though he may possibly be right as a naturalist,-though we think that matter admits of being tried, for it is far from settled, he may be none the less wrong on that account as a theologian. His inferences may be right and legitimate in themselves, and yet the main deduction founded upon them be false in fact. Let us illustrate. There is nothing more certain than that the human species is of comparatively recent origin. All geological science testifies that man is but of yesterday; and the profound yet exquisitely simple argument of Sir Isaac Newton, as reported by Mr Conduit, bears with singular effect on the same truth. Almost all the great discoveries and inventions, argued the philosopher, are of comparatively recent origin. Perhaps the only great invention or discovery that occurs in the fabulous ages of history is the invention of letters. All the others,—such as the mariner's compass, printing, gunpowder, the telescope, the discovery of the New World and Southern Africa, and of the true position and relations of the earth in the solar system,— lie within the province of the authentic annalist; which, man being the inquisitive, constructive creature that he is, would not be the case were the species of any very high antiquity. We have seen, since the death of Sir Isaac, steam, gas, and electricity introduced as new forces into the world: the race, in consequence, has in less than a century and a half grown greatly in knowledge and in power; and by the rapid rate of the increase, we argue with the philosopher that it can by no means be very ancient. Had it been on the earth twenty, fifty, or a hundred thousand years ago, steam, gas, and electricity would have been discovered hundreds of ages since, and it would at this date have no such room to grow. And the only very ancient history which has a claim to be authentic,that of Moses, confirms, we find, the shrewd inference of Sir Isaac. Now, with this fact of the recent origin of the race on the one hand, and the other fact, that

the many various languages of the race so differ that there are some of them which have scarce a dozen of words in common, a linguist who confined himself to the consideration of natural causes would be quite justified in arguing that these languages could not possibly have changed to be what they are, from any such tongue, in the some five or six thousand years to which he finds himself restricted by history, geology, and the inference of Sir Isaac. It takes many centuries thoroughly to change a language, even in the present state of things, in which divers languages exist, and in which commerce and conquest, and the demands of literature, are ever incorporating the vocables of one people with those of another. After the lapse of nearly three thousand years, the language of modern Greece is essentially that in which Homer wrote; and by much the larger part of the words in which we ourselves express our ideas are those which Alfred employed when he propounded his scheme of legislative assemblies and of trial by jury. And were there but one language on earth, changes in words or structure would of necessity operate incalculably more slowly. Nor would it be illogical for the linguist to argue, that if, some five or six thousand years ago, the race, then in their extreme infancy, had not a common language, they could not have originated as one family, but as several, and so his conclusion would in effect be that of the American naturalist. But who does not see that, though right as a linguist, he would be wrong as a theologian, wrong in fact? Reasoning on but the common and the natural, he would have failed to take into account, in his calculation, one main element, the element of miracle, as manifested in the confusion of tongues at Babel; and his ultimate finding would, in consequence, be wholly erroneous. Now, it is perhaps equally possible for the naturalist to hold that two such extreme varieties of the human family as the negro and the Goth could not have originated from common

parents in the course of a few centuries; and certainly the negro does appear in history not many centuries after the Flood. He had assumed his deep black hue six hundred years before the Christian era, when Jeremiah used his well-known illustration, "Can the Ethiopian," &c.; and the negro head and features appear among the sculptures and paintings of Egypt several centuries earlier. Nay, negro skulls of a very high antiquity have been found among the mummies of the same ancient kingdom. But though, with distinguished naturalists on the other side, we would not venture authoritatively to determine that a variety so extreme could have originated in the ordinary course of nature in so brief a period, just as we would hesitate to determine that a new language could originate naturally in other than a very extended term, we would found little indeed upon such a circumstance, in the face of a general tradition that the negroid form and physiognomy were marks set upon an offending family, and were scarce less the results of miracle than the confusion of tongues. We are far from sure, however, that it is necessary to have recourse to miracle. The Goth is widely removed from the negro; but there are intermediate types of man that stand in such a midway relation to both, that each variety, taking these as the central type, is divested of half its extremeness. Did such of our Edinburgh readers as visited the Exhibition of this season mark with what scholar-like exactness and artistic beauty the late Sir William Allan restored, in his last great picture (" The Cup found in Benjamin's Sack"), the original Egyptian form, as exhibited in the messengers of Joseph Had the first men, Adam and Noah, been of that mingled negroid and Caucasian type,-and who shall say that they were not?-neither the Goth nor the negro would be so extreme a variety of the species as to be beyond the power of natural causes to produce.

We had purposed referring at some length to that portion

of the argument which is made to rest on analogy. We have, however, more than exhausted our space, and merely remark that it is not at all a settled point that the analogies are in favour of creation in a plurality of centres. Linnæus and his followers in the past, and men such as Edward Forbes in the present, assert exactly the contrary; and, though the question is doubtless an obscure and difficult one,-so much so, that he who takes up either side, and incurs the onus probandi of what he asserts, will find he has but a doubtful case,-the doubt and obscurity lie quite as much on the one side as the other. Even, however, were the analogies with regard to vegetables and the lower animals in favour of creation in various centres, it would utterly fail to affect the argument. Though the dormouse and the Scotch fir had been created in fifty places at once, the fact would not yield us the slightest foundation for inferring that man had originated in more than a single centre. Ultimately, controversies of this character will not fail to be productive of good. They will leave the truth more firmly established, because more thoroughly tried, and the Churches more learned. Nay, should such a controversy as the present at length convince the Churches that those physical and natural sciences which, during the present century, have been changing the very face of the world, and the entire region of human thought, must be sedulously studied by them, and that they can no more remain ignorant without sin than a shepherd can remain unarmed in a country infested by beasts of prey without breach of trust, it will be productive of much greater good than harm.-July 13, 1850.

NORWAY AND ITS GLACIERS.*

THERE is a striking resemblance in form and aspect between the Scandinavian races of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and the people of the north-eastern coasts of Scotland. The resemblance, however, is not restricted to the races ;-it extends also to the countries which they inhabit. The general features of Denmark and Sweden are very much those of the southern districts of our own country,-mayhap rather tamer on the whole, from a less ample development of the trap-rocks. And in Norway we have, if we except a small portion of its southern extremity, simply a huge repetition of the Western Highlands of Scotland: it is a Highlands roughened by greater hills, and intersected by deeper and more extensive lochs, and prolonged far beyond the Arctic circle. In, however, their physical conditions, both Norway and the Highlands are wonderfully alike; but with this interesting difference, that some of the great agents which modified, in the remote past, the form of the rougher portions of our country, and regarding which we can only speculate and theorize, are still in active operation in Norway. The loftier Norwegian mountains rise to nearly twice the height of Ben Macdhui and Ben Nevis; the country, too, stretches about twelve degrees farther to the north than Cape Wrath, and runs more than three hundred miles within the Arctic circle. And so it has its permanent snow-fields and its great glaciers, that are in the present day casting up their moraines, lateral and transverse, and grooving and rounding the rocks beneath, just as

* Norway and its Glaciers visited in 1851, &c. By James D. Forbes, D.C.L., F.R.S., Sec. R.S., Ed., &c. &c., and Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh.