290 The Lord President on the Natural History of 



ciple which presides over the structure of the globe, and which 

 regulates all the phenomena depending upon it, is not less wor- 

 thy of its efforts, or beneath the talents and resources which it 

 has at its command. The object is certainly one of the most 

 elevated to which the human mind can aspire : its attainment 

 would, moreover, be of the highest importance to the whole phi- 

 losophy of science. If it is averred that the earth is not an in- 

 ert mass, as it has been so long supposed ; if the appearance of 

 inertia is only owing to the slowness of the phenomena, and their 

 feeble intensity : if all is in motion and in labour in the interior, 

 as all is in motion and in labour on the outside of the globe, we 

 arrive at a result of the highest importance, since it seems appli- 

 cable to all the celestial bodies; and there is thus obtained a 

 most powerful proof of the existence of the great principle of 

 universal instability, which was long ago announced or foreseen 

 by Newton and other philosphers ; a principle superior to the 

 great rules which we are accustomed to regard as exclusively 

 constituting the laws of nature, by the aid of which we see be- 

 yond the longest and apparently most perfect periodicities of our 

 solar system, which appears to govern the universe even in its 

 minutest parts, which continually modifies all things, alters and 

 displaces them insensibly and irrevocably, and leads them through 

 the immensity of ages, to new ends which human intellect can- 

 not assuredly penetrate, but of which it may at least boast of ha- 

 ving foreseen the necessity. 



Memorandum from the Right Honourable the Lord President, 

 containing somejacts relating to the Natural History of the 

 Swallow and the Partridge, 



To Professor Jameson. 



x\.B0DT eighteen or twenty years ago. The Lord President, 



then Lord Justice- Clerk, left his house at Granton, on the 17th 



of April, to go on the West Circuit. 



There had been a fall of snow the night before, the l6th, 



and it lay on the ground two or three inches deep. He 



breakfasted with Solicitor Blair at Aventon, near Linlithgow, 



where the snow was still deeper, and the frost keen. He stop- 



3 



