ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 89 



Those forces which disintegrated the early rocks and of the 

 detritus formed new beds at the bottoms of seas, are still 

 seen at work to the same effect in every part of the globe. 

 To bring these truths the more clearly before us, it is possible 

 to make a substance resembling basalt in a furnace ; lime- 

 stone and sandstone have both been formed from suitable 

 materials in appropriate receptacles ; the phenomena of 

 cleavage have, with the aid of electricity, been similated 

 on a small scale, and by the same agent crystals are 

 formed. In short, the remark which was made regard- 

 ing the indifference of the cosmical laws to the scale on 

 which they operated, is to be repeated regarding the geo- 

 logical. A common furnace will sometimes exemplify the 

 operation of laws which have been concerned in the produc- 

 tion of a Giant's Causeway ; and in a sloping ploughed field 

 after rain, we may often observe, at the lower end of a furrow, 

 a handful of washed and neatly deposited mud or sand, capable 

 of serving as an illustration of the way in which Nature 

 has produced the deltas of the Nile and Ganges. In the 

 ripple-mark on sandy beaches of the present day, we see 

 Nature's exact repetition of the operations by which she im- 

 pressed similar features on the sandstones of the carboni- 

 genous era. Even such marks as wind-slanted rain would in 

 our day produce on tide-deserted sands, have been read upon 

 tablets of the ancient strata. It is the same Nature working 

 every where and in all time, causing the wind to blow and 

 the rain to fall, and the tide to ebb and flow, inconceivable 

 ages before the birth of our race, as now. So also we learn 

 from the conifers of those old ages, that there were winter 

 and summer upon earth, before any of us lived to liken the 

 one to all that is genial in our own nature, or to say that the 

 other breathed no airs so unkind as man's ingratitude. Let 

 no one suppose there is any necessary disrespect for the 

 Creator in thus tracing his laws in their minute and familiar 

 operations. There is in reality no true great and small, 

 grand and familiar, in nature. Such only appear, when we 

 thrust ourselves in as a point from which to start in judging. 

 Let us pass, if possible, beyond immediate impressions, and 



