CHAPTER XIV.

The Cornstone Formation and its Organisms.--Dwarf Vegetation.--_Cephalaspides._--Huge Lobster.--Habitats of the existing Crustacea.--No unapt representation of the Deposit of Balruddery, furnished by a land-locked Bay in the neighborhood of Cromarty.--Vast Space occupied by the Geological Formations.--Contrasted with the half-formed Deposits which represent the existing Creation.--Inference.--The formation of the _Holoptychius_.--Probable origin of its Siliceous Limestone.--Marked increase in the Bulk of the Existences of the System.--Conjectural Cause.--The Coal Measures.--The Limestone of Burdie House Conclusion.

The curtain rises, and the scene is new. The myriads of the lower formation have disappeared, and we are surrounded, on an upper platform, by the existences of a later creation. There is sea all around, as before; and we find beneath a dark-colored, muddy bottom, thickly covered by a dwarf vegetation. The circumstances diner little from those in which the ichthyolite beds of the preceding period were deposited; but forms of life, essentially different, career through the green depths, or creep over the ooze. Shoals of _Cephalaspides_, with their broad, arrow-like heads, and their slender, angular bodies, feathered with fins, sweep past like clouds of crossbow bolts in an ancient battle. We see the distant gleam of scales, but the forms are indistinct and dim: we can merely ascertain that the fins are elevated by spines of various shape and pattern; that of some the coats glitter with enamel; and that others--the sharks of this ancient period--bristle over with minute thorny points. A huge crustacean, of uncouth proportions, stalks over the weedy bottom, or burrows in the hollows of the banks.

Let us attempt bringing our knowledge of the present to bear upon the past. The larger crustaceæ of the British seas abound most on iron-bound coasts, where they find sheltering places in the deeper fissures of sea-cliffs covered up by kelp and tangle, or under the lower edges of detached boulders, that rest unequally on uneven platforms of rock, amid forests of the rough-stemmed cuvy. We may traverse sandy or muddy shores for miles together, without rinding a single crab, unless a belt of pebbles lines the upper zone of beach, where the forked and serrated fuci first appear, or a few weed-covered fragments of rock here and there occur in groups on the lower zones. In this formation, however, the bottom must have been formed of mingled sand and mud, and yet the crustacea were abundant. How account for the fact? There is, in most instances, an interesting conformity between the character of the ancient rocks, in which we find groups of peculiar fossils, and the habitats of those existences of the present creation which these fossils most resemble. The fisherman casts his nets in a central hollow of the Moray Frith, about thirty fathoms in depth, and draws them up foul with masses of a fetid mud, charged with multitudes of that curious purple-colored zoophyte the sea-pen, invariably an inhabitant of such recesses. The graptolite of the most ancient fossiliferous rocks, an existence of unequivocally the same type, occurs in greatest abundance in a finely-levigated mudstone, for it, too, was a dweller in the mud. In like manner, we may find the ancient Modiola of the Lias in habitats analogous to those of its modern representative the muscle, and the encrinite of the Mountain Limestone fast rooted to its rocky platform, just as we may see the Helianthoida and Ascidioida of our seas fixed to their boulders and rocky skerries. But is not analogy at fault in the present instance? Quite the reverse. Mark how thickly these carbonaceous impressions cover the muddy-colored and fissile sandstones of the formation, giving evidence of an abundant vegetation. We may learn from these obscure markings, that the place in which they grew could have been no unfit habitat for the crustaceous tribes.

There is a little, land-locked bay on the southern shore of the Frith of Cromarty, effectually screened from the easterly winds by the promontory on which the town is built, and but little affected by those of any other quarter, from the proximity of the neighboring shores. The bottom, at low ebb, presents a level plain of sand, so thickly covered by the green grass-weed of our more sheltered sandy bays and estuaries, that it presents almost the appearance of a meadow. The roots penetrate the sand to the depth of nearly a foot, binding it firmly together; and as they have grown and decayed in it for centuries, it has acquired, from the disseminated particles of vegetable matter, a deep leaden tint, more nearly approaching to black than even the dark gray mudstones of Balruddery. Nor is this the only effect: the intertwisted fibres impart to it such coherence, that, where scooped out into pools, the edges stand up perpendicular from the water, like banks of clay; and where these are hollowed into cave-like recesses,--and there are few of them that are not so hollowed,--the recesses remain unbroken and unfilled for years. The weeds have imparted to the sand a character different from its own, and have rendered it a suitable habitat for numerous tribes, which, in other circumstances, would have found no shelter in it. Now, among these we find in abundance the larger crustaceans of our coasts. The brown edible crab harbors in the hollows beside the pools; occasionally we may find in them an overgrown lobster, studded with parasitical shells and zoöphytes--proof that the creature, having attained its full size, has ceased to cast its plated covering. Crustaceans of the smaller varieties abound. Hermit crabs traverse the pools, or creep among the weed; the dark green and the dingy, hump-backed crabs occur nearly as frequently; the radiata cover the banks by thousands. We find occasionally the remains of dead fish left by the retreating tide; but the living are much more numerous than the dead; for the sand-eel has suffered the water to retire, and yet remained behind in its burrow; and the viviparous blenny and common gunnel still shelter beside their fuci-covered masses of rock. Imagine the bottom of this little bay covered up by thick beds of sand and gravel, and the whole consolidated into stone, and we have in it all the conditions of the deposit of Balruddery--a mud-colored, arenaceous deposit, abounding in vegetable impressions, and enclosing numerous remains of crustaceans, fish, and radiata, as its characteristic organisms of the animal kingdom. There would be but one circumstance of difference: the little bay abounds in shells; whereas no shells have yet been found in the mudstones of Balruddery, or the gray sandstones of the same formation, which in Forfar, Fife, and Moray shires represent the Cornstone division of the system.

