GEOLOGY. 393 



cornu abounds. Like the nautilus, it was a sailing 

 animal, and though different in form, its structure seems 

 to have been nearly the same. We find it partitioned 

 in the same way by little cross walls, which divide the 

 cavity within into a number of minute cells, by means 

 of which and by a power it must have possessed of alter- 

 ing its gravity, by nearly vacating or occupying these to 

 the full, it seems to have moved upwards or downwards 

 at pleasure. The inner part of the shell seems, from the 

 more perfect impressions of it which I have met with, 

 to have been of a pearly lustre ; the outer is ridged and 

 furrowed with much regularity, and there is at least as 

 much elegance in its general contour as in that of the 

 Ionic volute, which it nearly resembles. But, why so 

 much beauty when there was no eye of man to see and 

 admire ? Does it not seem strange that the bays of our 

 coasts should have been speckled by fleets of beautiful 

 little animals, with their tiny sails spread to the wind 

 and their pearly colours glancing to the sun, when there 

 was no intelligent eye to look abroad and delight in 

 their loveliness ? Of all the sciences there is none which 

 furnishes so many paradoxical facts and appearances as 



geology 



' Mr Stewart returned last week from Strathpeffer, 

 in improved but still rather delicate health, and preached 

 one half of the day last Sabbath. His discourse, though 

 in a lower and more subdued tone than some of his 

 more powerful ones, was truly beautiful, full of ex- 

 quisite sentiment and lovely description ; and there was 

 an air of tenderness about it which rarely characterizes 

 his compositions. He spoke of the finely fibred and 

 wonderfully complicated frame of man, of its liability to 

 derangement, and its capacity of pain, of the weariness 

 of sleepless nights and the heavy yet restless languor of 



