GIFT OF 
 Charles L. Camp 
 
 EARTH 
 
 SCIENCES 
 
 LIBRARY 
 

, 
 

 RELICS FHOM THE WKECK 
 
 OF 
 
 A FORMER WORLD; 
 
 o a 
 
 SPLINTERS GATHERED ON THE SHORES 
 
 OF 
 
 A TURBULENT PLANET, 
 
 &c. ; &c. ; &c. 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 
 \V. H. (illAHAM, TRIBUNE BUILDINGS; 
 II . LONG A N I) B It O T II E R , 32 ANN S T R E E T ;- 
 
 HUltGKSd, STRINGER & CO. 22i RROADWAY. 
 
 
 
RELICS 
 
 tf 
 
 FROM THE WRECK OF A FORMER WORLD; 
 
 OR, 
 
 SPLINTERS GATHERED ON THE SHORES 
 
 or 
 
 A TURBULENT PLANET. 
 
 PROVING, 
 
 TO A DEMONSTRATION, THE VAST ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH J AND, TH 
 
 EXISTENCE OF ANIMAL LIFE OF THE MOST FANTASTIC SHAPES, 
 
 AND THE MOST ELEGANT COLORS: RIVALING THOSE 
 OF THE RAINBOW, MILLIONS OF YEARS BE- 
 FORE THE APPEARANCE OF MAN. 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX 
 
 OM THE SCENERY IN A PATCH OF INFINITE SPACE. TO WHICH IS ADDED, 
 
 ACCOUNTS OF THE MOST WONDERFUL BODIES, AND SUBSTANCES, 
 
 THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM HEAVEN, IN ALL AGES OF 
 
 THE WORLD : WITH Atf ANALYSIS 
 
 OF EACH. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS. 
 
 " It will not do for Christians to deny the conclusion, on the ground that the. Mosaic 
 narrative teaches that the Earth is only about six thousand years old. This is attribut 
 ing to Moses a sentiment which his language does not justify." W. Lindsay Alexander 
 D. >., F. S. A. S. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 W. H. GRAHAM, TRTBUNE BUILDINGS, H. LONG & 
 
 BROTHER, 32 ANN- STREET, AND BURGESS, 
 
 STRINGER & Co., 222 BROADWAY. 
 
 1847. 
 
X 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, 
 
 BY HENRY LONG & BROTHER, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office cf th.3 District Comi o the Southern District of 
 New-Yoilv. t ' 
 
 MATTHEW LIBRARY 
 

 PREFACE. 
 
 Eternal truth ! how wondrous is thy power, 
 How vain the human mind to fully trace 
 All the deep mysteries that hover o'er 
 The hidden depths of thy profound embrace. 
 
 THE present work is intended to furnish a general 
 view of the leading appearances of Physical Nature the 
 economy of the heavens and the earth : deduced from 
 Milner's "Gallery of Nature," Mantell's "Medals of 
 Creation," and other authentic sources. 
 
 Geology and Astronomy are, in truth, sciences 
 whose discoveries have realized the wildest imaginings 
 of the poet, and whose realities infinitely surpass, in 
 grandeur and sublimity, the most imposing fictions of 
 romance. 
 
 954116 
 

 RELICS 
 
 FROM THE WRECK OF A FORMER WORLD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 '' The very ground on which we tread, and the mountains which sur- 
 round us, may be regarded as vast tumuli, in which the organic remains 
 of a former world are enshrined." Parkinson's Org. Rem., Vol. I. 
 
 ACCUSTOMED to consider the whole of nature as having 
 sprung out of nothing at the Divine command in the course 
 of a few days and erroneously deeming this belief as es- 
 sentially connected with the fundamental articles of Chris- 
 tian faith it is little wonder when Hutton announced to 
 the world that the earth offered no trace of a commencement; 
 nor any prospect of an end, that he was assailed as an in- 
 fidel. But time effects changes in the moral as well as the 
 physical world, and such a belief is now considered no way 
 obnoxious to a true interpretation of the sacred text. 
 
 Some of our divines are among the most celebrated geolo- 
 gists, and the vast antiquity of the earth has become as 
 fully accredited as if it had formed a distinct subject of rev- 
 elation. A few cavillers are still to be found, but not among 
 the enlightened portion of the Christian community. It is 
 only from those who, assuming t/ieir preconceptions to be 
 true, and their interpretations of Scripture right, that we 
 find any opposition to the stubborn evidence of fact. 
 
 

 6 % RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 " The hope of truth grows stronger day by day ; 
 I hear the soul of Man around me waking, 
 Like a great sea its frozen fetters breaking, 
 And flinging up to heaven its sunlit spray, 
 Tossing huge continents in scornful play, 
 And crushing them with din of grinding thunder 
 That makes old emptiness stare in wonder." 
 
 Disputation is an irksome and thankless employment, 
 and scarcely answers the purpose of conviction ; because the 
 mind naturally sets up its own old defences whenever its 
 prejudices are attacked. "Men do not willingly," says the 
 Rev. Thomas Milner, "abandon notions that have grown 
 with their growth, and strengthened with their strength, 
 and struck their roots deep and fast into their ( heart of 
 hearts.' Besides being mortifying to intellectual vanity 
 to admit an error, they disrelish the mental disturbance oc- 
 casioned by the breaking up of old associations of ideas, 
 and the toil which a correct conception of truth may require. 
 Much of the suspicion with which the scientific have been 
 visited, may be referred to prejudices in favor of early im- 
 bibed opinions, to which the demonstrations of science have 
 been opposed prejudices which are known in the pages of 
 Lord Bacon as idola specus, the individual mind being the 
 den to which that sagacious observer of human nature al- 
 ludes, and repugnant as it is to the owner and guardian of 
 the mental cavern to have its chambers of imagery searched, 
 and the occupant of any niche ejected, men have beeh com- 
 pelled repeatedly to submit to the process, however they 
 may have resisted the attempt. A country schoolmaster 
 may still discourse of the four elements fire, air, earth, and 
 water ; and his boys may look up to him as a prodigy of 
 erudition ; but cttemical analysis teaches us to smile at the 
 enumeration, though old as the days of the Greek philoso- 
 phers. So the antiquated notion of the earth being an ex- 
 tended plane, like a table, as motionless as that household 
 instrument, the sun coming to take his daily peep at it, like 
 

 OF A FORMER WORLD. 7 
 
 a careful watchman on his rounds, has vanished from the 
 face of civilized society, though supported by the impres- 
 sion of the senses, once deemed essential to religious faith, 
 and defended by ecclesiastical law. It becomes us there- 
 fore, when the decisions of science are contrary to our 
 familiar ideas, to inquire into the soundness of both, and 
 willingly to surrender our preconceived opinions to the force 
 of truth, and not to any prejudice against knowledge" 
 
 The vast antiquity of our globe is now as fully demon- 
 strated as its rotundity : and the lapse of ages which must 
 have occurred in the completion of a geological epoch, as 
 evident as the distances of the heavenly spheres : indeed 
 more so because the one can be proven to any person in 
 the slightest degree conversant with the structure of the 
 earth, by deductions most rational and satisfactory, and by 
 evidence the most complete; whereas in Astronomy the 
 person who cannot apply the telescopic tube, has in a great 
 measure to rest satisfied with the testimony of the astrono- 
 mer, and the collateral evidence of the mathematician. 
 That our globe was the seat of animal and vegetable life 
 through a countless series of ages, before its occupation by 
 the human species that successive races flourished, decayed 
 and altogether vanished, long anterior to the appearance of 
 man upon the stage of life is a conclusion of which irre- 
 fragable evidence is aiforded in the myriad forms of once 
 animated existence, whose remains have been disinterred 
 from their graves in the lias, gypsum-quarries, and chalk, 
 and which enter almost exclusively into the composition of 
 vast masses of mountain limestone. 
 
 "The earth is in truth a charnel house, full of bones, 
 sinews, shells, leaves, and prostrate trunks, and with con- 
 summate skill the botanist and comparative anatomist have 
 traced the animal and vegetable forms indicated by the 
 fragments gathered from the wreck of life. Ancient con- 
 ditions of our planet have thus been restored, when stately 
 
8 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 ferns and graceful palms threw their shadows upon its sur- 
 face, and herbivorous and carnivorous quadrupeds roamed 
 in its forests ; when animate objects of uncouth shape 
 swarmed in its rivers, and sported on its plains ; all, how- 
 ever, swept away antecedent to the human creation, and 
 whose skeletons, after being washed in the ocean, were 
 laid up in the solid masonry of the globe's present super- 
 structure. The current of popular opinion has run vio- 
 lently against statements of this kind ; for no sentiment 
 has stronger hold of the common mind, than that all the 
 alarming phenomena of nature, with the existence of 
 death in the animal kingdom, are the penal consequences 
 of human transgression. Poetry has helped to extend 
 and perpetuate this idea, which observation contradicts, and 
 which a rational exegesis of the Scripture testimony has 
 shown to be unsupported by the record from which it was 
 primarily derived. 
 
 ' Thus began 
 
 Outrage from lifeless things ; but Discord first. 
 Daughter of Sin, among the irrational, 
 Death introduced, through fierce antipathy ; 
 Beast now with beast 'gan war, and fowl with fowl, 
 And fish with fish ; to graze the herb all leaving, 
 Devour'd each other ; nor stood much in awe 
 Of man, but fled him ; or with countenance grim 
 Glared on him passing.' 
 
