120 Analysis of Scientific Rooks. 



soils ; the heaping up of marine mineral masses ; the secondary 

 rocks, and the confused mixture of the organic terresliai frag- 

 ments, once a part of the furniture of the earth that perished, 

 are as evidently to be referred. 



Of the natural agencies employed by the Almighty in 

 the two great revolutions, our author supposes earthquakes 

 and volcanoes to have been the most probable; and it is 

 well known that there is an intimate connexion between 

 them. Some geologists, however, reasoning from the limited 

 effects of existing volcanoes, have denied their sufficiency ; 

 but, " it is one thing to compute the power of a vol- 

 cano, and another thing to compute the power of volcanic 

 action ; — the possible effects of volcanic power, rendered 

 general within the globe, and acting simultaneously against 

 its solid crusts, without a regular vent to determine its issue, 

 cannot be measured by the effects of an individual volcano 

 acting on one point, at which it has found a channel to dis- 

 charge' its violence." The presence of water too in great 

 quantities in volcanic phenomena, which, from the actual situa- 

 tion of existing volcanoes, ' on islands or on coasts not far 

 from the sea,' we may conclude ' is a condition essential to 

 their existence ;' and the evidence of their having prevailed 

 * anterior to the formation of valleys,' " that is, previous to 

 the depression of the earth's surface," are circumstances which 

 increase the probability, that their powers were called into 

 action in the first revolution. For, in the first place, at that 

 period water was in immediate contact with the entire surface 

 of the earth, and its admission, " at one and the same mo- 

 ment, beneath a considerable extent of it, was able by the 

 new laws of volcanic action, directed by their author, to cause 

 at one and the same moment an equally extensive disruption, 

 and consequent depression of that surface." In the second 

 place, " the immense fusions of basalt," as witnessed at the 

 Giants' Causeway, the Island of StafFa, &c. &c., and which 

 the mineral geology considers as belonging ' to the most 

 ancient epocha,' " demonstrate a remote period of volcanic 

 effort in the interior of the earth, totally different in circum- 

 stance from the ordinary phenomena of conical volcanoes," 

 (those now active,) " and of which we have no experience 

 Avhatevcr except in those effects." Thus our author contends, 

 that the unequivocal character of igneous fusion which per- 

 vades the great basaltic districts, is perfectly consistent with 

 the sacred record ; and, " if we superadd to the indefinite 

 extent of volcanic power, the ordination and direction of its 

 agency to a particular purpose by its Divine Author, we shall 

 at once perceive Jiat it was an instrument, calculated by its 

 laws to operate to the fullest extent of the effects which we 

 here ascribe to them." 



Tlie remains of animals of all species and climates are 



