applying to it the well-known lines of Montgomery, in his celebration of the coral insect in his "Pelican Island:

Millions of millions here, from age to age,
With simplest skill, and toil unweariable,
No moment and no movement unimproved,
Laid line on line, on terrace, terrace spread,

To swell the heightening, brightening gradual mound,
By marvellous structure climbing towards the day.
Omnipotence wrought in them, with them, by them:
Hence what Omnipotence alone could do,
Worms did.

"And God made the beast of the earth after his kind."

MOSES.

IN our rapid sketch of the materials constituting the crust of the earth, we first of all, in that imaginary section which we supposed to have been laid bare to us, studied the characters of the hypogene rocks,* that make up the Azoic period, in which, with the exception of a few zoophytes, all nature was void of animal, life and possessed only by the genius of dread silence. Rising higher, we surveyed the Paleozoic or primary rocks, where the fishes of the Old Red Sandstone convinced us of progress in the forms of life, and taught us our first lesson in the ascending scale of those types of life with which Palæontology has now made us familiar. Leaving this period at the Carboniferous era, we entered upon the Mesozoic,† or

* Under-borne rocks; upo, below, and ginomai, to be formed. + Middle life period: mesos, middle, and zoos, life.

Secondary period, ushered in amidst strange convulsions that must again and again have rendered the earth "without form and void;" and here we found ourselves in company with the strange and gigantic remains of a higher order of vertebrated animals, the saurians, the crocodile-kings of a bygone period; and as we pondered these hieroglyphics of past generations, our souls "were seized the prisoners of amaze;" and now, in our upward ascent, leaving behind us the

scenes

"Where eldest Night

And Chaos, ancestors of nature, held
Eternal anarchy,"

we come to the Cainozoic,* or Tertiary Rocks, where other and higher types of life are found. Huge mammals, beasts of prodigious size, are now found inhabitants of the earth, the precursors of man-reasoning, intelligent, responsible man, who is presently to make his appearance on this great theatre of life, "made a little lower than the angels," to have dominion over the works of Jehovah's power.

Sir H. de la Beche proposes, for tertiary, the

* Recent-life period: kainos, recent, and zoos, life.

term "supercretaceous;" it is, however, of little consequence which term is adopted, the meaning in each case being the same, that all the rocks or strata lying above the chalk are to be considered as belonging to the tertiary system or series. Confessedly, it is a dark period in the history of those successive creations which have been engaging our attention, for we can trace no near connexion between the secondary or older, and tertiary or newer formations. That is to say-and the bare statement appears so sufficient and final a refutation of what has been termed the "development hypothesis," now recognised as contradictory to fact and to Scripture-that there are not known to exist in any of these newer strata the same beings, or the descendants of the same beings, that were found upon the earth at the termination of the chalk deposit.

Nor is this all; not only are none of the old fossils found in any one of the three divisions of this system, but we are introduced at once. to so many new ones, that their species and genera are almost endless; and he is not only a geologist of mark, but a most singularly accomplished geologist, who thoroughly under

stands their minute subdivisions, and can appropriately classify the fossils of this most fossiliferous era. To make the matter as simple as possible, let us add that "the broad distinction between tertiary and secondary rocks is a paleontological one. None of the secondary rocks contain any fossil animals or plants of the same species as any of those living at the present day. Every one of the tertiary groups do contain some fossil animals or plants of the same species as those now living."

Having alluded to the threefold division of this series of rocks, we shall proceed to notice them, dwelling a while upon each, and showing the principle on which each is based, as originated and enunciated by Lyell. Of the three divisions, the first is called Eocene (eos, the dawn, and kainos, recent), by which term. is represented the oldest or lowest of this tripartite series. Then we have the Miocene (meion, less, and kainos, recent)—a name, we think, not the most appropriate, and likely to mislead the beginner, because really it represents a series of beds, more and not less recent than * Juke's Practical Geology, p. 265