Chapter 6

In the noble flora of the Coal Measures much still remains to be done in Scotland. Our Lower Carboniferous rocks are of immense development; the Limestones of Burdiehouse, with their numerous terrestrial plants, occur many hundred feet beneath our Mountain Limestones; and our list of vegetable species peculiar to these lower deposits is still very incomplete. Even in those higher Carboniferous rocks with which the many coal workings of the country have rendered us comparatively familiar, there appears to be still a good deal of the new and the unknown to repay the labor of future exploration. It was only last year that Mr. Gourlay[53] of this city (Glasgow) added to our fossil flora a new Volkmannia from the coal field of Carluke; and I detected very recently in a neighboring locality (the Airdrie coal field), though in but an indifferent state of keeping, what seems to be a new and very peculiar fern. It presents at first sight more the appearance of a Cycadaceous frond than any other vegetable organism of the Carboniferous age which I have yet seen. From a mid stem there proceed at right angles, and in alternate order, a series of sessile, lanceolate, acute leaflets, nearly two inches in length by about an eighth part of an inch in breadth, and about three lines apart. Each is furnished with a slender midrib; and, what seems a singular, though not entirely unique, feature in a fern, their edges are densely hirsute, and bristle with thick, short hair, nearly as stiff as prickles. The venation is not distinctly preserved; but enough remains to show that it must have been peculiar,--apparently radiating outwards from a series of centres ranged along the midrib. Nay, the apparent hairs seem to be but prolongations of the nerves carried beyond the edges of the leaflets. There is a Stigmaria, too, on the table, very ornate in its sculpture, of which I have now found three specimens in a quarry of the Lower Coal Measures near Portobello, that has still to be figured and described. In this richly ornamented Stigmaria the characteristic areolae present the ordinary aspect. Each, however, forms the centre of a sculptured star, consisting of from eighteen to twenty rays, or rather the centre of a sculptured flower of the composite order, resembling a meadow daisy or sea-aster. The minute petals,--if we are to accept the latter comparison,--are of an irregularly lenticular form, generally entire, but in some instances ranged in two, or even three, concentric lines round the depressed centre of the areolae; while the interspaces outside are occupied by numerous fretted markings, resembling broken fragments of petals, which, though less regularly ranged than the others, are effective in imparting a richly ornate aspect to the whole.

Ever since the appearance, in 1846, of Mr. Binney's paper on the relations of stigmaria to sigillaria as roots and stems, I have been looking for distinguishing specific marks among the former; and, failing for a time to find any, I concluded that, though the stems of the sigillarian genus were variously sculptured, their roots might in all the species have been the same. The present rich specimen does seem, however, to bear the specific stamp; and, from the peculiar character of the termination of another specimen on the table, I am inclined to hold that the stigmaria may have borne the appearance rather of underground stems than of proper roots. This specimen suddenly terminates, at a thickness of two and a half inches, in a rounded point, abrupt as that of one of the massier cacti; and every part of the blunt sudden termination is thickly fretted over with the characteristic areolae. The slim tubular rootlets must have stuck out on every side from the obtuse rounded termination of this underground stem, as we see, on a small scale, the leaflets of our larger club mosses sticking out from what are comparatively the scarce less abrupt terminations of their creeping stems and branches. In at least certain stages of growth the sub-aerial stems of Lepidodendron also terminated abruptly (see Fig. 24); and the only terminal point of Ulodendron I ever saw was nearly as obtuse as that of Stigmaria.

I have been long desirous of acquainting myself with the true character of this latter plant (Ulodendron), but hitherto my labors have not been very successful. A specimen of _Ulodendron minus_, however, now on the table, which I disinterred several years ago from out a bed of ferruginous shale in the Water of Leith, a little above the village of Colinton, exhibits several peculiarities which, so far as I know, have not yet been described. Though rather less than ten inches in length by about three inches in breadth, it exhibits no fewer than seven of those round, beautifully sculptured scars, ranged rectilinearly along the trunk, by which this ancient genus is so remarkably characterized. It is covered with small, sharply relieved, obovate scales, most of them furnished with an apparent midrib, and with their edges slightly turned up; from which peculiarities, and their great beauty, they seem suited to remind the architect of that style of sculpture adopted by Palladio from his master Vitruvius, when, in ornamenting the Corinthian and composite torus, lie fretted it into closely imbricated obovate leaves. These scales are ranged in elegant curves, not unlike those ornamental curves,--a feat of the turning-lathe,--which one sees roughening the backs of ladies' watches of French manufacture. My fossil exhibited, as it lay in the rock, what I never saw in any other specimen,--a true branch sticking out at an acute angle from the stem, and fretted with scales of a peculiar form, which in one little corner appear also on the main stem, but which differ so considerably from those of the obovate, apparently imbricated type, that, if found on a separate specimen, they might be held to indicate difference of species. It has been shown by Messrs. Lindley and Hutton, on the evidence of one of the specimens figured in the "Fossil Flora," that the line of circular scars so remarkable in this genus, and which is held to be the impressions made by a rectilinear range of almost sessile cones, existed in duplicate on each stem,--a row occurring on two of the sides of the plant directly opposite each other. The branch in my specimen struck off from one of the intermediate sides at right angles with the cones. We already know that these were ranged in one plane; nor, if the branches were ranged in one plane also,--certainly the disposition of branch which would consort best with such a disposition of cone,--would the arrangement be without example in the vegetable kingdom as it even now exists. "Our host," says the late Captain Basil Hall, in his brief description of the island of Java, "carried us to see a singular tree, which had been brought from Madagascar, called familiarly the _Traveller's Friend_, Urania being, I believe, its botanic name. We found it to differ from most other trees in having all its branches in one plane, like the sticks of a fan or the feathers of a peacock's tail." I may further mention, that the specimen which showed me the abrupt cactus-like terminations of Ulodendron repeated the evidence of Messrs. Lindley and Hutton's specimen regarding the arrangement of the cone scars on opposite sides, and showed also that these scars ascended to within little more than an inch of the top of the plant.

As there are cases in which the _position_ of a fossil plant may add, from its bearing on geologic history, a threefold interest to the fossil itself, regarded simply as an organism, I may be permitted to refer to a circumstance already recorded, that there was a well marked Bechera detected about two years ago by Dr. Macbean of Edinburgh, an accomplished naturalist and careful observer, in a thin argillaceous stratum, interposed, in the Queen's Park, between a bed of columnar basalt and a bed of trap-tuff, in the side of the eminence occupied atop by the ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel. The stratified bed in which it occurs seems, from its texture and color, to be composed mainly of trappean materials, but deposited and arranged in water; and abounds in carbonaceous markings, usually in so imperfect a state of keeping that, though long known to some of the Edinburgh geologists, not a single species, or even genus, were they able to determine. All that could be said was, that they seemed fucoidal, and might of course belong to any age. The Bechera, however, shows that the deposit is one of the Lower Coal Measures. There was found associated with it a tooth of a Carboniferous Holoptychius, whose evidence bore out the same conclusion; and both fossils derive an importance from the light which they throw on the age of the bed of tuff which underlies the stratum in which they occur. At least this trap-rock must be as old as the fossiliferous layer which rests upon it, or rather, as shown by its underlying position, a little older: it must be a trap of the earlier Carboniferous period. Further, it must have been, not injected among the strata, but poured out over the surface,--in all probability covered at the time by water; and there must have formed over it, ere another overflow of trap took place, a thin sedimentary bed charged with fragments of the plants of the period, and visited, when in the course of deposition, by some of its fishes.

Even among the vegetable organisms of our Coal Measures, already partially described and figured, much remains to be accomplished in the way of restoration. Portions of _Sphenopteris bifida_, for instance, a fern of the Lower Carboniferous rocks have been repeatedly figured; but a beautiful specimen on the table, which exhibits what seems to be the complete frond of the plant, will give, I doubt not, fresh ideas respecting the general framework, if I may so speak, of this skeleton fern, to even those best acquainted with the figures; and an elaborate restoration of its contemporary, _Sphenopteris affinis_ (see frontispiece) which I completed from a fine series of specimens in my collection, will be new, as a whole, to those most familiar with this commonest of the Burdiehouse fossils. From comparisons instituted between minute portions of this Sphenopteris and a recent fern, it has been held considerably to resemble a Davallia of the West Indies; whereas it will be seen from the entire frond that it was characterized by very striking peculiarities, exemplified, say some of our higher botanical authorities, to whom I have submitted my restoration, by no fern that now lives. The frond of _Davallia Canariensis_, though unlike in its venation, greatly resembles in general outline one of the larger pinnae of _Sphenopteris affinis_; but these pinnae form only a small part of the entire frond of this Sphenopteris. It was furnished with a stout leafless rachis, or leaf-stalk, exceedingly similar in form to that of our common brake (_Pteris aquilina_). So completely, indeed, did it exhibit the same club-like, slightly bent termination, the same gradual diminution in thickness, and the same smooth surface, that one accustomed to see this part of the bracken used as a thatch can scarce doubt that the stipes of Sphenopteris would have served the purpose equally well; nay, that were it still in existence to be so employed, a roof thatched with it, on which the pinnae and leaflets were concealed, and only the club-like stems exposed, row above row, in the style of the fern-thatcher, could not be distinguished, so far as form and size went, from a roof thatched with brake. High above the club-like termination of the rachis the stem divided into two parts, each of which, a little higher up, also divided into two; these in turn, in at least the larger fronds, also bifurcated; and this law of bifurcation,--a marked, mayhap unique, peculiarity in a fern,--regulated all the larger divisions of the frond, though its smaller pinnae and leaflets were alternate. It was a further peculiarity of the plant that, unlike the brake, it threw off, ere the main divisions of its rachis took place, two pinnae placed in the alternate order, and of comparatively small size. The frond of _Sphenopteris bifida_ was of a more simple form than that of its larger congener, and not a little resembled a living fern of New Zealand, _Coenopteris vivipara_. It was tripinnate; its secondary stems were placed directly opposite on the midrib, but its tertiary ones in the alternate arrangement; and its leaflets which were also alternate, were as rectilinear and slim as mere veins, or as the thread-like leaflets of asparagus. Like the fronds of Coenopteris when not in seed, it must have presented the appearance of the mere macerated framework of a fern. I need scarce remark that, independently of the scientific interest which must attach to restorations of these early plants, they speak powerfully to the imagination, and supply it with materials from which to construct the vanished landscapes of the Carboniferous ages. From one such restored fern as the two now submitted to the Association, it is not difficult to pass in fancy to the dank slopes of the ancient land of the Lower Coal Measures, when they waved as thickly with graceful Sphenopteres as our existing hill sides with the common brake; and when every breeze that rustled through the old forests bent in mimic waves their slim flexible stems and light and graceful foliage.

