We should scarcely have believed that men of grave and scientific minds could have given credence to such absurdities, if the fact was not unquestionably substantiated, that these systems were for a time extremely popular among the wise as well as the foolish. Other writers adopted the hypothesis of Kepler, which so far as our understanding can inform us, is the most absurd of the whole. His disciples say the globe has vital powers; each of its component parts, life, instinct, will; mountains are its organs of respiration, and schists the secreting organs; sea-water is decomposed by these to engender volcanoes; the veins of mines are the abscesses of the mineral kingdom; the metals, the production of putrefaction, and this accounts for their bad smell.

While men of science were indulging in these wild systems, it is not at all to be wondered at, that the doctrine of atoms, with all its train of atheistical notions, frequently gained proselytes, as it is unquestionably conceived with more ingenuity, and has an air of greater plausibility than most of the theories which have been placed in comparison with it.

The Count de Buffon treats these hypotheses with sufficient contempt, and then offers an imaginary theory of his own, not at all better than some of those he ridicules. He held that the earth, as well as the other planets, were portions of the body of the sun separated by the force of some comet falling into its mass; that they were in a state of fusion when thus separated from that body, and naturally assumed the form of spheres, as they rolled through space, those forms being produced by the nature of their motion; that the projectile force received from the comet gave these spheres their centrifugal tendency; the oblique manner in which the stroke was received, is the cause why the axis of the planet does not move at right-angles to the plane of its orbit, and why it spins on its axis in diurnal revolution. Now if the earth, (we leave the other planets to themselves,) was altogether fluid at the time of its separation, we should be inclined to think that an oblique stroke upon this fluid substance would tend still further to separate the parts of the mass, rather than to put the whole in circular motion. We are, however, aware, that this difficulty could be as easily removed as many others which the Count has disposed of, by imagining the mass to be exactly in that state of consistency, that the parts would rather cohere than separate in spite of the shock.

That the earth is an oblate spheroid, and that this form is produced by the nature of its motion; that it revolves on its axis in the twenty-four hours, and that the pole of its diurnal motion is oblique

to the plane of the ecliptic, we all know. That it was fluid or rather in a gaseous form at first, as La Place supposes, we think more than probable. But why should a comet be supposed to be the agent in its formation? What does philosophy gain by this supposition unsupported by proof? Would it not have been as easy to suppose that the sun threw off the mass of matter, constituting the earth, by the energy of some force inherent in itself, or to suppose a hundred other things as plausible, if we once launch into the region of probabilities and possibilities? We are surely bound by the common rules of philosophy not to resort to the immediate agency of the Creator when events can be accounted for by secondary causes. But we must have some evidence that these secondary agents, from qualities known to exist in themselves, were at least efficient for the production of such results, or that something like similar results have been proved to arise from their action. It has been demonstrated for example, that the attraction of the moon is the cause of the rise and fall of the tides of the ocean. It would not be very visionary to attribute the deluges which have inundated the world partly to the changes in her relative position and motion. The moon is the only body, except in a minor degree, the sun, under whose influence the tides exist. But the Count is forced, at the outset, to invent a new attribute for his comet-the power of altering the state of the matter composing the body of the sun, so as to strike off portions of it. His very first step is gratuitous assumption. Would it not have been as easy, and far more natural to suppose that the hand, which created the matter composing our earth, communicated directly the centrifugal tendency, as to conjecture that he sent forth the comet on its course, commissioned for the purpose ? Is it not more natural, as well as more consonant to reason to assume that the axis of the earth was inclined to the plane of its orbit, with a view to the changes of the seasons, of which this motion is confessedly the cause? Why, then, should we attribute it to the accidental stroke of a comet ?

Nothing is more calculated to retard the progress of science than the false opinions of a celebrated writer, because his name gives authority to the error. Happily, however, the systems of the Count de Buffon have been long exploded. We have noticed him more particularly here, because he was the great predecessor of our author in the science of natural history as well as in renown, and because we believe his great reputation, (though we do not dispute his merit as a writer of eloquence and sagacity,) to be attributable, in no small degree, to his fondness for new systems. This air of system and novelty so

cheaply earned, has an irresistible charm for many readers, and, however injurious to the cause of science, it is weli calculated to command popularity for a time. We do not mean, however, to class the Count de Buffon with mere system makers; we accord to him all the praise to which transcendent abilities and a vast range of information entitle him, and we attribute the defects of his work very much to the imperfect degree of knowledge possessed on these subjects at the time he wrote. But we also think that too great a love of system has materially impaired the usefulness of his otherwise magnificent production.

There is no branch of natural philosophy more calculated to interest the inquisitive mind than the one before us. Our author has not investigated the nature and forms of organized matter only as they now exist. In his geological and zoological researches, he has carried us back to those early periods of the world, when man had not yet been created-at least, so far as we can philosophically know-and strange and monstrous beings occupied the habitable surface of our planet. It appears, from his researches, together with those of other philosophers, that there was a period when the earth was but a solid mass of granite and water, without vegetation or life. At the next period, as indicated by the strata, it was occupied by zoophytes and mollusca, and, probably, the land was covered with vegetation and reptiles. At later periods, the leviathan and behemoth possessed it, unchecked and unawed by the presence of man; and it is only after the last deluge, and in the more superficial strata formed since that event, that the bones, either of man or the quadrumana, have been found, clearly indicating, so far as we possess any geological evidence of the facts, that neither of these races of animals previously existed in the countries which are now inhabited by them. It is, however, very possible, geologically considered, that man may have existed before this last deluge, (which we take to have been that of Noah,) and that the countries which he then inhabited, may now lie at the bottom of the ocean. In all probability, the sea then shifted its bed on account of some change in the direction of the moon's attraction, by some alteration in the relative position of the earth, in reference both to that body and the sun, and this may be supposed to have been the immediate cause of the deluge; or, perhaps, as many respectable writers think, by the sinking of the surface of the land in those regions and elevation in others, through the agency of earthquakes, &c. That some such event did occur at the time, and that it was sudden, is VOL. VIIL-NO. 15.