Ages and centuries passed, but who can sum up their number? In England, the depth of this middle formation greatly exceeds that of any of the other two; in Scotland, it is much less amply developed; but in either country it must represent periods of scarce conceivable extent. I have listened to the controversies of opposite schools of geologists, who, from the earth's strata, extract registers of the earth's age of an amount amazingly different. One class, regarding the geological field as if under the influence of those principles of perspective which give to the cottage in front more than the bulk and altitude of the mountain behind, would assign to the present scene of things its thousands of years, but to all the extinct periods united merely their few centuries; while with their opponents, the remoter periods stretch out far into the bygone eternity, and the present scene seems but a narrow strip running along the foreground. Both classes appeal to facts; and, leaving them to their disputes, I have gone out to examine and judge for myself. The better to compare the present with the past, I have regarded the existing scene merely as a _formation_--not as superficies, but as depth; and have sought to ascertain the extent to which, in different localities, and under different circumstances, it has overlaid the surface.

The slopes of an ancient forest incline towards a river that flows sluggishly onwards through a deep alluvial plain, once an extensive lake. A recent landslip has opened up one of the hanging thickets. Uprooted trees, mingled with bushes, lie at the foot of the slope, half buried in broken masses of turf; and we see above a section of the soil, from the line of vegetation to the bare rock. There is an under belt of clay, and an upper belt of gravel, neither of which contains any thing organic; and overtopping the whole we may see a dark-colored bar of mould, barely a foot in thickness, studded with stumps and interlaced with roots. Mark that narrow bar: it is the geological representative of six thousand years. A stony bar of similar appearance runs through the strata of the Wealden: it, too, has its dingy color, its stumps, and its interlacing roots; but it forms only a very inconsiderable portion of one of the least considerable of all the formations; and yet who shall venture to say that it does not represent a period as extended as that represented by the dark bar in the ancient forest, seeing there is not a circumstance of difference between them?

We descend to the river side. The incessant action of the current has worn a deep channel through the leaden-colored silt; the banks stand up perpendicularly over the water, and downwards, for twenty feet together,--for such is the depth of the deposit,--we may trace layer after layer of reeds, and flags, and fragments of driftwood, and find here and there a few fresh-water shells of the existing species. In this locality, six thousand years are represented by twenty feet. The depth of the various fossiliferous formations united is at least fifteen hundred times as great.

We pursue our walk, and pass through a morass. Three tiers of forest trees appear in the section laid open by the stream, the one above the other. Overlying these there is a congeries of the remains of aquatic plants, which must have grown and decayed on the spot for many ages after the soil had so changed that trees could be produced by it no longer; and over the whole there occur layers of mosses, that must have found root on the surface after the waters had been drained away by the deepening channel of the river. The six thousand years are here represented by that morass, its three succeeding forests, its beds of aquatic vegetation, its bands of moss, and the thin stratum of soil which overlies the whole. Well, but it forms, notwithstanding, only the mere beginning of a formation. Pile up twenty such morasses, the one over the other; separate them by a hundred such bands of alluvial silt as we have just examined a little higher up the stream; throw in some forty or fifty thick beds of sand to swell the amount; and the whole together will but barely equal the Coal Measures, one of many formations.

But the marine deposits of the present creation have been, perhaps, accumulating more rapidly than those of our lakes, forests, or rivers? Yes, unquestionably, in friths and estuaries, in the neighborhood of streams that drain vast tracts of country, and roll down the soil and clay swept by the winter rains from thousands of hill-sides; but what is there to lead to the formation of sudden deposits in those profounder depths of the sea, in which the water retains its blue transparency all the year round, let the waves rise as they may? And do we not know that, along many of our shores, the process of accumulation is well nigh as slow as on the land itself? The existing creation is represented in the little land-locked bay, where the crustacea harbor so thickly, by a deposit hardly three feet in thickness. In a more exposed locality, on the opposite side of the promontory, it finds its representative in a deposit of barely nine inches. It is surely the present scene of things that is in its infancy! Into how slender a bulk have the organisms of six thousand years been compressed! History tells us of populous nations, now extinct, that flourished for ages: do we not find their remains crowded into a few streets of sepulchres? 'Tis but a thin layer of soil that covers the ancient plain of Marathon. I have stood on Bannockburn, and seen no trace of the battle. In what lower stratum shall we set ourselves to discover the skeletons of the wolves and bears that once infested our forests? Where shall we find accumulations of the remains of the wild bisons and gigantic elks, their contemporaries? They must have existed for but comparatively a short period, or they would surely have left more marked traces behind them.

When we appeal to the historians, we hear much of a remote antiquity in the history of man: a more than twilight gloom pervades the earlier periods; and the distances are exaggerated, as objects appear large in a fog. We measure, too, by a minute scale. There is a tacit reference to the threescore and ten years of human life; and its term of a day appears long to the ephemera. We turn from the historians to the prophets, and find the dissimilarity of style indicating a different speaker. Ezekiel's measuring-reed is graduated into cubits of the temple. The vast periods of the short-lived historian dwindled down into weeks and days. Seventy weeks indicated to Daniel, in the first year of Darius, the time of the Messiah's coming. Three years and a half limit the term of the Mohammedan delusion. Seventeen years have not yet gone by since Adam first arose from the mould; nor has the race, as such, attained to the maturity of even early manhood. But while prophecy sums up merely weeks and days, when it refers to the past, it looks forward into the future, and speaks of a thousand years. Are scales of unequally graduated parts ever used in measuring different portions of the same map or section--scales so very unequally graduated, that, while the parts in some places expand to the natural size, they are in others more than three hundred times diminished? If not,--for what save inextricable confusion would result from their use,--how avoid the conclusion, that the typical scale employed in the same book by the same prophet represents similar quantities by corresponding parts, whether applied to times of outrage, delusion, and calamity, or set off against that long and happy period in which the spirit of evil shall be bound in chains and darkness, and the kingdom of Christ shall have come? And if such be the case--if each single year of the thousand years of the future represents a term as extended as each single year of the seventeen years of the past--if the present scene of things be thus merely in its beginning--should we at all wonder to find that the formation which represents it has laid down merely its few first strata?

