PREFACE. 
rpHE completion of a third volume of the Journal of Trans - 
actions of the Victoria Institute, with other papers and 
discussions partly in type which will form a fourth volume, 
must naturally be a matter of congratulation, not only to our 
Vice-Patrons, Members, and Associates, but also to those 
well-wishers who have not as yet joined the Institute. It can 
scarcely now be doubted that the Victoria Institute has met a 
want of the day, and already done good work. Now, only the 
vaguest observations are heard of the oppositions of science 
to revelation. In the Essays and Reviews the charge was 
clear and specific. In opposition to the Mosaic Cosmogony, 
the nebular theory of Laplace was boastingly put forward as 
scientific truth. And, strangely enough, notwithstanding Sir 
Charles LyelPs frank condemnation of the theory as one 
“ altogether delusive,” which had been disproved by the ad- 
vancement of Geological knowledge, the professed “ lovers of 
truth ” still go on hugging their delusion, and issue fresh 
editions of their crude Essays, without apparently any feeling 
that mere common honesty seems now to demand an open 
retractation at their hands. 
But the most strange reiteration of the nebular theory 
is that put forth by Professor Huxley, in the first number 
of the Academy , in a review of a work on The Natural 
History of the Creation, by Dr. Ernst Haeckel, Professor in 
