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Art. XVI. ANALYSIS OF SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 



A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical 

 Geologies. i?y Granville Penn, Esq. 8vo. Pp.460. 

 Ogle, Duncan & Co. 



We take shame to ourselves for having sufFered this valuable 

 book to remain so long unnoticed on our shelves, or only inci- 

 dentally mentioned in some of our late reviews. At a period 

 like the present, when many of the disciples of modern geology 

 either boldly disclaim all belief in the Mosaical account of the 

 creation, or consider it at best as a mere allegory — or when 

 others, with a less daring but not less dangerous scepticism, 

 admit, with Moses, the broad self-evident truth, that God did, 

 at some time, and in some manner and form, call this world 

 into being by his own immediate act, but deny that the time 

 and mode are explicitly detailed in the sacred record he has 

 bequeathed us ; — when both allow, that since its first creation, 

 it has obviously undergone a violent revolution, bat contend 

 that the history of the deluge is insufficient to account for it; — 

 and when a third party, professing its belief in the Mosaical 

 history, tampers with its details, or distorts them to any mean- 

 ing that may best suit some favourite hypothesis, extending 

 days into ages, multiplying revolutions, and, in short, giving 

 the sacred text any interpretation rather than the literal and 

 true one ; — at such a period, we hail the appearance of the 

 " Comparative Estimate," with unfeigned satisfaction. To re- 

 lieve the mind of the anxious and sincere inquirer after truth 

 " from perplexity ; to disengage it from error concerning the 

 important subject of which it treats ;" and to demonstrate the 

 essential connexion between moral and physical evidence, when 

 we endeavour to explain the causes of the present state of the 

 crust of the earth, by the sensible phenomena it presents to our 

 inspection, are the great objects of this treatise. In inquiring 

 how far this has been accomplished, we shall endeavour to give 

 our readers an impartial account of its contents ; in doing which 

 we shall indulge very little in digression, and not at all in 

 speculation — convinced, with our author, that what we cannot 

 find within the limit of a true philosophical geology, " is not 

 permitted to the sphere of our real knowledge. To know that 

 we cannot knotv certain things, is in itself positive knowledge, 

 and a knowledge of the most safe and valuable nature ; and to 

 abide by that cautionary knowledge, is infinitely more condu- 

 cive to our advancement in truth, than to exchange it for any 

 quality of conjecture or speculation." We shall hold our 

 author's ground sacred, to be trodden by no foot but his own — 



