Notices of New Books. 



8135 



of these human and preadamite instruments sorely perplexed him ; 

 his belief in revealed religion was immovable ; his belief in the evi- 

 dence of his senses was also unquestionable. Fain would he have 

 believed the celts non-existent, but then they were to be seen and 

 handled by every one. He visited Amiens and Abbeville, in the 

 ardent hope of finding some flaw in the history of celts : unsuccess- 

 fully he visited the more recently-discovered locality at Heme Bay ; 

 and at last is believed, by his estimable son-in-law, to have " con- 

 vinced himself that these implements belong to a period long ante- 

 cedent to that usually attributed to man's existence on the earth." 

 Inclination and supposed duty were pulling one way, and stern incon- 

 trovertible fact the other. He clearly saw how such a conflict must 

 militate against our accepting the Natural History of the Bible as 

 infallible in its details, and he nobly confesses, " I do assert that I 

 yield to no man in firm belief that ' all Scripture is given by inspira- 

 tion but, then, given only for the purposes specified, viz., for doc- 

 trine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." 

 He thus meets the question in a manly spirit, and exhibits a far 

 deeper love of true religion than those have done who invent cun- 

 ningly-devised fables in order to prove the accordance of geological 

 discovery with the Scripture narrative of Creation. 



If an objection can be raised to any part of the scientific character 

 of this most estimable man, it is his love of speculation : many of his 

 views, retained through a long series of years, and constantly upper- 

 most in his mind, never received that confirmation which converts a 

 vague hypothesis into an available theory : such was his inquiry into 

 the colouring of pebbles, a subject at which he worked throughout 

 life, without attaining, and therefore without giving to the world, any 

 available result. He held that if a defined mineral mass — frag- 

 mentary, nodular or crystalline — is imbedded under circumstances 

 which admit of its being continuously acted upon by heat or 

 moisture, then any colouring matters introduced or originally included 

 in its substance can rearrange themselves into zoned laminae, which 

 bear a distinct relation to the surface of the mass. Also that nodular 

 aggregations can be formed within its substance from numerous 

 centres, many of which are seated at or near the surface of the mass. 

 In his endeavour to establish these views, the Professor collected an 

 infinity of pebbles ; some rough, some cut, some polished. In 1836 

 he communicated orally his views on these to the Cambridge Philo- 

 sophical Society ; but, although he continued the inquiry for a quarter 



