Reviews and Notices of Books. | 131 
“How long these conditions continued we have no means of 
determining in centuries; but, judging from the amount of denu- 
dation, the extent and nature of the heterogeneous deposits, as 
well as from the slow rate of elevation and submergence now 
going on in known regions, vast periods must have elapsed during 
the manifestation of this glacial epoch, At length the downward 
tendency of these northern latitudes come to a close; submer- 
gence stops and elevation begins. Slowly, and for long under a 
‘ rigorous climate, the lands of Europe, Asia, and North America 
emerge from the waters. Glaciers still envelop the higher eleva- 
tions; icebergs, summer after summer, drift over the waters; and 
the sea, attacking the soft emerging shores, re-assorts and re- 
deposits the sands, gravels, and clays of the older glacial epoch. 
By-and-by the deposits become fossiliferous, showing that the 
ocean was tenanted by shell-fish, seals, whales, and other crea- 
tures, whose habitats are now the icy regions of the arctic circle. 
Upward, still upward, the land emerges, evincing in its old water- 
lines and raised beaches the successive steps of its uprise, till 
ultimately the continents of the northern hemisphere assume, 
within appreciable limits of current mutation, the configuration 
and climatology they now present. As the continents emerge and 
the land surfaces augment, as new atmospheric and oceanic cur- 
rents are established, and as the post-tertiary epoch advances, the 
boreal races retreat farther to the north, some of the old pliocene 
families again return and spread over European latitudes, and 
other and newer forms, in the course of creation, begin to 
appear.” 
The last chapter of the work, which our author has entitled 
“The Law,” consists of a group of short but pithy essays on the 
different questions of vital import to the science, on which opinion 
is still divided, Although the reflections embodied in these are 
often highly suggestive, and indicate the author’s grasp of mind, 
yet the effect of the whole, when read in succession, is very con- 
fusing, as they are frequently contradictory; so that, being like a 
mass of jottings made at different times when the mind has been 
influenced by a variety of impressions, the reader is left at a loss 
to understand exactly what has been established. Among the 
subjects treated of in this chapter, Darwin’s hypothesis of course 
figures largely ; but it is painful to notice that our author’s desire 
to take a decided ground on this question has led him to forsake 
that calmness of judgment and breadth of treatment which marks 
the other parts of his task. Even those most opposed to Darwin’s 
views, who have mature opinions on the subject, will feel an- 
noyed at such vigorous partisanship, founded on obvious miscon- 
ceptions of what has been urged in behalf of the agency of natural 
selection. Mr Page has evidently failed to distinguish between 