 "The opening verse of the Scriptures announces the fact 
 of a dependant universe being created by the Almighty, but 
 assigns no date to the mighty operation. Geology de- 
 mands nothing beyond what this indefinite enunciation of 
 the Creator's work as to time supplies ; and theology, in the 
 passage, requires only an acknowledgment of the will, power, 
 and wisdom of the one God, in originating and super- 
 intending the terrestrial constitution. At a precise point 
 of time, the earth, in its primordial elements, as we are left 
 

 OF A FORMER WORLD. 9 
 
 at liberty to conceive, was called into being, but the 
 question is completely undetermined ivhen that time was. 
 An interval as long as the imagination can entertain may 
 be placed between the first operation of Divine power, and 
 the subsequent arrangement of the globe for the habita- 
 tion of man. The record allows room enough for all those 
 wonderful changes and transformations to transpire, the in- 
 dubitable memorials of which are discovered in the deep 
 and dark places of the earth, which, after ages of entomb- 
 ment, have been commanded to show themselves ; but yet, 
 as if to prevent man from becoming proud amid the triumphs 
 of his genius, he is checked at once in the endeavor to 
 measure the interval, the vastness of which he can discern, 
 which will ever remain to us in the present state, invested 
 with the obscurity that marks the number of the ocean's 
 sands. There has been, however, no little flippancy and 
 contraction of mind evinced by many who have carped at 
 the demands of geological time, for time is long or short ac- 
 cording to the particular standard we employ in its mea- 
 surement." Milner. 
 
 At the first step we take in geological inquiry, says the 
 Rev. Dr. Buckland, we are struck with the immense period 
 of time which the phenomena presented to our view must 
 have required for their production, and the incessant changes 
 which appear to have been going on in the natural world ; 
 but we must remember that time and change are great, only 
 in reference to the faculties of the being who notes them. 
 The insect of an hour contrasting its own ephemeral exist- 
 ence with the flowers on which it rests, would attribute an 
 unchanging durability to the most evanescent 'of vegetable 
 forms, while the flowers, the trees, and the forest would as- 
 cribe an endless duration to the soil on which they grow ; 
 and thus, uninstructed man comparing his own brief earthly 
 existence with the solid frame-work of the world he in- 
 habits, deems the hills and mountains around him coeval 
 
10 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 with the globe itself. But with the enlargement and culti- 
 vation of his mental powers, he takes a more just, compre- 
 hensive, and enlightened view of the wonderful scheme of 
 creation, and while in his ignorance he imagined that the 
 duration of the globe was to be measured by his own brief 
 span, and arrogantly deemed himself alone the object of the 
 Almighty's care, and that all things were created for his 
 pleasure and necessities, he now feels his dependence, enter- 
 tains more correct ideas of the mercy, wisdom, and good- 
 ness of his Creator ; and while exercising his high privilege 
 of being alone capable of contemplating and understanding 
 the wonders of the natural world, he learns the most im- 
 portant of all lessons to doubt the evidence of his own 
 senses until confirmed by patient and cautious investiga- 
 tions. 
 
 " Where is the dust that has not been alive ?" 
 
 The remains of organic existence, found in the median 
 and other tartiaries, conduct us from the colossal and impo- 
 sing to the minute and microscopic j for beds occur entirely 
 composed of the fossil relics of animalculites those in- 
 finitesimal forms now present in our lakes, rivers, and 
 streams, invisible to the unassisted sight, whose perfect or- 
 ganization places them among the wonders of the creation. 
 They were formerly supposed to be little more than mere 
 particles of matter endowed with vitality ; but Ehrenberg 
 has discovered in them an apparatus of muscles, intestines, 
 teeth, different kinds of glands, eyes, nerves, and organs of 
 reproduction. Yet some of the smallest are not more than 
 the 24,000th of an inch in diameter, the thickness of the 
 skin of their stomachs not more than the 50,000,000th part 
 of an inch, a single drop of water having been estimated 
 sometimes actually to contain 500,000,000 individuals. 
 Not less astonishing is their power of multiplication, an in- 
 dividual of one species increasing in ten days to 1,000,000 
 

 OP A FORMER WORLD. 11 
 
 on the eleventh day to 4,000,000, and on the twelfth day to 
 16,000,000 ; while, of another kind, Ehrenberg states that one 
 individual is capable of becoming, in four days, 170,000,- 
 000,000 ! To this distinguished naturalist we are indebted 
 for the developement of the fact that ages ago our world 
 was rife with these minute organisms, belonging to a great 
 number of species, whose mineralised skeletons actually con- 
 stitute nearly the whole mass of some tertiary soils and rocks 
 several feet in thickness, and extending over areas of many 
 acres. Such is the Polirschiefe7' } or polishing slate of Bilin 
 in Bohemia, which occupies a surface of great extent, proba- 
 bly the site of an ancient lake, and forms slaty strata of 
 fourteen fe'et in thickness, almost wholly composed of the 
 silicified shields of animalcules. The size of a single one, 
 forming the polishing slate, " amounts upon an average, and 
 in the greatest part, to TSJ of a line, which equals i of 
 the thickness of a human hair, reckoning its average 
 size at -fa of a line. The globule of the human blood 
 considered at yj-o is not much smaller. The blood glo- 
 bules of a frog are twice as large as one of these ani- 
 malcules. As the Polirschiefer of Bilin is slaty, but 
 without cavities, these animalcules lie closely compressed. 
 In round numbers, about 23 millions would make up a cubic 
 line, and would in fact be contained in it. There are 1728 
 cubic lines in a cubic inch; and therefore a cubic inch 
 would contain, on an average, about 41,000 millions of 
 these animals. On weighing a cubic inch of this mass, 
 I found it to be about 220 grains. Of the 41,000 millions 
 of animals 187 millions go to a grain ; or the siliceous 
 shield of each animalcule weighs about yfy millionth part of 
 a grain." Such is the statement of Ehrenberg, which natu- 
 rally suggests to the reflection of the French philosopher, 
 that if the Almighty is great in great things, he is-' still 
 more so in those which are minute ; and furnishes additional 
 data for the well-known moral argument of the theologian 
 
12 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 derived from a comparison of the telescope and microscope : 
 " The one led me to see a system in every star ; the other 
 leads me to see a world in every atom. The one taught me 
 that this mighty globe, with the whole burden of its people 
 and of its countries, is but a grain of sand on the high field 
 of immensity.* The other teaches me, that every grain of 
 sand may harbor within it the tribes and the families of a 
 busy population. The one told me of the insignificance 
 of the world I tread upon. The other redeems it from all 
 insignificance ; for it tells me that 
 
 " In the leaves of every forest, in the flowers of every garden, in the 
 waters of every rivulet, there are worlds teeming with life, and number- 
 less as are the glories of the firmament." Rev. Dr. Chalmers. 
 
 Nothing more perfectly demonstrates the power of Nature 
 to effect her vast designs through apparently feeble and in- 
 sufficient agents, than the coral formation. It .requires, 
 indeed, ocular proof of the labors of the madrepores, to 
 credit what stupendous submarine reefs and islands, many 
 miles in compass, are indebted for at least a great part of 
 their structure to the secretory economy of these minute 
 artificers. 
 
 The coral insects are abundant in the Mediterranean, 
 where corallines of beautiful forms and colors are produced; 
 but it is in the Pacific Ocean and its branches that these 
 
 * Sir John Herschel, in an " Essay on the Power of the Telescope to 
 penetrate into space," a quality distinct from the magnifying power, in- 
 forms us that there are stars so infinitely remote as to be situated at the 
 distance of twelve millions of millions of millions of mites from our earth ; 
 so that light, which travels with a velocity of twelve millions of miles 
 in a minute, would require two millions of years for its transit from those 
 distant orbs to our own ; while the astronomer who should record the as- 
 pect or mutations of sueh a star, would be relating, not its history at the 
 present day, but that which took place two millions of years gone by. And 
 when we reflect that if it were possible for us to attain to those distant 
 spheres, we should look, not on the limits, the blank wall of Creation, 
 but only into fresh fields of Creation, Power, and Wisdom, we feel that 
 our earth and all that it inherits is a mere speck in space, ar atom amid 
 the vast Universe. (See Appendix.) 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 13 
 
 tiny workmen are effecting those mighty changes, which far 
 exceed the most remarkable labors of man. 
 
 " Millions of millions thus from age to age, 
 With simplest skill, and toil unweariable, 
 No moment and no movement unimproved, 
 Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread, 
 To swell the heightening, brightening gradual mound, 
 By marvellous structure climbing towards the day. 
 Each wrought alone, yet altogether wrought, 
 Unconscious, not unworthy, instruments, 
 By which a hand invisible was rearing 
 A new creation in the secret deep. 
 Omnipotence wrought in them, with them, by them; 
 Hence what Omnipotence alone could do 
 Worms did. I saw the living pile ascend, 
 The mausoleum of its architects, 
 Still dying upwards as their labors closed : 
 Slime the material, but the slime was turn'd 
 To adamant, by their petrific touch ; 
 Frail were their frames, ephemeral their lives, 
 Their masonry imperishable. All 
 Life's needful functions, food, exertion, rest, 
 By nice economy of Providence 
 Were overruled to carry on the process 
 Which out of water brought forth solid rock. 
 Atom by atom thus the burthen grew, 
 Even like an infant in the womb, till Time 
 Deliver'd ocean of that monstrous birth 
 A coral island stretching east and west." 
 