In 1844, when Professor Nicol, of Marischal College, Aberdeen, appended to his interesting "Guide to the Geology of Scotland," a list of the Scottish fossils known at the time, he enumerated only two vegetable species of the Scotch Oolitic system,--_Equisetum columnare_ and _Pinites_ or _Peuce Eiggensis_; the former one of the early discoveries of our distinguished President, Sir Roderick Murchison; the latter, of the late Mr. William Nicol of Edinburgh. Chiefly from researches in the Lias of Eathie, near Cromarty, and in the Oolites of Sutherland and the Hebrides, I have been enabled to increase the list from two to rather more than fifty species,--not a great number, certainly, regarded as the sole representative of a flora; and yet it may be deemed comparatively not a very small one by such as may remember, that in 1837, when Dr. Buckland published the second edition of his "Bridgewater Treatise," Adolphe Brogniart had enumerated only seventy species of plants as occurring in all the Secondary formations of Europe, from the Chalk to the Trias inclusive. In a paper such as the present I can of course do little more than just indicate a few of the more striking features of the Scottish flora of the middle Secondary ages. Like that of the period of the true Coal, it had its numerous coniferous trees. As shown by the fossil woods of Helmsdale and Eigg, old Oolitic Scotland, like the Scotland of three centuries ago, must have had its mighty forests of pine;[54] and in one respect these trees seem to have more nearly resembled those of the recent pine forests of our country than the trees of the coniferous forests of the remote Carboniferous era. For while we scarce ever find a cone associated with the coniferous woods of the Coal Measures,--Lindley and Hatton never saw but one from all the English coal fields, and Mr. Alexander Bryson of Edinburgh, only one from all the coal fields of Scotland,--tree-cones of at least four different species, more probably of five, are not rare in our Scottish deposits of the Lias and Oolite. It seems not improbable that in the Carboniferous genera Pinites, Pitus, and Anabathra, which approach but remotely to aught that now exists, the place of the ligneous scaly cone may have been taken, as in the junipers and the yews, by a perishable berry; while the Pines and Araucarians of the Oolite were, like their congeners in recent times, in reality coniferous, that is, cone-bearing trees. It is another characteristic of these Secondary conifers, that while the woods of the Palaeozoic periods exhibit often, like those of the tropics, none of the dense concentric lines of annual growth which mark the reign of winter, these annual lines are scarce less strongly impressed on the Oolitic woods than on those of Norway or of our own country in the present day. In some of the fossil trees these yearly rings are of great breadth; they seem to have sprung up in the rich soil of sheltered hollows and plains, and to have increased in diameter from half an inch to three quarters of an inch yearly; while in other trees of the same species the yearly zones of growth are singularly narrow,--in some instances little more than half a line in thickness. Rooted on some exposed hill side, in a shallow and meagre soil, they increased their diameter during the twelvemonth little more than a line in the severer seasons, and little more than an eighth part of an inch even when the seasons were most favorable. Further, whether the rings be large or small, we ordinarily find them occurring in the same specimens in groups of larger and smaller. In one of my Helmsdale specimens, indicative generally of rapid growth, there are four contiguous annual rings, which measure in all an inch and two twelfths across, while the four contiguous rings immediately beside them measure only half an inch. "If, at the present day," says a distinguished fossil botanist, "a warm and moist summer produces a broader annual layer than a cold and dry one, and if fossil plants exhibit such appearances as we refer in recent plants to a diversity of summers, then it is reasonable to suppose that a similar diversity formerly prevailed." The same reasoning is of course as applicable to _groups_ of annual layers as to _single_ annual layers; and may we not venture to infer from the almost invariable occurrence of such groups in the woods of this ancient system, that that ill-understood law of the weather which gives us in irregular succession groups of colder and warmer seasons, and whose operation, as Bacon tells us, was first remarked in the provinces of the Netherlands, was as certainly in existence during the ages of the Oolite as at the present time?

Twigs which exhibit the foliage of these ancient conifers seem to be less rare in our Scotch deposits than in those of England of the same age. My collection contains fossil sprigs, with the slim needle-like leaves attached, of what seem to be from six to seven different species; and it is worthy of notice, that they resemble in the group rather the coniferae of the southern than those of the northern hemisphere. One sprig in my collection seems scarcely distinguishable from that of the recent _Altingia excelsa_; another, from that of the recent _Altingia cunninghami_. Lindley and Hutton figure in their fossil flora a minute branch of _Dacrydium cupressinum_, in order to show how nearly the twigs of a large tree, from fifty to a hundred feet high, may resemble some of the "fossils referable to Lycopodiaceae." More than one of the Oolitic twigs in my collection are of a resembling character, and may have belonged either to cone-bearing trees or to club mosses. Respecting, however, the real character of at least one of the specimens,--a minute branch from the Lias of Eathie, with the leaflets attached,--there can be no mistake. The thicker part of the stem is in such a state of keeping, that it presents to the microscope, in a sliced preparation, the internal structure, and exhibits, as in recent coniferous twigs of a year's growth, a central pith, a single ring of reticulated tissue arranged in lines that radiate outwards, and a thin layer of enveloping bark. Nothing, then, can be more certain than that this ancient twig, which must be accepted as representative of the foliage of whole forests of the Secondary ages in Scotland, formed part of a conifer of the Lias; and the foliage of several of the other twigs, its contemporaries, though I have failed to demonstrate their true character in the same way, bear a scarce less coniferous aspect. The cones of the period, from the circumstance that they are locked up in a hard limestone that clings closely around their scales, and from the further circumstance that the semi-calcareous lignite into which they are resolved is softer and less tenacious than the enclosing matrix, present, when laid open, not their outer surfaces, but mere sections of their interior; and give, in consequence, save in their general proportions and outline, but few specific marks by which to distinguish them. We see, however, in some cases in these sections what would be otherwise unseen,--the flat naked seeds lying embedded in their hollow receptacles between the scales, and in as perfect a state of keeping as the seeds of recent pines that had ripened only a twelvemonth ago. Had not the vitality of seeds its limits in time, like life of all other kinds, one might commit these perfect fossil germs to the soil, in the hope of seeing the old extinct forests called, through their agency, a second time into existence. Of three apparent species of cones which occur in the Eathie Lias, the smallest seems to have resembled in size and appearance that of the Scotch fir; the largest, which consisted from bottom to top, as seen in section, of from nine to ten scales, appears to have been more in the proportions of the oblong oval cones of the spruce family; while a cone of intermediate length, but of considerably greater breadth, assumed the rounded form of the cones of the cedar. I have found in the same deposit what seems to be the sprig of a conifer, with four apparently embryo cones attached to it in the alternate order. These are rather more sessile than the young cones of the larch; but the aspect of the whole is that of a larch twig in early summer, when the minute and tender cones, possessed of all the beauty of flowers, first appear along its sides.

Among conifers of the Pine and Araucarian type we mark the first appearance in this system, in at least Scotland, of the genus Thuja. One of the Helmsdale plants of this genus closely resembles the common Arbor Vitae (_Thuja occidentalis_) of our gardens and shrubberies. It exhibits the same numerous slim, thick-clustered branchlets, covered over by the same minute, sessile, scale-like leaves; and so entirely reminds one of the recent Thuja, that it seems difficult to conceive of it as the member of a flora so ancient as that of the Oolite. But not a few of the Oolitic plants in Scotland bear this modern aspect. The great development of its Cycadaceae,--an order unknown in our Coal Measures,--also forms a prominent feature of the Oolitic flora. One of the first known genera of this curious order,--the genus Pterophyllum,--appears in the Trias. It distinctively marks the commencement of the Secondary flora, and intimates that the once great Palaeozoic flora, after gradually waning throughout the Permian ages, and becoming extinct at their close, had been succeeded by a vegetation altogether new. At least one of the Helmsdale forms of this family is identical with a Yorkshire species already named and figured,--_Zamia pectinata_: a well marked Zamia which occurs in the Lias of Eathie appears to be new. Its pinnate leaves were furnished with a strong woody midrib, so well preserved in the rock, that it yields its internal structure to the microscope. The ribbon-like pinnae or leaflets were rectilinear, retaining their full breadth until they united to the stem at right angles, but set somewhat awry; and, like several of the recent Zamiae, they were striped longitudinally with cord-like lines. (Fig. 133.) Even the mode of decay of this Zamia, as shown by the abrupt termination of its leaflets, exactly resembled that of its existing congeners. (Fig. 134.) The withered points of the pinnae of recent Zamiae drop off as if clipped across with a pair of scissors; and in fossil fronds of this Zamia of the Lias we find exactly the same clipped-like appearance. (Fig. 135.) Another Scotch Zamia (Fig. 136), which occurs in the Lower Oolite of Helmsdale, resembles the Eathie one in the breadth of its leaflets, but they are not wholly so rectilinear, diminishing slightly towards their base of attachment; they are ranged, too, along the stem or midrib, not at a right angle, but at an acute one; the line of attachment is not set awry, but on the general plane of the leaf; and the midrib itself is considerably less massive and round. A third species from the same locality bears a general resemblance to the latter; but the leaflets are narrower at the base, and, as the print indicates (Fig. 136), so differently attached to the stem, that from the pressure in the rock most of them have become detached; while yet a fourth species (Fig. 137), very closely resembles a Zamia of the Scarborough Oolite,--_Z. lanceolata_. The leaflets, however, contract much more suddenly from their greatest breadth than those of _lanceolata_, into a pseudo-footstalk; and the contraction takes place not almost equally on both sides, as in that species, but almost exclusively on the upper side. And so, provisionally at least, this Helmsdale Zamia may be regarded as specifically new.

With the leaves of the Eathie Zamia, we find, in this northern outlier of the Lias, cones of a peculiar form, which, like the leaves themselves, are still unfigured and undescribed, and some of which could scarce have belonged to any coniferous tree. In one of these (Fig. 138), the ligneous bracts or scales, narrow and long, and gradually tapering till they assume nearly the awl-shaped form, cluster out thick from the base and middle portions of the cone, and, like the involucral appendages of the hazel-nut, or the sepals of the yet unfolded rose-bud, sweep gracefully upwards to the top, where they present at their margins minute denticulations. In another species the bracts are broader, thinner, and more leaf-like: they rise, too, more from the base of the cone, and less from its middle portions; so that the whole must have resembled an enormous bud, with strong woody scales, some of which extended from base to apex. The first described of these two species seems to have been more decidedly a _cone_ than the other; but it is probable that they were both connecting links between such leathern seed-bearing flowers as we find developed in _Cycas revoluta_, and such seed-bearing cones as we find exemplified in _Zamia pungens_. The bud-like cone, however, does not seem to have been that of a Cycadaceous plant, as it occupied evidently not a terminal position on the plant that bore it, like the cones of Zamia or the flowers of Cycas, but a lateral one, like the lateral flowers of some of the Cactus tribe. Another class of vegetable forms, of occasional occurrence in the Helmsdale beds, seems intermediate between the Cycadaceae and the ferns: at least, so near is the approach to the ordinary fern outline, while retaining the stiff ligneous character of Zamia, that it is scarce less difficult to determine to which of the two orders of plants such organisms belonged, than to decide whether some of the slim graceful sprigs of foliage that occur in the rocks beside them belonged to the conifers or the club mosses. And I am informed by Sir Charles Lyell, that (as some of the existing conifers bear a foliage scarce distinguishable from that of Lycopodiaceae), so a recently discovered Zamia is furnished with fronds that scarce differ from those of a fern. Even _Zamia pectinata_ may, as Sternberg remarks, have been a fern. Lindley and Hutton place it merely provisionally among the Cycadaceae, in deference to the judgment of Adolphe Brogniart, and point out its resemblance to _Polypodium pectinatum_; and a small Helmsdale frond which I have placed beside it bears the impress of a character scarce less equivocal. The flora of the Oolite was peculiarly a flora of intermediate forms.

We recognize another characteristic of our Oolitic flora in its simple-leaved fronds, in some of the species not a little resembling those of the recent Scolopendrium, or Hart's-Tongue fern,--a form regarded by Adolphe Brogniart as peculiarly characteristic of his third period of vegetation. These simple ferns are, in the Helmsdale deposits, of three distinct types. There is first a lanceolate leaf, from two and a half to three inches in length, of not unfrequent occurrence, which may have formed, however, only one of the four leaflets, united by their pseudo-footstalks, which compose the frond of Glossopteris,--a distinctive Oolitic genus. There is next a simple ovate lanceolate leaf, from four to five and a half inches in length, which in form and venation, and all save its _thrice_ greater size, not a little resembles the leaflets of a Coal Measure neuropteris,--_N. acuminata_. And, in the third place, there are the simple leaves that in general outline resemble, as I have said, the fronds of the recent Hart's-Tongue fern (_Scolopendrium vulgare_), except that their base is lanceolate, not cordate. Of these last there are two kinds in the beds, representative of two several species, or, as their difference in general aspect and detail is very great, mayhap two several genera. The smaller of the two has a slender midrib, depressed on its upper side, and flanked on each side by a row of minute, slightly elongated protuberances, but elevated on the under side, and flanked by rows of small but well marked grooves, that curve outwards to the edges of the leaf. The larger resemble a Taeniopteris of the English and Continental Oolites, save that its midrib is more massive, its venation less at right angles with the stem, its base more elongated, and its size much greater. Some of the Helmsdale specimens are of gigantic proportions. From, however, a description and figure of a plant of evidently the same genus,--a Taeniopteris of the Virginian Oolite, given by Professor W.B. Rogers of the United States,--I find that some of the American fronds are larger still. My largest leaf from Helmsdale must have been nearly five inches in breadth; and if its proportions were those of some of the smaller ones of apparently the same species from the same locality, it must have measured about thirty inches in length. But fragments of American leaves have been found more than six inches in breadth, and whose length cannot have fallen short of forty inches. The Taeniopteris, as its name bears, is regarded as a fern. From, however, the leathern-like thickness of some of the Sutherland specimens,--from the great massiveness of their midrib,--from the rectilinear simplicity of their fibres,--and, withal, from, in some instances, their great size,--I am much disposed to believe that in our Scotch, mayhap also in the American species, it may have been the frond of some simple-leaved Cycas or Zamia. But the point is one which it must be left for the future satisfactorily to settle; though provisionally I may be permitted to regard these leaves as belonging to some Cycadaceous plant, whose fronds, in their venation and form, resembled the simple fronds of Scolopendrium, just as the leaves of some of its congeners resembled the fronds of the pinnate ferns.

