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tained and corrected by many astronomers, recalled tbe ancient 
researches of the Babylonians, transmitted to the Greeks by 
Alexander, and preserved for posterity by Ptolemy in his 
Almageste. The Babylonians pretended at the time of 
Alexander to have astronomical observations for 400,300 
years. The attempt was made to reconcile the calculations of 
the Babylonians with the hypothesis of the revolutions in the 
millions of years ; and finally, some philosophers concluded that 
each climate had its turn — now at the pole, now on the equator, 
all the seas having changed their places/ 
‘ The marvellous, the vast, the grand mutations, these are 
the matters which are sometimes pleasing to the imagination of 
the most wise. Philosophers want the great changes in the 
scenes of the world, just as people do when they go to the play. 
From the stand-point of our existence and of its duration, our 
imagination soars up in the midst of millions of ages to see 
with pleasure Canada under the equator, and the seas of Nova 
Zembla upon Mount Atlas/ 
This very considerable jumble of shrewd common sense, 
ignorance, and unreasonable opposition to inevitable conclusions, 
indicates, however, what were the common opinions of the day 
about the great succession of changes. There is some lively 
sarcasm at the service of the geologists who derive great 
theories from little facts, and it is interesting to find so great a 
thinker opposed to the Pythagorean doctrines. Yet the reasoning 
regarding the former connexion of England with France, and of 
Spain with Africa, is very ignorantly set aside. The common 
knowledge of the day was thus in advance of the critic ; and it 
is interesting to note the ancient date of the truth of the con- 
tinuity of sedimentary strata, except under the aspect of thin- 
ning out. The petrifactions and fossils were even in Voltaire’s 
day a great trouble to the unscientific, although their true 
nature had been proved; but it is evident that the common 
knowledge of the day was in favour of the spontaneous origin 
of fossils and odd- shaped stones — the earth grew them. 
These are ideas which are common enough, even in these 
days of educational progress. The mistake relating to the 
movement of the ecliptic is interesting, because it shows how 
thoroughly what may be called Astronomical Geology had 
taken hold of the minds of the educated classes, thanks to the 
great French mathematicians, who had followed our Newton. 
The question of the possibility of any great variation in the 
inclination of the polar axis to the ecliptic, has been of late 
greatly agitated, and the physicist declares against the possi- 
bility, whilst not a few geologists assert that the phenomena 
they perceive to have taken place, cannot be explained by any 
other method. It is interesting, then, to find these questions 
