REVIEW.

Otago Witness, Issue 296, 1 August 1857, Page 2

REVIEW.

(From the Banffshire Journal, March 31.) The Testimokt op the Rocks ; or, Geologt in its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed. By Hugh Miller, Author of " The Old Red Sandstone," "Footprints of the Creator," &c. This, as might have been expected, is a very remarkable book. Indeed, it may with safety be said that nothing that "was common-place could proceed from/ the pen of -Hugh Miller. He was so careful to master every subject which he took in hand, and was so fastidious in his style, that everything which he produced had a kind of classic value. Special interest attends the present book, for, as our readers are generally aware, it was in the preparation of it for the press that the author spent the last days of his life. The book was all ready, and he had, on the very last day of his existence, occupied some hours in revising some of the latter pages; and the only thing which was left to do after his death was to place and to name one or two of the wood engravings, with which the work abounds. This little service was performed by Professor Fleming. With this exception, the book is wholly Hugh Miller's — his latest gift to his countrymen, to the world, and to science, and one which will be cherished so long as there is a regard to knowledge and a love for the beautiful and the true. As might have been supposed, the book has had already an immense success. The first edition of 5000 copies was found to be utterly insufficient to meet the orders which poured in upon the publishers before it was ready. Its issue was therefore delayed until another 4000 were prepared. The whole were issued upon Tuesday last, and we learn that they are already all disposed of, another edition being announced to be ready by the middle of next month. The book in which such interest centres is not wholly new. It consists of chapters, or more properly of lectures, all bearing on theo- ■ logico-geological subjects. There are twelve lectures in all ; and of these four were delivered before members of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, in the years 1852 and 1855 ; another one was read at Exeter Hall in 1854; while of two others, the substance was delivered at Glasgow before the Geological section of the British Association. Three more have also been addressed viva voce to popular audiences. Only two, therefore, are wholly original, and prepared for the present book. Though the ten others have thus, in a certain sense, been communicated to a portion of the public, they all, with one exception, appear in print for the first time. The 1 only one of the twelve previously printed is the third, which has been published both in this country and in America, and has since been translated into several continental languages. In a work treating of so many and various subjects, and containing so many passages worthy of retention, we cannot be expected to do more than merely, in a measure, indicate its contents, giving a few passages illustrative of the nature of the book. This plan is the less to be regretted, that the work itself is issued at a comparatively cheap rate, and from the extensive circulation which it has enjoyed and will enjoy, we presume there are not very many of our readers who will not have the pleasure of its perusal. We may just say that the book is designed to bring to bear in one focus all the information which science contributes respecting the earlier ages of the world, taken in conjunction and in harmony with the statements of holy writ. In pursuance of this plan, the writer devotes a chapter to the history of the plants found on the earth's strata, showing that the plants found earliest are of a low character, and that each successive creation was an advance upon its predecessors. First, there were the flowerless plants without proper stems or leaves, termed Thallogens, a class which includes all the Alga? or sea weeds. Next succeed Acrogenfe, or flowerless plants, but possessing both stems and leaves, such as the ferns. Next come the Endogens, monocotyledonous flowering plants, including the palms, &c. Then came the Gymnogens, or Polycotyledonous trees, represented by the conifera. Last of all come the Dicotyledon, which include all the fruit trees, and those known as our forest trees. The mode in which these various classes of vegetation are arranged in the different strata is illustrated in the subjoined figure : — GENEALOGY Oi 1 PLANTS.

Geologic [Thai. Ac. Gy. Mon. Die] arrangement. , , Lindley'a [Thai. Ac. Mon. Gy. Die] arrangement.