I have already referred to the close resemblance which certain Cycadaceous genera bear to certain of the fern family. In at least two species of Pterophyllum,--_P. comptum_ and _P. minus_,--the divisions of the leaflets seem little else than accidental rents in a simple frond; in _P. Nelsoni_ they are apparently _nothing_ more; and similar divisions, evidently, however, the effect of accident, and less rounded at their extremities than in at least _P. comptum_, we find exhibited by some of the Helmsdale specimens of Taeniopteris (See Fig. 142, p. 488.) But whatever the nature of these simple fronds, they seem to impart much of its peculiar character, all the world over, to the flora of the Oolitic ages.

The compound ferns of the formation are numerous, and at least proportionally a considerable part of them seem identical in species with those of the Oolite of England. (See Fig. 143.) Among these there occur _Pecopteris Whitbiensis_, _Pecopteris obtusifolia_, _Pecopteris insignis_,--all well marked English species; with several others. It has, besides, its apparent ferns, that seem to be new--(Fig. 144)--that are at least not figured in any of the fossil floras to which I have access,--(Fig. 145),--such as a well defined Pachypteris, with leaflets broader and rounder than the typical _P. lanceolata_, and a much stouter midrib; a minute Sphenopteris too, and what seems to be a Phlebopteris, somewhat resembling _P. propinqua_, but greatly more massive in its general proportions. The equisetacea we find represented in the Brora deposits by _Equisetum columnare_,--a plant the broken remains of which occur in great abundance, and which, as was remarked by our President many years ago, in his paper on the Sutherlandshire Oolite, must have entered largely into the composition of the bed of lignite known as the Brora Coal. We find associated with it what seems to be the last of the Calamites,--_Calamites arenaceus_,--a name, however, which seems to have been bestowed both on this Oolitic plant and a resembling Carboniferous species. The deposit has also its Lycopodites, though, from their resemblance in foliage to the conifers, there exists that difficulty in drawing the line between them to which I have already adverted. One of these, however, so exactly resembles a lycopodite of both the Virginian and Yorkshire Oolite,--_L. uncifolius_,--that I cannot avoid regarding it as specifically identical; and it seems more than doubtful whether the stem which I have placed among the conifers is not a lycopodite also. It exhibits not only the general outline of the true club moss, but, like the fossil club mosses too, it wants that degree of ligniferous body in the rock which the coniferous fossils almost always possess. Yet another of the organisms of the deposit seems to have been either a lycopodite or a fern. Its leaflets are exceedingly minute, and set alternately on a stem slender as a hair,--circumstances in which it resembles some of the tiny lycopodites of the tropics, such as _Lycopodium apodium_. I must mention, however, that the larger plant of the same beds which I have placed beside it, and which resembles it so closely that my engraver finds it difficult to indicate any other difference between them than that of size, appears to be a true fern, not a lycopodium. To yet another vegetable organism of the system,--an organism which must be regarded, if I do not mistake its character, as at once very interesting and extraordinary, occurring as it does so low in the scale, and bearing an antiquity so high,--I shall advert, after a preliminary remark on a general characteristic of the flora to which it belongs, but to which it seems to furnish a striking exception.

From the disappearance of many of those anomalous types of the Coal Measures which so puzzle the botanist, and the extensive introduction of types that still exist, we can better conceive of the general features and relations of the flora of the Oolite than of those of the earlier floras. And yet the general result at which we arrive may be found not without its bearing on the older vegetations also. Throughout almost all the families of this Oolitic flora, there seems to have run a curious bond of relationship, which, like those ties which bound together some of the old clans of our country, united them, high and low, into one great sept, and conferred upon them a certain wonderful unity of character and appearance. Let us assume the ferns as our central group. Though less abundant than in the earlier creation of the Carboniferous system, they seem to have occupied, judging from their remains, very considerable space in the Oolitic vegetation; and with the ferns there were associated in great abundance the two prevailing families of the Pterides,--Equiseta and Lycopodia,--plants which, in most of our modern treatises on the ferns proper, take their place as the fern allies. (See Fig. 148.) Let us place these along two of the sides of a pentagon,--the Lycopodia on the right side of the ferns, the Equiseta on the left; further, let us occupy the two remaining sides of the figure by the Coniferae and the Cycadaceae,--placing the Coniferae on the side next the Lycopodia, and the Cycadaceae, as the last added keystone of the erection, between these and the Equiseta. And now, let us consider how very curious the links are which give a wonderful unity to the whole. We still find great difficulty in distinguishing between the foliage of some of even the existing club mosses and the conifers; and the ancient Lepidodendra are very generally recognized as of a type intermediate between the two. Similar intermediate types, exemplified by extinct families, united the conifers and the ferns. The analogy of _Kirchneria_ with the _Thinnfeldia_, says Dr. Braun, is very remarkable, notwithstanding that the former is a fern, and that the latter is ranked among conifers. The points of resemblance borne by the conifers to the huge Equiseta of the Oolitic period seem to have been equally striking. The pores which traverse longitudinally the channelled grooves by which the stems of our recent Equiseta are so delicately fluted, are said considerably more to resemble the discs of pines and araucarians than ordinary stomata. Mr. Francis does not hesitate to say, in his work on British Ferns, that the relation of this special family to the Coniferae is so strong, both in external and internal structure, that it is not without some hesitation he places them among the fern allies; and it has been ascertained by Mr. Dawes, in his researches regarding the calamite, that in its internal structure this apparent representative of Equiseta in the earlier ages of the world united "a network of quadrangular tissue similar to that of Coniferae to other quadrangular cells arranged in perpendicular series," like the cells of plants of a humbler order. The relations of the Cycadacean order to ferns on the one hand, and to the Coniferae on the other, are equally well marked. As in the ferns, the venation of its fronds is circinate, or scroll-like,--they have in several respects a resembling structure,--in at least one recent species they have a nearly identical form; and fronds of this fern-like type seem to have been comparatively common during the times of the Oolite. On the other hand, the Cycadaceae manifest close relations to the conifers. Both have their seeds originally naked; both are cone-bearing; both possess discs on the sides of their cellules; and in both, in the transverse section, these cellules are subhexagonal, and radiate from a centre. Such were the very curious relations that united into one great sept the prevailing members of the Oolitic flora; and similar bonds of connection seem to have existed in the floras of the still earlier ages.

In the Oolite of Scotland I have, however, at length found trace of a vegetable organism that _seems_ to have lain, if I may so express myself, outside the pentagon, and was not a member of any of the great families which it comprised. (See Fig. 151.) I succeeded about four years ago in disinterring from the limestone of Helmsdale what _appears_ to be a true dicotyledonous leaf, with the fragment of another leaf, which I at first supposed might have belonged to a plant of the same great class, but which I now find might have been a portion of a fern. When _Phlebopteris Phillipsii_ was first detected in the Oolite of Yorkshire, Lindley and Hatton, regarding it as dicotyledonous, originated their term Dictyophillum as a general one for all such leaves. But it has since been assigned to a greatly lower order,--the ferns; and Sir Charles Lyell has kindly shown me that an exotic fern of the present day exhibits exactly such a reticulated style of venation as my Helmsdale fragment. (See Fig. 152, p. 497.) The other leaf, however, though also fragmentary, and but indifferently preserved, seems to be decidedly marked by the dicotyledonous character; and so I continue to regard it, provisionally at least, as one of the first precursors in Scotland of our great forest trees, and of so many of our flowering and fruit-bearing plants, and as apparently occupying the same relative place in advance of its contemporaries as that occupied by the conifer of the Old Red Sandstone in advance of the ferns and Lycopodaceae with which I found it associated. In the arrangement of its larger veins the better preserved Oolitic leaf somewhat resembles that of the buckthorn; but its state of keeping is such that it has failed to leave its exterior outline in the stone.

One or two general remarks, in conclusion, on the Oolite flora of Scotland may be permitted me by the Association. In its aspect as a whole it greatly resembles the Oolite flora of Virginia, though separated in space from the locality in which the latter occurs by a distance of nearly four thousand miles. There are several species of plants common to both, such as _Equisetum columnare_, _Calamites arenaceus_, _Pecopteris Whitbiensis_, _Lycopodites uncifolius_, and apparently _Taeniopteris magnifolia_; both, too, manifest the great abundance in which they were developed of old by the beds of coal into which their remains have been converted. The coal of the Virginia Oolite has been profitably wrought for many years: it is stated by Sir Charles Lyell, who carefully examined the deposit, and has given as the results of his observation in his second series of Travels in the United States, that the annual quantity taken from the Oolitic pits by Philadelphia alone amounted to ten thousand tons; and though, on the other hand, the Sutherlandshire deposit has never been profitably wrought, it has been at least wrought more extensively than any other in the British Oolite. The seam of Brora, varying from three feet three to three feet eight inches in thickness, furnished, says Sir Roderick Murchison, between the years 1814 and 1826, no less than seventy thousand tons of coal. Such is its extent, too, that nearly thirty miles from the pit's mouth (in Ross-shire under the Northern Sutor) I have found it still existing, though in diminished proportions, as a decided coal seam, which it must have taken no small amount of vegetable matter to form. And almost on the other side of the world, nearly five thousand miles from the Sutherland beds, and more than eight thousand miles from the Carolina ones, the same Oolitic flora again appears, associated with beds of coal. At Nagpur in Central India the Oolitic Sandstones abound in simple fronded ferns, such us Taeniopteris and Glossopteris, and has its Zamites, its coniferous leaves, and its equisetaceae.

Compared with existing floras, that of our Scottish Oolite seems to have most nearly resembled the flora of New Zealand,--a flora remarkable for the great abundance of its ferns, and its vast forests of coniferous trees, that retain at all seasons their coverings of acicular spiky leaves. It is to this flora that _Dacrydium cupressinum_,--so like a club moss in its foliage,--belongs; and _Podocarpus ferrugineus_,--a tree which more closely resembles in its foliage the Eathie conifer, save that its spiky leaves are somewhat narrower and longer than any other with which I am acquainted. About two thirds of the plants which cover the plains, or rise on the hill-sides of that country, are cryptogamic, consisting mainly of ferns and their allies; and it is a curious circumstance,--which was, however, not without precedent in the merely physical conditions of the Oolitic flora of Scotland,--that so shallow is the soil even where its greatest forests have sprung up, and so immediately does the rock lie below, that the central axes of the trees do not elongate downwards into a tap, but throw out horizontally on every side a thick network of roots, which rises so high over the surface as to render walking through the woods a difficult and very fatiguing exercise. The flora of the Oolite, like that of New Zealand, seems to have been in large part cryptogamic, consisting of ferns and the allied horse-tail and club moss families. Its forests seem to have contained only cone-bearing trees; at least among the many thousand specimens of its fossil woods which have been examined, no tissue of the true, dicotyledonous character has yet been found; and with the exception of the leaves just described, all those yet found in the System, which could have belonged to true trees, are of the acicular form common to the Coniferae, and show in their dense ligneous structure that they were persistent, not deciduous. Nor is there evidence wanting that many of the Coniferae of the period grew in so shallow a soil, that their tap-roots were flattened and bent backwards, and they were left to derive their sole support, like the trees of the New Zealand forests, from such of their roots as shot out horizontally. We even know the nature of the rock upon which they rested. As shown by fragments still locked up among the interstices of their petrified roots, it was an Old Red flagstone similar to that of Caithness in the neighborhood of Wick and Thurso, and containing the same fossil remains. In the water-rolled pebbles of the Conglomerate of Helmsdale and Port Gower,--pebbles encrusted by Oolitic corals, and enclosed in a calcareous paste, containing Oolitic belemnites and astreae,--I have found the well marked fishes and fucoids of the Old Red Sandstone. As shown by the appearance of the rounded masses in which these lay, they must have presented as ancient an appearance in the times of the Lower Oolite as they do now; and the glimpse which they lent of so remote an antiquity, through the medium of an antiquity which, save for the comparison which they furnished the means of instituting, might be well deemed superlatively remote, I have felt singularly awe-inspiring and impressive. Macaulay anticipates a time when the traveller from some distant land shall take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to survey the ruins of St. Paul's. In disinterring from amid the antique remains of the Oolite the immensely more antique remains of the Old Red Sandstone, I have felt as such a traveller would feel if, on setting himself to dig among the scattered heaps for memorials of the ruined city, he had fallen on what had been once the Assyrian Gallery of the British Museum, and had found mingling with the antiquities of perished London the greatly older and more venerable antiquities of Nineveh or of Babylon. The land of the Oolite in this northern locality must have been covered by a soil which,--except that from a lack of the boulder clays it must have been poorer and shallower,--must have not a little resembled that of the lower plains of Cromarty, Caithness, and Eastern Ross. And on this Palaeozoic platform, long exposed, as the Oolitic Conglomerates abundantly testify, to denuding and disintegrating agencies,--a platform beaten by the surf where it descended to the sea level, and washed in the interior by rivers, with here a tall hill or abrupt precipice, and there a flat plain or sluggish morass,--there grew vast forests of cone-bearing trees, tangled thickets of gigantic equisetaceae, numerous forms of Cycas and Zamia, and wide-rolling seas of fern, amid whose open spaces club mosses of extinct tribes sent forth their long, creeping stems, spiky and dry, and thickly mottled with pseudo-spore-bearing catkins.