The curtain again rises. A last day had at length come to the period of the middle formation; and in an ocean roughened by waves, and agitated by currents, like the ocean which flowed over the conglomerate base of the system, we find new races of existences. We may mark the clumsy bulk of the _Holoptychius_ conspicuous in the group; the shark family have their representatives as before; a new variety of the _Pterichthys_ spreads out its spear-like wings at every alarm, like its predecessors of the lower formation; shoals of fish of a type more common, but still unnamed and undescribed, sport amid the eddies; and we may see attached to the rocks below substances of uncouth form and doubtful structure, with which the oryctologist has still to acquaint himself. The depositions of this upper ocean are of a mixed character: the beds are less uniform and continuous than at a greater depth. In some places they consist exclusively of sandstone, in others of conglomerate; and yet the sandstone and conglomerate seem, from their frequent occurrence on the same platform, to have been formed simultaneously. The transporting and depositing agents must have become more partial in their action than during the earlier period. They had their foci of strength and their circumferences of comparative weakness; and while the heavier pebbles which composed the conglomerate were in the course of being deposited in the foci, the lighter sand which composes the sandstone was settling in those outer skirts by which the foci were surrounded. At this stage, too, there are unequivocal marks, in the northern localities, of extensive denudation. The older strata are cut away in some places to a considerable depth, and newer strata of the same formation deposited unconformably over them. There must have been partial upheavings and depressions, corresponding with the partial character of the depositions; and, as a necessary consequence, frequent shiftings of currents. The ocean, too, seems to have lessened its general depth, and the bottom to have lain more exposed to the influence of the waves. And hence one cause, added to the porous nature of the matrix, and the diffused oxide, of the detached, and, if I may so express myself, churchyard character of its organisms.

Above the blended conglomerates and sandstones of this band a deposition of lime took place. Thermal springs, charged with calcareous matter slightly mixed with silex, seem to have abounded, during the period which it represents, over widely-extended areas; and hence, probably, its origin. An increase of heat from beneath, through some new activity imparted to the Plutonic agencies, would be of itself sufficient to account for the formation. I have resided in a district in which almost every spring was charged with calcareous earth; but in cisterns or draw-wells, or the utensils in which the housewife stored up for use the water which these supplied, no deposition took place. With boilers and tea-kettles, however, the case was different. The agency of heat was brought to operate upon these; and their sides and bottoms were covered, in consequence, with a thick crust of lime. Now, we have but to apply the simple principles on which such phenomena occur, to account for widely-spread precipitates of the same earth by either springs or seas, which at a lower temperature would have been active in the formation of mechanical deposits alone. The temperature sunk gradually to its former state; the purely chemical deposit ceased; the waters became populous as before with animals of the same character and appearance as those of the upper conglomerate; and layer after layer of yellow sandstone, to the depth of several hundred feet, were formed as the period passed. With this upper deposit the system terminated.

Though fish still remained the lords of creation, and fish of apparently no superior order to those with which the vertebrata began at least three formations earlier, they had mightily advanced in one striking particular. If their organization was in no degree more perfect than at first, their bulk at least had become immensely more great. The period had gone by in which a mediocrity of dimension characterized the existences of the ancient oceans, and fish armed offensively and defensively with scales and teeth scarcely inferior in size to the scales and teeth of the gavial or the alligator, sprung into existence. It must have been a large jaw and a large head that contained, doubtless among many others, a tooth an inch in diameter at the base. I may remark, in the passing, that most of the teeth found in the several formations of the system are not instruments of mastication, but, like those in most of the existing fish, mere hooks for penetrating slippery substances, and thus holding them fast. The rude angler who first fashioned a crooked bone, or a bit of native silver or copper, into a hook, might have found his invention anticipated in the jaws of the first fish he drew ashore by its means; and we find the hook structure as complete in the earlier ichthyolites of the Old Red Sandstone as in the fish that exist now. The evidence of the geologist is of necessity circumstantial evidence, and he need look for none other; but it is interesting to observe how directly the separate facts bear, in many examples, on one and the same point. The hooked and slender teeth tell exactly the same story with the undigested scales in the fœcal remains alluded to in an early chapter.

