202 REVIEWS—OUTLINES OF NATURAL THEOLOGY. 
from them ; but the necessary extracts—due regard being had to the 
continuity of the argument—would he too copious for our pages 3 
and hence, in justice to the author, we must refer the reader to the 
work itself. It isin this part of his treatise more especially, that 
the varied knowledge, eloquence, and acumen of our author are 
brought fully into play. We do not think heis so happy in the more 
purely geological portion of his book. It is to some extent a matter 
of opinion, but we fear he will find few geologists at the present day 
willing to subscribe to his interpretation of the Mosaic Record as 
given in the pages before us. Following Buckland, more particular- 
ly, Dr. Bovell interprets the word Day in its literal sense, and looks 
consequently on the narrative of Moses as taking up the history of 
the world’s creation, not from the Beginning—beyond the mere 
allusion toa beginning in the first verse of Genesis—but from the 
commencement of the present, or, what we may call, the Human 
Epoch. No reference, it is assumed, is made in the sacred record to 
the earlier creations of the globe, but those types alone are spoken 
of, which immediately preceded man’s advent upon the scene, and 
which formed the parent-stocks of the fauna and flora that now 
people the earth and its waters. So far, perhaps, so well. But the 
holy writings record distinctly the elaboration of the world, or (ac- 
cording to those who adopt Buckland’s theory) its regeneration, 
from a void or chaotic condition: and have we in the later periods of 
geological history any proofs of the existence of such a state? Dr. 
Bovell replies in the affirmative, and points to the so-called “ Glacial 
Epoch” which marks according to his view the close of the great 
Tertiary age. But this is the weak point in his argument. It isa 
position indeed, perfectly untenable. The Glacial epoch, far from 
marking the close of the Tertiary age, belongs rather to the present, 
or forms a complete period of passage between the two epochs. 
Between the Tertiary Age and the Glacial Period it is absolutely 
impossible to draw a strict line of demarcation ; and still less are we 
able to draw one between the latter and the existing era. Many 
types, both animal and vegetable, have survived the glacial epoch; and 
(as so ably pointed out by Edward Forbes) itis evidently to the 
agency of this glacial period, as it came gradually on and gradually 
diminished in intensity, that the isolation of many arctic plant- 
colonies is due. That the Alpine plants of the Pyrennees and 
Scotland, for example, isolated from the surrounding vegetation, find 
their kindred species amongst the flora of northern Scandinavia, —that 