The reader will of course understand that

the Thallogens are found throughout the whole strata, above the Salurian,"- but that none of the monocotyledons are got in any lower strata, that in short the particular classes make their appearance first in the stratum opposite to which they are placed, though of course they continue' to .present themselves in all the -superincumbent beds. Exactly analogous to the arrangement of the plants is found to be the distribution of the animals. In the Silurian system there are found none but mollusca, articulata, and radiata. In the old red sandstone, there first appear the" fishes. In the carboniferous strata, the reptiles first, present themselves. Birds are not met with below the Oolitic ; and mammals appear at the same time. The earliest indications of the mammaliferous class, however, are only represented by one order, the marsupiata or pouched animals. It is not till the Tertiary divisions are reached that mammals in their higher order are found. Last of all man appears upon the scene. As illustrative of the progressive advancement of the different floras which successively occupied the surface of the earth, we quote the following passage : —

With each succeeding period there appeared a more extensively useful and various vegetation than that which had gone before. I have already referred to the sombre, unproductive character of the eldest terrestrial flora with which we are acquainted. It was a flora unfitted, apparently, for the support of either graminivorous bird or herbivorous quadruped. The singularly profuse vegetation of the coal measures was, with all its wild luxuriance, of a resembling cast. So far as appears, neither flock nor herd could have lived on its greenest and richest plains ; nor does even the flora of the Oolite seem to have been in the least suited for the purposes of the shepherd or herdsman. Not until we enter on the tertiary periods do we find floras amid which man might have profitably laboured as a dresser of gardens, a tiller of fields, or a keeper of flocks and herds. Nay, there are whole orders and families of plants of the very first importance to man which do not appear until late in even the tertiary ages. Some degree of doubt must always attach to merely negative evidence ; but Agassiz, a geologist whose statements must be received with respect by every student of the science, finds reason to conclude that the order of the Rosaceas — an order more important to the gardener than almost any other, and to which the apple, the pe,ar, the quince, the cherry, the plum, the peach, the apricot, the victorine, the almond, the raspberry, the strawberry, and the various bramble berries belong, together with all the roses and the potentillas — was introduced only a short time previous to the appearance of man. And the true grasses — a still more important order, which, as the cone-bearing plants of the agriculturist, feed at the present time at least two-thirds of the human species, and in their humbler varieties form the staple food of the grazing animals — scarce appear in the fossil state at all. They are peculiarly plants of the human period.

Let me instance one other family of which the fossil botanist has not yet succeeded in finding any trace in even the tertiary deposits, and which appears to have been specially created for the gratification of human sense. Unlike the Rosacea?, it exhibits no rich blow of colour, or tempting show of luscious fruit ; it does not appeal very directly to either the sense of taste or of sight ; but it is richly odoriferous ; and, though deemed somewhat out of place in the garden for the last century and more, it enters largely into the composition of some of our most fashionable perfumes. I refer to the Labiate family — a family to which the lavenders, the mints, the thymes, and the hyssops belong, with basil, rosemary, and marjoram — all plants of " gray renown," as Shenstone happily remarks in his description of the herbal of his " Schoolmistress."

So far as we have gone, possibly the reader will think that nothing new has been said, and perhaps this may be correct enough, but the merit of the book is that it deals with the subject in such a way as not only to state these views, but to support them and render them unassailable. The reader will at once have gathered from the observations already made that Mr. Miller had modified the views he at | one time held with respect to the " days" mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis. He had at one time adopted the opinion promulgated by Chalmers that the first verse in Genesis announced the formation of the world or universe, and that an indefinite period elapsed between the fact so announced and the change specified in the succeeding verses, but that each of the days there referred to were to be understood as natural days. He now abandons this view, and gives very important reasons for his change of opinion. In the preface he says : — I certainly did once ' believe with Chalmers and with Buckland that the six days were simply natural days of twenty-four hours each — that they had comprised the! entire work of the existing creation — and that the latest of the geologic ages was separated by, a great chaotic gap from our own. My labours at the time as a practical geologist had

