Upon minute investigation, Cuvier* ascertained, that of the fossil remains, comprising seventy-eight different quadrupeds, forty-nine are of species distinct from any known to naturalists of the present day. Eleven or twelve species are now known, and sixteen or eighteen belong to others bearing considerable resemblance to known species. He ascertained, also, that the remains of oviparous animals are found in more ancient strata than those of the viviparous class. From these data it would appear that, in the formation of 196 yards, being the depth from the top of the eleventh to the lowest point of the chalk, there have been no less than ten geological epochs, in which the sea appears to have twice covered that part of the globe, and twice retired from it.t

Leaves of trees, trunks of bituminous wood, vast quantities of shells, with bones of fish and other marine animals, are perpetually found among the SubApennines of Italy. At the feet of the Ligurian Mountains is a tract of breccia, agglutinated scales of mica, and pieces of quartz, in which are imbedded shells, bivalve and univalve, and a profusion of madrepores. Similar organic substances have been

Cuvier, by establishing a correct classification according to their nature, has effected that for the animal kingdom which Linnæus and Jussieu have done for the vegetable one; given us a knowledge of animals existing before the present disposition of things, and also a key by which, from the examination and contemplation of a fossil tooth, we may not only, by that slight indication, know the class and order to which it belonged, but even the prominent character of its nature.

† "Geological science proves to demonstration that God makes use of ages, perhaps of millions of years, to produce effects that one simple instantaneous fiat might effect. Hence we learn that there is a slow and successive development in the schemes of his providence; and hence a hope is excited, a vivid and animating hope, that this is his mode of dealing with individual man, and that it is the way in which he rears the highest faculties of his nature for an interminable growth and eternity of increase."-FELLOWS: The Religion of the Universe, p. 56.

discovered on the Superga, near Turin, two thousand and sixty-four feet above the level of the sea; and along the Apennines overlooking Modena, Parma, Piedmont, and Placentia. In Modena, the waters of the wells spring from beds of gravel mixed with marine shells. These shells are found more than sixty feet in depth, and yet more than one hundred and thirty feet above the level of the Mediterranean. The shells thus found have a general analogy with each other, though many of them belong to species long supposed to be natives of other oceans. Subsequent investigations, however, have proved that many of those shellfish which have for ages been supposed to belong only to the Indian, African, and Northern Seas, the insulated recesses of the Caspian, the bays of Nicobar, and the coasts of South America, are not only to be found in the neighbourhoods of Naples and Ravenna, but, as above described, imbedded in strata of blue marl, in the bosom of the Sub-Apennines, sixty feet below successive strata of black earth, mixed with vegetable substances.

On a hill, distant about twenty miles from Verona, are found stones disposed in slates, which, being split, discover in each the half of a fish. Its species is known by the head, the eye, the spine, and the tail. Many of these were preserved in the collection of Vincenzio Bozza of Verona, who formed a collection of petrified fishes, taken from Mount Bolca, some of which the Abbé Fortis identified with fishes on the coasts of Otaheite. The borders of Mount Baldo, on the Lake Du Garda, exhibit large pieces of grayish marble full of sea-shells, converted into a substance of white spatha; near the sanctuary of Corona are flints mixed with fragments of star-fishes; and on the side of the Altissimo marks of fishes in calcareous stone. Entire skeletons of animals, supposed by some to be whales, have been dug up in Tuscany, Bologna, Piedmont, and Placentia, out

S

of strata of blue marl. Indeed, so many of these fossil remains have been found in the Superiore Valdarno, that Targione called it "the Cemetery of Elephants." In this district also have been found bones of rhinoceroses and hippopotami, as well as near Leghorn, Viterbo, Verona, Rome, Naples, and in Calabria.* They lie, for the most part, not more than a few feet below the surface; but in one instance, near Rome, those of the elephant are imbedded twenty feet deep in volcanic tufa. Some of those found so near the surface of the earth may, however, have been buried by the Romans, who were accustomed to collect great numbers of Asiatic and African animals for their savage exhibitions.

