the ocean than any of those previously discovered, and is, perhaps, among the most perfect of those hitherto exhumed. Fossil bones, together with shells and wood, have also been found on the banks of the Irawadi, in the East. Among the bones, two new species of the mastodon were discovered; one of them was equal in size to the mastodon of Ohio, and the other approached that of the Asiatic elephant. There are also four species of the fossil rhinoceros, all apparently differing from any living species. This new fruit of enterprise, which attended the British mission to Ava, is interesting, as having discovered another locality for the mastodon, which had been hitherto supposed exclusively confined to America. Turquoises are considered to be fragments of the teeth of the mastodon, the colouring matter being derived from the blue phosphate of iron on the principle already adverted to, in reference to the marl pit of Ballaugh.

In the MEGATHERIUM and MEGALONYX, which seem distinct species, we have extinct animals, whose habits appear to have allied them to the sloth; but of a gigantic size, being nearly that of the rhinoceros. Their limbs terminated in five toes, and some of these were provided with enormous claws: their thick ossified skin seems to have been imbricated: from the structure of their teeth, vegetables and roots appear to have been their food. These animals have been hitherto found only in America. Crocodiles have been discovered with fins, but without feet; and marine lizards as large as whales. Mr. Bullock mentions his having seen, near New Orleans, the organic remains of an enormous crocodile, which, by the measurement of the right side of the under jaw, he calculated to be one hundred and fifty feet long! It is supposed that this animal, when alive, must have been twenty-five feet in circumference round the body. The ribs measure nine feet along the curve, and are three inches thick; while the cranial bone weighs one thousand two hundred pounds, and exceeds twenty feet in its extreme length. We have already adverted to the iguanodon. One of these enormous marine lizards may have been the LEVIATHAN,

described in such vivid characters in the Book of Job.* The luminous path described by his movement through the deep, refers distinctly to a marine animal. Still, however, it may have been indigenous to some gulf or delta, from its participating somewhat of an amphibious character.

These gigantic forms may be adduced as an evidence either of a vastly prolonged term of existence, or an altered density in the incumbent atmosphere, or of both together. Some animals, even now, increase in size with an increase of age. There is now being exhibited, in London, the skeleton of a whale, (balona mysticetus) which was found floating off the coast of Belgium, about twelve miles from Ostend, on the 3rd of Nov. 1827. Cuvier and others have estimated the age of this animal at about a thousand years. The fingers of the side fins are completely ossified. The following are its dimensions: the entire length of the skeleton is ninety-five feet; length of the head, twenty-two feet; length of the vertebral column, sixty-nine feet and a half; number of vertebræ, sixty-two. The entire weight of the animal, when found, was two hundred and fortynine tons quantity of oil extracted from the blubber, four thousand gallons: weight of the skeleton, seventy thousand pounds. Such an occurrence in post diluvian times is, however, rare; while, in antediluvian ages, the law seems to have been general, and the phenomenon

common.

The several phenomena to which we have referred, —such as the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep, the tremendous deluge which descended from the heavens, the phenomena of the rainbow, the abbreviation of human life, together with the gigantic remains which we have just adverted to,-all tend to confirm the supposition of an altered density. The transition, in reference to the inmates of the ark, was comparatively gradual; and the animal system would conform itself to the change, as it is known to accommodate itself to

* Job. xl. 1.

vast elevations, such as Mont Blanc, Chimboraço, and the Himālā; and though the summits of the latter have not been attained, Humboldt and Gerard have gained elevations at least from four to five thousand feet higher than Mont Blanc. The descent into deep mines, and in the diving bell, proves the same fact.