been very much restricted"*to the Palaeozoic and Secondary rocks, more, especially to the Old Red and Carboniferous Systems of the one division, and the Oolitic System of the other ; and the long extinct organisms which I found in them certainly did not conflict with the view of Chalmers. All I found necessary at the time to the work of reconciliation was some scheme that would permit me to assign to the earth a high antiquity, and to re-., gard it as the scene of many succeeding creations. During the last nine years, howeveiy'X hatfe spent a few weeks every autumn in exploring the later formations, and acquainting myself. With their peculiar organisms. I have traced theto upwards from the raised beaches and old -coast lines' of tSe human period, to the brick. claysjTClyde beds, and drift and boulder' deposits. of -the Pleistocene era, and again from these,* with the help of museums and collections, up through the mammiliferous crag of England, to its red and its coral crags. And the conclusion at which I have been compelled to arrive is, that for many long ages ere man was ushered into being, not a few of his humbler contemporaries of the fields and woods enjoyed life in their present haunts, and that for thousands of years anterior to even their appearance, many of the existing molluscs lived in our seas. That day during which the present creation came into being, and in which God, when he had made " the beast of the earth after his kind, and the cattle after their kind," at length terminated the work by moulding a creature in His own image, to whom he gave dominion over them all, was not a brief period of a few hours' duration, but extended over mayhap milleniums of centuries. No blank chaotic gap of death and darkness separated the creation to which man belongs from that of the old extinct elephant, hippopotamus, and hyaena ; for familiar animals, such as the red deer, the roe, the fox, the wild cat, and the badger, lived throughout the period which connected their times with our own ; and so I have been compelled to hold, that the days of creation were not natural, hut prophetic days, and stretched far back into the bygone eternity. After in some degree committing myself to the other side, I have yielded to evidence which I found it impossible to resist ; and such in this matter has been my inconsistency — an inconsistency of which the world has furnished examples in all the sciences, and will,. I trust, in its onward progress, continue to furnish many more. One of the steps in the reasoning which conducts us beyond the period usualty assigned in the new chronology for the creation of the world, is to be found in the proof we have of the existence of what is known as " the old-coast-line." This part of the subject is exquisitely handled by Mr. Miller in the following passage :—: —

AGE OF THE OLD SEA MARGIN.

There runs around the shores of Great Britain \ and Ireland a flat terrace of unequal breadth, backed by an escarpment of varied height and character, which is known to geologists as the old coast line. On this flat terrace most of the seaport towns of the empire are built. The subsoil which underlies its covering of vegetable mould consists usually of stratified sands and gravels, arranged after the same fashion as on the neighbouring beach, and interspersed in the same manner with sea -shells. The escarpment' behind, when formed of materials of no great coherency, such as gravel or clay, exists as a sloping, grass-covered bank— at one place running out into promontories that encroach upon the terrace beneath — at another receding into picturesque, bay-like recesses ; and whore composed, as in many localities, of rock of an enduring quality, we find it worn, as if by the action of the surf — in some parts relieved into insulated stacks, in others hollowed into deep caverns — in short, presenting all the appearance of a precipitous coast-line, subjected to the action of the waves. Now, no geologist can or does doubt that this escarpment was at one time the coast-line of the island — the line against which the waves broke at high water in some recent age, when either the sea stood from 20 to 30 feet higher along our shores than it does now, or the land sat from 20 to 30 feet lower. Nor can the geologist doubt, that along the- flat terrace beneath, with' its stratified beds of sand and gravel, and its accumulations of sea-shells, the tides must have risen and fallen twice every day, as they now rise and fall along the beach that at present girdles our country. But, in reference to at least human history, the age of the old-coast-line and terrace must be a very remote one. Though geologically recent, it lies far beyond the reach of any written record. ,It was shown by Mr. Smith of Jordanhill, one of our highest authorities on the subject, that the wall of Antoninus, erected by the Romans as a protection against the Northern Caledonians, was made to terminate at the Friths of Forth : and Clyde, with relation not to the level of the old- coast-line, but to that of the existing one. And so we must infer that, ere the year a.d. 140 (the year during which, according to our antiquaries, the ( greater ( part of the wall was erecied) the old -coast-line had attained to its present elevation over the sea. Further, however, we know from the history of Diodorus the Sicilian, that at a period earlier by at least 200 years, St. Michael's Mount, in Cornwall, was connected with the mainland at low water, just as it is now, by a flat isthmus, across which, upon, the falling of the tide, the ancient Cornish miners used to carry over their tin in carts. Had ' the relative levels of sea and land been those of the old- coastline at the time, St. Michael's Mount, instead- of