In what could this increase in bulk have originated? Is there a high but yet comparatively medium temperature in which animals attain their greatest size, and corresponding gradations of descent on both sides, whether we increase the heat until we reach the point at which life can no longer exist, or diminish it until we arrive at the same result from intensity of cold? The line of existence bisects on both sides the line of extinction. May it not probably form a curve, descending equally from an elevated centre to the points of bisection on the level of death? But whatever may have been the cause, the change furnishes another instance of analogy between the progress of individuals and of orders. The shark and the sword-fish begin to exist as little creatures of a span in length; they expand into monsters whose bodies equal in hugeness the trunks of ancient oaks; and thus has it been with the order to which they belong. The teeth, spines, and palatal bones of the fish of the Upper Ludlow Rocks are of almost microscopic minuteness; an invariable mediocrity of dimension characterizes the ichthyolites of the Lower Old Red Sandstone; a marked increase in size takes place among the existences of the middle formation; in the upper the bulky _Holoptychius_ appears; the close of the system ushers in the still bulkier Megalichthys; and low in the Coal Measures we find the ponderous bones, buckler-like scales, and enormous teeth of another and immensely more gigantic _Holoptychius_--a creature pronounced by Agassiz the largest of all osseous fish.[BF] We begin with an age of dwarfs--we end with an age of giants. The march of Nature is an onward and an ascending march; the stages are slow, but the tread is stately; and to Him who has commanded, and who overlooks it, a thousand years are as but a single day, and a single day as a thousand years.[BG]

[Footnote BF: There have been fish scales found in Burdie House five inches in length, by rather more than four in breadth. Of the gigantic _Holoptychius_ of this deposit we have still much to learn. The fragment of a jaw, in the possession of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which belonged to an individual of the species, is 18½ inches in length; and it is furnished with teeth, one of which, from base to point, measures five inches, and another four and a half.]

[Footnote BG: See, on this subject, the introductory note to the present edition, and note p. 154.]

We have entered the Coal Measures. For seven formations together--from the Lower Silurian to the Upper Old Red Sandstone--our course has lain over oceans without a visible shore, though, like Columbus, in his voyage of discovery, we have now and then found a little floating weed, to indicate the approaching coast. The water is fast shallowing. Yonder passes a broken branch, with the leaves still unwithered; and there floats a tuft of fern. Land, from the mast-head! land! land!--a low shore, thickly covered with vegetation. Huge trees, of wonderful form, stand out far into the water. There seems no intervening beach. A thick hedge of reeds, tall as the masts of pinnaces, runs along the deeper bays, like water-flags at the edge of a lake. A river of vast volume comes rolling from the interior, darkening the water for leagues with its slime and mud, and bearing with it, to the open sea, reeds, and fern, and cones of the pine, and immense floats of leaves, and now and then some bulky tree, undermined and uprooted by the current. We near the coast, and now enter the opening of the stream. A scarce penetrable phalanx of reeds, that attain to the height and well nigh the bulk of forest trees, is ranged on either hand. The bright and glossy stems seem rodded like Gothic columns; the pointed leaves stand out green at every joint, tier above tier, each tier resembling a coronal wreath or an ancient crown, with the rays turned outwards; and we see a-top what may be either large spikes or catkins. What strange forms of vegetable life appear in the forest behind! Can that be a club-moss that raises its slender height for more than fifty feet from the soil? Or can these tall, palm-like trees be actually ferns, and these spreading branches mere fronds? And then these gigantic reeds!--are they not mere varieties of the common horse-tail of our bogs and morasses, magnified some sixty or a hundred times? Have we arrived at some such country as the continent visited by Gulliver, in which he found thickets of weeds and grass tall as woods of twenty years' growth, and lost himself amid a forest of corn, fifty feet in height? The lesser vegetation of our own country, reeds, mosses, and ferns, seems here as if viewed through a microscope: the dwarfs have sprung up into giants, and yet there appears to be no proportional increase in size among what are unequivocally its trees. Yonder is a group of what seem to be pines--tall and bulky, 'tis true, but neither taller nor bulkier than the pines of Norway and America; and the club-moss behind shoots up its green, hairy arms, loaded with what seems catkins above their topmost cones. But what monster of the vegetable world comes floating down the stream--now circling round in the eddies, now dancing on the ripple, now shooting down the rapid? It resembles a gigantic star-fish, or an immense coach-wheel, divested of the rim. There is a green, dome-like mass in the centre, that corresponds to the nave of the wheel, or the body of the star-fish; and the boughs shoot out horizontally on every side, like spokes from the nave, or rays from the central body. The diameter considerably exceeds forty feet; the branches, originally of a deep green, are assuming the golden tinge of decay; the cylindrical and hollow leaves stand out thick on every side, like prickles of the wild rose on the red, fleshy, lance-like shoots of a year's growth, that will be covered, two seasons hence, with flowers and fruit. That strangely formed organism presents no existing type among all the numerous families of the vegetable kingdom. There is an amazing luxuriance of growth all around us. Scarce can the current make way through the thickets of aquatic plants that rise thick from the muddy bottom; and though the sunshine falls bright on the upper boughs of the tangled forest beyond, not a ray penetrates the more than twilight gloom that broods over the marshy platform below. The rank steam of decaying vegetation forms a thick blue haze, that partially obscures the underwood; deadly lakes of carbonic acid gas have accumulated in the hollows; there is silence all around, uninterrupted save by the sudden splash of some reptile fish that has risen to the surface in pursuit of its prey, or when a sudden breeze stirs the hot air, and shakes the fronds of the giant ferns or the catkins of the reeds. The wide continent before us is a continent devoid of animal life, save that its pools and rivers abound in fish and mollusca, and that millions and tens of millions of the infusory tribes swarm in the bogs and marshes. Here and there, too, an insect of strange form flutters among the leaves. It is more than probable that no creature furnished with lungs of the more perfect construction could have breathed the atmosphere of this early period, and have lived.