The curtain drops over this ancient flora of the Oolite in Scotland; and when, long after, there is a corner of the thick enveloping screen withdrawn, and we catch a partial glimpse of one of the old Tertiary forests of our country, all is new. Trees of the high dicotyledonous class, allied to the plane and the buckthorn, prevail in the landscape, intermingled, however, with dingy funereal yews; and the ferns and equisetae that rise in the darker openings of the wood approach to the existing type. And yet, though _eons_ of the past eternity have elapsed since we looked out upon Cycas and Zamia, and the last of the Calamites, the time is still early, and long ages must lapse ere man shall arise out of the dust, to keep and to dress fields waving with the productions of yet another and different flora, and to busy himself with all the labor which he taketh under the sun. Our country, in this Tertiary time, has still its great outbursts of molten matter, that bury in fiery deluges many feet in depth, and many square miles in extent, the debris of wide tracts of woodland and marsh; and the basaltic columns still form in its great lava bed; and ever and anon, as the volcanic agencies awake, clouds of ashes darken the heavens, and cover up the landscape as if with accumulated drifts of a protracted snow storm. Who shall declare what, throughout those long ages, the history of creation has been? We see at wide intervals the mere fragments of successive floras; but know not how what seem the blank interspaces were filled, or how, as extinction overtook in succession one tribe of existences after another, and species, like individuals, yielded to the great law of death, yet other species were brought to the birth, and ushered upon the scene, and the chain of being was maintained unbroken. We see only detached bits of that green web which has covered our earth ever since the dry land first appeared; but the web itself seems to have been continuous throughout all time; though ever as breadth after breadth issued from the creative loom, the pattern has altered, and the sculpturesque and graceful forms that illustrated its first beginnings and its middle spaces have yielded to flowers of richer color and blow, and fruits of fairer shade and outline; and for gigantic club mosses stretching forth their hirsute arms, goodly trees of the Lord have expanded their great boughs; and for the barren fern and the calamite, clustering in thickets beside the waters, or spreading on flowerless hill slopes, luxuriant orchards have yielded their ruddy flush, and rich harvests their golden gleam.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Prayer will be found at the end of these Memorials.

[2] The same revolver proved to be the instrument of death to another person, two days after. The circumstances are thus related in the _Edinburgh Witness_ of December 27:--

"A most melancholy event, arising out of the following circumstances, occurred yesterday in the shop of Mr. Thomson, gunmaker. In the beginning of July, last year, Mr. Hugh Miller bought a six-shot revolving chamber pistol, size of ball ninety-two to the pound, from the late firm of Messrs. Alexander Thomson & Son, gunmakers, 16 Union Place. A few days after, he called and said he thought it a little stiff in its workings, and got it made to revolve more readily. The pistol has not been seen by Mr. Thomson since then; but in his absence a few minutes at dinner yesterday, Professor Miller called about twenty minutes from two, and asked Mr. Thomson's foreman how many of the six shots had been fired. He added, 'Mind, it is loaded.' The foreman, instead of removing the breech or chamber to examine it, bad incautiously turned the pistol entire towards his own person, and lifting up the hammer with his fingers, while he counted the remaining loaded chambers, he must have slipped his fingers while the pistol was turned to his own head. It exploded, and the ball lodging in the angle of his right eye, he fell back a lifeless corpse. The pistol is a bolted one, which permits of being carried loaded with perfect safety. Having been wet internally, rust may have stopped the action of the bolt. It is a singular fact that Hugh Miller dropped the pistol into the bath, where it remained for several hours. This may account for the apparent incaution of Mr. Thomson's foreman."

[3] See _ante_, p. 9.

[4] The horizontal lines in this diagram indicate the divisions of the various geologic systems; the vertical lines the sweep of the various classes or sub-classes of plants across the geologic scale, with, so far as has yet been ascertained, the place of their first appearance in creation; while the double line of type below shows in what degree the order of their occurrence agrees with the arrangement of the botanist. The single point of difference indicated by the diagram between the order of occurrence and that of arrangement, viz., the transposition of the gymnogenous and monocotyledonous classes, must be regarded as purely provisional. It is definitely ascertained that the Lower Old Red Sandstone has its coniferous wood, but not yet definitely ascertained that it has its true monocotyledonous plants; though indications are not awanting that the latter were introduced upon the scene at least as early as the pines or araucarians; and the chance discovery of some fossil in a sufficiently good state of keeping to determine the point may, of course, at once retranspose the transposition, and bring into complete correspondence the geologic and botanic arrangements.

[5] The horizontal lines of the diagram here indicate, as in Fig. 1, the divisions of the several geologic systems; the vertical lines represent the leading divisions and classes of animals, and, as shown by the formations in which their earliest known remains occur, the probable period of their first appearance in creation; while the double line of text below exhibits the complete correspondence which obtains between their occurrence, in nature and the Cuvierian arrangement. The line representative of the Radiata ought perhaps to have been elevated a little higher than either of its two neighbors.

[6] Fig. 14, Neuropteris Loshii. Fig. 15, Neuropteris gigantea. Fig. 16, Neuropteris acuminata. Fig. 17, Sphenopteris affinis. Fig. 18, Pecopteris heterophylla. Fig. 19, Sphenopteris dilitata.

[7] Fig. 21, _r a_, Rachis, greatly thickened towards its base by numerous aerial roots, shot downwards to the soil, and which closely cover the stem.

[8] Fig. 22, _m_, Cellular tissue of the centre of rachis; _d_, similar tissue of the circumference; _f_, _v_, darkly-colored woody fibres of great strength, the "internal buttresses" of the illustration; _e_, the outer cortical portion formed by the bases of the leaves.

[9] Fig. 23, Branching stem, with bark and leaves. Fig. 24. Extremity of branch. Fig. 25, Extremity of another branch, with indication of cone-like receptacle of spores or seed.

[10] No true fossil palms have yet been detected in the great Oolitic and Wealden systems, though they certainly occur in the Carboniferous and Permian rocks, and are comparatively common in the earlier and middle Tertiary formations. Much cannot be founded on merely negative evidence; but it would be certainly a curious circumstance should it be found that this graceful family, first ushered into being some time in the later Palaeozoic periods, was withdrawn from creation during the Middle ages of the earth's history, to be again introduced in greatly more than the earlier proportions during the Tertiary and recent periods.

[11] Leaf of a tree allied to the maple.

[12] Leaf of a tree allied to the elm.

[13] Here, as in the former diagrams (Figs. 1 and 4), the horizontal lines represent the divisions of the great geologic systems; while the vertical lines indicate the sweep of the several orders of fishes across the scale, and the periods, so far as has yet been determined, of their first occurrence in creation.

[14] Some of these _dragons_ of the Secondary ages were of very considerable size. The wings of a Pterodactyle of the Chalk, in the possession of Mr. Bowerbank, must have had a spread of about eighteen feet; those of a recently discovered Pterodactyle of the Greensand, a spread of not less than twenty-seven feet. The _Lammer-geyer_ of the Alps has an extent of wing of but from ten to eleven feet; while that of the great Condor of the Andes, the largest of flying birds, does not exceed twelve feet.

[15] _a_, Palaeotherium magnum. _b_, Palaeotherium minus. _c_, Anoplotherium commune.

[16] It will be seen that there is no attempt made in this lecture to represent the great Palaeozoic division as characterized _throughout its entire extent_ by a luxuriant flora. It is, on the contrary, expressly stated here, that the "plants of its earlier and terminal formations (_i.e._ those of the Silurian, Old Red, and Permian Systems) were _few and small_," and that "it was _only during the protracted eons of the carboniferous period that they received their amazing development, unequalled in any previous or succeeding time_." Being thus express in my limitation, I think I have just cause of complaint against any one who represents me us unfairly laboring, in this very composition, to make it be believed that the _whole_ Palaeozoic period was characterized by a gorgeous flora; and as thus sophistically generalizing in the first instance, in order to make a fallacious use of the generalization in the second, with the intention of misleading non-geologic readers. Such, however, as may be seen from the following extracts from the "Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Science at Philadelphia," is the charge preferred against me by a citizen of the United States.

"Mr. William Parker Foulke asked the attention of the Society to a lecture by Mr. Hugh Miller, recently republished in the United States under the title of 'The Two Records, Mosaic and Geological,' and made some remarks upon the importance of maintaining a careful scrutiny of the logic of the natural sciences.... Mr. Miller teaches that, in the attempt to reconcile the two 'records,' there are only three periods to be accounted for by the geologist, viz. 'the period of _plants_; the period of _great sea monsters and creeping things_; and the period of _cattle and beasts of the earth_;' and that the first of these periods is represented by the rocks grouped under the term _Palaeozoic_, and is distinguished from the _Secondary_ and _Tertiary_ chiefly by its gorgeous flora; and that the geological 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 general reader, not familiar with the details of geological arrangement, could not fail to infer from such a statement, used for such a purpose, that the Palaeozoic rocks are regarded by geologists as forming one group representative of one period, which can properly be said to be distinguished as a _whole_ by its gorgeous flora; and that it is properly so distinguished _for the argument in question_. It was familiar to the Academy, as well as to Mr. Miller, that from the _carboniferous_ rocks downward (backward in order of time), there have been discriminated a large number of periods, differing from one another in mineral and in organic remains; and that the proportion of the _carboniferous_ era to the whole series is small, whether we regard the thickness of its deposits or its conjectural chronology. It in only of this _carboniferous_ era, _the latest of this series_, that the author's remarks could be true; and even of this, if taken for the entire surface of the earth, it could not be truly asserted that 'the evidence is so complete as to be patent to all,' that the quantity of its vegetable products distinguishes it from the earth's surface during the era in which we live. To confound by implication all this periods termed Palaeozoic, so as to apply to them as a whole what could be true, if at all, only of the _carboniferous_ period, is a fallacious use of a generalization _made for a purpose_, and upon a principle not properly available for the writer's argument," &c. So far the "Proceedings" of the Academy.

This, surely, is very much the reverse of fair. I, however, refer the matter, without note or comment (so far at least as it involves the question whether Mr. Foulke has not, in the face of the most express statement on my part, wholly misrepresented me), to the judgment of candid and intelligent readers on both sides of the Atlantic.