being accessible at low ebb, would have been separated from the shore by a strait from three to five fathoms in depth. It would not have been then as now, as described in the verse of Carew — " Both land and island twice a-day." But even the incidental notice of Diodorus Siculus represenls,ji[pry-inadequ,ately the antiquity of the, existing coast-line. Some dfltSMyiyes, hollowed in hard rock in the line b'f -'faults and sßtfts^ by the attrition of the surf, are more than a*'njmdrelisJeet' in depth,;' and it, must have, required 'toan/ .cpifc. turies to excavate toughtr'ap or rigid' gneJsi,w^ depth so considerable, by a process so- slowl ' Kpd yet, however long the sea may have stood 'against the present coast-line, it must have stobd-foc a^fcbnsiderably longer period against the ancient one. The latter presents generally marks of greater attrition than the modern line, and its wave-hollowed caves are of a depth considerably more profound. In determining, on an extensive tract of coast, the average profundity of both classes of caverns from a considerable number of each, I ascertained that the proportional average depth of the modern to the ancient is as two to three. For every two centuries, then, during which the waves have been scooping out the caves of the present coast-line, they must have been engaged for three centuries in scooping out those of the old one. But we know historically, that for at least twenty centuries the sea has been toiling in these modem caves ; and who shall dare affirm that it has not been toiling in them for at least ten centuries more ? But if the sea has stood for but even 2600 years against the present coast-line (and no geologist would dare fix his estimate lower), then must it have stood against the old line, ere it could have excavated caves one-third deeper, 3900 years. And both periods united (6500 years) more than exhaust the Hebrew chronology. Yet what a mere beginning of geological history does not the epoch of the old-coast-line form ! It is but a mere starting point from the recent period. Not a single shell seems to have become extinct during the last 6500 years ! The shells embedded in the subsoils beneath the old-coast-line are exactly those which still live in our seas.

This passage proves most conclusively that the earth, even in its present form, has existed longer than consists with the usual chronology ; and once having it proved that the world did exist long anterior to the creation of Adam, there can be no plea for holding to ' the exploded notion, repudj^ited half a century ago by Dr. Chalmers, that the Mosaic record fixes the antiquity of the globe.

The 'idays" mentioned in Genesis could not be natural days, fox geology proves this world was inhabited by many races of animals, and of plants, long anterior to the formation of man — a principle this now conceded by every person who has given the subject the slightest consideration. Mr. Miller supplies the following

EXPLANATION OF " THE DATS."

Holding with Cuvier, Parkinson, and Silliman, that each of the six days of the Mosaic narrative in the first chapter were what is assuredly meant by the day referred to in the second, — not natural days, but lengthened periods, — I find myself called on, as a geologist, to account for but three of the six. Of the period during which light was created— or of the period during which the two great lights of the earth, with the other heavenly bodies, became visible from the earth's surface — we need expect to find no record in the rocks. Let me, however, pause for a moment, to remark the peculiar character of the language in which we are first introduced, in the Mosaic narrative, to the heavenly bodies — sun, moon, and stars. The moon, though absolutely one of the smallest lights of our system, is described as secondary and subordinate to only its greatest light, the sun. It is the apparent, then, not the actual, which we find in the passage — what seemed to be, not what was ; and as it was merely what appeared to be greatest that was described as greatest, on vfhat grounds are we to hold that it may not also have been described as made ? The sun, moon, and stars may have been created long before, though it was not until this fourth period of creation that they became visible from the earth's surface.

The geologist, in his attempts to collate' the Divine with the geologic record, has, I repeat, only three of the six periods of creation, to account for — the period of plants, the period of great monsters and creeping things, and the period of cattle and beasts of the earth. He is called on to question his systems and formations regarding the remains of these three great periods, and of these only. And the question once fairly stated, what, I ask, is the reply ? All geologists agree in holding that the vast geological scale naturally divides into three great parts. There are many lesser divisions— divisions into systems, formations, deposits, beda, strata; but the master divisions, in each of which we find a type of life so unlike that of the others that even the unpractised eye can detect the difference, are simply three— the Palaeozoic, or oldest fossiliferous division; the secondary or xniddle fossiliferous division ; and the Tertiary, or latest fossiliferous division. In the first or Palpeozoic division,.we find corals, crustaceans, ,molluscs, fishes, and, in its latter formations, a few reptiles. But none of these classes of organisms give its leading character to the Palseozoic; they do not 'constitute* its prominent feature, or render it mole remarkable as a scene of life than any of the divisions which - followed. That which chiefly distinguished the PaWzpJLC .from the Secondary and Tertiary^ periods- was -it's gorgeous flora. It was emphatically the period ,of plants — "of herbs yielding seed, after their kind. >J , In no other age did the world ever witness such a flora; the-