Doubtless the impressions of geological botany are often tropical and sometimes gigantic: the tidal wave of the deluge swept from afar and brought with it the trophies of ruin; and the vegetation of other lands and distant climes supplied the materials that complete the picture of desolation. The curious fact, however, that a change in the density of the atmosphere would satisfactorily account for this gigantic feature presented in antediluvian botany, has been overlooked by geologists. A diminished pressure and an attenuated atmosphere would lessen the size. Thus we leave a plant in the valley, and we meet its fac simile even in variety, on the summit of some alpine cliff, five thousand feet above the level of the sea: its botanical characters are the same, and its visage that of its fellow in the valley; but it is a dwarf-it is the very miniature of that we left so far below. Professor Dobreiner, of Jena, has made this the subject of direct experiment. Two glass vessels were employed, each of the capacity of three hundred and twenty cubic inches; and two portions of barley were sown in parts of the same earth, and moistened in the same degree: they were placed one in each vessel. The air was now exhausted in one, till reduced to the pressure of fourteen inches of mercury; and condensed in the other till the pressure equalled fifty-six inches. Germination took place in both nearly at the same time, and the leafets appeared of the same green tint; but, at the end of fifteen days the following differences existed: the shoots. in the rarified air were six inches long, but from nine to ten inches in the condensed air. The former were expanded and soft; the latter rolled round the stem, and nearly solid: the former were wet on their surface, especially toward their extremities; the latter were

nearly dry. The same fact applies to the elucidation of gigantic animal forms.

Perhaps we may be charged with being too severe on geologists; let us, be therefore, clearly understood: we most gratefully receive from their hands, as a valuable boon, the interesting facts discovered by the practical geologist; but we cannot, and dare not surrender the charter of our hopes to reveries the most fantastical, and speculations the most wild and eccentric. Some there are who fancy they surrender little or nothing by conceding such important points to bold and unwarrantable demands. We think differently: we contend for the integrity of the truth with those who would dare to mutilate the Sacred Record. Truths are propounded in the Sacred Volume; we believe them to be the gift of divine communication; and while we rejoice to find that geological facts substantiate these truths to their full amount, we cannot consent to part with them for the unauthorized visions of those, who from the strata of the earth,

"Extract a register, by which "they" learn,
That HE who made it, and revealed its date
To Moses, was mistaken in its age."

Let us take Professor Sedgwick's admissions, and see whether we have not sufficient reason to withhold our amen to geological theories: "It might be supposed that the red sandstone and the conglomerate were formed during some short period of confusion, produced by the dislocation of older rocks; that after a time the sea again became tranquil; and the fossils of the lias were called into being, upon the ruins of an older world, by a new fiat of creative power! But in France and Germany, (in the region of the Vosges, and on the banks of the Neckar,) we meet with a solution of our difficulties: between the magnesian limestone and the lias, we have three great formations, each characterized by its suite of fossils! Between the deposition of the coal measures, and the lias of the West of England, there were completed at least five great geological

periods, each distinguished by its own group of animals, and each, therefore, probably continued during a long succession of ages." We frankly confess our utter inability to reconcile these extraordinary opinions with the facts, literally propounded for our belief, in the cosmogony of Moses; and those who will cede the credibility of the Sacred Annals, corroborated by an overwhelming mass of testimony, to such visionary fancies, hold, we fear, the Sacred Volume with too loose a hand-we envy not their tenure.

"Non equidem invideo: miror magis:"

“Man,” says the editor of a popular work, "in comparison of many other races of animated beings, the creature of yesterday, is not warranted in thinking that this globe was called into existence at the same hour when he began to hold dominion over it." The reasons assigned for conscientiously assuming the great anti-` quity of the earth" are these: "the evidences are so strong, that our reason cannot withhold its assent; and secondly, because our conviction appears to conduct us onward to an enlarged idea of the wisdom and power of the great Author of the universe." To the same effect, as to the non-contemporaneous existence of man, are the words of Mr. Lyell: "It is never pretended that our race co-existed with the assemblage of animals and plants, of which all the species are extinct." We have only to observe, that we pity, sincerely pity, those who cannot perceive in these opinions a direct impeachment of the Truth of Revelation: but we choose rather to contend for the question as a physical truth, and on this broad basis insist, that, among the facts and phenomena of geology, there is not a solitary proof that can be brought forward to impugn the literality of the Sacred Records of the creation and the deluge. From a diligent and attentive examination of geological facts, and a personal investigation of many of the great phenomena of rocks, we can as conscientiously declare our conviction, to the contrary of that of the writers whose sentiments we have quoted. One would imagine, either that some