 That those infinitesimal forms of existence, whose pres- 
 ence in our lakes, rivers, and streams, can only be made 
 manifest by the aid of the microscope, should be detected 
 in a fossil state, and that their aggregated skeletons should 
 be found to constitute the chains of hills, and the subsoil of 
 extensive districts, and that the most stupendous monuments 
 erected by man, should be composed of rocks resulting from 
 the mineralized remains of animalcules, invisible to the 
 unassisted eye, are among the most marvellous of wonders.* 
 
 * If we apply our vision to the microscope, we behold in every leaf 
 and blade of grass, and every drop of water in which these substances have 
 
14 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 Every walk we take offers subjects for profound consider- 
 ation every pebble that attracts our notice, matter for 
 serious reflection ; and contemplating the innumerable proofs 
 afforded us of the incessant dissolution and renovation 
 which are taking place around us, we feel the force and 
 beauty of the exclamation of the poet, 
 
 " My heart is awed within me, when I think 
 Of the great miracle which still goes on 
 In silence round me the perpetual work 
 Of Thy creation, finished, yet renewed 
 For ever !" 
 
 become decomposed, a world of life and being, unknown, unseen by the 
 feeble human eye. We have only to cut a little hay into small pieces with 
 a pair of scissors, put the pieces into a saucer full of water, and, let 
 them stand for a week, when a film will appear on the surface, which we 
 have but to take off with a spoon, put it under the microscope, and we have 
 then before us in the mere drop of water a world of animated beings of high 
 order of organization, possessing heads, eyes, with systems nervous, circu- 
 latory, respiratory, and digestive, yet the creatures themselves so infinitely 
 minute as to be perfectly invisible to the most acute and perfect sight. The 
 animalculae form, in fact, one of the most important realms in the vast 
 empire of Nature, and so vast are their numbers, their species and the 
 diversified phenomena of their existence, that, as with the vast and un 
 numbered orbs above us, the mind is lost in the immensity of the contem- 
 plation; we find that the infinitely minute, like the infinitely magnificent, 
 transcends our powers of observation, and we are left to admire, to won- 
 der, and adore . 
 

 OF A FORMER WORLD. ' 15 
 
 CHAPTER II * 
 
 " Let the moon 
 
 Shine on thee in thy solitary walk ; 
 
 And let the misty mountain winds be free 
 
 To blow against thee ; and in after years, 
 
 When these wild ecstasies shall be matured 
 
 Into a sober pleasure when thy mind 
 
 Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, 
 
 Thy memory be a dwelling place 
 
 For all sweet sounds and harmonies, oh ! then 
 
 If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief 
 
 Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts 
 
 Of tender joy wilt thou remember me 
 
 And these my benedictions!" WORDSWORTH. 
 
 IN walking over the surface of a country, we witness its 
 undulations, its mountains, and its rivers, and are apt to 
 conclude that hill and valley, river and lake, may have 
 existed in nearly the same condition since time began its 
 ceaseless course. But when we come to examine the struc- 
 ture of the mountain, the causes of undulation, the altera- 
 tions which have taken place in the water courses, nay, even 
 in the general configuration of the globe itself, or of any 
 particular region of it, we naturally exclaim, "the hills 
 themselves are the daughters of time, the waves of the 
 present ocean played in past ages on other shores, and the 
 rivers which supply it are derived from surfaces, which in 
 ancient days were below the level of the deep all that is 
 now land, is but the debrisf of continents and islands now 
 unknown; the wreck of a former world the spoils and 
 the sport of time." 
 
 Effects have been produced, which, if attributed to the 
 
 * See chapter v., p. 45. t The waste of other rocks. 
 
16 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 ordinary agencies of Nature, require the imagination to 
 stretch its visual glance through the vista of a past eter- 
 nity, or at least through a lapse of ages, as inconceivable in 
 duration, as the distances of the spheres are in the field of 
 space. 
 
 " Were we to assert," says the Rev. Dr. Buckland, " that 
 the present continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, 
 were once wholly immersed under the waters of the ocean, 
 and that after rising at different spots in low newborn 
 islands* they gradually acquired their present configu- 
 ration ; nay, that the whole materials of which both the 
 present continents and their islands are composed, have 
 resulted from the denudation of continents and islands 
 which have been worn away, or finally sunk under the all- 
 
 * One circumstance may well surprise us, and that is, to find in the 
 Bible mountains distingushed in two classes, very nearly in the manner as 
 they are distinguished by science into primitive and secondary. Thus in 
 the 104th Psalm, a composition of incomparable poetical beauty, the pro- 
 phet gives us an idea of the formation of the earth ; he represents it to us 
 as still covered with the waters of the deep as with a garment. The 
 waters stood above all the mountains, but many of these eminences became 
 elevated, and rose above their level; the waters then retired and fled. 
 New mountains then appeared, and valleys, and plains ; the lowest parts of 
 the globe were formed at their feet. Two principal epochs, then, must 
 have been in the mind of the prophet, from the time of the rising up of 
 the heights which appear on all parts of the globe ; these two epochs cor- 
 respond to the formation of primitive and secondary mountains. 
 
 Reference is even made to the force by which they have been elevated : 
 it is represented as proportionate to the elevation to which their eminen- 
 ces have been raised, being most powerful when employed in elevating 
 the mountains properly so called, and weaker when its efforts were limit- 
 ed to the raising of the hills above the valleys. In its figurative style, it 
 compares the elevation of the former to the skipping of rams, and that 
 of the latter to the leaping of lambs. Newton esteemed the Bible "the 
 most authentic of ah 1 histories;" Hale said, "none was like unto it for 
 excellent wisdom, learning, and use ;" Boyle considered it " a matchless 
 volume, impossible to be too much studied or too highly esteemed ;" and 
 Locke pronounced it as " consisting of Truth without any mixture of Error 
 for its matter." 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 17 
 
 encroaching influence of the waves, we would not be 
 credited by many the assertion would seem that of one 
 whose avocation was the excitement of astonishment, and 
 who if he could make his reader wonder, had attained the 
 acme of his ambition. Yet such, nevertheless, is the con- 
 clusion, to which all who study the structure of the earth, 
 divested of prejudice and preconception, are necessarily led/' 
 
 If we look with wonder upon the great remains of human 
 works, says Sir H. Davy, such as the columns of Pal- 
 myra, broken in the midst of the desert ; the temples of 
 PaBstum, beautiful in the decay of twenty centuries; or' 
 the mutilated fragments of Greek sculpture in the Acro- 
 polis of Athens, or in our own museums, as proofs of the 
 genius of artists, and power and riches of nations now 
 passed away ; with how much deeper feeling of admiration 
 must we consider those grand monuments of nature which 
 mark the revolutions of the Globe ; continents broken into 
 islands ; one land produced, another destroyed ; the bottom 
 of the ocean become a fertile soil ; whole races of animals 
 extinct, and the bones and exuviae of one class covered with 
 the remains of another ; and upon the graves of past gen- 
 erations the marble or rocky tombs, as it were, of a for- 
 mer animated world new generations rising, and order 
 and harmony established, and a system of life and beauty 
 produced out of chaos and death ; proving the infinite power, 
 wisdom, and goodness of the GREAT CAUSE of all things! 
 
 From the numerous foreign writers, who at a very early 
 period began to entertain correct notions of the structure 
 of our planet, and of the nature of the revolutions which 
 it had undergone, we are induced to select the following 
 highly philosophical and beautiful illustration of the phy- 
 sical mutations to which the surface of the earth is per- 
 petually exposed. It is from an Arabic manuscript written 
 in the thirteenth century. The narrative is supposed to be 
 given by Rhidhz, an allegorical personage. 
 
18 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 "I passed one day by a very ancient and populous wty 
 and I asked one of its inhabitants how long it had been 
 founded? 'It is, indeed, a mighty city/ replied he; 'we 
 know not how long it has existed, and our ancestors were on 
 this subject as ignorant as ourselves.' Some centuries after- 
 wards, as I passed by the same place, I could not perceive the 
 slightest vestige of the city. I demanded of a peasant, who 
 was gathering herbs upon its former site, how long it had been 
 destroyed ?' ' In sooth, a strange question,' replied he, ' the 
 ground here- has never been different from what you now 
 behold it.' ' Was there not,' said I, ' of old a splendid city 
 here?' 'Never,' answered he, 'so far as we know, and 
 never did our fathers speak to us of any such.' 
 
 " On my return there again, after the lapse of other cen- 
 turies, I found the sea in the same place, and on its shores 
 were a party of fishermen, of whom I inquired how long 
 the land had been covered by the waters ? ' Is this a ques- * 
 tion', said they, ' for a man like you ? This spot has always 
 been what it is now.' 
 
 " I again returned ages afterwards, and the sea had dis- 
 appeared. I inquired of a man who stood alone upon the 
 ground, how long the change had taken place, and he gave 
 me the same answer that I had received before. 
 
 "Lastly, on coming back again after an equal lapse of 
 time, I found there a flourishing city, more populous and 
 more rich in buildings than the city I had seen the first 
 time ; and when I would have fain informed myself regard- 
 ing its origin, the inhabitants answered me, ' its rise is lost 
 in remote antiquity we are ignorant how long it has ex- 
 isted, and our fathers were on this subject* no wiser than 
 ourselves.' " 
 
 We may smile at the ignorance of the inhabitants of the 
 fabled cities, but are we in a condition to give a more satis- 
 factory reply should it be inquired of us, 'What are the 
 physical changes which the country you inhabit has under- 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 19 
 
 gone ? and yet cautious observation, and patient and un- 
 prejudiced investigation, are alone necessary to enable us to 
 answer the interrogation. 
 
 Dismissing from his mind all preconceived opinions, 
 the student must be prepared to discover that the earth's 
 surface has been, and still is, subject to perpetual mutation, 
 that the sea and land are continually changing place, 
 that what is now dry land was once the bottom of the deep, 
 and that the bed of the present ocean will, in its turn, be 
 elevated above the water and become dry land, that all 
 the solid materials of the globe have been in a softened, fluid, 
 or gaseous state, and that the remains of countless myr- 
 iads of animals and plants are not only entombed in the 
 rocks and mountains, but that every grain of sand, and ev- 
 ery particle of dust wafted by the wind, may teem with the 
 relics of beings that lived and died in periods long antece- 
 dent to the creation of the human race. Astounding as are 
 these propositions, they rest upon evidence so clear and in- 
 controvertible, that they cannot fail to be admitted by ev- 
 ery intelligent and unprejudiced reader, who will bestow but 
 a moderate share of attention. to the phenomena, of which 
 it is the purport of this work to offer a familiar exposition. 
 