youth of the earth waspeculiarly a green and umbrageous youth— a youth of dusk and tangled forest; of 'huge pings, and .stately, araucarians, of the reed- ! like caiamite/.tHe r tall tree-fern, the 'sculptured'sigillaria, and the hirsute iepidodendron. "Wherever dryjand, or shallow lakej or running stream appeared, from where Melville Island now spreads out its ice wastes under the star of the pole, to where the arid plains of Australia lie solitary beneath the bright cross of the south, a rank and luxuriant herbage " cumbered every footbreadth of the dark and steamingcsoil; "and even.to distant planets our earth must fehave shone through the enveloping cloud with a Kgreen and delicate ray. j Of^this extraordinary age of plants we have our cheerful remembrancers and witnesses in thte, flames that roar in our chimneys when we pile up the winter fire— in the .brilliant gas that now casts its light on this assemblage, and that lightens'up the streets and lanes of this vast city — in' the glowing furnaces that smelt our metals, and moving' power to our ponderous engines — in -the long .dusky trains that, with shriek and snort, speed dart-like athwart our landscapes — and in the great cloud-enveloped vessels that darken the lower reaches of your noble river, and rush in foam over ocean and sea. The geologic evidence is so complete as to -be patent to all, that the first great period of- organized being was, as described in the Mosaic record, peculiarly a period of herbs and trees, "yielding seed after their kind."

The middle great period of the geologist — that of "the Secondary division — possessed, like the earlier one, its herbs and plants, but they were of a greatly less luxuriant and conspicuous character than their predecessors, and no, longer formed the prominent trait or feature of the creation to which they belonged. The period had also its corals, its Crustaceans, its molluscs, its fishes, and in some one or two exceptional instances its dwarf mammals. But the grand existence of the age— the existences in which it excelled every other creation, earlier or later, were its huge creeping things— its enormous monsters of the deep— and, as shown by the impressions of their footprints stamped upon the rocks, its gigantic birds. It was peculiarly, the age of eggbearing animals, winged and wingless. Its wonderful whales, not, however, as now, of the mammalian, but of the reptilian class — ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and cetiosaurs — must have tempested the deep ; its creeping lizards and crocodiles, such as the teliosaurus, megalosaurus, and iguanodon — creatures some of which more than rivalled the existing elephant in height, and greatly more than rivalled him in bulk — must have crowded the plains or haunted by myriads the river's of that period ; and we know that the footprints of at least one of its many birds are of fully twice the size of those made by the horse or camel. We are thus prepared to demonstrate, that the second period of the geologist was peculiarly and characteristically a period of whale-like reptiles of the sea, of enormous creeping reptiles of the land, and of numerous birds, some of them of gigantic size ; and, in meet accordance with, the fact, we find that the second Mosaic period with which the geologist is called on to deal was a period in which God created the fowl that flieth above the earth, with moving [or creeping] creatures, both in the waters and on the land, and what our translation renders great whales, but that I find rendered in" the margin great sea-mon-sters. . '

