REVIEWS POPULAR GEOLOGY. 407 



which they were originally produced before an Edinburgh audience. 

 Various illustrations might be produced in proof of this very pardonably 

 scrupulous fidelity to the author's manuscript, but one will serve ou.r 

 purpose here, better than any others could possibly do. Lecture first 

 begins with the consideration of the junction of geology and human 

 history, with special reference to periods of Scottish history previous 

 to the Koman invasion ; and this introductory portion our author thus 

 concludes : " The story of a civilized people I would fain study in the 

 pages of their best and most philosophic historians ; whereas I would 

 prefer acquainting myself with that of a savage one archseologically 

 and in its remains. And I would appeal in justification of the prefer- 

 ence, to the great superiority in interest and value of the recently pub- 

 lished ' Prehistoric Annals of Scotland,' by our accomplished townsman 

 Mr. Daniel Wilson, over all the diffuse narrative and tedious descrip- 

 tion of all the old chroniclers that ever wore out life in cloister or cell." 

 It is scarcely necessary perhaps to remind any of our Canadian readers, 

 that the author of the work referred to by Hugh Miller in such terms 

 of commendation, when addressing an Edinburgh audience to whom 

 both were then well known ; has now the citizens of our Upper Canada 

 capital for his townsmen, and is specially known to ourselves as the 

 editor of this Canadian Journal. 



It cannot be overlooked by any intelligent critic of Hugh Miller's 

 writings, amid all his high admiration of them, that there are passages 

 of a theologico-controversial character, traceable to the circumstances 

 under which some of them were first produced, in the columns of a 

 religious and party newspaper. These lectures however, were prepared 

 under altogether different circumstances, and designed for an audience 

 whose presence is a safeguard against polemics. We have accordingly 

 been gratified to find that the author does not touch upon the vexed 

 questions involved in the theological bearings of Geology, which have 

 already been discussed ad nauseam, and have become a nuisance to 

 every practical Geologist. Commencing with the Post-tertiary, the 

 author devotes the whole of the introductory lecture to the separation 

 of the geologic from the historic age, in a manner highly pleasing to 

 the antiquary, — here as everywhere else showing the large amount of 

 general information he possessed. "We are. tempted to give the fol- 

 lowing rather lengthy extract, as a specimen of the author's pleasing 

 style for the general reader ; as it is only by giving such a continuous 

 passages that the sustained vigour of his style, and the attractiveness 