 Scott, in his " Marmion," refers to a legend once preva- 
 lent in the neighborhood of Whitby, that the ammonite 
 shells, which are common in that vicinity, had formerly 
 been snakes, which the foundress of the abbey, St. Hilda, 
 succeeded in decapitating by her prayers, and then convert- 
 ing into stone : 
 
 " And how the nuns of Whitby told, 
 How of countless snakes, each one 
 Was changed into a coil of stone 
 When holy Hilda pray'd. 
 Themselves within their sacred bound 
 Their stony folds had often found." 
 
 We. shall now proceed to lay before the reader some of 
 the data connected with the stratification of the earth, which 
 
 
20 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 lead to the conclusion of a vast antiquity, and of the 
 physical revolutions it has undergone since it has become 
 a planet. Our limits forbid us from entering into detail on 
 all the multifarious forms which geology has disclosed to 
 our observation, nor, were we doing so, could it prove inter- 
 esting to any of our readers, except such as have made 
 comparative anatomy more or less their study, nor will our 
 limits allow of more than a general notice of the most re- 
 markable of those forms which peopled our planet prior to 
 the existence of our own species. 
 
 " Every rock in the desert, every boulder on the plain, every pebble by 
 the brook-side, every grain of sand on the sea-shore, is replete with les- 
 sons of wisdom to the mind that is fitted to receive and comprehend their 
 sublime import." 
 
 The rocks of which the crust of the earth is chiefly com- 
 posed, occur in beds or layers ; on examining them we find 
 every evidence of their having resulted from matter carried 
 by rivers into lakes, estuaries, or seas. This is demonstra- 
 ble from some of them being composed of fragments of 
 other rocks worn and rounded by the action of water, so as not 
 to be distinguished from the gravel strewed upon the shore, 
 or which we meet with in the path of a mountain stream, 
 except in its having been consolidated into a stony mass 
 such rocks are called conglomerates. The red sandstone 
 formations of Arran, and the coasts of Argyle and Ayrshire, 
 Scotland, consist of immense beds of such rocks, alternat- 
 ing with layers of red clay, and red sandstone. This for- 
 mation itself is many thousand feet thick ; we never find in 
 it any fragments of the coal, or of any newer formation ; 
 on the contrary, the conglomerates consist solely of pieces 
 of quartz, slate, red sandstone, and other rocks of more 
 ancient date. In the same formation, which stretches from 
 Argyle through Stirlingshire and Forfarshire, to the eastern 
 coast, remains of fishes in a very perfect state of preservation, 
 have been found. In both the conglomerates then, and in the 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 21 
 
 fishes we have evidence of this formation having been pro- 
 duced, not instantaneously, but through a long succession 
 of ages. Each bed of pebbles, if the ancient agencies of 
 nature were any way analogous to the present, must have 
 been the work of many years. That these agencies were 
 not more violent, or at least that there were long intervals 
 of repose, is attested by^fie beds of fine grained sand- 
 stone, and consolidated mud, with which the conglome- 
 rates alternate. The largest of our existing rivers, in 
 rainy seasons, carry great quantities of gravel, sand and 
 mud, into their estuaries or the sea ; but great as the amount 
 of debris is, the production of a quantity of matter, any 
 way equivalent to the old red sandstones of England and 
 Scotland, could not take place except in the lapse of innu- 
 merable ages. The mud carried down by the Nile, and de- 
 posited, amounts only to a quarter of an inch thick annually. 
 The old red sandstone formation is estimated at from three 
 to four thousand yards in thickness. Allowing a quarter 
 of an inch as the average annual aggregation of matter, 
 this formation alone could not have been deposited in less 
 than 432,000 years. 
 
 If we contemplate for a moment the agencies that must 
 have been engaged in wearing down the surfaces of the 
 ancient rocks, and in transporting them over the vast areas 
 they now occupy, the time here stated will not seem any 
 way exaggerated, but far too little for the amount of the 
 effects produced. We have mentioned the old, red sand- 
 stone formation as an instance, from which something like 
 an idea may be formed of the time requisite for the produc- 
 tion of a certain class of rocks. The same, or even still 
 more decisive proofs of the lapse and change of time are 
 afforded by the other formations. 
 
 To disintegrate to any considerable extent a solid rock 
 to transfer the material by a river-current to any oceanic 
 site to deposit it, and consolidate the deposition, are exces- 
 
22 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 sively slow operations, requiring the lapse of centuries to 
 accomplish the formation of a thin stratum. We are cer- 
 tain, therefore, that the building up of the gneissic and 
 mica-schist systems, by the abrasion of the granite, and 
 the gradual deposition of the detached matter at the bottom 
 of the ocean, must have required a period, with the vastness 
 of which the mind can hardly grj^ple, though perfectly in- 
 significant in His view, to whom " one day is as a thousand 
 years, and a thousand years are as one day." Of these two 
 groups, Dr. Macculloch remarks, " The thickness of these 
 strata we know to be enormous, their depths are discovered 
 by geological observations and inferences: that they ex- 
 tend to many miles was also proved. We have every 
 reason to know, from what is now taking place on our own 
 earth, that the accumulation of materials at the bottom of 
 the ocean, is a work infinitely slow. We are sure that such 
 an accumulation as should produce the primary strata as 
 we now see them, must have occupied a space, from the con- 
 templation of which the mind shrinks.* 
 
 The silurian rocks underlay the old red sandstone of 
 England, and these are also estimated at 3,000 yards in 
 thickness. The slate rocks of Scotland are several miles 
 in thickness, and all exhibit the marks of slow deposition 
 and subsequent consolidation. " We have traced," says the 
 late Dr. James Douglas, of Glasgow, " a continuous ' out 
 crop 7 of these rocks along the coast of Argyle for seven 
 miles, and this is not one-third part of its extent. The 
 whole slate or schistose formations of the west Highlands 
 of Scotland generally l crop out' in a north-west direction, 
 and lie in an angle of from 45 to 70 or degrees. They 
 extend from about five miles below Dunoon, along the whole 
 
 * There are seven distinct geological epochs each characterized by 
 sedimentary deposits of enormous thickness, and each the work of thou- 
 sands, if not millions of years. 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 23 
 
 joasts of Loch Long, and Loch Lomond, with nearly the 
 same inclination. The slate rocks of England underlaying 
 the silurian* system, are also of immense thickness. These 
 facts show that, previous to the carboniferous or coal era, 
 when the earth began to be adorned with vegetation, my- 
 riads of ages must have passed away." 
 
 The carboniferousf formation excluding the mountain 
 limestone, and millstone grit,J measures 1900 yards in thick- 
 ness. Many of the limestones in this formation consist 
 almost entirely of organic remains. Beds of limestone, 
 30 feet thick, and totally composed of zoophytes and shells 
 of various kinds, are common in this formation : almost all 
 the sandstones contain the stems of trees belonging to 
 genera or species now unknown, and many of the clays 
 abound with the 'most delicate impressions of the fronds 
 and leaves of ferns, and other plants most delicately pre- 
 served : and fishes of enormous size are frequently met 
 with. || Coal itself is now universally acknowledged to 
 be of vegetable origin. The laminated nature of many of 
 
 * Silurian from Silures, the name of the ancient inhabitants of 
 Wales. The term Silurian is given to those rocks which occured be- 
 tween the clay slate and the carboniferous system. 
 
 f Carboniferous, containing coal. 
 
 t Millstone grit, a series of rocks in England, which lie between the 
 mountain limestone and the coal measures, as the beds are called, which 
 contain workable seams of coal. 
 
 Zoophite, a coral or animal plant. 
 
 || Fishes make their first appearance in the upper beds of the Silu- 
 rian rocks, but it is in the old red sandstone, where, on account of their 
 extraordinary and well-developed forms, the study of them becomes de- 
 finite and deeply interesting. " No two mineral formations contain tho 
 same fishes, the species in each being quite distinct from those of another. 
 With what interest then, must we regard these the first created of the 
 many thousands of species wnich, since the period of the old red sand- 
 stone, have moved through the waters of the ocean, preying on each 
 other, and otherwise performing the offices for which they were adapted 
 by their peculiar organizations in the economy of Nature." Agassiz. 
 
24 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 the sandstones, and of the shale or slaty clays, and their 
 being frequently impressed with the ripple marks of the 
 ancient ivaves, show that almost the whole of this im- 
 mense mass of deposition was accumulated under the 
 influence of comparatively tranquil water ; if so, how amaz- 
 ing must the fhue have been during which these deposits 
 were formed ! 
 