The tertiary period had also its prominent class of existences. Its flora seems to have been no more conspicuous than that of the present time; its reptiles occupy a, very subordinate place; but its beasts of the field were by far the most wonderfully developed, both in size and numbers, that ever appeared upon earth. Its mammoths and its mastodons, its rhinpceri and its hippopotami, its enormous dinotherium and colossal megatheriums greatly more than equalled in bulk the hugest mammals fif the present time, and vastly exceeded them in number. The remains of one of its elephants (Elephas primigenius) are still so abundant amid the frozen wastes of Siberia, that what have been not inappropriately termed "ivory quarries'' have been wrought among their bones for more than a hundred years. Even in our own country, of which, as I have already shown, this elephant was for long ages a native, so abundant are the skeletons and tusks, that there is scarcely a local museum in the kingdom that has not its specimens, dug out of the Pleistocene deposits of the neighbourhood. And with this ancient elephant there were meetly associated in Britain, as on the northern continents generally all around the globe, many, other mammals of corresponding magnitude. " Grand in. deed," says an English naturalist, " was the fauna of the British islands in those early days. Tigers as large 1 again as the biggest Asiatic species lurked in the ancient thickets ; elephants of nearly twice the bulk of. the largest individuals that now exist in Africa or; Ceylon roamed in herds; at least two species of rhinoceros forced their way through the primeval forest ; and the lakes and rivers were tenanted by hippopotami as bulky, and with as great tusks as those of Africa."' The massive cave-bear and large cave-hyaena belonged to the same formidable group, with at least two species of great oxen (Bos longifrons and Bos primigenius), with a horse of smaller size, and an elk (Megaceros Hibernicus) that stood ten feet four inches in height. Truly this Tertiary age — this third and last of the great geologic periods — was peculiarly the age of great " beasts of the earth after their kind, and of cattle after their kind.''

How Moses came to speak of each successsve creation' as a "day" may be considered from a theory (suggested by Mr. Miller, though not altogether novel), that the .ancient prophet was cast into a trance, and .that the Divine Being caused.a representation of each era to pasp before him in a vision. Here is the passage f in which the remarkable Hypothesis is elaborated : — • % " - * , moses' , -Vision of the creations. Let us suppose that it took' place far from' man,

[in an untrodden, leqesk \ of v "the. .desert, ere yet the. vision of the bunupgtbjwih hadf 'teen, youch-, s,afed,;*and*that,,as in,thp;j^siqri^ t f 'Stl jqhn.in,Patmos,,VjOiceß,were mjngledjvjrtti^sce^esj and, the : ear as certainly addressed as the eye. A .." great darkness" first falbjiiiponthepsophet, }ike,that which in an earlier age fell upon .Abraham, but ■ without the "horror;" and as the Divine -Spirit moves on the faceof the wildly troubled waters^ as. a, visible aurora envelopedby the pitchy cloud,, the. great, doctrine is orally^ enunciated, that "in the beginning ■God created^ the Heayens and the earth." Unreckoned ages, , condensed in the vision into a' few brief moments ( pass away; the creative voice is again heard, "Let there Delight,''' and straightway agr&y, diffused light > springs vup-in the east, and casting its' sickly' gleam over a" cloud-limited expanse of steaming, vaporous sea, journeys through the heavens towards the -west. One heavy, sunless day is made the representative of 1 myriads ; the faint light waxes fainter — it sinks beneath the dim, undefined horizon; the first scene of the drama closes upon the seer, and he sits a while on his hill top in darkness, solitary but not sad, in what seems to be a calm and starless night.

The light again brightens— it is day;,. and over an expanse of ocean without visible boun}d the horizon has become wider and sharper of outline than before: • There is life in that great sea — invertebrate, mayhap > also ichthyic, life ; but from the comparative distance of the point in view occupied by the prophet, only the slow roll of its waves can be discerned, as they rise and fall in. long undulations before a gentle gale, and what most strongly impresses the eye is the change which has taken place in the atmospheric scenery. That lower stratum of the heavens occupied in the previous vision by seething steam, or grey smoke-like fog, is clear and transparent; and only in an upper region, where the previously invisible vapour of the tepid sea has thickened in the cold, do the clouds appear. But there, in the higher strata of the atmosphere they lie, thick and manifold — an upper sea of great waves, separated from those beneath by the trans-

parent firmament, and, like them, too, impelled in rolling masses by the wind. A mighty advance has taken place in creation ; but its most conspicuous optical sign is the existence of a transparent atmosphere, of a firmament stretched out over the earth, that separates the waters above from the waters below. But darkness descends the third time upon the seer, for the evening and the morning have completed the second day.