Doubts have been entertained whether the limestone of Burdie House belongs to the Upper Old Red Sandstone or to the inferior Coal Measures. And the fact may yet come to be quoted as a very direct proof of the ignorance which obtained regarding the fossils of the older formation, at a time when the organisms of most of the other formations, both above and below it, had been carefully explored. The Limestone of Burdie House is unequivocally and most characteristically a Coal Measure limestone. It abounds in vegetable remains of terrestrial or lacustrine growth, and these, too, the vegetables common to the Coal Measures--ferns, reeds, and club-mosses. One can scarce detach a fragment from the mass, that has not its leaflet or seed-cone enclosed, and in a state of such perfect preservation, that there can be no possibility of mistaking its character. If in reality a marine deposit, it must have been formed in the immediate neighborhood of a land covered with vegetation. The dove set loose by Noah bore not back with it a less equivocal sign that the waters had abated. Now, in the Upper Old Red Sandstone none of these plants occur. The deposit is exclusively an ocean deposit, and the remains in Scotland, until we arrive at its inferior and middle formations, are exclusively animal remains. Its upper member, "the yellow sandstone," says Dr. Anderson, of Newburgh, "does not exhibit a single particle of carbonaceous matter--no trace or film of a branch having been detected in it, though, if such in reality existed, there are not wanting opportunities of obtaining specimens in some one of the twenty or thirty quarries which have been opened in the county of Fife in this deposit alone." No two bordering formations in the geological scale have their boundaries better defined by the character of their fossils than the Old Red Sandstone and the Coal Measures.

We pursue our history no further. Its after course is comparatively well known. The huge sauroid fish was succeeded by the equally huge reptile--the reptile by the bird--the bird by the marsupial quadruped; and at length, after races higher in the scale of instinct had taken precedence in succession, the one of the other, the sagacious elephant appeared, as the lord of that latest creation which immediately preceded our own. How natural does the thought seem which suggested itself to the profound mind of Cuvier, when indulging in a similar review! Has the last scene in the series arisen, or has Deity expended his infinitude of resource, and reached the ultimate stage of progression at which perfection can arrive? The philosopher hesitated, and then decided in the negative, for he was too intimately acquainted with the works of the Omnipotent Creator to think of limiting his power; and he could, therefore, anticipate a coming period in which man would have to resign his post of honor to some nobler and wiser creature--the monarch of a better and happier world. How well it is, to be permitted to indulge in the expansion of Cuvier's thought, without sharing in the melancholy of Cuvier's feeling--to be enabled to look forward to the coming of a new heaven and a new earth, not in terror, but in hope--to be encouraged to believe in the system of unending progression, but to entertain no fear of the degradation or deposition of man! The adorable Monarch of the future, with all its unsummed perfection, has already passed into the heavens, flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone, and Enoch and Elias are there with him--fit representatives of that dominant race, which no other race shall ever supplant or succeed, and to whose onward and upward march the deep echoes of eternity shall never cease to respond.

ICHTHYOLITES OF THE OLD RED SANDSTONE.

FROM

AGASSIZ'S "POISSONS FOSSILES."

∵ The synonymes here--now supplanted, however--with the names of a few doubtful or fictitious species, are given in _Italics_;--the former opposite the names ultimately adopted, the latter immediately under the names of the determined species.

Acanthodes pusillus. Actinolepis tuberculatus. Asterolepis Asmusii.--Syn. _Chelonichthys Asmusii_. " apicalis. " granulata. " Hœninghausii. " Malcolmsoni. " minor.--Syn. _Chelonichthys minor_. " ornata. " speciosa. " _concatenatus_. " _depressus_.

Bothriolepis favosa.--Syn. _Glyptosteus favosus_. " ornata " " _reticulatus_ Byssacanthus arcuatus. " crenulatus. " lævis.

Cephalaspis Lewisii. " Lloydii. " Lyellii. " rostratus.

Cheiracanthus microlepidotus. " minor. " Murchisoni. Cheirolepis Cummingiæ. " Traillii. " Uragus. " _splendens_. " _unilateralis_. Chelyophorus pustulatus. " Verneuilii. Cladodus simplex. Climatius reticulatus. Coccosteus cuspidatus. " decipiens.--Syn. _latus_. " maximus. " oblongus. Cosmacanthus Malcolmsoni. Cricodus incurvus.--Syn. _Dendrodus incurvus_. Ctenacanthus ornatus. " serrulatus. Ctenodus Keyserlingii. " marginalis. " parvulus. " Worthii. " _radiatus_. " _serratus_. Ctenoptychius priscus.

Dendrodus latus. " minor. " sigmoides. " strigatus. " tenuistriatus. Diplacanthus crassispinus. " longispinus. " striatulus. " striatus. Diplopterus affinis. Diplopterus borealis.--Syn. _Agassizii_. " macrocephalus. Dipterus macrolepidotus. " _arenaceus_. " _brachypygopterus_. " _macropygopterus_. " _Valenciennesii_. Glyptolepis elegans. " leptopterus. " microlepidotus. Glyptopomus minor.--Syn. _Platygnathus minor_.

Haplacanthus marginalis. Holoptychius Andersoni. " Flemingii. " giganteus. " Murchisoni. " nobilissimus. " Omaliusii. Homacanthus arcuatus. Homothorax Flemingii.

Lamnodus biporcatus.--Syn. _Dendrodus biporcatus_. " hastatus.--Syn. _Panderi. Dendrodus hastatus, compressus_. " sulcatus. Narcodes pustilifer. Naulas sulcatus.

Odontacanthus crenatus.--Syn. _Ctenoptychius crenatus_. " heterodon. Onchus heterogyrus. " semistriatus. " sublævis. Osteolepis arenatus. " macrolepidotus " major. " microlepidotus. " _intermedius_. " _nanus_.