 The roofs of some of the coal-beds exhibit great beauty 
 of appearance, and a vast profusion of plants. " The 
 finest example I ever witnessed/' says the Rev. Dr. Buck- 
 land, " is that of the coal mines of Bohemia. The most 
 elaborate imitations of living foilage upon the painted ceil- 
 ings of Italian palaces bear no comparison with the beau- 
 teous profusion of external vegetable forms with which the 
 galleries of these instructive mines are overhung. The 
 roof is covered with a canopy of gorgeous tapestry, en- 
 riched with festoons of most graceful foilage, hung in wild 
 irregular profusion over every portion of its surface. The 
 effect is heightened by the contrast of the black color of 
 these vegetables with the light ground of the rock to which 
 they are attached. The spectator feels himself transported, 
 as if by enchantment, into the forests of another world, 
 
 " So wondrous wild, the whole might seem 
 The scenery of a fairy dream ;" 
 
 he beholds trees of forms and characters now unknown 
 upon the surface of the earth, presented to his senses al- 
 most in the beauty and vigor of their primeval life; their 
 scaly stems and bending branches, with their delicate appa- 
 ratus of foilage, all spread before him, little impaired by 
 the lapse of countless ages, ajid bearing fruitful records of 
 extinct systems of vegetation, which began and terminated 
 in times of which these relics are the infallible historians."* 
 
 * The plants, which occur in the manner so beautifully described by 
 the Doctor, are generally not in direct contact with the coal-bed, but at a 
 little distance above it. 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 25 
 
 Advancing upwards until we arrrive at the sands of the 
 ancient Triassic ocean the saliferous ; * or new red sand- 
 stone formation, we behold appearances as unexpected and 
 startling, us the human footstep to Crusoe on his desolate 
 island the tracks of bipeds colossal birds of which 
 no other vestiges remain, and to which the existing order of 
 creation affords no parallel. Tracks of this description 
 were found, in 1828, on new red sandstone, in the quarry of 
 Corn Cockle Muir, in Dumfrieshire, at a depth of forty- 
 five feet. After removing a large slab which presented foot- 
 prints, perhaps the very next stratum, at a distance of a 
 few feet or inches, exhibited the same phenomenon. Hence 
 the process by which the impressions were made on the sand, 
 and subsequently buried, must have been repeated at suc- 
 cessive intervals. In another quarry in similar strata, near 
 the town of Dumfries, the same marks were discovered,, and 
 in one instance a track extended from twenty to thirty feet 
 in length. Dr. Buckland refers these impressions to land 
 tortoises. In 1834, an account was published of some re- 
 markable footsteps in the new red sandstone at Hesseburg, 
 near Kildberghausen, in Saxony, at a depth of sixty-nine 
 feet. The largest track appears to have been macle by an 
 animal whose "hind foot was eight inches long. It has re- 
 ceived the name of Chirotttkrium, from Professor Kaup, 
 owing to the resemblance of its impressions to the shape of 
 the human hand ; but some of the tracks appear to have 
 been made by tortoises, and M. Link suggests, that others 
 are to be referred to gigantic batrachians, or frogs and sal- 
 amanders. 
 
 The new red sandstone overlies the coal : it is about 9000 
 feet in thickness and yields evidence of similar conditions 
 in the medium of deposition, as in the old red sandstone pe- 
 riod. It contains besides red and variegated sandstones, 
 marl| and conglomerates, immense beds of rock-salt, and 
 
 * Saliferous, containing salt. t Marl, a compound of clay and lima 
 
26 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 layers of gypsum (sulphate of lime) ; it is in this series of 
 rocks where the saurian or crocodile tribe are first found. 
 The shells in it are all of marine origin. 
 
 The Lias* formation is superimposed upon the new red sand- 
 stone : it consists principally of limestone and shale, abound- 
 ing with a vast profusion of organic remains, differing in 
 species from any found in the older rocks. 
 
 A small slab of marl from Aix, in Provence, in the col- 
 lection of R. J. Murchison, Esq., contains scores of small 
 fishes, as perfect as if recently imbedded in soft mud. In the 
 chalk formation, many of the fishes are uncompressed, the 
 hody being as perfect in form as if the original had heen 
 surrounded by soft plaster of Paris while floating in the 
 water. But in coarse limestones and conglomerates, in oth- 
 er words, in materials that have heen subjected to the action 
 of the waves, and torrents, detached teeth, scales, bones, (fee., 
 constitute the principal vestiges of this class of beings. 
 
 * Lias, a provincial word, meaning layers. 
 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 27 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 " To discover order and intelligence, in scenes of apparent wildness and 
 confusion, is the pleasing task of the geological inquirer. Dr. Paris. 
 
 THE next formation is the oolite,* consisting also of lime- 
 stone and shales, and like the lias formation, teeming with 
 the evidence of a very different animal economy existing 
 in the ancient from the modern ocean. Among these are 
 the remains of the Ichthyosaurus! and the Plesiosaurus, J an- 
 imals combining the structure of a fish with that of the 
 crocodile, and furnished with paddles like those of the whale. 
 The character of these and the other animals will now be 
 described, and from which the reader will perceive that time 
 must have been required for their production and growth, 
 and that any condition of the ocean, by which deposition 
 would be more hastily precipitated than now } would have 
 been incompatible with the duration of their existence in 
 the ancient seas. 
 
 The periods of secondary deposition were those in which 
 the Saurian tribe seemed to have attained the most extraor- 
 dinary development, and many of them were formed after 
 types which have wo analogy among existing forms ; such 
 are the flying Saurians, the Pterodactyles (fig. 4), the Ich- 
 thyosaurians (fig. 1), and the Plesiosaurians (fig. 2). The 
 highest of all the Iguanoden (fig. 6) has its representative 
 in the recent Iguana ; the megalosaurus combined the struc- 
 
 * Oolite, from oon, an egg, and lithos, a stone, given to this formatiolf .' 
 from some of its limestones, containing little round particles like the roe 
 of a fish. 
 
 t Ichthyosaurus ichthys, a fish, and saurus, a lizard. (See fig. I.) 
 t Plesiosaurus, from plesios nearly allied, and saurus, a lizard. (See 
 
28 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 ture of the living crocodile and moniter, while the Steneo- 
 saurus and the Teleosaurus, approached in the structure of 
 their heads and dental system, to the long-snouted Gavial, 
 the crocodile of the Ganges, while the Hylasosaurus, com- 
 hined in its osteology the structure of the crocodile with 
 that of lizards armed with dorsal spinal ridges. These, 
 and all others yet discovered in rocks ranging from the 
 older deposits of the new red sandstone to the terminating 
 of the chalk formation, are all essentially distinct from 
 species now in existence, and form in our museums most 
 tangible evidences of the very different conditions of these 
 parts o the earth at the time when they crawled upon the 
 land, or swam in the water, or winged their flight through 
 the air. A brief notice of these tenants of the ancient 
 world is all our limits will afford. 
 
 Ichthyosaurus* (Fig. 1.) Ten species of this genus have 
 been found in the oolite and lias formation, varying con- 
 siderably in size, the largest measuring thirty feet in length. 
 " In its general outline," says Dr. Buckland, " the ichthyo- 
 saurus must have most nearly resembled the modern por- 
 poise and grampus. The animal was furnished with four 
 paddles, the front ones attached to a sternal arch of great 
 strength, and in a manner admirably adapted to the habits 
 of a creature requiring rapid motion through the ocean. 
 A similar construction of the sternum (breastbone) is only 
 met with among existing animals in that of the ornithor- 
 hynchus, or duck-billed water mole of New South Wales. 
 The snout resembled that of the porpoise j the teeth were 
 numerous, sharp and conical like those of a crocodile; 
 
 * The remains of these animals are found through the oolite, and in 
 the lower beds of the chalk formations, but the lias is especially their 
 sepulchre. They occur in great abundance in England, at Barrow-on- 
 Soar, in Leicestershire, in the valley of the Avon, between BatH and Bris- 
 tol, aftd on the coast of Dorsetshire, where the cliffs appear to b inx- 
 haustible quarries of them. Milner. 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 
 
 29 
 
 the construction of the head was that of a lizard, with 
 enormously large eyes j the vertebras were doubly concave, 
 like those of fishes, thus combining in its osteology the con- 
 formation of the whale, the ornithorhynchus, the crocodile, 
 and a fish." 
 
 Fig. 1. 
 
 Ichthyosauras communis. 
 
 Dr. Buckland in his Bridgewater Treatise mentions that 
 the skeleton of one of these animals from Lyme Regis in 
 Dorsetshire, preserved in the Oxford Musuem, contains 
 within the ribs a large mass of undigested fish scales, which 
 it had devoured previous to its death, and as this mass of 
 coprolitic matter occurs through the entire region of the 
 ribs, he concludes that like existing crocodiles, it must have 
 had a capacious stomach, whole human bodies having been 
 sometimes found in the latter. " The coprolites (dung- 
 stones) voided by Ichthyosauri, containing the bones, scales, 
 and teeth, of the animals they fed on, are found in great 
 abundance in the lias formation. At Lyme Regis, these co- 
 prolites are so abundant, that they lie in some parts of the 
 lias like potatoes scattered on the ground ; still more com- 
 mon are they in the estuary of the Severn, where they are 
 similarly disposed in strata of many miles in extent, and 
 mixed up so abundantly with teeth and rolled fragments 
 of the bones of reptiles and fishes, as to show that this re- 
 gion, having been the bottom of an ancient sea, was for a , 
 long period the receptacle of the bones and fcecal remains 
 of its inhabitants. Thus when we see the body of" an 
 Ichthyosaurus still containing the food it had eaten just 
 before its death, and its ribs still surrounding the remains 
 of fishes that were swallowed ten thousand times ten thou- 
 
30 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 sand years ago, all these intervals seem annihilated, time 
 altogether disappears, and we are brought into the imme- 
 diate contact with events of immeasurably distant periods 
 as with the affairs of yesterday.' 7 
 
 Plesiosaurus (Fig. 2). ThisEnaliosaurian or fish-lizard, 
 resembled the Ichthyosaurus in its being furnished with 
 four paddles, in the concave structure of its vertrebse, and 
 in possessing the head of a lizard, and the teeth of a croco- 
 dile ; but its neck was enormously long, while its trunk and 
 tail possessed the proportions of an ordinary quadruped. 
 The head was comparatively small, the teeth conical, very 
 slender, and curved inwards. Professor Owen enumerates 
 not less than sixteen' species, some of which are thirty feet 
 in length. In treating of this, perhaps the most hetrocli tic 
 of all animals, living or extinct, Conybeare observes: 
 " That it was aquatic is evident, from the form of its pad- 
 dles that it was marine, is almost equally so, from the re- 
 mains with which it is universally associated that it may 
 have occasionully visited the shore, the resemblance of its 
 extremities to those of the turtle, may lead us to conjecture ; 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
 Plesiosaurus. 
 
 its motions, however, must have been very awkward on land ; 
 its long neck- must have impeded its progress through the 
 water, presenting a striking contrast to the organization 
 which so admirably fits the Ichthyosaurus to cut through 
 the waves. May it not, therefore, be concluded, (since, in 
 addition to these circumstances, its respiration must have 
 required frequent access of air,) that it swam upon, or near 
 the surface, arching its long neck like the swan, and occa- 
 sionally darting it down at the fish which happened to float 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 31 
 
 within its reach. It may, perhaps, have lurked in shoal 
 water along the coast, concealed among the sea-weed, and 
 raising its nostrils to the surface from a considerable depth, 
 have found a secure retreat from the assaults of dangerous 
 enemies, while the length and flexibility of its neck may 
 have compensated for the want of strength in its jaws, and 
 its incapacity for swift motion through the water, by the 
 suddenness and agility of the attack which they enabled it 
 to make on every animal fitted for its prey wluch came within 
 reach." 
 