I know not that I should recognize Mr. Foulke as entitled, after such a display, to be dealt with simply as the member of a learned society who differs from me on a scientific question; nor does his reference to the "carboniferous era" as "the _latest_ of the" Palaeozoic "series," and his apparent unacquaintance with that Permian period, in reality the terminal one of the division during which the Palaeozoic forms seem to have gradually died away, in order to give place to those of the Secondary division, inspire any very high respect for his acquirements as a geologist. Waiving, however, the legitimacy of his claim, I may be permitted to repeat, for the further information of the non-geological reader, that the _carboniferous_ formations, _wherever they have yet been detected_, justify, in the amazing abundance of their carbonized vegetable organisms, the name which they bear. Mr. Foulke, in three short sentences, uses the terms "carboniferous era," "carboniferous rocks," "carboniferous period," four several times; and these terms are derived from the predominating amount of carbon (elaborated of old by the plants of the period) which occurs in its several formations. The very language which he has to employ is of itself a confirmation of the statement which he challenges. For so "patent" is this _carboniferous_ character of the system, that it has given to it its universally accepted designation,--the verbal sign by which it is represented wherever it is known. Mr. F. states, that "if taken for the entire surface of the earth," it cannot be truly asserted that the carboniferous flora preponderated over that of the present time, or, at least, that its preponderance could not be regarded as "patent to all," The statement admits of so many different meanings, that I know not whether I shall succeed in replying to the special meaning intended by Mr. Foulke. There are no doubt carboniferous deposits on the earth's surface still unknown to the geologist, the evidence of which on the point must be regarded, in consequence, not as "patent to all," but as _nil_. They are witnesses absent from court, whose testimony has not yet been tendered. But equally certain it is, I repeat, that wherever carboniferous formations _have_ been discovered and examined, they have been found to bear the unique characteristic to which the system owes its name,--they have been found charged with the carbon, existing usually as great beds of coal, which was elaborated of old by its unrivalled flora from the elements. And as this evidence is certain and positive, no one would be entitled to set off against it, as of equal weight, the merely negative evidence of some one or two deposits of the carboniferous age that did not bear the carboniferous character, even were such known to exist; far less is anyone entitled to set off against it the _possibly_ negative evidence of deposits of the carboniferous age not yet discovered nor examined; for that would be simply to set off against good positive evidence, what is no evidence at all. It would be to set off the _possible_ evidence of the absent witnesses, not yet precognosced in the case, against the express declarations of the witnesses already examined, and strong on the positive side.

Surely an American, before appealing, in a question of this kind, to the bare possibility of the existence somewhere or other of barely negative evidence, ought to have bethought him of the very extraordinary positive evidence furnished by the carboniferous deposits of his own great country. The coal fields of Britain and the European continent had been wrought for ages ere those of North America were known, and for ages more after it had been but ascertained that the New, like the Old World, has its Coal Measures. And during the latter period the _argument_ of Mr. Foulke might have been employed, just as now, and some member of a learned society might have urged that, though the coal fields of Europe bore evidence to the former existence of a singularly luxuriant flora, beyond comparison more vast than the European one of the present day, the same could not be predicated of the American coal fields, whose carbonized remains _might_ be found representative of a flora which had been at least not more largely developed than that existing American flora to which the great western forests belong. Now, however, the time for any such argument has gone by; the American coal fields have been carefully explored; and what is the result? The geologist has come to know, that even the mighty forests of America are inconsiderable, compared with its deposits of coal; nay, that all its forests gathered into one heap would fail to furnish the materials of a single coal seam equal to that of Pittsburg; and that centuries after all its thick woods shall have disappeared before the axe, and it shall have come to present the comparatively bare, unwooded aspect of the long civilized countries of Southern Europe, it will continue to derive the elements of its commercial greatness, and the cheerful blaze of its many millions of domestic hearths, from the unprecedentedly luxurious flora of the old carboniferous ages. Truly, very wonderful are the coal fields of Northern America! If geologists inferred, as they well might, that the extinct flora which had originated the European coal vastly outrivalled in luxuriance that of the existing time, what shall be said of that flora of the same age which originated the coal deposits of Nova Scotia and the United States,--deposits _twenty times as great_ as all those of all Europe put together!

[17] Such is also the view taken by the author of a recently published work, "The Genesis of the Earth and of Man." "Christian philosophers have been compelled to acknowledge," says this writer, "that the Mosaic account of creation is only reconcileable with demonstrated facts, by its being regarded as a record of _appearances_; and if so, to vindicate the truth of God, we must consider it, so far as the acts are concerned, as the relation of a revelation to the _sight_, which was sufficient for all its purposes, rather than as one in words; though the words are perfectly true as describing the revelation itself, and the revelation is equally true as showing man the principal phenomena which he would have seen had it been possible for him to be a witness of the events. Further, if we view the narrative as the description of a series of visions, while we find it to be perfectly reconcileable with the statement in other parts of Scripture, that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, we remove, with other difficulties, the only strong objection to the opinion of those who regard the 'six days' as periods of undeflnable duration, and who may even believe that we are now in the 'seventh day,'--the day of rest or of cessation from the work of creation. Certainly, 'the day of God,' and 'the day of the Lord,' and the 'thousand two hundred and threescore days,' of the Revelation of St. John, and the 'seventy weeks' in the Prophecy of Daniel, are not to be understood in their primary and natural senses," &c., &c.

[18] "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it."

[19] Forbes and Hanley enumerate one hundred and sixty bivalves, and two hundred and thirty-two univalves,--in all three hundred and ninety-two species, as the only known shell-bearing molluscs of the existing British seas.

[20] Principles of Zoology: touching the Structure, Development, Distribution, and Natural Arrangement of the Races of Animals, living and extinct. With numerous Illustrations. For the Use of Schools and Colleges. Part I., "Comparative Physiology." By Louis Agassiz and Augustus A. Gould. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.

[21] _a_, Articulating surface of joint. _b_, Fragment of column, exhibiting laterally the tooth processes, so fitted into each other as to admit of flexure without risk of dislocation. The uppermost joint shows two lateral cavities for the articulation of auxiliary arms.

[22] Perhaps one strengthening principle more might be enumerated as occurring in this curious piece of mechanism. In the layer of the nether plate, the fibres, instead of being laid in parallel lines, like the threads in the moleskin of my illustration, seem to be _felted_ together,--an arrangement which must have added considerably to their coherency and powers of resistance.

[23] Fig. 102, Clymenia Sedwicki; Fig. 103, Gyroceras Eifelensis; Fig. 104, Cirrus Goldfussii.

[24] Berosus, Hieronymus, Mnaseas, Nicolaus, Manetho, Mochus, and Hestaeus.

[25] See Cory's "Ancient Fragments."

[26] As was common in Bible illustrations published in our own country a century and a half ago, the old Greek artist has introduced into his medal two points of time. Two of the figures represent _Noe_ and his wife quitting the ark; while the other two exhibit them as seated within it. An English print of the death of Abel, now before me, which dates a little after the times of the Revolution, shows, on the same principle, the two brothers, represented by four figures,--two of these quietly offering up their respective sacrifices in the background, and the other two grappling in deadly warfare in front.

[27] "In preparing the 'Horae Biblicae Quotidianae,' he [Dr. Chalmers] had beside him, for use and reference, the Concordance, the Pictorial Bible, Poole's Synopsis, Henry's Commentary, and Robertson's Researches in Palestine. These constituted what he called his Biblical Library. 'There,' said he to a friend, pointing, as he spoke, to the above named volumes as they lay together on his library table, with a volume of the 'Quotidianae,' in which he had just been writing, lying open beside them,--'these are the books I use: all that is Biblical is there.'"--_Dr. Hanna's Preface to "Daily Scripture Readings."_

[28] The raven is said to live for more than a hundred years. I am, however, not prepared to say that it was the same pair of birds that used, year after year, to build on the same rock-shelf among the precipices of Navity, from the times of my great-grandfather's boyhood to those of my own.

[29] The following estimate of the air-breathing vertebrates (that of the "Physical Atlas," second edition, 1856) may be regarded as the latest. It will he seen that it does not include the cetacea or the seals:--

SPECIES. Quadrumana 170 Marsupialia 123 Edentata 28 Pachydermata 39 Terrestrial Carnivora 514 Rodentia 604 Ruminantia 180 ---- 1658 Birds 6266 Reptiles 657 Turtles 8} Sea Snakes 7} 15 ---- 642

Great as is this number of animals, compared with those known a century ago, there are indications that the list is to be increased rather than diminished. Even by the latest European authorities the reindeer is represented as consisting of but a single species, common to the sub-arctic regions of both the Old and New Worlds; whereas in the "Canadian Naturalist" for 1856 I find it stated, on what seems to be competent authority, that America has its two species of reindeer, and that they both differ from the European species.

[30] If I do not introduce here the argument founded on the great age of certain gigantic trees, such as the Baobab of intertropical Africa, or the Taxodium of South America, it is not because I have any reason to challenge the estimates of Adamson or Candolle. The one tree may have lived its five thousand, the other its six thousand, years; but as the grounds have been disputed on which the calculations respecting their vast age have been founded, and as they cannot be reexamined anew by the reader, I wholly omit the evidence, in the general question, which they have been supposed to furnish.

[31] The following excellent remarks on the economy of miracle, by Chalmers, bear very directly on this subject:--"It is remarkable that God is sparing of miracles, and seems to prefer the ordinary processes of nature, if equally effectual for the accomplishment of his purposes. He might have saved Noah and his family by miracles; but he is not prodigal of these, and so he appointed that an ark should be made to bear up the living cargo which was to be kept alive on the surface of the waters; and not only so, but he respects the laws of the animal physiology, as he did those of hydrostatics, in that he put them by pairs into the ark, male and female, to secure their transmission to after ages, and food was stored up to sustain them during their long confinement. In short, he dispenses with miracles when these are not requisite for the fulfilment of his ends; and he never dispenses with the ordinary means when these are fitted, and at the same time sufficient, for the occasion."--_Daily Scripture Readings_, vol. i. p. 10.

[32] For a brief but masterly view of these ancient cosmogonies, see the Rev. D. Macdonald's "Creation and the Fall." Edinburgh: Constable & Co.

[33]

1. The great surrounding oceans. 2. Caspian Sea. 3. River Phison. 4-4. Points of the Compass. 5. Mediterranean Sea. 6. Red Sea. 7-8. Persian Gulf, with the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. 9. River Gihon.

[34]

1. The sun Occident. 2. The sun orient. 3. The Heavens. 4. Great mountain behind which the sun is hidden when it is night. 5. The Mediterranean Sea. 6. Red Sea. 7. Persian Gulf. 8. Garden of Eden. 9. Great surrounding ocean 10. The Creator looking down upon his work, and seeing that all was good.

[35] The very different terms which Mr. Powell employs in characterizing the anti-geologists, from those which he makes use of in denouncing the men honestly bent on reconciling the enunciations of revelation with the findings of geologic science,--a class which included in the past, divines such as Chalmers, Buckland, and Pye Smith, and comprises divines such as Hitchcock and the Archbishop of Canterbury now,--is worthy of being noted. In two sermons, "Christianity without Judaism," written by this clergyman of the Church of England, to show that all days of the week are alike, and the Christian Sabbath a mere blunder, I find the following passage:--"Some divines have consistently rejected all geology and all science as profane and carnal; and some even, when pretending to call themselves men of science, have stooped to the miserable policy, of tampering with the truth, investing the real facts in false disguises, to cringe to the prejudices of the many, and to pervert science into a seeming accordance with popular prepossessions." I cannot believe that this will be regarded as justifiable language: it seems scarce worthy of a man of science; and will, I fear, only be accepted as good in evidence that the _odium theologicum_ is not restricted to what is termed the orthodox side of the Church.

[36] The gentleman here referred to lectured no later than October, 1853, against the doctrines of the geologists; and modestly chose as the scene of his labors the city of Hutton and Playfair. What he set himself specially to "demonstrate" was, as he said, that the geologic "theories as to antiquity of the earth, successive eras, &c., were not only fallacious and unphilosophical, but rendered nugatory the authority of the sacred Scriptures." Not only, however, did he exert himself in demolishing the geologists as infidel, but he denounced also as unsound the theology of good old Isaac Watts. The lines taught us in our infancy,--

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite, For God hath made them so,"

were, he remarked, decidedly heterodox. They ought to have run instead,--

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite, _Satan_ hath made them so"!!!

[37] "A Brief and Complete Refutation of the Anti-Scriptural Theory of Geologists." By a Clergyman of the Church of England. London: Wertheim & Macintosh. 1853.

[38] Newspaper Report of Meeting of the British Association held at York in September, 1844.

[39] See "Primary and Present State of the Solar System, particularly of our own Planet;" and "Exposure of the Principles of Modern Geology." By P. M'Farlane, Author of the "Primary and Present State of the Solar System." Edinburgh: Thomas Grant.

