an

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the Straights of Gibraltar, was by no means a generally acknowledged fact. It was in vain that "our sea officers" asserted, that the "Mediterranean sets out again into the Atlantic" by ebbing out (i. e. an under current) of the Straights' mouth,' it being scarce reconcilable to the common notions of philosophy, that there should be two contrary declivities, or currents, in the same channel." As an apology for these learned men, a still greater ignorance of more practical importance, perhaps, prevailed, almost within our own memory as we have heard that, not half a century ago, lime was actually sent from this country to Gibraltar, for the purpose of building; the civil or military engineers not having had philosophy or common sense enough to discover, that the rock was stratified with masses of fine calcareous materials. Upon several other points, connected with general science and local knowledge, we find considerable ignorance, (in using, however, this term, we are far from imputing it as a fault to such men as Ray, &c.; on the contrary, considering the education, manners, and character of the times, our wonder is, rather, that any individual could collect a tithe of the information they possessed.) Thus, Mr. Ray makes it one of his queries to Sir Hans Sloane, on his going to Jamaica, "whether ambergrise be the juice of any sort of metal, or aloe, dropt into the sea, as Tropham would have it;" a substance now generally understood to be a concretion formed in the stomach, or intestines, of the physeter macrocephalus, or spermaceti whale. Again, the existence of that wonderful work of nature, the Giant's Causeway, seems to have been known only by vague report; for we find Mr. Lwhyd, an intelligent correspondent of Mr. Ray's, "put in mind of a current report, how that, in the county of Antrim, in Ireland, there are divers large pillars of star stones, able to support a church."

But the most remarkable deficiency in their knowledge relates to their almost utter ignorance of the nature and character of fossil organic remains. It would be unreasonable, indeed, to expect to meet with a Buckland, or a Cuvier, at a period when the vast and important accession of information afforded by these celebrated men might have exposed them, if not to the fate of Galileo, at least to the pains and penalties with which the orthodox priesthood of that day might have overwhelmed them. That the word "beginning," as applied by Moses, (Genesis, ch. i., v. 1,) expressed an undefined period of time, antecedent to the last great change that affected the surface of the earth, and to the creation of its present animal and vegetable inhabitants; and that the days of the Mosaic are not to be strictly construed as implying the same length of

time which is at present occupied by a single revolution of our globe, but periods of a much longer extent;* were assertions reserved as privileges for the more enlightened era of the 19th century, and for which we, who have lived to receive and accept them as allowable truths, cannot be sufficiently thankful. The subject often reverted to in the course of the correspondence, is treated, according to the views and good sense of the writers, with every variety of doubt or caution. It will be perceived, however, that Ray entertained sentiments of a far more enlarged and superior cast to the rest, adopting ideas of the truth, well worthy of his fame and character. Mr. Cole, to Mr. Ray, thus expresses himself: "I have found fossils and figured stones, which would put you out of all doubt, that there are many varieties of naturally formed stones, which never were either animals, or vegetables, or any parts of them, not only because no such shell-fishes were ever found, so far as appears by any known authors, or the collections that I have seen or heard of, (and to suppose any species of creatures to cease cannot consist with the divine providence, and is contrary to the opinion of all philosophers, as well as learned divines ;) but it doth evidently appear, by the figure of some of them, that they were never capable of being living creatures;" which he' proves from the extreme thinness of the lamina in which they were found. Other stones, "something resembling a nautilus," he found, but so much differing from those he had ever seen, that he is "confident they were never shell-fishes." Mr. Lwhyd is less positive, and, therefore, more rational: he says, "whether (these fossil impressions) were ever the tegumenta of animals, or are only primary productions of nature in imitation of them, I am constrained to leave in Medin, and to confess I find in myself no sufficient ability or confidence to maintain either opinion, though I incline much to the latter. However it be, it seems an extraordinary delightful subject, and worthy the inquiry of the most judicious philosophers. On the one hand, it seems strange, if these things are not shells petrified; whence it proceeds, that we find such great variety of them, so very like shells, in shape and magnitude, and some of them in colour, weight, and consistence, and not only resemblances of sea-shells should be found, but also of the bones and teeth of divers sea-fish; and that we only find the resemblance of such bodies, as are in their own nature of a stonelike substance. On the other hand, it seems as remarkable, that we seldom or never find any resemblance of horns, teeth, or bones of land animals, or of birds, which might be apt to petrify, if we respect

Buckland's Inaugural Lecture, p. 31-32.

their consistence; insomuch, that I suspect few formed stones are found (at least in England,) except in some extraordinary petrifying earth, but what a skilful naturalist may (and that, perhaps, deservedly) assimilate to some marine bodies; but yet, when we confer them with these bodies they seem most to resemble, they appear but as mock shells and counterfeit teeth; differing from them little less than the works of art do from those of nature, which we endeavour to imitate; as if the earth, in these productions (to speak vulgarly), should only ape the sea. To find out the truth of this question, nothing would conduce more than a very copious collection of shells, of the skeletons of fish, &c., and of these supposed petrifications."

In another letter to Mr. Ray, with a parcel of fossil leaves, he says, "I heartily wish you may be able to satisfy yourself, upon sight of them, whether they are original productions, or the remains of once real plants, for I must confess that, at present, I cannot acquiesce in the opinion of their having been once mere plants, growing on the surface of the earth." Lastly, we quote Mr. Ray's opinion, as given to Dr. Robinson, respecting some fossil remains from Malta; "which, why we should not esteem to have been originally the shells of fishes, I see no reason; for if, in one and the same place, we find many teeth and bones of fishes entire and unpetrified, and, likewise, stones exactly imitating the shells of other fishes, a great presumption to me it is, that these were originally the things whose shape only they now seem to bear." What would not such men have given for an anticipatory ticket of admission to the cavern of Kirkdale, or for a copy of the Reliquiæ Diluviana, or Cuvier's Theory of the Earth.