 Megalosaurus.* Remains of this crocodelian have been 
 found in the oolite at Stonesfield, in Oxfordshire, and at Be- 
 sancon, and also by Dr. Mantell, in the Wealden of Til- 
 gate forest. From the size and nature of the bones found, 
 Cuvier considered the animal as partaking of the structure 
 of the moniter and crocodile, and to have been from forty to 
 fifty feet in length. The femur and tibia measure nearly 
 three feet each, so that the hind leg must have been about 
 six feet long. The thigh and leg bones of crocodiles, and 
 other aquatic quadrupeds, are solid throughout, but those of 
 the Megalosaurus were hollow, like those of land quadru- 
 peds, an arrangement by which both lightness and strength 
 are secured. It is therefore conjectured, that the Saurian, 
 under consideration, lived chiefly on land. The structure 
 of its serrated teeth indicate it to have been carnivorous. 
 
 Fig. 3. 
 
 Anterior extremity of the right lower jaw of Megalosaurus in side 
 view one fourth of nat. size. 
 
 ' From /ueyaf , great, and aai>QO , a lizard. 
 
32 
 
 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 Pterodactyle* (fig. 4). The extinct reptiles denominated 
 Pterodactyles, are unquestionably the most marvelous even 
 
 Fig. 4. 
 
 Pterodactylus Crassirostris (restored by Goldfuss). 
 
 of the wonderful beings which the relics of the Age of Rep- 
 
 * TTTEQOV a wing, and 
 
 of, a finger. 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 
 
 33 
 
 tiles have enabled the palaeontologist to reconstruct, and 
 place before us in their natural forms and appearance. 
 With a head and length of neck resembling those of a bird, 
 the wings of a vampire or bat, and the body and tail of an 
 ordinary mammalian, these creatures present an anomaly of 
 structure as unlike their fossil contemporaries, as is the duck- 
 billed Platypus, or Ornithorhynchus, of Australia, the ex- 
 isting animals. The skull is small, with very long beaks, 
 which extend like those of the crocodile, and are furnished 
 with upward of sixty sharp, pointed teeth ; the eyes were 
 enormous, enabling the creature to fly by night. The fore- 
 finger is immensely elongated, for the support of a membra- 
 nous expansion, as in the bat : the impression of the wing- 
 membrane is preserved on the stone in some examples ; and 
 the fingers terminated, as in that animal, in long curved 
 claws. The size and form of the foot, leg, and thigh, show 
 that the Pterodactyles were capable of perching on trees, 
 and of standing firmly on the ground, when, with its wings 
 Fig. 5. 
 
 Restorations of Saurians and other animals of the Liaa. 
 
34 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 folded, it might walk or hop like a bird. Dr. Buckland is 
 of opinion that it had the power of swimming. Fig. 5 ex- 
 hibits the chief reptiles of the Liassic age, the Ichthyosau- 
 rus and Plesiosaurus ; the latter in the act of catching a 
 pterodactyle. 
 
 " With head uplift above the waves, and eyes 
 That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides, 
 Prone on the flood, extended long and large, 
 Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge 
 As whom the fables name of monstrous size, 
 Titanian, or earth-born, that warred on Jove. 
 Briarchus, or Typhon, whom the den 
 By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea beast 
 Leviathan, which God of all his works 
 Created hugest that swam the ocean stream." 
 
 Cuvier in his great work, pronounces these flying reptiles 
 the most extraordinary of all the beings whose ancient ex- 
 istence is revealed to us ; and those which, if alive, would 
 seem most at variance with living forms. Eight species 
 have been determined, from the size of a snipe to that of a 
 cormorant, occurring in the lias of Lyme Regis, the oolite 
 of Stonesfield, the grit of the Wealden, and on the continent 
 at Pappenheim and Solenhofen. 
 
 With flocks of such like creatures flying in the air, and 
 shoals of no less monstrous Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri 
 swarming in the ocean, and gigantic crocodiles and tortoises 
 crawling on the shores 
 
 " Till all the plume-dark air 
 And rude resounding shore are one wild cry" 
 
 of the primeval lakes and rivers ; air, sea, and land, must 
 have been strangely peopled in those early periods of our 
 infant world. 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 
 
 35 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Mighty Pre- Adamites who walk'd the earth, 
 Of which ours is the wreck." 
 
 HYLJEOSARUS (Weald Lizard). The lizard thus denom- 
 inated by the discoverer, Dr. Mantell, was about twenty-jive 
 feet in length, and is chiefly remarkable by a large spiny 
 process along the back, which must have given to such a 
 creature a terrific appearance. Such process is found in 
 many of the living lizards. 
 
 Iguanodon (fig. 6). The remains of this, the most gi- 
 gantic of all reptiles living or extinct, were also made 
 known to the world by Dr. Mantell. The bones obtained 
 by the doctor indicate the existence of a herbivorous lizard, 
 
 Fig. 6. 
 
 The Iguanodon. 
 
36 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 allied in structure to the iguana of the West Indies ; seven- 
 ty feet in length, and fourteen and a half feet in circumfer- 
 ance round the body. A thigh bone measures three feet 
 eight inches, and thirty-five inches in circumference, and 
 the bones of the foot show it to have been six and a half 
 feet in length. The nose of the animal was armed with a 
 horn, equal in size, and resembling in form, the lesser horn 
 upon the nose of the rhinoceros, an apparatus which also 
 exists on the nose of the iguana. The teeth, some of which 
 are two and a half inches in length, are deeply serrated, and 
 their resemblance to those of the iguana, clearly demonstrate 
 that, like it, it was of herbivorous habits. Besides the re- 
 mains found in Tilgate Forest, in strata of the Wealden 
 formation, Dr. Mantell mentions the discovery of another 
 at Maidstone, in an arenaceous or sandy limestone, called 
 Kentish rag, belonging to the Shanklin sands. This rock, 
 he observes, abounds in the marine shells, which are char- 
 acteristic of that division of the chalk formation. In the 
 quarry in which the remains of this iguanodon were found, 
 Mr. Benson has discovered fossil wood by the boring shells, 
 the lithodomi ; impressions of leaves, stems of trees, ammon- 
 ites, nautili, &c., large conical striated teeth, which are re- 
 ferrible to those extinct fossil fishes which M. Agassiz de- 
 nominates sauroid, or lizard-like, scales and teeth of several 
 kinds of fishes, and among these a jaw or mandible of that 
 singular genus of fish, the Chimera. 
 
 The geological position of this specimen forms an excep- 
 tion to what has been previously remarked of the fossils of 
 the Wealden ; for, while the bones in the latter were asso- 
 ciated with terrestrial and fluviatile remains, only the Maid- 
 stone specimen is imbedded in a marine deposit. This dis- 
 crepancy nowise affects the arguments as to the fluviatile 
 origin of the Wealden ; it merely shows that part of the 
 delta had subsided^ and was covered by the chalk ocean, 
 while the country of t/ie iguanodon was still in existence. 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 37 
 
 The body of the iguanodon was then driven out to sea, and 
 became imbedded in the sand of the ocean ; in the like 
 manner, as at the present day, bones of land quadrupeds 
 may not only be engulphed in deltas, but also in the de- 
 posits of the adjacent sea. 
 
 The oolite is succeeded by the Wealden, green sand and 
 chalk formations measuring 660 yards in thickness ; and con- 
 taining immense quantities of fresh water and marine re- 
 mains, the species being almost all different from those in 
 the older rocks, and none of them occurring in the newer. 
 The Wealden is one of estuary origin, containing many 
 fresh water shells, and the bones of enormous reptiles : one 
 of which, the iguanodon, must have measured seventy feet 
 from snout to tail, and been fourteen feet in girth round 
 the body* The chalk and green sand abound with marine 
 remains. It appears certain that the beds of this wonderful 
 formation add to the antiquity of the earth. Come when 
 the solution may, there is little likelihood of it shortening, 
 but every probability of it extending the period that has 
 elapsed since God called into existence the " heavens and the 
 earth." 
 
 The chalk is succeeded by the tertiary deposits,- in which 
 the existing species make their first appearance. In the 
 lower or first of the tertiary formations, there are only about 
 five* per cent, of existing marine shells; in the second, or 
 middle formation, the number of recent and extinct species 
 is nearly equal ; in the last, or newest of these deposits, the 
 
 * Let the reader visit the British Museum, and after examining the lar- 
 gest thigh-bone of the Iguanodon, repair to the Zoological Gallery, and 
 inspect the recent Crocodilian reptiles, some twenty-five or thirty feet in 
 length ; and observe that the fossil -bone equals, if not surpasses, in size 
 the entire thigh of the largest of existing reptiles ; then let him imagine this 
 bone clothed with proportionate mtiscles and integuments, and reflect 
 upon the enormous trunk which such limbs must have been destined to 
 move and to sustain, and he will obtain a just notion of the appaling mag- 
 nitude of tho lizards which inhabited the eountry of the Iguanodon. 
 
