BEYIEWS — THE TESTIMONY OE THE EOCKS. 203 



manner in which the teachings of modern science are brought in all 

 their force before the render, may be gathered from the following 

 quotation, extracted from the opening of the second lecture : — 



" Amid the unceasing change and endless variety of Nature there occur certain 

 great radical ideas, that, while they form, if I may so express myself, the ground- 

 work of the change, — the basis of the variety, — admit in themselves of no change 

 or variety whatever. They constitute the aye-enduring tissue on which the ever- 

 changing patterns of creation are inscribed: the patterns are ever varying; the 

 tissue which exhibits thern for ever remains the same. In the Animal Kingdom 

 for instance, the prominent ideas have always been uniform. However much the 

 faunas of the geologic periods may have differed from each other, or from the fauna 

 which now exists, in their general aspect and character, they were all, if I may 

 so speak, equally underlaid by the great leading ideas which still constitute the 

 master types of animal life. And these leading ideas are four in number. First, 

 there is the star-like type of life, — life embodied in a form that, as in the corals, 

 the sea-anemones, the sea-urchins, and the star-fishes, radiates outwards from a 

 centre ; x/cond, there is the articulated type of life, — life embodied in a form com- 

 posed, as in the worms, crustaceans, and insects, of a series of rings united by 

 their edges, but more or less moveable on each other ; third, there is the bilateral 

 or molluscan type of life, — life embodied in a form in which there is a duality of 

 corresponding parts, ranged as in the cuttle-fishes, the clams, and the snails, on 

 the sides of a central axis or plane ; and fourth, there is the vertebrate type of 

 life, — life embodied in a form in which an internal skeleton is built up into two 

 cavities placed the one over the other ; the upper for the reception of the nervous 

 centres, cerebal and spinal, — the lower for the lodgment of the respiratory, circu- 

 latory, and digestive organs. Such have been the four central ideas of the faunas 

 of every succeeding creation, except perhaps the earliest of all, that of the Lower 

 Silurian System, in which so far as is yet known, only three of the number exist- 

 ed,— the radiated, articulated, and molluscan ideas or types. The Omnipotent 

 Creator, infinite in his resources, — who, in at least the details of his workings, 

 seems never yet to have repeated himself, but, as Lyell well expresses it, breaks 

 when the parents of a species hava been moulded, the dye in which they were 

 cast, — manifests himself, in these four great ideas, as the unchanging and un- 

 changeable One. They serve to bind together the present with ail the past ; and 

 determine the unity of the authorship of a wonderfully complicated design, ex- 

 ecuted on a groundwork broad as time, and whose scope and bearing are deep as 

 eternity." 



After the two preliminary lectures alluded to above, the theological 

 bearings of Geology in many of its leading questions, are taken up 

 and discussed in several lectures with great fearlessness and power. 

 From the known and sterling piety of their gifted author, combined 

 with his equally recognised position in the scientific world, we regard 

 these portions of Hugh Miller's work as peculiarly, valuable in their 

 advocacy of the true claims of geological science. It may be 

 that here and there he fails to establish all his arguments in a 

 thoroughly satisfactory manner, but the failure must be sought for 



