these creatures among the families of the inhabitants of the sea, appear 
pretty equally divided between the sharks and the whales, and the claims 
of altogether a new living genus. Let us therefore not force conclusions 
prematurely, neither discourage observation and reports, by attempting 
to laugh down honest men who cannot tell their stories in the imposing 
language of science. 
Scientific system is good and useful in natural history as in all other 
branches of knowledge, because it facilitates the acquisition of new data, 
and secures them when acquired ; but a long familiarity with the techni¬ 
calities of system has a tendency to close the mind against a ready recep¬ 
tion of new combinations, for which an immediate precedent cannot be 
found. Yet the daily discoveries in the walks of philosophy should teach 
humility, and keep up a disposition to inquire with candour, and with 
earnest desire to pick out the grain of real value, even though sur¬ 
rounded with much which may be chaff. Never in this world can the 
attainment of knowledge be such as to destroy all occasion for faith in 
the existence of more to be learnt. The frequent new wonders of inven¬ 
tion defy dogmatic incredulity, whether it obtrudes itself amid the re¬ 
searches of art or science. It is scarcely ten years since it was “ satis¬ 
factorily” proved that steam navigation could never unite the old and 
new world. Yet already the voyage of the Atlantic mail-ships have be¬ 
come fixed subjects of admiration, not only in respect of the solution of 
the problem of ocean steam-navigation, but of the marvellous punctuality 
of departure and arrival. The establishment of the magnetic telegraph 
on land is a wonder of the past; and who dare now deny the probability 
of its extension through the other element of ocean ? The race of man 
advances in the maturity of age ; behold how his horizon enlarges, and 
how objects near to earlier generations, yet unperceived by them, are 
unfolding themselves to us ! Inversely to the time by which we are 
separated from the day of the glories of Asiatic and Egyptian ascendancy, 
is our success in penetrating into the public history and the domestic 
privacy of those nations which flourished earliest on the earth. Is it not 
marvellous that we can judge Herodotus in his knowledge of Egyptian 
greatness, and Cicero and Pliny in their acquaintance with Etruscan 
antiquity? Yet so it is; while the stony book of the history of the 
planet on which we live, with its fossil leaves, was not only unopened by 
the ancient philosopher, but not even suspected to exist. 
As in historical, geological, and geographical knowledge, we of to-day 
