has during this, been gradually sinking into the sea. Places of landing, less than a century ago, are now distant from the shore and buried under the waters. Mount Etna has piled up its chimney almost two hundred feet by its own eruptions, and gathered a hill of lava round it. Not fifty miles from Sicily, not long since, a mountain almost three hundred feet high was suddenly raised out of the bottom of the

sea.

Passing within seventy or eighty miles of the Azores, the other

day, being carried thither by north easterly winds, I was reminded of the volcanic island thrown up in the vicinity of one of them in 1811, and which was again submerged. All the Azores are, I presume, volcanic islands. I need not name Iceland, covered with lava, nor the Cape de Verd islands,-nor the burning mountains of the Andes, and of Mexico. Nor need I name the hundred volcanic islands of the Pacific. There is in one of these Islands, Hawii, if I remember right, an immense crater one thousand feet below the surrounding country, on the edge of which one may stand and look down into a sea of lava, lashing its sides, boiling and swelling as if tempest tossed and infuriate with rage. Not far from this fiery whirlpool there is a neighbouring volcano that rises twelve thousand feet high, which seems to be its chimney; and which, by its frequent eruptions, prevents the necessity of its boiling over. To these might be added many more, of which I cannot now speak particularly. But are not these enough to sustain the alarming fact that under this ocean of water there is one of fire, and that the depth and the extent of the igneous ocean are much greater than those of the aqueous ocean?

The earth is most correctly presented to us as a globe. On the outside of this globe we have the envelope, on which we live, called its surface. This surface is divided into continents and oceans, islands and lakes, denominated according to the taste or caprice of its inhabitants. But geologically speaking, its surface, excepting its ocean, sea, and lake basins, is but its outside envelope, composed of a layer, or stratum, deposited from, as well as by the waters that once overwhelmed it. This stratum, by the action of the heavens, has been converted, like the human heart, into a proper abode for a spirit. The sun, moon, and stars, the winds and vapours, with all their combined influences, aided by those more sublimated, spiritualized, imponderable agents-light, heat, electricity, &c., have decomposed, fertilized, and prepared it for the seeds that God has sown, and the germs of life that he has planted in it; and have rendered it a suitable habitation for man. He is now learning to read it.

The work is divided into two grand divisions. The first is now published, containing some twenty volumes; but only two or three volumes of the second department have yet appeared. A philosopher called WATER is the author of the first series of volumes, and another called FIRE is the author of the second series, so far as it has appeared. Few have read the first volume called "Modern Alluvium," and fewer the second called "Ancient Alluvium." Some have peeped into the "Pliocene," the "Miocene," and the " Eocene."-Others, such as Mr. Lyell, have read the " Cretaceous," Saliferous," and "Carboniferous" volumes, down to the "Silurian," and " Cambrian," and have penetrated into the second department so far as to have read a few pages in stratified Mica and Gneiss, and just opened the amorphous pages of unstratified granite.

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This onion-like earth has many envelopes, each one of which reveals a thousand mysteries. They all either prove or illustrate that, (as Moses reports,) before the six days' creation began-" the

earth was without form and void-that darkness enveloped it, and that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."-Thus we understand Peter's allusion to the earth's "standing in the water and out of the water;" but how long?-its multiform and manifold generations of aquatic animals alone can imperfectly develop.

I will only add, for I have been beguiled for an hour or two by God's works in the sea, and "his great wonders in the deep," into an excursion into fields of thought and reflection on subjects always interesting to myself, as an amusement, and more especially now, while slowly moving on the placid face of these "great waters;" I say I will only add, that the everlasting mountains piled on each other, have been reared by steam engines fabricated in the bosom of the earth, as mighty monuments of the dead, containing in them the mortal remains of untold generations of animated nature; and having inscribed upon them the epitaphs of multitudes of defunct genera and species that have passed into eternal oblivion, and that, too, by the spasmodic action of the fire ocean in some of its more violent and fitful movements, instigated by causes unknown to mortal man.

