HUGH MILLER, XXXV. 



vegetation, we ought to have, in the Lake of Stennis, for ex- 

 ample, plants of an intermediate character between the algsB 

 of the sea and the monocotyledons of the lake. But no such 

 transition plants are found. The algse, as our author observes, 

 become dwarfish and ill-developed. They cease to exist as 

 the water becomes fresher, " until at length we find, instead 

 of the brown, rootless, flowerless fucoids and confervas of the 

 ocean, the green, rooted, flowering flags, rushes, and aquatic 

 grasses of the fresh water. Many thousands of years have 

 failed to originate a single intermediate plant" The same 

 conclusion may be drawn from the character of the vegeta- 

 tion along the extensive shores of Britain and Ireland. No 

 botanist has ever found a single plant in the transition state. 

 The/ourteenth chapter of the " Foot-prints" will be perused 

 «dth great interest by the general reader. It is a power- 

 ful and argumentative exposure of the development hypothe- 

 sis, and of the manner in which the subject has been treated 

 in the '^Vestiges." "Whether we consider it in its nature, 

 in its history, or in the character of the intellects with whom 

 t originated, or by whom it has been received and supported, 

 Mr Miller has shown that it has nothing to recommend it 

 It existed as a wild dream before Geology had any being as 

 a science. It was broached more than a century ago by De 

 Maillet, who knew nothing of the geology even of his day. 

 In a translation of his "Telliamed," published in 1750, Mr 

 ]\Iiller finds very nearly the same account given of the ori- 

 gin of plants and animals as that in the " Vestiges," and in 

 which the sea is described as that " great and fruitful womb 

 of nature in which organization and life first begin." Lamarck, 

 though a skilful botanist and conchologist, was unacquainted 

 with Geology ; and as he first published his development hy- 

 pothesis in 1802 (an hypothesis identical with that of the 

 " Vestiges"), it is probable that he was not then a very skil- 

 ful zoologist Nor has Professor Oken any higher claims to 