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proved by many circumstances which have been brought to light by recent researches. One of the most remarkable facts ever recorded in history or philosophy as an evidence of these changes we will take the liberty to insert:

"In 1799, a Tongoose fisherman, observed, on the borders of the Icy-sea, near the mouth of the Lena, in the midst of the fragments of ice, a shapeless mass of something, the nature of which he could not conjecture. The next year, he observed that this mass was a little more disengaged. Towards the end of the following summer the en tire side of the animal, and one of the tusks, became distinctly visible. In the fifth year the ice being melted earlier than usual, this enormous mass was cast upon the coast, upon a bank of sand. The fisherman possessed himself of the tusks, which he sold for fifty rubles. Two years after, Mr. Adams, associate of the academy of St. Petersburgh, who was travelling with Count Golovkin, on an embassy to China, having heard of this discovery at Yakutsk, repaired immediately to the spot. He found the animal already greatly mutilated. The flesh had partly been cut away by the Yakoots for their dogs, and some of it had been devoured by wild beasts. Still the skeleton was entire, with the exception of a fore-leg. The spine of the back, a shoulder-blade, the pelvis, and the rest of the extremities were still united by the ligaments and a portion of the skin. The other shoulder-blade was found at some distance. The head was covered with a dry skin, one of the ears, in high preservation, was furnished with a tuft of hair, and the pupil of the eye was still discernible. The brain was found in the cranium, but in a state of desiccation. The under lip had been torn, and the upper one being utterly destroyed, left the molars visible. The neck was furnished with a long mane. The skin was covered with black hairs, and with a reddish sort of wool. The remains were so heavy that ten persons had much difficulty in removing them. More than thirty pounds of hair and bristles were carried away, which had been sunk into the humid soil by the white bears, when devouring the flesh. The animal was a male. The tusks were more than nine feet long, and the head, without the tusks, weighed more than four hundred pounds. Mr. Adams collected, with the utmost care, all the remains of this singular and valuable relic of a former creation. He repurchased the tusks at Yakutsk, and received for the whole, from the Emperor Alexander, eight thousand rubles."*

The animal above mentioned proved to be the mammoth of the Russians, or fossil elephant of geologists, but differing from any species of elephant now in existence, not only in form, but also in being covered with long hair and a thick wool, and having a mane. The remains of these animals are so numerous in those icy regions, that the Siberians carry on a profitable trade

* See Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, edited, &c. by Ed. Griffith and others. Part iii. p. 52.

in the fossil tusks, which they call the horns of the mammoth. Indeed, this trade was so lucrative at one time, that the Czars reserved to themselves the monopoly. The Siberians suppose these remains to belong to a subterraneous animal, and the Chinese call it "the mouse that hides itself." They say it dies as soon as it sees the light.

The most important fact, gathered from the case of the animal found enveloped in the ice, is, that it must have been thus enclosed at the moment of its death, or the body could not have been preserved. That it was a native of the regions where the body was found is most probable, and that the climate was, at the time, a cold one, from its being clothed in wool.

This animal, then, was destroyed by a flood, for its body was found in the midst of the waters; the climate it inhabited at the time of its destruction, was warm enough to keep the waters in a fluid state, otherwise it could not have been buried in them; the temperature of the climate was changed simultaneously with the event that overwhelmed it, so as to turn the waters into ice, otherwise the body must have corrupted; and lastly, the freezing which took place at the time of its destruction, became from thence the permanent temperature of that climate down to the time of the discovery of the animal, in 1799.

It appears to us almost incontrovertible, that the event by which it was overwhelmed, was not only sudden, but could not have been produced by earthquakes, volcanoes, or any other of those known general agents, commonly at work on the surface of the globe.*

How came these waters so suddenly to overflow? Did the moon change her relative position as to the earth, or was the direction of the pole altered, with respect both to the sun and moon, so as to whelm that portion of land beneath the sea which had been previously inhabited, and by placing this region at the same time more remote from the influence of the sun, bind it thenceforward in perpetual ice? That some such event did occur, and that it must have been caused by some such extraordinary means, we cannot doubt. May not this have been the time, supposing man to have previously existed, when the pole of the earth's axis became inclined to the plane of the

The remains of the whole race in those regions shew, that the cause of their destruction was general. We are then justified in inferring that this individual perished in that general deluge, though it is certainly possible that it may have perished from some particular casualty before the inundation, which destroyed the race, such as being frozen to death on some floating mass of ice, and incased in frozen waves before putrefaction commenced, but we think it more philosophical to infer that they all perished by the same catastrophe. This animal. or the ice which enshrined it, may have been carried by the current a vast distance from its habitation before it became stationary.