From this long episode, prosaic indeed, I will return (if I have not lost myself,) to our voyage.

I need not tell you of all the pleasures of sea-sickness, nor of all the unpleasant things that occur in a sea voyage. We had our usual share of all these. Brother Henshall was confined two days, and some for a much longer time. They suffered much for the time being. I was, indeed, more affected than on any former voyage. But as I dislike confinement, not having lain one day in bed for forty years, (thanks to the Father of mercies!) I kept on foot every day.

We had about four stormy days on the whole passage, and having to sail as near the wind as possible, we had more rough sailing than had we, in a tempest, been going before the wind. We were carried so far south as to make our passage some five or six hundred miles farther than the real distance between New York and Liverpool.

Our berths were large and comfortable; our captain a gentleman, and admirably qualified in all respects for his station, did every thing to make us comfortable that he could, both in health and in sickness. He invited me to preach to the passengers every Lord's day. Not only the cabin, but the steerage passengers attended, and we had their attention while I addressed them for an hour and a half. Our table was well furnished with every thing desirable and necessary, having had fresh meats and fowl of every variety in abundance, with good vegetables and other luxuries till we landed. We kept so far to the south, that we neither saw the Banks of Newfoundland, nor an iceberg on the passage. Our captain, so perfectly master of his profession, could almost every day tell us within a mile or two of our locality. When he told us that we had Cape Clear to the south, and were but thirty-five miles from its light-house, before we had a single indication of it to the eye, we were, of course,

pleased to hear the tidings; but still more to ascertain, in a few hours, that it was as near the fact as could be imagined.

We entered the channel with a propitious breeze, and soon passing the eastern promontory of Ireland, we saw the mountains of Wales lifting their blue heads in the distance. The island of Anglesea soon made its Hollyhead a very interesting scene. We got our telescopes upon it and bade it welcome. A few hours, and we could trace the houses and fields on the island. I looked, but looked in vain for a tree. I counted some seven windmills in motion on different parts of the island. I even counted the slate roofed houses in its principal village, but I could find nothing green larger than an apple tree on its whole premises. Still, the appearance of mother earth, and of the residence of man upon it, is a very interesting spectacle to any one who sails across an ocean of from three to four thousand miles extent.

We spent a pleasant night, but made little headway, the wind having gone to sleep with us. Next morning we had the coasts of Ireland in sight. During the forenoon we passed the harbours of Waterford and Cork, and in the afternoon took a pilot aboard.— Again becalmed, (O how unpleasant when approaching a desired' haven!) we were disappointed in getting into port. A steamer came along in the morning, our captain hired her services to bring the Siddons into port, and in six hours we passed the river Dee, separating England and Wales, and saw the trees and country seats around Liverpool rising in all their beauty on the banks of the Mersey.

When our pilot informed us that the Exmouth, from London-derry, had recently been dashed to pieces on that same Islay on which I had been wrecked some nine and thirty years ago—and that of 220 passengers, men, women, and children, not one escaped -I felt a new fountain of gratitude spring up in my heart. But four seamen from the topmast escaped, being flung off when she struck upon a perpendicular rock; seizing some of its cliffs, though stunned, they held on till they recovered, and clambering to its summit, escaped destruction!

At ten o'clock we had the pleasure of approaching the docks, and as soon as we came near them, of seeing two gentlemen saluting us as though they were some old acquaintances. I could not recognize them. Conjecture was in vain. But soon the vessel was moored, and being helped on shore by one of them, I learned that I had brother Davies of Mollington by the hand, and that the other was his brother Samuel.

In five minutes we were on board of a cab, and away to the custom-house to have our trunks examined by the officers of her majesty, Victoria. There we were introduced to brethren Woodnorth and Tickle of Liverpool, and having passed the custom-house ordeal with impunity, we were immediately in a carriage, and away to the railcars, and in little more than an hour we found ourselves at the delightful abode of brother Davies and his excellent lady, seventeen miles from the city. Thus in twenty-five days from New York, and a voyage, as we made it, of 3,800 miles, brother Henshall