Yet again the light rfses under a canopy of cloud; but the scene has changed, and there is no longer an unbroken expanse of sea. The white surf breaks at the distant horizon, on an insulated reef, formed mayhap by the Silurian or Old Red coral zoophytes ages before, during tlie bygone yesterday ; and beats in long lines of foam, nearer at hand, against a low winding shore, the seaward barrier of a widely spread country. But at the Divine command, the land has arisen from the deep — not inconspicuously and in scattered islets, as at an earlier time, but in extensive though flat and marshy continents, little raised over the sea level ; and a yet further flat has covered them with the great carboniferous flora. The scene is one of mighty forests, of cone-hearing trees— of palms, and tree-fern's,* and gigantic club mosses, on the opener slopes',' and of great reeds clustering by the sides of quiet lakes and dark rolling rivers. There is deep gloom in the recesses of the thicker woods, and low thick mists creep along the dank marsh or sluggish stream. But there is a general lightening of the sky overhead ; as the day declines, a redder flush than had hitherto lighted up the prospect falls athwart fern covered bank and long withdrawing glade. And while the fourth evening has fallen on the prophet/vh* becomes sensible, as it wears on; and the fuiKty 'tfawn approaches, that yet another change has taken place. The Creator has spoken, and the stars look out from openings of dark unclouded blue ; and as day rises, and the planet of morning pales in the east, the broken cloudlets are transmuted from bronze into gold, and anon the gold becomes fire, and at length the glorious sun arises out of the sea, and enters on his course rejoicing. It is a brilliant day ; the waves, of a deep er and softer blue than, before, dance and sparkle in the light; the earth, with little else to attract the gaze, has' assumed a garb of brighter green"; and as the sun declines amid even richer glories than those which had encircled his rising, the moon appears full-orbed in the east — to the human eye the second great luminary of the heavens — and climbs slowly to ,the zenith as night advances, shedding its mild radiance' on land and sea.

Again jthe day breaks ;,, the prospect consists, as before, of land and ocean. There are great pine woods, reed-covered swamps, wide plains, winding rivers, and broad lakes ; and a bright sun shines over all. But the landscape derives its interest and novelty from a feature unmarked before. Gigantic birds stalk along the sands, or wade far into the water in quest of their ichthyic food, while birds of lesser size float upon the lakes, dr scream discordant in hovering flocks, thick as insects in the calm of a summer evening over the narrower seas, or brighten with the sunlit gleam of their wings the thick woods. And ocean has its monsters ; great " tanninim'' tempest the deep as they heave their huge bulk over the surface, to inhale the life-sustaining air ; and out of their nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a " seething pot or caldron." Monstrous creatures, armed in massive scales, haunt the rivers, or scour the flat rank meadows ; earth, air, and water are charged with animal, life, and the sun sets on a busy scene, in which unerring instinct pursues .unremittingly its few simple ends— the support and preservation of the individual, .propagation of the species, and the protection and maintenance of the young.

>Again the night descends, for, the fifth day has closed; and morning breaks on ( the; sixth and last day of creation.. Cattle and beasts of the field graze on the plains; the thick-skinned rhinoceros wallows in the-marshes'j, the squat 1 hippopotamus rustles among the reeds," or -plunges -sullenly into

theriver ; great herds of elephants seek their. food amid-the young herbage of the Wods ; while animals of fiercer "nature— the lion, the leopard, and the'bear— harbour in deep caves till the evening, or lie' in wait for their prey amid tangled thickets, or beneath some broken bank. At length as the day wanes and the shadows lengthen, man, the responsible lord of creation, formed in God's own image, is introduced upon the scene, and the work of creation'ceases for ever upon the face of the earth. The night falls once more upon the prospect, and there dawns yet another morrow— the morrow of God's rest — that- Divine Sabbath in which there is no more creative labour, and which, " blessed and sanctified 1 ' beyond all the days that had gone before, has as its special object the moral elevation and final redemption of man. And over it no evening is represented in the record as falling, for its special work is not yet complete. Such seems to have been the sublime panorama of creation exhibited in vision of old to " The shepherd who first taught the chosen seed, In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of chaos ;" and, rightly understood, I know not a single scientific truth that militates against even the minutest or least prominent of its details.