[40] One of the more brilliant writers of the present day,--a native of the picturesque village in which this anti-geologist resides,--describes in a recent work, with the enthusiasm of the poet, the noble mountains which rise around it. I know not, however, whether my admiration of the passage was not in some degree dashed by a few comic notions suggestive of an "imaginary conversation," in the style of Landor, between this popular author and his anti-geologic townsman, on the merits of hills in general, and in especial on the claims of those which encircle Comrie "as the mountains are round about Jerusalem." The two gentlemen would, I suspect, experience considerable difficulty in laying down, in such a discussion, their common principles.

[41] "Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies." By Granville Penn, Esq. London, 1825.

[42] "Statesman and Record," October 6th, 1846.

[43] Sir Charles Lyell's statement is by no means so express or definite as it is represented to be in this passage, in which I have taken the evidence of his opponents regarding it. What he really says (see his "Principles," second edition, 1832) is what follows:--"_If_ the ratio of recession had never exceeded fifty yards in forty years, it must have required nearly ten thousand years for the excavation of the whole ravine; but no probable conjecture can be offered as to the quantity of time consumed in such an operation, because the retrograde movement may have been much more rapid when the whole current was confined within a space not exceeding a fourth or fifth of that which the Falls now occupy." In the eighth edition of the same work, however, published in 1850, after he had examined the Falls, there occurs the following re-statement of the case:--"After the most careful inquiries I was able to make during my visit to the spot in 1841-42, I came to the conclusion that the average [recession] of one foot a year would be a much more probable conjecture than that of one and a quarter yards. In that case it would have required _thirty-five thousand years_ for the retreat of the Falls from the escarpment of Queenston to their present site. It seems by no means improbable that such a result would be no exaggeration of the truth, although we cannot assume that the retrograde movement has been uniform. At some points it may have receded much faster than at present; but in general its progress was probably slower, because the cataract, when it began to recede, must have been nearly twice its present height."

[44] "Scottish Christian Herald," 1838, vol. iii., p. 766.

[45] The substance of this and the following lecture was originally given in a single paper, before the Geological Section of the British Association, held at Glasgow in September 1855. So considerable have been the additions, however, that the one paper has swelled into two lectures. Most of the added matter was at first thrown into the form of Notes; but it was found, that from their length and frequency, they would have embarrassed the printer, mayhap the reader also; and so most of the larger ones have been introduced into the text within brackets.

[46] A curious set of these, with specimens of the smooth-stemmed fucoid collected by Mr. John Miller of Thurso,--a meritorious laborer in the geologic field,--were exhibited at Glasgow to the Association. The larger stems were thickly traversed in Mr. J. Miller's specimens by diagonal lines, which seemed, however, to be merely lines of rhomboidal fracture in the glassy coal into which the plants were converted, and not one of their original characters.

[47] I must, however, add, that there was found in the neighborhood of Stromness about fifteen years ago, by Dr. John Fleming, a curious nondescript vegetable organism, which, though equivocal in character and appearance, was in all probability a plant of the sea. It consisted of a flattened cylinder, in some of the specimens exceeding a foot in length by an inch in breadth, and traversed on both the upper and under sides by a mesial groove extending to the extremities. It bore no external markings, and the section exhibited but an indistinct fibrous structure, sufficient, however, to indicate its vegetable origin. I have not hitherto succeeded in finding for myself specimens of this organism, which has been named provisionally, by Dr. Fleming, _Stroma obscura_; but it seems not improbable that certain supposed fragments of wood, detected by Mr. Charles Peach in the Caithness Flagstones, but which do not exhibit the woody structure, may have belonged to it.

[48] I figured this species from an imperfect Cromarty specimen fifteen years ago. (See "Old Red Sandstone," first edition, 1841, Plate VII. Fig. 4). Of the greatly better specimens now figured I owe the larger one (Fig. 120) to Mrs. Mill, Thurso, who detected it in the richly fossiliferous flagstones of the locality in which she resides, and kindly made it over to me; and the specimen of which I have given a magnificent representation (Fig. 12, p. 55) to my friend Mr. Robert Dick. I have, besides, seen several specimens of the same organism, in a better or worse state of keeping, in the interesting collection of the Rev. Charles Clouston, Sandwick, near Stromness.

[49] "Frogspawn is full of eyes [that is, black eye-like points], and every eye is a tadpole."

[50] Mr. Page figures, in his "Advanced Text Book of Geology" (p. 127), a few circular markings from the Forfarshire beds, which he still regards as spawn, probably that of a Crustacean, and which certainly differ greatly in appearance from the markings found enclosed in the apparent spathes.

[51] Since these sentences were written I have seen a description of both the plants of the Upper Old Red to which they refer, in an interesting sketch of the geology of Roxburgshire by the Rev. James Duncan, which forms part of a recent publication devoted to the history and antiquities of the shire. "In the red quarry of Denholm Hill there occurs," says Mr. Duncan, "a stratum of soft yellowish sandstone, which contains impressions of an apparent fucoid in considerable quantity. One or several linear stems diverge from a point, and throw off at acute angles, as they grow upwards, branches or leaves very similar to the stem, which are in turn subdivided into others. The width of the stalks is generally about a quarter of an inch, the length often a foot. The color is brown, blackish-brown, or grayish. The same plant also occurs in the whitestone quarry [an overlying bed] in the form of Carbonaceous impressions. There can be little doubt that it is a fucoid. The general mode of growth greatly resembles that of certain seaweeds; and in some specimens we have seen the branches dilated a little at the extremities, like those of such of the living fuci as expand in order to afford space for the fructification. It is deserving of remark, that the plant is seldom observed lying horizontally on the rock in a direction parallel to its stratification, but rising up through the layers, so as only to be seen when the stone is broken across; as if it had been standing erect, or kept buoyant in water, while the stony matter to which it owes its preservation was deposited around it." Mr. Duncan, after next referring to the remains of what he deems a land plant, derived from the same deposit, and which, though sadly mutilated, presents not a little of the appearance of the naked framework of a frond of Cyclopterus Hibernicus divested of the leaflets, goes on to describe the apparent calamite of the formation. "The best preserved vegetable remain yet found in Denholm Hill quarry," he says, "is the radical portion of what we cannot hesitate to call a species of calamite. The lower part is regularly and beautifully rounded, bulging and prominent, nearly four inches in diameter. About an inch from the bottom it contracts somewhat suddenly in two separate stages, and, from the uppermost sends up a stem about an inch in diameter, and nearly of the same length, where it is broken across. At the origin of this stem the small longitudinal ridges are distinctly marked; and the whole outline of the figure, though converted into stone, is as well defined as it could have been in the living plant." Mr. Duncan accompanies his description with a figure of the organism described, which, however, rather resembles the bulb of a liliaceous plant than the root of a calamite, which in all the better preserved, specimens contracts, instead of expanding, as it descends. The apparent expansion, however, in the Old Red specimen may be simply a result of compression in its upper part: the under part certainly much resembles, in the dome-like symmetry of its outline, the radical termination of a solitary calamite.

[52] "Though the coal of Sabero is apparently included in Devonian rocks," says Sir Roderick Murchison, "M. Casiano de Prado thinks that this appearance may be do to inverted folds of the strata." On the other hand, M. Alcide D'Orbigny regards it us decidedly Old Red; and certainly its Sphenopteris and Lepidodendron bent much more the aspect of Devonian than of Carboniferous plants.

[53] Now, alas! no more. In Mr. Gourlay the energy and shrewd business habits of the accomplished merchant were added to an enlightened zeal for general science, and no inconsiderable knowledge in both the geologic and botanic provinces. The marked success, in several respects, of the brilliant meeting of the British Association which held in Glasgow in September 1855, was owing in no small measure to the indefatigable exertions and well calculated arrangements of Mr. Gourlay.

[54] Trees must have been very abundant in what is now Scotland in these Secondary ages. Trunks of the common Scotch fir are of scarce more frequent occurrence in our mosses than the trunks of somewhat resembling trees among the shales of the Lower Oolite of Helmsdale. On examining in that neighborhood, about ten years since, a huge heap of materials which had been collected along the sea shore for burning into lime in a temporary kiln, I found that more than three fourths of the whole consisted of fragments of coniferous wood washed out of the shale beds by the surf, and the remainder of a massive Isastrea. And only two years ago, after many kilnfuls had been gathered and burnt, his grace the Duke of Argyll found that fossil wood could still he collected by cartloads along the shore of Helmsdale. The same woods also occur at Port Gower, Kintradwell, Shandwick, and Eathie. In the Island of Eigg, too, in an Oolite deposit, locked up in trap, and whose stratigraphical relations cannot in consequence be exactly traced, great fragments of _Pinites Eiggensis_ are so abundant, that, armed with a mattock, I have dug out of the rock, in a few minutes, specimens enough to supply a dozen of museums. In short, judging from its fossiliferous remains, it seems not improbable that old Oolitic Scotland was as densely covered with coniferous trees as the Scotland of Roman times, when the great Caledonian forest stretched northwards from the wall of Antoninus to the furthest Thule.

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A Narrative of the Excursion of Mr. Vanderbilt's Party, in her Voyage to England, Russia, Denmark, France, Spain, Italy, Malta, Turkey, Madeira, etc. By Rev. JOHN OVERTON CHOULES, D.D. With elegant Illustrations, etc. 12mo, cloth, gilt back and sides, $1.50.

VISITS TO EUROPEAN CELEBRITIES.

By the Rev. WILLIAM B. SPRAGUE, D.D. 12mo, cloth, $1.00.

A series of graphic and life-like Personal Sketches of many of the most distinguished men and women of Europe, with whom the author became acquainted in the course of several European tours, where he saw them in their own homes and under the most advantageous circumstances. "It was my uniform custom, after every such interview, to take copious memoranda of the converation, including an account of the individual's appearance and manners; in short, defining as well as I could, the whole impression which his physical, intellectual, and moral man had made upon me." From the memoranda thus made, the material for the present instructive and exceedingly interesting volume is derived. Besides these "pen and ink" sketches, the work contains the novel attraction of a FAC SIMILE OF THE SIGNATURE of each of the persons introduced.

PILGRIMAGE TO EGYPT; EXPLORATIONS OF THE NILE.

With Observations, illustrative of the Manners, Customs, etc. By Hon. J.V.C. SMITH, M.D. With numerous elegant Engravings, 12mo; cloth, $1.25.

THE STORY OF THE CAMPAIGN.

A complete Narrative of the War in Southern Russia. Written in a Tent in the Crimea. By Major E. BRUCE HAMLEY, author of "Lady Lee's Widowhood." With a new and complete Map of the Seat of War. 12mo. paper covers, 37-1/2 cts.

POETICAL WORKS.

MILTON'S POETICAL WORKS. With Life and Elegant Illustrations. 16mo, cloth, $1.00; fine cloth, gilt, $1.25.

POETICAL WORKS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. With Life, and Illustrations on Steel. 16mo, cl., $1; fine cl., gilt, $1.25.

COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM COWPER. With a Life, and Critical Notices of his Writings. With new and elegant Illustrations on Steel. 16mo. cloth, $1.00; fine cloth, gilt, $1.25.

--> The above Poetical Works, by standard authors, are all of uniform size and style, printed on fine paper, from clear, distinct type, with new and elegant illustrations, richly bound in full gilt, and plain; thus rendering them, in connection with the exceedingly LOW PRICE at which they are offered, the cheapest and most desirable of any of the numerous editions of these author's works now in the market.

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN FOSTER.

Edited by J.E. RYLAND, with Notices of Mr. Foster as a Preacher and a Companion. By JOHN SHEPPARD. Two volumes in one, 700 pages. 12mo, cloth, $1.25.

In simplicity of language, in majesty of conception, in the eloquence of that conciseness which conveys in a short sentence more meaning than the mind dares at once admit,--his writings are unmatched.--[North British Review.]

GUIDO AND JULIUS.

Tho Doctrine of Sin and the Propitiator; or, the True Consecration of the Doubter. Exhibited in the Correspondence of two Friends. By FREDERICK AUGUSTUS O. THOLUCH, D.D. Translated by JONATHAN EDWARDS RYLAND. With an Introduction by JOHN PYE SMITH, D.D. 16mo, cloth, 60 cents.

NEW AND COMPLETE CONDENSED CONCORDANCE

To the Holy Scriptures. By ALEXANDER CRUDEN. Revised and re-edited by Rev. DAVID KING, L.L.D. Octavo, cloth backs, $1.25, sheep, $1.50.

VALUABLE WORKS

PUBLISHED BY

GOULD AND LINCOLN,

59 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON.