Having followed them through their several branches of science, we cannot take our leave, without introducing one more correspondent, of whom we have hitherto not spoken, namely, a certain Rev. Mr. Paschal, or Pascal, of Queen's College, in conjunction with Mr. Ray and others, as supporter of the atomic theory. Upon so abstruse a subject, in this advanced stage of our article, we cannot be expected to expatiate largely; and it is equally impossible to condense, within a few lines, the essence of theories which have occupied the minds of such men as Cudworth and Boscovich, to say nothing of more ancient and more modern philosophers. The atomic physiology, says the former, supposes that body is nothing else but "extended bulk ̧ and resolves, therefore, that nothing is to be attributed to it, but what is included in the nature and idea of it, viz. more or less magnitude, with divisibility into parts, figure, and position, together with motion or rest, but so as that no part of body can ever move itself, but is always moved by something

else, &c.* Boscovich (and indeed Liebnitz, though with some inconsistencies) maintained, that the very first elements of matter were void of extension, and perfectly simple, under the influence of forces strongly attractive and repulsive, and, by this theory, explained all the most remarkable operations of nature; and being accustomed to contemplate so deeply the universe, and the materials of which it is composed, he soon saw the evident necessity of admitting an all-powerful, intelligent, self-existing being, for the creation of those materials, and for the arrangement of them in their present beautiful forms. Newton's views were, probably, not very remote from those of Boscovich; and, had he lived to be acquainted with, he ́would, probably, have adopted them. This has been conjectured from what he says in his last question of optics, where, after having mentioned those things which might be explained by an attractive force, succeeded by a repulsive one on a change of the distance, he adds, "and if all these things are so, then will all nature be very simple and consistent with itself, effecting all the great motions of the heavenly bodies by the attraction of gravity, which is mutual between all those bodies, and almost all the less motions of its particles by another certain attractive and repulsive force, which is natural between those particles." This system, differing in no very great degree from the definitions we have briefly given, has lately been introduced into chemistry, as the only means of explaining, on rational grounds, a considerable portion of the phenomena which modern discoveries have brought to light. Thus, Sir H. Davy, in his Elements of Chem. Philosophy, 223503, observes, that if the "sublime idea of the ancient philosophers, which has been sanctioned by the approbation of Newton, should be true, namely, that there is only one species of matter, the different chemical, as well as mechanical, forms of which are owing to the different arrangement of its particles, then a method of analysing those forms may, probably, be found, &c. ;" and again," a few undecompounded bodies, which may, perhaps, ultimately be resolved into still fewer elements, or which may be different forms of the same material, constitute the whole of our tangible universe of things. By experiment, they are discovered, even in the most complicated arrangements; and experiment is, as it were, that chain that binds down the Proteus of nature, and obliges it to confess its real form and divine origin."

We shall now proceed to give Mr. Ray's opinion, “that there are fixed and physically indivisible principles in nature, I

* Cudworth Int. Sys. b. 1., ch. 1.

thus argue: if there be no such, but bodies are infinitely divisible, how can there be any constancy in generations or productions?" This is followed up by a chain of reasoning which induces him to conclude, that, were bodies infinitely divisible and, consequently, of no certain figure (the minima I mean) "I do not see how we could ever come to such regular concretions, at least to such multitudes and masses of them; but that the world must have continued, as the poets first fancied it, a chaos."

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As matter more of curiosity than information, we will now add Mr. Pascal's opinion, though, with the worthy editor of our book, Dr. Denham, we must say, his letters are rather " tedious, by reason the hypothesis is abstruse and somewhat strained." In fact, we are by no means sure, that we have very clear conceptions of the theory he wishes to develope; we can, therefore, only suspect, that if he could have elucidated it, or we could have understood it, the result would have been coincident with those of Mr. Ray, and the others we have alluded to. This opinion forms the sum and substance of a letter from the Rev. Mr. Pascal to Mr. Ray, dated Cedsey, near Bridgewater: the whole of it we shall not insert, leaving it for our readers, if they approve of the specimen, to consult the origiginal in page 274. "There seems to be throughout the universe a mutual concranitency between parts central and circumferential; those emitting and propelling outwards; these resisting and repelling inwards:" of this, I have three instances now in my thoughts: we shall only insert the first. 1st. "In this, or any other planetary system, the sun sends forth chiefly by its ecliptic parts; and the ambient fixed stars in their respective æthers, and according to their powers, give bounds, and beat back; from whence proceeds a plenitude as absolute, and entire, and close as the nature of such a fluid can admit of." By these reasons, he thinks he can contribute something towards "an explication of sundry phenomena in nature; such as gravity, the orders and distances of the planets, the Estus Atmosphæra, or air tides; and, lastly, what he calls culinary or vital fires; both which kinds move a centro; particularly life, as to its nature, original progress, state sane or morbose, decay, and dissolution, may have some light from a nearer and accurate inspection into these. Sir, my narrow and but late observation, and that much interrupted, supplies me with enough to make a volume upon this subject." We cannot but congratulate ourselves that this volume, never having been published, is not now a Retrospective work, the mysteries of which we, as Retrospective Reviewers, might have felt it our duty to develope.

In page 279, he suggests, that the "globe, in several parts, and times, and states of it, sends forth various effluvia, sulphu