Pamphractus Andersoni. Pamphractus hydrophilus.--Syn. _Pterichthys hydrophilius_. Parexus rccurvus. Phyllolepis concentricus. Placothorax paradoxus. Platygnathus Jamesoni. " paucidens. Polyphractus platycephalus. Psammosteus arenatus.--Syn. _Placosteus arenatus_. " mæandrinus. " " _mæandrinus_. " paradoxus. " _Psammolepis paradoxus_. " undulatus. " _Placosteus undulatus_. Pterichthys arenatus. " cancriformis. " cornutus. " major. " Milleri. " latus. " oblongus. " productus. " testudinarius. Ptychacanthus dubius.

Stagonolepis Robertsoni.

THE END.

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"The work will prove of unusual interest and value."--_Traveller._

"We have in our possession the ledger of progress for 1849, exhibiting to us in a condensed form, the operations of the world in some of the highest business transactions. To say that its execution has been worthy of its aim is praise sufficient."--_Springfield Republican._

"To the artist, the artisan, the man of letters, it is indispensable, and the general reader will find in its pages much valuable material which he may look for elsewhere in vain."--_Boston Herald._

"We commend it as a standard book of reference and general information, by those who are so fortunate as to possess it."--_Saturday Rambler._

"A body of useful knowledge, indispensable to every man who desires to keep up with the progress of modern discovery and invention."--_Boston Courier._

"Must be a most acceptable volume to every one, and greatly facilitate the diffusion of useful knowledge."--_Zion's Herald._

"A most valuable and interesting popular work of science and art."--_Washington National Intelligencer._

"A rich collection of facts, and one which will be eagerly read. The amount of information contained within its pages is very large."--_Evening Gazette._

"Such a key to the progress and facts of scientific discovery will be everywhere welcomed."--_New York Commercial Advertiser._

"A most valuable, complete, and comprehensive summary of the existing facts of science; it is replete with interest, and ought to have a place in every well appointed library."--_Worcester Spy._

"We commend it to all who wish what has just been found out; to all who would like to discover something themselves, and would be glad to know how: and to all who think they have invented something, and are desirous to know whether any one else has been before hand with them."--_Puritan Recorder._

"This is one of the most valuable works which the press has brought forth during the present year. A greater amount of useful and valuable information cannot be obtained from any book of the same size within our knowledge."--Washington Union.

"This important volume will prove one of the most acceptable to our community that has appeared for a long time."--_Providence Journal._

"This is a neat volume and a useful one. Such a book has long been wanted in America. It should receive a wide-spread patronage."--_Scientific American, New York._

"It meets a want long felt, both among men of science and the people. No one who feels any interest in the intellectual progress of the age, no mechanic or artisan, who aspires to excel in his vocation, can afford to be without it. A very copious and accurate index gives one all needed aid in his inquiries."--_Phil. Christian Chronicle._

"One of the most useful books of the day. Every page of it contains some useful in formation, and there will be no waste of time in its study."--Norfolk Democrat.

"It is precisely such a work as will be hailed with pleasure by the multitude of intelligent readers who desire to have, at the close of each year, a properly digested record of its progress in useful knowledge. The project of the editors is an excellent one, and de serves and will command success."--_North American, Philadelphia._

"Truly a most valuable volume."--_Charleston (S.C.) Courier._

"There are few works of the season whose appearance we have noticed with more sincere satisfaction than this admirable manual. The exceeding interest of the subjects to which it is devoted, as well as the remarkably thorough, patient and judicious manner in which they are handled by its skilful editors, entitle it to a warm reception by all the friends of solid and useful learning."--_New York Tribune._

FOOT-PRINTS OF THE CREATOR;

-- OR --

THE ASTEROLEPIS OF STROMNESS.

BY HUGH MILLER.

WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS.

FROM THE THIRD LONDON EDITION.--WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR

BY LOUIS AGASSIZ.

"In its purely geological character, the 'Foot-prints' is not surpassed by any modern work of the same class. In this volume, Mr. Miller discusses the development hypothesis, or the hypothesis of natural law, as maintained by Lamarck, and by the author of the 4 Vestiges of Creation,' and has subjected it, in its geological aspect, to the most rigorous examination. He has stripped even of its semblance of truth, and restored to the Creator, as governor cf the universe, that power and those functions which he was supposed to have resigned at its birth. * * * The earth has still to surrender mighty secrets,--and great revelations are yet to issue from sepulchres of stone. It is from the vaults to which ancient life has been consigned that the history of the dawn of life is to be composed."--_North British Review._

"Scientific knowledge equally remarkable for comprehensiveness and accuracy; a style at all times singularly clear, vivid, and powerful, ranging at will, and without effort, from the most natural and graceful simplicity, through the playful, the graphic, and the vigorous, to the impressive eloquence of great thoughts greatly expressed; reasoning at once comprehensive in scope, strong in grasp, and pointedly direct in application,--these qualities combine to render the 'Foot-prints' one of the most perfect refutations of error, and defences of truth, that ever exact science has produced."--_Free Church Magazine._

Dr. Buckland, at a meeting of the British Association, said he had never been so much astonished in his life, by the powers of any man, as he had been by the geological descriptions of Mr. Miller. That wonderful man described these objects with a facility which made him ashamed of the comparative meagerness and poverty of his own descriptions in the "Bridgewater Treatise," which had cost him hours and days of labor. He would give his left hand to possess such powers of description as this man; and if it pleased Providence to spare his useful life, he, if any one, would certainly render science attractive and popular, and do equal service to theology and geology.