38 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 recent shells amount to ninety-five per cent. circumstan- 
 ces which show a gradual increase of marine animal life, 
 for a long series of ages previous to our historical epoch. 
 The tertiary rocks in the neighborhood of Paris, and other 
 places, abound with the remains of extinct quadrupeds allied 
 to the tajpirs with the bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, hip- 
 popotami, lions, tigers, and many other animals belonging 
 to existing genera, but of different species from any now 
 living. The teeth and bones of horses are often met with 
 in the elephant bed, in Brighton cliiFs ; they are referable 
 to a small species, about the size pf a Shetland pony.* 
 
 " Yes ! where the huntsman winds his matin horn. 
 
 And the couch'd hare beneath the covert trembles ; 
 
 Where shepherds tend their flocks, and grows the corn; 
 Where Fashion on our gay Parade assembles 
 
 Wild Horses, Deer, and Elephants have strayed, 
 Treading beneath their feet old Ocean's races." 
 
 Megatherium, (Fig 7.) This leviathan of the vast plains 
 
 Fig. 7. 
 
 Skeleton of the Megatherium. 
 
 * The bones of the Kangaroo have been also found in England. That 
 the remains of an extinct species of gigantic Kangaroo should be found 
 

 OF A FORMER WORLD. 39 
 
 of South America, which were once occupied by immense 
 numbers of the race now entirely extinct, partakes of the 
 generic character of the existing diminutive sloths. It ri- 
 valled in size the largest rhinoceros, was armed with claws 
 of enormous length and power, its whole frame possessing 
 an extreme degree of solidity. With a head and neck like 
 those of the sloth, its legs and feet exhibit the character of 
 the armadillo and the ant-eater. Some specimens of the 
 animal give the measurement of five feet across the haunches, 
 and the thigh bone was nearly three times as thick as that 
 of the elephant. The spinal marrow must have been a foot 
 in diameter, and the tail, at the part nearest the body, twice 
 as large, or six feet in circumference. The girth of the 
 body was fourteen feet and a half, and the length eighteen 
 feet. The teeth were admirably adapted for cutting vege- 
 table substances, and the general structure and strength of 
 the frame for tearing up the ground in search of roots, 
 wrenching off the branches of trees, and uprooting their 
 trunks, on which it principally fed. " Heavily constructed, 
 and ponderously accoutred/' says Dr. Buckland, in his elo- 
 quent description of the megatherium, "it could neither 
 run, nor leap, nor climb, nor burrow under the ground; 
 and all its movements must have been necessarily slow. 
 But what need of rapid locomotion to an animal whose oc- 
 cupation, of digging roots for food, was almost stationary ? 
 And what need of speed for flight from foes, to a creature 
 whose giant carcase was encased in an impenetrable cuirass, 
 and who, by a single pat of his paw, or lash of his tail, 
 could in an instant have demolished the couguar or the 
 
 in the fissures of the rocks, and in the caverns of Australia, a country in 
 which marsupial animals are the principal existing mammalia, is a fact 
 that will not excite much surprise ; but that beings of this remarkable 
 type of organization should ever have inhabited the countries situated in 
 the latitude of the European continent and of Great Britain, would never 
 have been suspected, but for the researches of the geologist. 
 
40 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 crocodile? Secure within the panoply of his strong ar- 
 mour, where was the enemy that would dare encounter this 
 leviathan of the Pampas ? or in what more powerful crea- 
 ture can we find the cause that has effected the extirpation 
 of his race ? His entire frame was an apparatus of colossal 
 mechanism, adapted exactly to the work it had to do. 
 Strong and ponderous in proportion as this work was heavy 
 and calculated to he the vehicle of life and enjoyment to a 
 gigantic race of quadrupeds, which, though they have ceased 
 to be counted among the living inhabitants of our planet, 
 have in their fossil bones left behind them imperishable 
 monuments of the consummate skill with which they were 
 constructed." 
 
 The oolite quarries of Portland have been long remark- 
 able for their containing certain strata called the " dirt- 
 beds/ 7 in which the stems and branches of coniferous trees 
 and cycadesa* are found in considerable abundance. Many 
 of the trees as well as the plants are still erect (see Fig 8.), 
 with their roots ramified in the dirt-beds, which appears to 
 be the soil in which they grew. " On my visit/' says Dr. 
 Mantell, " to the island in the summer of 1832, the surface 
 of a large area of the dirt-bed was cleared, preparatory to 
 its removal, an.d a most striking phenomenon was presented 
 to my view. The floor of the quarry was literally strewed 
 with fossil wood, and I saw before me a petrified tropical 
 forest ; the trees and plants like the inhabitants of the Alg, 
 in the Arabian story, being converted into stone, yet still 
 maintaining their place, which they occupied when alive! 
 Some of the trunks were surrounded by a conical mound of 
 calcareous matter, which had evidently once been earth, and 
 had accumulated around the base and roots of the trees. 
 The stems were generally three or four feet high, their 
 summits being jagged and splintered, as if they had been 
 
 * A genus of plants allied to the palms and ferns. 
 
RELICS FROM THE WRECK 41 
 
 corn and wrenched off by a hurricane an appearance which 
 many trees in this neighborhood (Bristol) after the late 
 storm, strikingly resembled. Some of the trunks were two 
 feet in diameter, and the united fragments of one tree mea- 
 sured upwards of thirty feet in length ; in other specimens, 
 branches were attached to the stem. In the dirt-bed there 
 were many trunks lying prostrate, and fragments of 
 branches. The fossil plants are called Cycadeodia, by Dr. 
 Buckland, from their analogy to the recent Cycas and 
 Zamia, but for which M. Adolphe Brongniart has established 
 a new genus, named Mantellia. The plants occurred at in- 
 tervals between the trees, and the dirt-bed was so little con- 
 solidated, that I dug up with a spade, as from a floor, seve- 
 eral specimens that must have been on the very spot on 
 which they grew, like the columns of Puzzioli, preserved 
 erect amidst all the revolutions which the surface of the 
 earth have subsequently undergone, and beneath the accu- 
 mulated spoils of numberless ages. The trees and plants 
 are completely petrified by silex or flint." 
 
 From what has been stated, it is evident, that after the 
 marine strata, forming the base of the isle of Portland 
 were deposited at the bottom of a deep sea, and had become 
 consolidated, the bed of that ancient ocean was elevated 
 above the level of the waters, became dry land, and was 
 covered by forests. How long this new country existed 
 cannot now be ascertained but that it flourished for a con- 
 siderable period is certain, from the number and magnitude 
 of the trees of the petrified forest. In the isle of Purbeck 
 traces of the dirt-bed, with trunks of trees, are seen be- 
 neath the fresh water limestone of the Weald ; a proof that ? 
 before the deposition of the Purbeck marble could have ta- 
 ken place, the petrified forest must have sunk to the depth 
 of many hundred feet. 
 
 Space will not permit us to describe the other varieties 
 of the vegetable kingdom which occur in secondary strata ; 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 
 
 it must therefore suffice to observe, that like their contem- 
 porary animals, they are all more or less indicative of a 
 much higher temperature than is now enjoyed in the lati- 
 tudes in which they occur. 
 
 Fig. 8. 
 
 1, Vegetable soil. 2, 4, and 6, Fresh water limestone. 3, Clay. 5 and 
 7, Dirt-bed with Cycadites, &c. 8, Portland oolite containing marine 
 shells, &c. 
 
 In none of these formations have the remains of man or 
 of his works been ever found. 
 
 The facts that have been stated, will, we think, satisfy the 
 reader of the justness of the conclusion, that the whole stra- 
 tified rocks which constitute the crust of the earth are de- 
 rived from matter deposited by water at the bottom of the 
 sea, in estuaries or lakes which at the time were inhabited 
 by animals differing in species and genera fro<>;* any 
 
RELICS FROM THE WRECK 43 
 
 that now exist ; and that consequently, the present struc- 
 ture and configuration of the earth is the offspring of a 
 vast antiquity. Of the myriads of living creatures, that 
 
 " The earth has gathered to her breast again," 
 
 r 
 
 how few, comparatively, could even the transcendent genius 
 of Cuvier reveal! Finding, even in these restricted bounds, 
 the amplest proof of order and design, the mind is naturally 
 led to the sublimest inferences respecting what is unseen, 
 and even to the conception of a power and intelligence to 
 which we may well apply the term infinite ; since we not 
 only see no limit to the instances in which they are mani- 
 fested, but find, on the contrary, that they continually open 
 upon us in increasing abundance, in proportion as we are 
 enabled to extend our sphere of observation and inquiry ; 
 and that as the study of one prepares us to understand and 
 appreciate another, wonder follows on wonder, till our facul- 
 ties become bewildered in admiration, and our intellect 
 falls back on itself in utter hopelessness of arriving at an 
 end. 
 
 In the tertiary rocks, the number of species of fossil 
 shells found is 2728. In the chalk rocks 500 in the 
 oolite 771 in the ne.w red sandstone 118 in the car- 
 boniferous rocks 336, and in the silurian and greywacke* 
 systems 349 ; making in all, 4832 different species. The 
 greater proportion of these are as perfect in their structure 
 as the living species. 
 
 Such are the views of modern geologists with respect to 
 the age of our earth. Unfolding as they do the most evi- 
 dent traces of the continued exercise of s the creative power, 
 in the production of creatures from time to time fitted to 
 the existing physical conditions of the globe ; they offer 
 
 * Greywacke, a name given to an indurated sandstone, belonging to 
 the slate rocks. 
 
44 RELICS PROM THE WRECK. 
 
 incontrovertible testimony to the existence of an infinitely 
 intelligent and all-powerful First Cause, and thus lay the 
 foundation of a true knowledge of the great Architect of 
 the universe. 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 45 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 GENERAL REMARKS ON THE DIFFERENT FORMATIONS. 
 
 HAVING enumerated and briefly described nearly all the 
 stratified formations that are known to occur in the crust 
 of the earth, we proceed to make some general remarks, 
 founded upon the facts that have passed before us. Let it 
 be distinctly understood, that the object of these remarks 
 is to prove, on geological grounds, the greater antiquity of 
 the earth than that generally assigned to it. 
 
