' 452 
Cliff; by Mr, Webster. On Glen Tilt; by 
Dr. M:Culloch. On the. Excavation of 
Vallies by Diluvian Action; by the Rer. 
Professor Buckland. On the Genera 
Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus; by the 
Rev. W. Conyheare, Outline of the Geo- 
logy of Russia; by the Hon. William T. H. 
Fox Strangways.. On the Geology of the 
Coast of France, Departement de la Seiue 
Inferieure; by H. T. Dela Beche, esq. On 
the Valley of the Sutluj in the Himalaya 
‘Mountains ; by H. T. Colebrooke, esq. On 
the Geology of the North Eastern Border 
of Bengal; by H. T. Colebrooke, esq. with 
various other papers and notices, the whole 
illustrated by twenty-four plates, maps, 
and sections, mauy of them coloured. 
We forebore, in our last, to notice a 
meteoric production called the Liberal, be- 
cause we imagined it would soon be for- 
gotten; but, as a second number is an- 
nounced, we consider it respectful to our 
readers to bestow a few words onits ex- 
traordinary character. We do not won- 
der at the bitterness with which a malig- 
nant turn-coat, who outrages all decency 
in a certain right-infamous Review, is 
- treated ; but we Jament that good educa- 
tion, superior talents, and gentlemanly cha- 
racter, should be so abused as they are by 
all the parties in these personal controver- 
sies. It forms a new era in literature, 
and the printing-press is now become the 
recognized yehicle of the scurrility of St. 
Giles’s, ‘The moral sense of the public 
seems, too, to be so vitiated, that works 
sellin the proportion in which they are 
filled with personal abuse, and whose chief 
characteristics are their undisguised arro- 
gance, egotism, and intolerance. Both 
cannot be right, yet each writes as though 
he were endowed with omniscient autho- 
rity over all other men, and as though the 
rest of the world could think only through 
his majesty. He who began such a con- 
test is unquestionably the most culpable of 
the set; but silent contempt would have 
been his surest punishment, 
Sir Gingerr BLAne, the father, or 
nearly so, of the medical profession, and 
perhaps, also, of more than one Royal So- 
giety, has presented to the world the re- 
sults of forty years’ active and able prac- 
tice, in a volume of Select Dissertations. 
We looked into it with anxiety, as likely 
to exhibit the standard opinions of the day, 
and we have not been disappointed. - As 
ours is not 2 medical work, we shail be 
excused from entering into details in re- 
gard to his medical opinions, which, as 
founded on experience, merit general re- 
spect; but of his philosophy we take the 
liberty to. annex some specimens and re- 
marks. ‘The following is one of the most 
extraordinary passages ever put forth in a 
philosophical production. He has been 
speaking of contagion, and, after some tri- 
fling, he arrives at this conclusion :—* The 
Literary and Critical Proémium. 
[ Dec. I; 
truth is, that it has pleased Almighty God 
in his mercy to smite only a certain pro- 
portion of those exposed either to the one 
or the other, and many of them in a de- 
gree short of fatality, otherwise the human 
species might be extinguished,”-—We were 
curious to see in his Croonian Lecture his 
observations on matter and motion, and 
they will astonish all who have made them- 
selves acquainted with the new doctrines 
on these simple subjects :— Eyery species 
of matter has a mode of aggregation pecu- 
liar to itself, when its particles are at 
liberty to attract each other accordimg to 
that tendency which has been called their 
polarity. Those who first conceived this 
idea, seemed to have proceeded on the 
supposition of the ultimate particles of 
matter being solid bodies, infinitely hard, 
having their different sides endowed with 
different powers of attraction and repul- 
sion, so as to give various configurations 
to the parts of matter, when concreting 
into a solid form. There is a still more 
profound doctrine (profound indeed!) on 
this subject, founded on the hypothesis of 
the’ ultimate particles of matter being 
combinations of attracting and repelling 
points, which, when brought much within 
the natural limits of these powers, produce 
unequal degrees of attraction and repulsion 
at equal distances from their common cen- 
tre ; thereby defining what may be called 
the shape of the particles, and constituting 
polarity. We cannot trace, by inspection, 
the manner in which the fluid. nutritious 
matter is ultimately applicd in forming so- 
lid parts; but, as muscles are composed of 
parts so regularly figured and endowed 
with contractility, it seems probable that 
there is some provision made by Nature, 
whereby the particles follow the precise 
tendency of their polarity, and constitute 
amore exquisite structure than in other 
parts of the body.” How truly pro- 
-found ! — His discoveries in regard to 
-motion are equally wonderful :-—“ So far as 
we know, either from actual observation 
or from analogy, there does not exist in 
nature any such thing as absolute rest: for, 
when we contemplate the motions of the 
earth abd heavenly bodies, the various 
complications of the planetary revolutions 
in their rotation round their own axes, 
and in the paths of their orbits, in the ir- 
regularities arising from the disturbances 
of their mutual gravitation, and from the 
precession of the equinoxes, not to men- 
tion the influence of the innumerable side- 
real systems upon eachother, it may be 
affirmed, on incontestible principles, that 
no particle of matter ever was, or will 
be, for two instants of time, in the same 
place; and that no particle of it ever has 
returned, or will return, to any one point 
of absolute space which it has ever foy- 
merly occupied. Whether motion, there- 
fore, can strictly be called au essential 
property 
