338 Analysis of Scientific Books. 
ing waves dissipate the local influence, and the accumulated effect is 
annihilated, again to be produced. 
«¢ In tracing the harmonious results of such discordant operations,” 
eloquently observes our author, ‘ it is impossible not to pause, to 
offer up a humble tribute of admiration of the designs of a beneficent 
Providence, thus imperfectly developed in a department of creation 
where they have been supposed to be the most obscure. By an 
invisible, but ever active agency, the waters of the decp are raised 
into the air, whence their distribution follows, as it were by measure 
and weight, in proportion to the beneficial effects which they are 
calculated to produce. By gradual, but almost insensible, expansions, 
the equipoised currents of the atmosphere are disturbed, the stormy 
winds arise, and the waves of the sea are lifted up; and that stagna-= 
tion of air and water is prevented which would be fatal to animal 
existence. But the force which operates is calculated and propor- 
tioned: the very agent which causes the disturbance bears with it 
its own check; and the storm, as it vents its force, is itself setting the 
bounds of its own fury. The complicated and beautiful con- 
trivances by which the waters are collected above the firmament,” 
and are at the same time “divided from the waters which are 
below the firmament,” are inferior to none of those adaptations of 
INFINITE Wispom, which are perpetually striking the inquiring 
mind, in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Had it not been for 
this nice adjustment of conflicting elements, the clouds and concrete 
vapours of the sky would have reached from the surface of the earth 
to the remotest heavens; and the vivifying rays of the sun would 
never have been able to penetrate through the dense mists of perpe- 
tual precipitation.”—P. 132. 
The reference to this admirable and complicated agency by which 
the different constituents of the atmosphere are so beautifully and 
regularly balanced, leads the author to the consideration of a sub- 
ject which has always been a favourite with the sceptic, and on 
which we must necessarily continue to remain in considerable doubt 
and conjecture: still, the philosophical explanation which Mr. 
Daniell adopts, along with Mr. Granville Penn, to whom he ex- 
presses himself indebted for the first idea of it, appears to us the 
most probable of any that has been propounded, and the most con- 
sistent with those principles which are known to regulate the aérial 
fluid. 
** The question has been asked,” says: the author, ‘* How is it 
that light is said to have been created on the first day, and day and 
night to have succeeded each other, when the sun has been de- 
scribed as not having been produced till the fourth day ? The scep- 
tic presumptuously replies, this is a palpable contradiction, and the 
history which propounds it must be false. But Moses records that 
God created on the first day the earth covered with water, and did 