THE CHRISTIAN'S DAILY TREASURY.

A Religious Exercise for Every Day in the Year. By E. TEMPLE. A new and improved edition. 12mo. cloth, $1.00.

A work for every Christian. It is indeed a "Treasury" of good things.

THE SCHOOL OF CHRIST;

Or, Christianity Viewed in its Leading Aspects. By the Rev. A.L.R. FOOTE, author of "Incidents in the Life of our Saviour," etc. 16mo, cloth, 50 cents.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

Social and Individual. By PETER BAYNE, M.A. 12mo, cloth, $1.25.

The demand for this extraordinary work, commencing before its publication, is still eager and constant. There is but one voice respecting it; men of all denominations agree in pronouncing it one of the most admirable works of the age.

GOD REVEALED IN THE PROCESS OF CREATION.

And by the Manifestation of Jesus Christ. Including an Examination of the Development Theory contained in the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," By JAMES B. WALKER, author of "Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation." 12mo, cloth, $1.00.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE PLAN OF SALVATION.

By an AMERICAN CITIZEN. An Introductory Essay, by CALVIN E. STOWE, D.D. New improved edition, with a SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER. 12mo, cloth, 75 cts.

This book is generally admitted to be one of the best in the English language. The work has been translated into several different languages in Europe. A capital book to circulate among young men.

A WREATH AROUND THE CROSS;

Or, Scripture Truths Illustrated. By A. MORTON BROWN, D.D. Recommendatory Preface, by JOHN ANGELL JAMES. Beautiful Frontispiece. 16mo, cloth, 60 cents.

THE BETTER LAND;

Or, The Believer's Journey and Future Home. By REV. A.C. THOMPSON. 12mo, cloth, 85 cents.

A most charming and instructive book for all now journeying to the "Better Land," and especially for those who have friends already entered upon its never-ending joys.

THE MISSION OF THE COMFORTER.

With copious Notes. By JULIUS CHARLES HARE. With the Notes translated for the American edition. 12mo, cloth, $1.25.

DR. WAYLAND'S UNIVERSITY SERMON

Delivered in the Chapel of Brown University. 12mo, cloth, S1.00.

THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD.

And their Relations to Christianity. By FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, A.M., Professor of Divinity, King's College, London. 16mo, cloth, 60 cts.

SACRED RHETORIC;

Or, Composition and Delivery of Sermons. By HENRY. J. RIPLEY, Professor in Newton Theological Institution, Including Professor Ware's Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching. 12mo, 75 cts.

THE PREACHER AND THE KING;

Or, Bourdalone in the Court of Louis XIV. An Account of that distinguished Era, Translated from the French of L.F. BUNGENER. With an Introduction by the Rev. GEORGE POTTS, D.D. New edition, with a fine Likeness, and a Sketch of the Author's Life. 12mo, cloth, $1.25.

It combines substantial history with the highest charm of romance. Its attractions are so various that it can hardly fail to find readers of almost every description.--[Puritan Recorder.]

THE PRIEST AND THE HUGUENOT;

Or, Persecution in the Age of Louis XV. Translated from the French of L.F. BUNGENER. 2 vols., 12mo, cloth, $2.25.

--> This is truly a masterly production, full of interest, and may be set down as one of the greatest Protestant works of the age.

FOOTSTEPS OF OUR FOREFATHERS.

What they Suffered and what they Sought. Describing Localities and portraying Personages and Events conspicuous in the Struggles for Religious Liberty. By JAMES G. MIALL. Thirty-six fine Illustrations. 12mo, $1.00.

An exceedingly entertaining work. The reader soon becomes so deeply entertained that he finds it difficult to lay aside the book till finished,--[Ch. Parlor Mag.]

A work absorbingly interesting, and very instructive.--[Western Lit. Magazine.]

MEMORIALS OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY.

Presenting, in a graphic, compact, and popular form, Memorable Events of Early Ecclesiastical History, etc. By JAMES G. MIALL. With numerous elegant Illustrations. 12mo, cloth, $1.00.

--> This, like the "Footsteps of our Forefathers," will be found a work of uncommon interest.

WORKS BY JOHN HARRIS, D.D.

THE PRE-ADAMITE EARTH. Contributions to Theological Science. 12mo, cloth, $1.00.

MAN PRIMEVAL; or, the Constitution and Primitive Condition of the Human Being. With a fine Portrait of the Author. 12mo. cloth, $1.25

PATRIARCHY; or, THE FAMILY. Its Constitution and Probation; being the _third_ volume of "Contributions to Theological Science." $1.25.

THE GREAT TEACHER; or, Characteristics of our Lord's Ministry. With an Introductory Essay. By H. HUMPHREY, D.D. 12mo, cloth, 85 cts.

THE GREAT COMMISSION; or, the Christian Church constituted and charged to convey the Gospel to the World. Introductory Essay by W.R. WILLIAMS, D.D. 12mo, cloth, $1.00.

ZEBULON; Or, the Moral Claims of Seamen. 18mo, cloth, 25 cts.

PHILIP DODDRIDGE.

His Life and Labors. By JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D., with beautiful Illuminated Title-page and Frontispiece, 16mo, cloth, 60 cents.

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY.

As exhibited in the writings of its apologists, down to Augustine. By W.J. BOLTON, of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. 12mo. cloth, 80 cents.

WORKS BY DR. TWEEDIE.

GLAD TIDINGS; or, The Gospel of Peace. A series of Daily Meditations for Christian Disciples. By Rev. W.K. TWEEDIE, D.D. With elegant Illustrated Title-page. 16mo, cloth, 63 cts.

THE MORN OF LIFE; or, Examples of Female Excellence. A Book for Young Ladies. 16mo, cloth. _In press._

A LAMP TO THE PATH; or, the Bible in the Heart, the Home, and the Market Place. With an elegant Illustrated Title-page. 16mo, cloth. 63 cts.

SEED TIME AND HARVEST; or, Sow Well and Reap Well. A Book for the Young. With an elegant Illustrated Title-page. 16mo, cloth, 63 cts.

--> The above works, by Dr. Tweedie, are of uniform size and style. They are most charming, pious, and instructive works, beautifully gotten up, and well adapted for "gift-books."

WORKS BY JOHN ANGELL JAMES.

THE CHURCH MEMBER'S GUIDE; Edited by J.O. CHOULES, D.D. New edition. With an Introductory Essay by Rev. HUBBARD WINSLOW. Cloth, 33c.

CHRISTIAN PROGRESS. A Sequel to the Anxious Inquirer. 18mo, cloth, 31c.

--> One of the best and most useful works of this popular author.

THE CHURCH IN EARNEST. Seventh thousand. 18mo, cloth, 40 cents

MOTHERS OF THE WISE AND GOOD.

By JABEZ BURNS, D.D. 16mo, cloth, 75 cents.

We wish it were in every family, and read by every mother in the land.--[Lutheran Observer.]

MY MOTHER;

Or, Recollections of Maternal Influence. By a New England Clergyman, With a beautiful Frontispiece. 12mo, cloth, 75 cents.

This is one of the most charming books that have issued from the press for a long period. "It is," says a distinguished author, "one of those rare pictures painted from life with the exquisite skill of one of the 'Old Masters,' which no seldom present themselves to the amateur."

THE EXCELLENT WOMAN.

With an Introduction by Rev. W.B. SPRAGUE, D.D. Containing twenty-four splendid Illustrations. 12mo. cloth, $1.00; cloth, gilt, $1.75; extra Turkey, $2.50.

--> This elegant volume is an appropriate and valuable "gift book" for the husband to present the wife, or the child the mother.

MEMORIES OF A GRANDMOTHER. By a Lady of Massachusetts. l6mo, cloth, 50 cents.

THE MARRIAGE RING;

Or, How to make Home Happy. By JOHN ANGELL JAMES. Beautiful illustrated edition 16mo, cloth, gilt, 75 cents.

A beautiful volume, and a very suitable present to a newly-married couple.--[N.V. Christian Intelligencer]

WORKS BY WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS, D.D.

RELIGIOUS PROGRESS; Discourses on the Development of the Christian Character. 12mo, cloth, 85 cts.

This work is from the pen of one of the brightest lights of the American pulpit. We scarcely know of any living writer who has a finer command of powerful thought and glowing, impressive language than he.--[DR. SPRAGUE, Alb. Atl.]

LECTURES ON THE LORD'S PRAYER Third edition. 12mo, cloth, 85 cts.

Their breadth of view, strength of logic, and stirring eloquence place them among the very best homilitical efforts of the age. Every page is full of suggestions as well as eloquence.--Ch. Parlor Mag.

MISCELLANIES. New improved edition. _Price reduced._ 12mo, $1.25.

VALUABLE WORKS.

THE HALLIG; OR, THE SHEEPFOLD IN THE WATERS. A Tale of Humble Life on the Coast of Schleswig. Translated from the German of Biernatzski, by Mrs. GEORGE P. MARSH. With a Biographical Sketch of the Author. 12mo. cloth. $1.00.

The author of this work was the grandson of an exiled Polish nobleman. His own portrait is understood to be drawn in one of the characters of the Tale, and indeed the whole work has a substantial foundation in fact. In Germany it has passed through several editions, and is there regarded as the chef-d'oeuvre of the author. As a revelation of an entire new phase of human society, it will strongly remind the reader of Miss Bremer's tales. In originality and brilliancy of imagination, it is not inferior those;--its aim is far higher. The elegance of Mrs. Marsh's translation will at once arrest the attention of every competent judge.

HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. "I have read it with deep interest. Mrs. Marsh has given us an admirable version of a most striking and powerful work."

FROM PROF. F.D. HUNTINGTON, D.D., IN THE RELIGIOUS MAGAZINE. "Wherever the work goes it fascinates the cultivated and the illiterate, the young and the old, the devout and the careless. Our own copy is in brisk circulation. The vivid and eloquent description of the strange scenery, the thrilling accounts of the mysterious action of the waters and vapors of the Schleswig coast, &c., all form a story of uncommon attractions and unmingled excellence."

DR. SPRAGUE IN ALBANY SPECTATOR. "A rare and beautiful work. It is an interesting contribution to the physical geography of a part of Europe lying quite beyond the reach of ordinary observation, and as a genial and faithful sketch of human life under conditions which are hardly paralleled elsewhere."

The tale is a novel one, containing thrilling scenes, as well as religious teachings.--PRESBYTERIAN.

A beautiful and exquisite natural tale. In novelty of life and customs, as well as in nicely drawn shades of local and personal character the Hallig, is equalled by very few works of fiction.--BOSTON ATLAS.

The story, which is deeply thrilling, is exclusively religious.--CH. SECRETARY.

Here we have another such book as makes the reading of it a luxury, even in hot summer weather. It takes us to an island home, in the chill regions of the North Sea, and introduces us to pastoral scenes as lively and as edifying as those of Oberlin, in the Ban de la Roche.--SOUTHERN BAP.

THE CAMEL: His Organization, Habits and Uses, considered with reference to his Introduction into the United States. BY GEORGE P. MARSH, late U. S. Minister at Constantinople. 16mo, cloth. 75 cents.

This book treats of a subject of great interest, especially at the present time. It furnishes the only complete and reliable account of the Camel in the language. It is the result of extensive research and personal observation, and it has been prepared with special reference to the experiment now being made by our Government, of domesticating the Camel in this country.

A repository of interesting information respecting the Camel. The author collected the principal materials for his work during his residence and travels for some years in the East. He describes the species, size, color, temper, longevity, useful products, diet, powers, training and speed of the Camel, and treats of his introduction into the United States.--PHIL. CHRISTIAN OBSERVER.

This is a most interesting book, on several accounts. The subject is full of romance and information; the treatment is able and thorough.--TEXAS CH. ADVOCATE.

Our Government have taken measures for introducing the Camel into this country, and an appropriation of $30,000 has been made by Congress. It becomes a matter of practical importance, therefore, to obtain the fullest and most reliable information possible respecting the animal and his adaptation to this country. His advent among us will stimulate general curiosity, and raise a thousand questions respecting his character and habits of life, his powers of endurance, his food, his speed, his length of life, his fecundity, the methods of managing and using him, the cost of keeping him, the value of his carcass after death, &c. This work furnishes, in a small compass, all the desired information.--BOSTON ATLAS.

