Reviews —Baker’s ‘ Maxims ;’ Kelly’s « Errors.’ 119 
for instance, by earthquakes, make the divided blocks grind each 
other into powder, and then puff out this powder by jets of steam from 
below into the water above. He calls this a ‘ grinding machine,’ and 
says that ‘the best of it all is, that there is nothing in the whole opera- 
tion either unnatural or improbable.’ 
In his endeavour to reconcile the apparent differences between 
Scripture and Geology, the author has our sympathy, but not our 
approval. Itis not needful that we put in print all we think we 
know ; and the dogmatic style upon such recondite questions as have 
stirred the clearest brains, and tried the strongest hearts, appears to 
us peculiarly unsuitable. The idea that each genetic day corre- 
sponds to one of the great geological periods is not new: it has been 
for a long while one of the hypotheses which, as Sir H. De la Beche 
used to say, have served for ‘pegs to hang our facts upon.’ But 
hear our author. He gives the first day to his ‘Primary System,’ 
now commonly known as the Laurentian epoch. The second day 
is the ‘Cambrian ;’ the third, the ‘ Transition,’—an old term, revived 
by Mr. Kelly, to include the hapless Silurian, with the much-abused 
Devonian rocks ; while the fourth day, when the great lights were 
made, is, in some unaccountable way, made to correspond to the 
Carboniferous System and the Coal-measures,—we suppose in anti- 
cipation of the use coal would be put to! The fifth is comfortably 
fitted with the whole Secondary Period, when, according to late 
discoveries, birds (and reptile-like birds?) flew about upon the 
earth. The sixth, of course, corresponds to the Tertiary System,— 
and the whole thing is done. 
His remark, that ‘there is an omission in the sacred text—no 
fossils of any kind having been referred to,’ is most original 
(p. 226): see also his summary at p. 222. 
The book altogether is excellent reading by the fireside; and as 
the new views (pp. 51 to 208) take up the mass of the work, the 
reader is requested to examine them at his leisure. ‘The sketches, 
maps, and geological illustrations are all remarkably good, for the 
author is no mean artist, and is, as before said, a practical field- 
geologist of the hard-working kind. One or two quotations (pp. 188, 
189), and we must go to the third part of his treatise. We shall 
give them without comment. 
‘The commencement of every system appears to have been characterized 
by the bursting of the crust of the earth, probably by the agency of steam, 
accompanied by earthquakes and eruptions of mineral matter. When the 
new turmoil began, there were new fissures, made in the previously existing 
rocks ; and the sides of a fissure, thirty miles long and thirty miles deep, 
presented two surfaces, which, when operated on by the expansive power of 
steam, to lift a block at one side,—by collapse and gravitation to let it 
cown,—and by the friction consequent on this operation, there were pro- 
duced quartz, jasper, and other hard pebbles enough, from the mineral 
veins previously existing, for the conglomerates of a new system. The loose 
materials in such a fissure, after having been ground and polished, were 
thrown up by puffs of steam, of extraordinary energy; the whole contents 
of the fissure—pebbles, sand, mud, and all—were thrown out and blown 
into the waters of the sea to a great height, along with, and in the space 