Those dug up in Valdarno Superiore and near Placentia were incrusted with oyster-shells, which adhered so closely to them that to break the bones was to break the oyster-shells at the same time. But it is probable that, as these bones are found among marine shells, they are really not the bones of elephants, but of some marine animals resembling them in anatomy.

It is to be observed, that the fossil shells found near Paris are for the most part totally distinct from those of the Sub-Apennines.

The ruins of Agrigentum stand upon a mountain composed of a concretion of sea-shells as hard as marble; and a stratum of bones has been found in Istria and Ossaro, under rocks of marble forty feet in thickness. Marble itself, also, has been found in Egypt, Italy, and Scotland, in which sea-shells are compactly indurated. Elephants' teeth, too, have been dug out of a marble quarry in Saxony, and

* Immense beds of bones have been found between the mouths of the Lena and Indigerka,* of mammoths, buffaloes, and rhinoceroses; vast multitudes are also seen in the caverns of the German mountains.

* See Von Wrangell's Expediton to Siberia and the Polar Seas, Har、 pers' Family Library.

are preserved in the Royal Museum of Copenha gen. These marbles were doubtless once of a soft nature like mud, and have become hard by the retirement of the water.

Sea-shells are found in Peru, more than 10,000 feet above the waters of the ocean; and on the summit of the mountains of the Arsagar are seen the bivalve shells of the Caspian. Thus, while fossil shells have been discovered in the quarries of Flanders, and among the Alps behind Genoa, the Pyrenees, the Caucasus, Athos, Lebanon, Ararat, the Riphæan ridge, and the steep mountains of NewIreland, the Andes present strata, either of shells, seaweeds, or skeletons of fishes, amphibia, and other animals, not only at their feet, but in their girdles, and near their very summits. Indeed, multitudinous are the evidences, in almost all parts of the globe, that what is now dry land, quarry, rock, and mountain, have, at separate periods of time, been in a state of liquidity.

The formations to which the Parisian strata apply were made at different epochs of time; each stratum was once the surface of that part of the globe in which it is now situated, and the animals found imbedded, there lived and there perished. It is indeed said that some species lie in a stratum which extends several hundred miles, unmixed with the other strata above or below. Now this is very possible, and there ought to be little doubt as to the fact; but we are no more to apply this comparative greatness of extent to the whole globe, than the natives of the deserts of Asia can be allowed to insist that, because deserts.cover vast tracts, therefore deserts pervade the entire surface of the earth.

Strata containing vegetable remains seldom discover marine shells or bones. Little, however, can be inferred from this, the whole subject being wrapped in ambiguity. But it is not improbable that each successive epoch has been marked by phe

nomena peculiar to itself; and, therefore, it is no great stretch of reasoning to suppose that the whole has several times been peopled with animals and vegetables different from those now in existence.

ASTRONOMY.

Is it possible to travel where Nature does not speak to us? If we coast the shores of the Mediterranean, or behold the sun setting in unclouded majesty in the Adriatic; if we inhale the temperate breezes of the Levant, or drink the odours wafted by the winds over the Arabian Sea; if we measure the vastness of the Pacific, encounter the snows of the Northern, or the ices of the Antarctic Ocean, still do we behold Nature operating on one grand uniform plan, her laws everywhere fixed, her bounty everywhere munificent.* Scenes like these create the most enlarged ideas of that infinity in which the Eternal centres; in whom it originates, and to whom it is alone reserved to calculate its boundless measure. Extension being one source of the sublime, the science which most expands our faculties of comprehension is undoubtedly that which is in itself the most noble and transporting. Nothing, therefore, can more strikingly indicate the vastness of those powers which Nature has implanted in man, than the faculty of investigating the various branches of natural philosophy, and, above all, that most wonderful of all the sciences, ASTRONOMY: the science of devotion, the science of an awful silence.

As the poet gazes upon the evening star, he is re

It is the same handwriting that we read, the same system and contrivance that we trace, the same unity of object, and relation to final causes which we see maintained throughout, and constantly proclaiming the UNITY of the great divine Original. -Buckland's Inaug. Lect., 1819, p. 13.