1^ 
^ 
302 
EEVIE^'. 
contributors. The most remarkable kinds -svere Salamander, Star, Mars, Sikh, Cruenta, Thisbee, 
Pictum, Corregio, Norah, IMarian, Alonza, Victory, Gustavus, Alderman, Lalla Eookh, Constance, 
Gipsey Bride, Conspicuum, Lamartine, Sun-down, Symmetiy, Emily, Emilie, Rosa, Cuyp, Sarah, Mont 
Blanc, and Crusader. Fancy Pelargoniums came from Mr. Robinson, who had some noble plants, 
also fi'om Mr. Staines and Mr. MUler, gardener to R. Mosely, Esq. ; and, among nurserymen, the con- 
tributors were, Mr. Ambrose, Mr. Gains, and Mr. E. G. Henderson. The best kinds were, Bouquet 
tout fait, Magnifica, Empress, Statueski, Rein de Frangais, Faii-y Queen, Formosa, Picturata, Jenny 
Lind, Madame Rosatti, Gent Jung, Priam, Albonii, and Amelia. 
Several groups of Calceolarias were shown, and some of them in tolerable condition. The best 
kinds were Incarnata, Mount Beauty, Umbrosa, Coronata, Resplendens, and Lama, from Messrs. 
Hendersons; Lord of the Isles, from Mr. Franklin, whose plants were weU grown; Attraction and 
Canary, from ^Ir. Stanley ; Eliza and Layton's Blanch, from Mr. Layton ; Astarte and Pantha, ft'om 
Mr. Gains ; and Earl of Rosslyn and Catherine Seaton, from Mr. Catleugh. 
Cape Pelargoniums came ft-om Jlr. Parker, !Mr. Staines, and Mr. Stanley. In the miscellaneous 
class we noticed a fine group of Schizanthus retusus albus, from ^Messrs. Henderson ; a fine collection 
of Irises, from Mr. Salter, of Hammersmith ; Ranunculuses, from Mr. Tyso ; Alpine plants, fi-om Mr. 
Wood, Mr. Turner, and Mr. Smith ; and several groups of Ferns were communicated by Mr. Williams 
and 'Mr. Smith. — A. 
llrnim, heiI iHisrrllniitDns Untirts. 
Footprints of the Creator ; or, tJie Asterolepis of Strom- 
ness. By Hugh Miller, author of " T/ie Old Red 
Sandstone," &c. London; Johnstone & Hunter. 
OxE of the objects of this book, as it appears from the 
dedication, is to controvert those peculiar views on 
Creation, sometimes called the Lamarckian or Develop- 
ment hypothesis, which were revived in this country 
not long since, by the ingenious author of the "Vestiges 
of the Katural History of Creation." That hypothesis 
is here met by an appeal to science, especially to that 
branch of science — namely geology — which is more 
especially to be regarded as the record of the ancient 
history of our planet. The author of the " Footprints," 
who is well known as a geologist, while pursuing 
his favourite study, located himself, as he tells us, in 
the vicinity of Stromness, in order to investigate the 
geology of the Orlmeys — which possesses much interest 
owing to the exti'aordinary development of the Lower 
Old Red Sandstone, and the abundance of its vertebrate 
remains. In the coiu'se of this investigation, he met 
with the nail-like fossilized bones of the Asterolepis, 
the most gigantic, and apparently, from the position of 
its remains, one of the earliest of the ganoid fishes of 
the Old Eed Sandstone. This fact is made to serve as 
a starting point, from which, taking up the ichthyolitic 
evidence of palsontological records, as they are in- 
scribed on the stratified rocks, the inconsistency and 
baseless character of the Lamarcldan theory is exposed. 
" I know not," writes our author : — 
"I know not how it may be witli others, hut the special 
phenomena connected with Orkney, which most decidedly hore 
fruit in my mind, were those exhibited in the neighbourhood of 
Stromness. I more particularly refer to the characteristic frag- 
ment of Asterolepis, which I detected iu its lower flag-stones ; 
and to the curiously mixed, semi-marine, semi-lacustrine vege- 
tation of the Loch of Stennis, Both seem to bear very dii-ectly 
on that Development hypothesis — fast spreading among an 
active and ingenious order of minds, both in Britain and 
America, and which has been long known on the Continent— 
that would fain transfer the work of creation from the depart- 
ment of miracle to the province of natural law, and would strike 
down in the process of removal all the old landmarks, ethical 
and religious." 
The palseontological argument we must pass over. 
All that our space will allow us to do is to scan hriefly 
what our author says of the Development hypothesis, 
and its results, and to quote some of the evidence which 
he adduces against it, from the "Two Floras of the 
Lake of Stennis." 
"Every individual, whatever its species or order, beeins and 
increases until it attains to its state of fullest development, 
under certain fixed laws, and in consequence of their operation. 
The mieroscopic monad developes into a foetus, the foetus into a 
child, the child into a man ; and however marvellous the pro- 
cess, in none of its stages is there the slightest mixture of 
miracle — from beginning to end all is progi'essive development, 
according to a determinate order of things. Has nature, during 
the vast geologic periods, been pregnant, in like manner, with 
the hnman race? and is the species, like the individual an effect 
of progressive development, induced and regulated by laws ? 
The assertors of the revived hypothesis of Maillet and Lamarck 
reply in the affirmative. Nor, he it remarked, is their positive 
atheism in the belief. God might as certainly have originated 
the species by a law of development, as he maintains it by a law 
of development. The existence of a First Great Cause is as 
perfectly compatible with the one scheme as with the other . . 
There are, however, beliefs, in no degree less important to the 
moralist, or the Christian, than even that in the being of a God, 
which seem wholly incompatible with the development hypo- 
thesis. If during a period so vast as to be scarcely expressible 
by figures, the creatures now himian have been rising by almost 
infinitesimals, from compound microscopic cells — minute vital 
globules within globules, begot hy electricity on dead gelatinous 
matter — until they have at length become the men and women 
which we see around us, we must hold either the monstrous 
belief that all the vitalities, whether those of monads or of mites, 
of fishes or of reptiles, of birds or of beasts, are individually or 
inherently immortal and undying, or that human souls are not 
SO- The difference between the dying and the undying— be- 
tween the spirit of the brute that goeth downward, and the 
spirit of man that goeth upward — is not a difference infinitesi- 
mally, or even atomically small. It possesses all the breadth of 
eternity to come. . - , And yet, if the spirit of a monad, or 
of a mollusc, be not immortal, then must there either have been 
a point in the history of the species, at which a dying brute — 
differing from its offspring merely by an inferiority of develop- 
ment, represented by a few atoms, mayhap, by a single atom — 
produced an undying man ; or, man in his present state, must 