'urgehi^e^to/^M^biirfstb^V^oWri-'al " mariiief^rri6h ji ex&# r ' tny^com£kss?oiF and "s-yrnpkfftf b^^eVe^otndrdef { ? decfer* e*T fcis'irtteD ' itiabiftty ' Troitf o^BaWioiiF6F .pWce^dih'g- with 1 "' It is (Jtfite°t'i-y'tl^e'tWpresMfrtgMagrstrafe 'wW ' anxious,' f fo*; r 'the'"sake 6P tYie> Jury and - wfarie'ssesy'rnosli' 8f 'thtf'Tatt'er' being'shepherds and 1 flockowriefs-'fronp' distant parfe 'of' the Province, tfc* conclude 'the ca'se'on>'thd first day, r as it was supposed-- i&afi two or three 1 hours ■more would 'suffice for>tfaat object':- but it was -only after cohsuMngi ther wishes of the Jury andi -the counsellor ;the plaintiff, who unani"motisly- urged; His.wdrsMp: to- go on, that he felt .'justified an deciding: that ■ there should be no -permanent adjournment. At a farther period of the evenings his compassion for the used-up solicitor for the' defence -'.overcame every other, consideration,! and, to the great regret of the Jury and opposite counsel, adjourned the case until the following day. 2nd. Mr. Johnston's next assertion • is, that at a future period 1 he founds it necessary to push the presidin-g Magistrate to receive his appeal in the case before he would receive it. This P Wuld'be apt'to designate, in language somewhat akin to the composition of my learned friend's production, as an unblushing-false-hood, because I was perfectly, cognizant of the whole arrangements subsequent to the trial, and can state, to the reception of the appeal there was not the slightest difficulty or objection offered.

I may state, however, that it is a necessary element in an appeal under the Extension of Jurisdiction Ordinance that the appellant must " give such security as the Court shall deem sufficient for the sum required to meet the whole costs of the action and appeal ;" and if Mr. Johnston had wished to state the whole truth he would have added a little narrative of what occurred with regard to this part of the subject, the particulars of which, as an officer of the Court, I am precluded from giving-

3rd. Mr. Johnston has next the temerity to hazard the assertion, that in the communings about the appeal the presiding Magistrate used language indicating want of respect to the gallant officer to whom her Majesty has entrusted the government of this gem of the antipodes.

Now this is going too far. Mr. Johnston is apparently urged by some under-current of motives to take away by his poisonous pen the character of a public officer of fifteen years' standing. Bat the poisoned arrow will fall harmless. Public opinion is a much better shield than Mr. Johnston anticipates, and Mr. Strode is too well known by every one in the settlement to require me to speak on his behalf. Flatly, Mr. Johnston, I do. not believe you, and lam confident no other body will. But you will have to give a better account of this anon before another tribunal. And to the tender mercies of his Honor the Chief Justice I will leave you. . i, 4th. The only othercharge against the presiding Magistrate in the letter of your correspondent is that he, the Magistrate, believed and acted upon the faot'that the equity element was not excluded from the Extended Jurisdiction Act. To use a favourite and elegant expression of the solicitor for the defendant, I think he is trying to cut his own throat, or the throat of his client, in bringing this charge. If the judgment of the Resident Magistrate had not been partially founded on an equitable view of the case, the verdict of the jury should have carried full costs ; whereas, in consequence of his Worship having looked with a sympathetic eye to the defendant's position, he ruled that the verdict should only carry three-fourths of the costs, thus saving. to him a matter of £20 ( or £30. Perhaps if the appeal should result in the granting of a new trial, which is not very probable, it might be a matter of consideration for the defendant whether it would be beneficial to have the case conducted by one who works so manfully to undermine .the position taken by the Resident Magistrate when he decided that the defendant should pay £20 or £30 less than he would have done if the judgment had been founded on Law alone. ' I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, ROBERT CHAPMAN, ; Clerk to the Bench.