A complete sketch of the habits and nature of the Camel is given, which has great interest. The value of the camel as a beast of burden is abundantly confirmed.--N.Y. EVANGELIST.

IMPORTANT WORKS.

ANALYTICAL CONCORDANCE OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES; or, The Bible presented under Distinct and Classified Heads or Topics. By JOHN EADIE, D.D., LL. D., Author of "Biblical Cyclopaedia," "Dictionary of the Bible," &c., &c. One volume, royal octavo, 836 pp. Cloth. $3.00; sheep, $3.50. _Just published._

The publishers would call the special attention of clergymen and others to some of the peculiar features of this great work.

1. It is a concordance of _subjects_, not of _words_. In this it differs from the common concordance, which, of course, it does not supersede. Both are necessary to the Biblical student.

2. It embraces all the topics, both secular and religious, which are naturally suggested by the entire contents of the Bible. In this it differs from Scripture Manuals and Topical Text-books, which are confined to religious or doctrinal topics.

3. It contains _the whole of the Bible without abridgment_, differing in no respect from the Bible in common use, except in the classification of its contents.

4. It contains a synopsis, separate from the concordance, presenting within the compass of a few pages a bird's-eye view of the whole contents.

5. It contains a table of contents, embracing nearly two thousand heads, arranged in alphabetical order.

6. It is much superior to the only other work in the language prepared on the same general plan, and is offered to the public at much less cost.

The purchaser gets not only a _Concordance_, but also a _Bible_, in this volume. The superior convenience arising out of this fact,--saving, as it does, the necessity of having two books at hand and of making two references, instead of one,--will be readily apparent.

The general subjects (under each of which there are a vast number of sub-divisions) are arranged as follows, viz.:

Agriculture, Animals, Architecture, Army, Arms, Body, Canaan, Covenant, Diet and Dress, Disease and Death, Earth, Family, Genealogy, God, Heaven, Idolatry, Idols, Jesus Christ, Jews, Laws, Magistrates, Man, Marriage, Metals and Minerals, Ministers of Religion, Miracles, Occupations, Ordinances, Parables and Emblems, Persecution, Praise and Prayer, Prophecy, Providence, Redemption, Sabbaths and Holy Days, Sacrifice, Scriptures, Speech, Spirits, Tabernacle and Temple, Vineyard and Orchard, Visions and Dreams, War, Water.

That such a work as this is of exceeding great convenience is matter of obvious remark. But it is much more than that; it is also an instructive work. It is adapted not only to assist the student in prosecuting the investigation of preconceived ideas, but also to impart ideas which the most careful reading of the Bible in its ordinary arrangement might not suggest. Let him take up any one of the subjects--"Agriculture," for example--and see if such be not the case. This feature places the work in a higher grade than that of the common Concordance. It shows it to be, so to speak, a work of more mind.

No Biblical student would willingly dispense with this Concordance when once possessed. It is adapted to the necessities of all classes,--clergymen and theological students; Sabbath-school superintendents and teachers; authors engaged in the composition of religious and even secular works; and, in fine, common readers of the Bible, intent only on their own improvement.

A COMMENTARY ON THE ORIGINAL TEXT OF THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. By HORATIO B. HACKETT, D.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and Interpretation, in the Newton Theological Institution. --> A new, revised, and enlarged edition. _In Press._

--> This most important and very popular work, has been thoroughly revised (some parts being entirely rewritten), and considerably enlarged by the introduction of important new matter, the result of the Author's continued, laborious investigations since the publication of the first edition, aided by the more recent published criticisms on this portion of the Divine Word, by other distinguished Biblical Scholars, in this country and in Europe.

AMOS LAWRENCE.

DIARY AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE LATE AMOS LAWRENCE; with a brief account of some Incidents in his Life. Edited by his son, WILLIAM R. LAWRENCE, M.D. With fine steel Portraits of AMOS and ABBOTT LAWRENCE, an Engraving of their Birth-place, a Fac-simile page of Mr. Lawrence's Hand-writing, and a copious Index. Octavo edition, cloth, $1.50. Royal duodecimo edition, $1.00.

This work was first published in an elegant octavo volume, and sold at the unusually low price of $1.50. At the solicitation of numerous benevolent individuals who were desirous of circulating the work--so remarkably adapted to do good, especially to young men--_gratuitously_, and of giving those of moderate means, of every class, an opportunity of possessing it, the royal duodecimo, or "_cheap edition_," was issued, varying from the other edition, only in a reduction in the size (allowing less margin), and the _thickness_ of the paper.

Within six months after the first publication of this work, _twenty-two thousand_ copies had been sold. This extraordinary sale is to be accounted for by the character of the man and the merits of the book. It is the memoir of a Boston merchant, who became distinguished for his great wealth, but more distinguished for the manner in which he used it. It is the memoir of a man, who, commencing business with only $20, gave away in public and private charities, _during his lifetime_ more, probably, than any other person in America. It is substantially an _autobiography_, containing a full account of Mr. Lawrence's career as a merchant, of his various multiplied charities, and of his domestic life.

"We have by us another work, the 'Life of Amos Lawrence.' We heard it once said in the pulpit, 'There is no work of art like a noble life,' and for that reason he who has achieved one, takes rank with the great artists and becomes the world's property. WE ARE PROUD OF THIS BOOK. WE ARE WILLING TO LET IT GO FORTH TO OTHER LANDS AS A SPECIMEN OF WHAT AMERICA CAN PRODUCE. In the old world, reviewers have called Barnum THE characteristic American man. We are willing enough to admit that he is a characteristic American man; he is ONE fruit of our soil, but Amos Lawrence is another. Let our country have credit for him also. THE GOOD EFFECT WHICH THIS LIFE MAY HAVE IN DETERMINING THE COURSE OF YOUNG MEN TO HONOR AND VIRTUE IS INCALCULABLE."--MRS. STOWE, IN N.Y. INDEPENDENT.

"We are glad to know that our large business houses are purchasing copies of this work for each of their numerous clerks. Its influence on young men cannot be otherwise than highly salutary. As a business man, Mr. Lawrence was a pattern for the young clerk."--BOSTON TRAVELLER.

"We are thankful for the volume before us. It carries us back to the farm-house of Mr. Lawrence's birth, and the village store of his first apprenticeship. It exhibits a charity noble and active, while the young merchant was still poor. And above all, it reveals to us a beautiful cluster of sister graces, a keen sense of honor, integrity which never knew the shadow of suspicion, candor in the estimate of character, filial piety, rigid fidelity in every domestic relation, and all these connected with and flowing from steadfast religious principle, profound sentiments of devotion, and a vivid realization of spiritual truth."--NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

"We are glad that American Biography has been enriched by such a contribution to its treasures. In all that composes the career of 'the good man,' and the practical Christian, we have read few memoirs more full of instruction, or richer in lessons of wisdom and virtue. We cordially unite in the opinion that the publication of this memoir was a duty owed to Society."--NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE.

"With the intention of placing it within the reach of a large number, the mere cost price is charged, and a more beautifully printed volume, or one calculated to do more good, has not been issued from the press of late years."--EVENING GAZETTE.

"This book, besides being of a different class from most biographies, has another peculiar charm. It shows the inside life of the man. You have, as it were, a peep behind the curtain, and see Mr. Lawrence as he went in and out among business men, as he appeared on change, as he received his friends, as he poured out, 'with liberal hand and generous heart,' his wealth for the benefit of others, as he received the greetings and salutations of children, and as he appeared in the bosom of his family at his own hearth stone."--BRUNSWICK TELEGRAPH.

"It is printed on new type, the best paper, and is illustrated by four beautiful plates. How it can be sold for the price named is a marvel."--NORFOLK CO. JOURNAL.

"It was first privately printed, and a limited number of copies were distributed among the relatives and near friends of the deceased. This volume was read with the deepest interest by those who were so favored as to obtain a copy, and it passed from friend to friend as rapidly as it could be read. Dr. Lawrence has yielded to the general wish, and made public the volume. It will now be widely circulated, will certainly prove a standard work, and be read over and over again."--BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER.

MODERN ATHEISM.

MODERN ATHEISM, under its Forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws. By JAMES BUCHANAN, D.D., LL. D. 12mo, cloth, $1.25.

The Author of this work is the successor of Dr. Chalmers in the Chair of Divinity in the New College, Edinburgh, and the intellectual leader of the Scottish Free Church.

FROM HUGH MILLER, AUTHOR OF "OLD RED SANDSTONE," &c., &c.,--The work before us is one of at once the most readable and solid which we have ever perused.

FROM THE "NEWS OF THE CHURCHES."--It is a work of which nothing less can be said, than that, both in spirit and substance, style and argument, it fixes irreversibly the name of the author as a leading classic in the Christian literature of Britain.

FROM HOWARD MALCOM, D.D., PRESIDENT OF LEWISBURG UNIVERSITY.--No work has come into my hands, for a long time, so helpful to me as a teacher of metaphysics and morals. I know of nothing which will answer for a substitute. The public specially needs such a book at this time, when the covert atheism of Fichte, Wolfe, Hegel, Kant, Schelling, D'Holbach, Comte, Crousse, Atkinson, Martineau, Leroux, Mackay, Holyoake, and others, is being spread abroad with all earnestness, supported, at least in some places, both by church influence and university honors. I cannot but hope that a work so timely, scholarly, and complete, will do much good.

It is one of the most solid and remarkable books in its department of literature; one of the most scholarly and profound inductions of modern Christian literature.--WORCESTER TRANSCRIPT.

Dr. Buchanan has earned a high and well-deserved reputation as a classical writer and close logical reasoner. He deals heavy, deadly blows on atheism in all its various forms; and wherever the work is read it cannot fail to do good.--CHRISTIAN SECRETARY.

It is a work which places its author at once in the highest rank of modern religious authors. His analyses of the doctrines held by the various schools of modern atheism are admirable, and his criticism original and profound; while his arguments in defence of the Christian Faith are powerful and convincing. It is an attractive as well as a solid book; and he who peruses a few of its pages is, as it were, irresistibly drawn on to a thorough reading of the book.--BOSTON PORTFOLIO.

The style is very felicitous, and the reasoning clear and cogent. The opposing theories are fairly stated and combated with remarkable case and skill. Even when the argument falls within the range of science, it is so happily stated that no intelligent reader can fail to understand it. Such a profound, dispassionate work is particularly called for at the present time.--BOSTON JOURNAL.

It is justly described as "a great argument," "magnificent in its strength, order, and beauty," in defence of truth, and against the variant theories of atheism. It reviews the doctrines of the different schools of modern Atheism, gives a fair statement of their theories, answers and refutes them, never evading, but meeting and crushing their arguments.--PHILA. CHRISTIAN OBSERVER.

Dr. Buchanan is candid and impartial, too, as a strong a man can afford to be, evades no argument, undertakes no opposing view, but meets his antagonists with the quiet and unswerving confidence of a locomotive on iron tracks, pretty sure to crush them.--CHRISTIAN REGISTER.

We hail this production of a master mind as a lucid, vigorous, discriminating, and satisfactory refutation of the various false philosophies which have appeared in modern times to allure ingenuous youth to their destruction. Dr. Buchanan has studied them thoroughly, weighed them dispassionately, and exposed their falsity and emptiness. His refutation is a clear stream of light from beginning to end.--PHILA. PRESBYTERIAN.

We recommend "Modern Atheism" as a book for the times, and as having special claims on theological students.--UNIVERSALIST QUARTERLY.

It is remarkable for the clearness with which it apprehends and the fairness with which it states, not less than for the ability with which it replies to, the schemes of unbelief in its various modern forms. It will be found easy to read--though not light reading--and very quickening to thought, while it clears away, one by one, the mists which the Devil has conjured around the great doctrines of our Faith, by the help of some of his ingenious modern coadjutors, and leaves the truth of God standing in its serene and pristine majesty, as if the breath of hatred never had been breathed forth against it.--CONGREGATIONALIST.

Dr. Buchanan has here gone into the enemy's camp, and defeated him on his own ground. The work is a masterly defence of faith against dogmatic unbelief on the one hand, and that universal skepticism on the other, which neither affirms nor denies, on the ground of an assumed deficiency of evidence as to the reality of God and religion.--N.Y. CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE.

It is a clearly and vigorously written book. It is particularly valuable for its clear statement and masterly refutation of the Pantheism of Spinoza and his School.--CHRISTIAN HERALD.