140 Proceedings of the British Association. 



be said to flow directly from another. But when we see successive 

 orders of animal existence, and successive organic types, which once 

 ministered to the functions of animal life, we can only say a living 

 spirit had been breathed into dead matter, far differing from the 

 mere causative of material laws, and that the beings of whatever 

 order were the effect of a direct creative will. In conclusion, the 

 Professor remarked, that what he had stated was as nothing in com- 

 parison of the evidence which might be brought forward in support 

 of his argument. There might be difficulties in the dark investiga- 

 tions of science, but the way to throw light upon them was to sift 

 them to the bottom, and not to shut our eyes like frightened chil- 

 dren and think thereby to save ourselves from danger. Truth could 

 never be opposed to itself; and the perception of truth, whether 

 physical or moral, was but a perception of one portion of the will of 

 God. He was not permitted there (he knew that were he to make 

 the attempt he would very properly be interrupted by the President) 

 to enter on a great question by formally attempting to reconcile the 

 phenomena of geology to the language of the word of God. But he 

 had no fears as to the result of such an attempt, if soberly made on 

 right evidence and in the simple love of truth ; nor did he doubt that 

 the highest discoveries of science would ever be found in perfect 

 harmony and accordance with the language and meaning of revela- 

 tion. 



• On the Excavations of the Rocky Channels of Rivers, by the re- 

 cession of their Cataracts.' — Mr. Featherstonhaugh drew attention 

 to the manner in which extensive lacustrine and marecageous districts 

 upon the continent of North America, have been drained and rendered 

 fit habitations for man. During his researches in that part of the 

 western hemisphere, he found evidences upon all the rivers whose val- 

 leys were bounded by lofty escarpments, that the gorge in which each 

 river flowed had been cut out of the land by the recession of a cata- 

 ract. The river Mississippi flowed in a valley of this character. From 

 the Falls of St. Anthony to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico, the 

 distance was about 2,000 miles, during the first 1,200 of which these 

 escarpments, varying from 200 to 450 feet in height, were every 

 where found, divided from each other by a width varying from one 

 to two and a half miles, the valley being during the greater part of 