"The style of this work is most singularly clear and vivid, rising at times to eloquence, and always impressing the reader with the idea that he is brought in contact with great thoughts. Where it is necessary, there are engravings to illustrate the geological remains. The whole work forms one of the best defences of Truth that science can produce."--_Albany State Register._

"The 'Foot-Prints of the Creator' is not only a good but a great book. All who have read the 'Vestiges of Creation' should study the 'Foot-Prints of the Creator.' This volume is especially worthy the attention of those who are so fearful of the skeptical tendencies of natural science. We expect this volume will meet with a very extensive sale. It should be placed in every Sabbath School Library, and at every Christian fireside."--_Boston Traveller._

"Mr. Miller's style is remarkably pleasing; his mode of popularising geological knowledge unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled; and the deep vein of reverence for Divine Revelation pervading all, adds interest and value to the volume."--_New York Com. Advertiser._

"The publishers have again covered themselves with honor, by giving to the American public, with the Author's permission, an elegant reprint of a foreign work of science. We earnestly bespeak for this work a wide and free circulation, among all who love science much and religion more."--_Puritan Recorder._

"The book indicates a mind of rare gifts and attainments, and exhibits the workings of poetic genius in admirable harmony with the generalizations of philosophy. It is, withal pervaded by a spirit of devout reverence and child-like humility, such as all men delight to behold in the interpreter of nature. We are persuaded that no intelligent render will go through the chapters of the author without being instructed and delighted with the views they contain."--_Providence Journal._

"Hugh Miller is a Scotch geologist, who, within a few years, has not Only added largely to the facts of science, but has stepped at once among the leading scientific writers of the age, by his wonderfully clear, accurate, and elegant geological works. Mr. Miller, taking the newly-discovered Asterolepis for his text, has produced an answer to the 'Vestiges of Creation,' a work which has been more widely circulated, perhaps, than any other professedly scientific book ever printed. Mr. Miller (and there is no doubt of this) completely upsets his opponent--exposing his incompetency, ignorance, and sophistry, with a clearness, ease, and elegance that are both astonishing and delightful. Throughout the entire geologic portion, the reasoning is markedly close, shrewd, and intelligible--the facts are evidently at the finger's end of the author--and the most unwilling, cautious, and antagonistic reader is compelled to yield his thorough assent to the argument."--_Boston Post._

GOULD AND LINCOLN, PUBLISHERS, BOSTON.

FOOT-PRINTS OF THE CREATOR.

NOTICES OF THE PRESS.

"This is a very rich and valuable book. It is rich in the treasures of scientific knowledge, which are interwoven in an argument, remarkably clear, in a style graceful, vigorous, graphic, and of great power--rendering it a most perfect refutation of the atheistical error propagated in the work entitled, the 'Vestiges of Creation.'"--_Philad. Christian Observer._

"Around the name of Hugh Miller already gathers the halo of a most pure and grateful fame. Receiving his geological education among the rocks of the quarry, where he labored for fifteen years; writing in a style of peculiar simplicity and elegance, and devoting the exact knowledge derived from walking in the Creator's 'foot-prints' to the cause of true religion, the proudest devotees of science have taken pleasure in doing him honor, have delighted to listen to his teachings, and rejoiced to aid in their promulgation."--_Springfield Republican._

"This is one of the most remarkable and deeply profound works of the present age. The author's name will not be soon forgotten, in the scientific world,--and his productions will not fail to be read and admired, wherever true science is promulgated. He is most remarkably clear, concise, and powerful, in his arguments; profound in his researches, and conclusive in his reasoning."--_New York Farmer and Mechanic._

"There is poetry and philosophy combined in this work. The author had a mind which revelled, so to speak, in the beauties and wonders of science. From a child, almost, he delighted in the works of nature.... He has gone from one step to another, till now he is justly esteemed as among the great Geologists of the world. It is a book in which the man of science will delight, but it is also one which the general reader will peruse with instruction and satisfaction."--_Baltimore Patriot._

"The publishers are entitled to the thanks, not only of scientific men but of christians, in this country, for presenting this work to the American public."--_Christian Secretary._

"A remarkable work by a remarkable man. Mr. Miller is self-made, and has elevated himself, by the force of his genius, from the position of an ordinary laborer in a stone quarry, to that of one of the first Geologists of the age. For careful investigation, accuracy, fullness, and beauty of description, combined with a proper estimate of the true claims of science, and a high reverence for sacred things, he is not surpassed by any writer on natural science at the present day. All who have taken any interest in the discussion of geological topics, and 'particularly their connection with the Sacred Writings, will read this volume with admiration and advantage. Its subject, spirit, style, and manner of publication, all commend it; and it is destined to an extensive circulation. It is one of the noblest and most admirable contributions lately made to Science and Christianity."--_Christian Herald._

"Within a few days, this enterprising house has re-published one of the most charming scientific works of 'modern times--a work which, from the simple love of truth which pervades it, its clearness, authenticity, and wonderful revelations, may be called a work of genius, as appropriately as a fine poem. It is entitled 'Foot-Prints of the Creator.'"--_Willis' Rome Journal._

"A work so beautifully written, filled with such curious, new, and interesting facts, and breathing in every page the purest philosophy and Christianity, could scarcely meet with adequate praise, in a limited space. It should be added to the library of every one."--_Washington Union._

"We have never read a work of the kind with so much interest. Its statements of fact and its descriptions are remarkably clear. From minute particulars it leads us on to broad views of the creation; and the earth becomes the witness of a succession of miracles, as wonderful as any recorded in the Scriptures."--_Christian Register._

"This splendid work should be read by every man in our land. We recommend the study of this science to our young men; let them approach it with open, and not unfaithful breasts,--for amid our mountains, grand and tall, our boundless plains, and flowing rivers, vast and virgin fields for exploration yet present themselves."--_Scientific American._

"This is one of the most able and learned works which has ever been issued from the American press. The North British Review says 'That in its geological character it is not surpassed by any modern work of the same class.' The style of the work is clear, rich, and strong; its statements of truth are plain and accurate, and its arguments are presented with masterly force. Its author, Hugh Miller, is a man of very superior talents and attainments."--_New York Christian Messenger._

"The author resembles Burns, in the freshness, and vigor, and enthusiasm of genius; and had he ventured into the realm of poetry, the greatest of Scottish bards might have welcomed his company. We hope the volume may be widely circulated, especially among intelligent Christians.... This work is written in a bold and eloquent style, and though penetrating to the inner shrine of the Geological temple, and necessarily dealing with hard words and harder things, it will secure many readers."--_Christian Chronicle._

GOULD AND LINCOLN, PUBLISHERS, BOSTON.

