Reviews, and Notices respecting New Booh, 295 



In our review of Mr. Conybeare's article on the progress of geo- 

 logy ill the Second Report of the British Association, we noticed 

 his adoption and explanation of the views of Leibnitz, with respect 

 to the original igneous fluidity of the nucleus of the globe, and the 

 formation of its present crust in part from the refrigeration of the 

 surface of this nucleus*; — proceeding with these views he now 

 draws the subjoined inferences with respect to those entertained 

 by the newly elected President of the Geological Society : 



*' This view of the subject is well illustrated, in some of the dia- 

 grams in the concluding volume of Lyell's very able elements ; but he 

 [the reader] will perhaps draw a further inference from these very re- 

 presentations, which that author has failed to draw ; for he may see in 

 them an evident reason why the perturbations of this igneous mass, 

 acting in the earlier periods, when the crust which confined it was 

 as yet in a thin and almost nascent state, and could therefore have 

 opposed but a comparatively trifling resistance, must have produced 

 effects incalculably superior in degree to those for which they are 

 at present adequate, when repressed by the enormous column of 

 resistance which the whole thickness of the actually consolidated 

 crust at present offers. If we believe, as Mr. Lyeil is most anxious 

 that we should believe, that the laws of nature are ever permanent 

 and uniform, we must admit it as one of the plainest of those con- 

 stant laws, " that the same given force, when it acts under a less re- 

 sistance, must necessarily produce for more powerful effects than when 

 it acts under an increased resistance" And if I may be allowed this 

 axiom, 1 hold myself able to prove, from Mr. Lyell's own diagram, 

 as clearly as any mathematical truth may be demonstrated from 

 the diagrams of Euclid, the proposition which nevertheless he some- 

 what unaccountably supposes himself to be opposed to, namely, 

 that the actual convulsions of the crust of our planet neither are, 

 nor, on the evidence which he has himself adduced, can possibly be, 

 equal in intensity to those which prevailed in the earlier geological 

 epochs. Instead, therefore, of comforting ourselves, as he does, 

 with the prospect that we may expect in our own days convulsions 

 violent as those which upheaved Mont Blanc, or *'Chimborazo, 

 giant of the western shore," we may rather repose with Leibnitz, 

 (assuredly not a less philosophical authority,) in the persuasion, 

 " Tandem quiescentibus causis, atque aequilibratis, consistentior 

 emergeret rerum status." (p. 18.) 



The next article in the Number is " An Introduction to Zoology, 

 in illustration of the zoological department of the Museum of the 

 Bristol Institution," by the Editor, Mr. Clark, with the assistance 

 of some of that body <' of which he is the organ," but by whom 

 *' the Journal has been placed under his immediate and unfettered 

 superintendence." This article, likewise to be continued in suc- 

 ceeding Numbers, consists of a physiological outline of the subjects 

 and objects of zoology, in the course of which are enunciated some 

 philosophical views not unworthy, we think, of the existing state of 

 the science. At the same time we must admit that we cannot agree 

 with the authors on the subject of the gradual succession of affini- 



* See Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag., vol. iv. p. 427—428. 



