contemplate the more complex forms of the higher 

 links of organised existence. There is wonder every 

 where excited in this world of wonders. 



The tone in which scientific truths are now pro- 

 mulgated is also changed for the better. In its inves- 

 tigations, the mind seems to have become much more 

 independent, less the slave of authority, and less obe- 

 dient to the trammels of system and the idol-worship 

 of a name. The days of its alchymy have passed away, 

 and the hermetic seal is broken ; we hope these days of 

 darkness will never return. The modulation of scientific 

 literature has now a more musical charm, and reaches 

 the heart, as well as informs the head. The style and 

 feeling displayed in such works as these, " Salmonia," 

 "Journal of a Naturalist," and the " British Naturalist," 

 remind us forcibly of the good old times of Eveyln 

 and Walton, Derham and Ray, and, last not least, the 

 amiable philosopher of Selborne. We think that 

 one obvious cause of this welcome acceptance will be 

 found in the rightful appeal that is made to the BEING 

 who made them all, and which vibrates through "their 

 pages like a silver chord a key-note unhappily over- 

 looked or forgotten by our modern philosophers, with 

 whom scepticism and infidelity seemed almost essential 

 to complete the character, and an occasional sneer at 

 Revelation the truest passport to their " Atalantis." 

 HE "who rideth on the whirlwind, and directs the 

 storm," and whose " still small voice" is ever " heard 

 among the trees of the garden," and the fiat of 

 creation, was to them " an idle tale that they believed 

 not," though the golden link that suspends its har- 

 monies. This unbelief proved a treacherous abandon- 

 ment of the principles under which they professed to be 

 enlisted, which the event has shown to be repulsive to the 

 best features of the true philosophy of the human mind. 