THE OLD RED SANDSTONE;

OR

NEW WALKS IN AN OLD FIELD.

BY HUGH MILLER,

FROM THE FOURTH LONDON EDITION--ILLUSTRATED

A writer, in noticing Mr. Miller's "First Impressions of England and the People," in the New Englander, of May, 1850, commences by saying, "We presume it is not necessary formally to introduce Hugh Miller to our readers; the author of 'The Old Red Sandstone' placed himself, by that production, which was first, among the most successful geologists, and the best writers of the age. We well remember with what mingled emotion and delight we first read that work. Rarely has a more remarkable book come from the press.... For, besides the important contributions which it makes to the science of Geology, it is written in a style which places the author at once among the most accomplished writers of the age.... He proves himself to be in prose what Burns has been in poetry. We are not extravagant in saying that there is no geologist living who, in the descriptions of the phenomena of the science, has united such accuracy of statement with so much poetic beauty of expression. What Dr. Buckland said was not a mere compliment, that 'he had never been so much astonished in his life, by the powers of any man, as he had been by the geological descriptions of Mr. Miller. That wonderful man described these objects with a felicity which made him ashamed of the comparative meagerness and poverty of his own descriptions, in the Bridgewater Treatise, which had cost him hours and days of labor.' For our own part we do not hesitate to place Mr. Miller in the front rank of English prose writers. Without mannerism, without those extravagances which give a factitious reputation to so many writers of the day, his style has a classic purity and elegance, which remind one of Goldsmith and Irving, while there is an ease and a naturalness in the illustrations of the imagination, which belong only to men of true genius."

"The excellent and lively work of our meritorious, self-taught countryman, Mr. Miller, is as admirable for the clearness of its descriptions, and the sweetness of its composition, as for the purity and gracefulness which pervade it."--_Edinburgh Review._

"A geological work, small in size, unpretending in spirit and manner; its contents, the conscientious narration of fact; its style, the beautiful simplicity of truth; and altogether possessing, for a rational reader, an interest superior to that of a novel."--_Dr. J. Pye Smith._

"This admirable work evinces talent of the highest order, a deep and healthful moral feeling, a perfect command of the finest language, and a beautiful union of philosophy and poetry. No geologist can peruse this volume without instruction and delight."--_Silliman's American Journal of Science._

"Mr. Miller's exceedingly interesting book on this formation is just the sort of work to render any subject popular. It is written in a remarkably pleasing style, and contains a wonderful amount of information."--_Westminster Review._

"In Mr. Miller's charming little work will be found a very graphic description of the Old Red fishes. I know not of a more fascinating volume on any branch of British geology."--_Mantell's Medals of Creation._

Sir Roderick Murchison, giving an account of the investigations of Mr. Miller, spoke in the highest terms of his perseverance and ingenuity as a geologist. With no other advantages than a common education, by a careful use of his means, he had been able to give himself an excellent education, and to elevate himself to a position which any man, in any sphere of life, might well envy. He had seen some of his papers on geology, written in a style so beautiful and poetical as to throw plain geologists, like himself, in the shade.

GOULD AND LINCOLN, PUBLISHERS. BOSTON.

THE POETRY OF SCIENCE;

OR, STUDIES OF THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF NATURE

BY ROBERT HUNT,

AUTHOR OF "PANTHEA," "RESEARCHES ON LIGHT," ETC.

NOTICES OF THE PRESS.

"We know of no work upon science which is so well calculated to lift the mind from the admiration of the wondrous works of creation to the belief in, and worship of, a First Great Cause. * * * One of the most readable epitomes of the present state and progress of science we have perused."--_Morning Herald, London._

"The design of Mr. Hunt's volume is striking and good. The subject is very well dealt with, and the object very well attained; it displays a fund of knowledge, and is the work of an eloquent and earnest man."--_The Examiner, London._

"This book richly deserves the attention of the public. Its object, as may be surmised from the title, is to paint the poetical aspect of science, or rather to show that the deeper one investigates the mysteries of nature--whether in the formation of a continent, in the orbit of a star, or in the color of a flower--the more awakened will be his wonder and his veneration, and the more call will there be upon his highest powers of the intellect and the imagination."--_Boston Post._

"It was once supposed that poetry and science were natural antipodes; and lo! they now are united in loving bonds. Mr. Hunt has certainly demonstrated that the divinest poetry lies hidden in the depths of science, and needs but a master spirit to evoke it in shapes of beauty."--_Christian Chronicle._

"It may be read with interest, by the lovers of nature and of science."--_N. Y. Tribune._

"It is written in a style not unworthy of the grandeur of the subject."--_N. Y. Eve. Post._

"The author, while adhering to true science, has set forth its truths in an exceedingly captivating style."--_New York Commercial Advertiser._

"We are heartily glad to see this interesting work re-published in America. It is a book that is a book."--_Scientific American._

"From the arcana of science especially, has the author gleaned what may be properly termed her poetry, which will make the