 The first argument in favor of the antiquity of the globe, 
 is founded on the number of strata that go to make up its 
 crust. The crust of the earth, or that rocky band that sur- 
 rounds and encloses its molten contents, is about ten miles 
 thick. The greater part of this mass has been examined, 
 nature having laid open or tilted up almost all the forma- 
 tions of which it is composed. To accomplish this appa- 
 rently impossible task, the geologist has but to walk over 
 the uplands, ascend the river beds, 
 
 " To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, 
 To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, 
 Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, 
 And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ; 
 To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, 
 With the wild flock that never needs a fold ; 
 Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean ; 
 This is not solitude ; 'tis but to hold 
 Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores 
 unroll'd," 
 
 penetrate the gloomy ravines, and climb the mountain ridges. 
 In this way all those formations enumerated in preceding 
 
46 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 chapters, have been examined by those who make nature 
 their study. 
 
 At present we leave out of view the granite and other ig- 
 neous rocks ; also the metamorphic rocks ; namely, gneiss, 
 mica-schist, and clay-slate. The number of distinct beds 
 above these is no less than fifty-seven, many of which are sev- 
 eral hundred feet thick. Of course these beds do not occur in 
 a regular series one above the other ; were this the case, the 
 crust of the earth would resemble the concentric layers of an 
 onion, and would be much beyond ten miles thick. They 
 lie in patch-like masses ; generally speaking, the more an- 
 cient are the most extensive, and the more recent the most 
 circumscribed. All these beds bear distinct evidence of 
 their formation under water. This cannot be disputed, if 
 we are to take present nature for our guide. The rocks of 
 these ancient seas, lakes, and rivers, present the same ap- 
 pearances at this distant date, that are observed in estuaries, 
 the margins of lakes, and the shores of the ocean at the 
 present day. The fine mud is seen in thin layers as it ori- 
 ginally subsided to the bottom of the waters. The sand- 
 stones bear the Impress of the receding wave on the ancient 
 sea-beach. Nay, the surface of the beds are sometimes 
 pitted with the lieavy rain-drops that have fallen upon 
 tliem, when yet expanses of loose sand, and exposed to the 
 weather. 
 
 It is not more certain that these stratified rocks are of 
 aqueous origin, than that the various formations have been 
 deposited in succession. The evidence of this remark will 
 be more fully brought out in illustrating points that are 
 not yet referred to. Meanwhile, it may suffice to state, that 
 this is proved both from the mineralogical character of the 
 formations, and their fossil contents. Not only is this true 
 of the various formations, or groups of strata ; as a general 
 principle it is also true of the members of these formations. 
 These fifty-seven beds are not simply proved to be of aque- 
 
OP A FORMER WORLD. 47 
 
 ous origin, but also to have been deposited in succession, 
 The same rock, or its equivalent, in other parts of the 
 world, would be deposited during or about the same period ; 
 but this was not the case with rocks whose positions in the 
 scale were apart from each other. To illustrate this : The 
 British chalk beds, and their foreign equivalents, were de- 
 posited during the same period ; but the upper chalk, and 
 the London clay, were deposited in succession. 
 
 That this long series of rocks occupied numerous ages 
 in accumulating, is obvious, first, from the fact, that many 
 of them are of enormous thickness. Secondly, each group 
 required for its perfection, at least two (in many instances 
 a greater number) changes of land and water. Now judg- 
 ing from the operations of nature in the historic period, we 
 may conclude that these changes were gradual ; and if grad- 
 ual indeed many of the rocks bear internal evidence to the 
 fact who can reckon the time consumed in their forma- 
 tion? 
 
 The second argument in favor of the antiquity of the 
 globe, is drawn from the nature of the strata, or their min- 
 eralogical character. Under this argument we do not in- 
 clude those rocks that are composed, to any extent, of or- 
 ganic remains ; their proper place is in connection with the 
 next. The rocks of which we now speak, namely, the coarse 
 and fine sandstones the beds of shale, marl, clay, slates, 
 &c., are composed of older rocks. Let us take the old red 
 sandstone as an example. The conglomerate, so largely de- 
 veloped in this system, is not a rock composed of new ma- 
 terials ; the geologist recognises the pebbles of which it is 
 almost entirely made up, as belonging to rocks lower in the 
 series. And the finer beds that accompany and overlie the 
 conglomerate, are obviously, in many instances, composed of 
 the same material ground into small particles. These illus- 
 trations apply to the whole class of rocks of which we are now 
 treating. The material of which they are composed, whether 
 
48 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 in its present combination in the shape of shale, clay, 
 flags, or sandstone, has, in every instance, heen associated 
 with, or constituted entirely, the rocks that precede each 
 other in the series. 
 
 These remarks raise several questions, each of which leads 
 us to draw largely upon time. Before the great conglom- 
 erate, the lowest member of the old red sandstone, was de- 
 posited, the pebbles of which it is principally composed must 
 have existed in the shape of quartz rock in beds or masses ; 
 and truly they must have occupied large areas of the sur- 
 face of the earth as it then was. These masses must have 
 been broken up into fragments of all sizes, probably by in- 
 ternal commotions, aided by the influence of water. 
 
 The conglomerates deposited, we must find time for the 
 formation of the sandstone. The beds of this rock are often 
 very thick, and are exceedingly numerous. The matter 
 of which they are composed originally existed as rock, and 
 through long exposure to the atmosphere, the shoivers of 
 heaven, l/ie continuing" ripple of running water, and the 
 incessant beat of the ocean wave, it has been disengaged 
 from its original combinations, carried downward to the 
 ocean, and after being held for a time in mechanical or 
 chemical solution by the water, is- spread out upon its 
 bottom. This is not the work of a few years. But how 
 are the demands upon time increased, when we reflect that 
 rocks thus formed by slow degrees, are consolidated, heaved 
 upward, exposed to the elements, and by partial decay sup- 
 ply the material for beds higher in the series, and which 
 pass through the same tedious processes in their forma- 
 tion? 
 
 Perhaps the immense beds of shale, and clay, that inter- 
 mingle with the harder rocks, required a period to accumu- 
 late, little short of that which must be granted to the sand- 
 stones. The material of which they are composed has also 
 been supplied by mechanical and chemical causes, and, in 
 
OP A FORMER WORLD. 49 
 
 course of time, accumulated to the extent we find them de- 
 veloped in the various formations. 
 
 The mineralogical character of the rocks, then, unques- 
 tionably prove their formation to have been slow, and con- 
 tinued over a period of time to us immeasurable. 
 
 The third argument in favor of the antiquity of the 
 globe is drawn from the fossil contents of the strata. The 
 strata enumerated are more or less fossiliferous ; very few 
 of them are entirely destitute of organic remains. In the 
 older rocks we have fishes, shells, and plants : in the more 
 recent, shells in greater abundance, plants in large quan- 
 tities, and bones of quadrupeds and birds, are associated 
 with the impressions and skeletons of fishes. The pres- 
 ence of these remains and the nature of them, lead us to as- 
 sign a much longer period for the depositing of the rocks in 
 which they occur, than is generally allowed. 
 
 There are fishes of all sizes and various ages ; and like 
 the fishes in the present seas, they must have acquired time 
 to arrive at maturity. The position in which they are fre- 
 quently found, when their stony matrix is opened, indi- 
 cates that they have sunk in the mud of the sea-bottom, and 
 been overlaid with newer sediment. This was the work of 
 time. And the time required for the depositing of one fish 
 formation, must be multiplied by the number of such for- 
 mations the crust of the earth contains. The same line of 
 argument is applicable to the fossil shells, plants, and 
 bones that are scattered so profusely throughout the strata. 
 
 In carrying out this argument we must refer to the fact 
 that some- rocks of the series are entirely, or in great part, 
 composed of animal or vegetable remains. The coal is a 
 familiar illustration. That this rock is composed of vege- 
 table matter, is now universally acknowledged. In the 
 sandstone and shales that occur in the coal beds, many plants, 
 in fragments, are imbedded : but when the coal is examined 
 no doubt rests on the mind but that it is wholly composed 
 
50 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 plants and trees. By a lately invented process, this exam- 
 ination is carried on with great accuracy. The coal is 
 sliced into thin leaves, and placed under a powerful glass. 
 In this way the peculiar character of the stem under exam- 
 ination is at once recognised, and the fact established that 
 the coal is of vegetable origin. An obvious inference is 
 drawn from this fact. The growth of these plants and trees 
 required time ; and the produce of many generations was re- 
 quired to make up even a thin bed of coal, the collecting 
 and consolidating, therefore, of only one bed, must have 
 stretched over a long period. It may be granted that vege- 
 tation, during the epoch of the earth's history of which we 
 are now treating, was more rapid and luxuriant ; Still our 
 conclusion is not affected much thereby. 
 
 Some limestones are known to be composed almost en- 
 tirely of organic remains. The exuvice, of creatures, all too 
 minute to be detected by the unaided eye, are collected in 
 such masses as to furnish beds of rock many feet thick t 
 It is superfluous to say, that the formation of such rocks 
 must have been the work of time. Again, it is well known 
 that corals enter largely into the composition of limestone. 
 In some instances, it would appear that the rock is one mass 
 of these zoophytes. Now, from all we have been able to 
 learn of the habits and modes of operation of these diminu- 
 tive laborers, we are left to conclude, that the general progress 
 of the mass of calcareous matter which they secrete, is 
 slow. It has been calculated that the growth of six inches 
 requires a century.* Let the thickness of the beds, and the 
 number that occur in the earth's crust, be taken into account, 
 and we again find ourselves driven backward into an un- 
 known antiquity. 
 
 In connexion with this argument, there is still another 
 point to which reference should, in justice, be made. The 
 fossils that exist in a given formation, are not identical with 
 
 Williams' Missionary Enterprise in the South Sea Islands, p. 9. 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 51 
 
 those that exist in the overlying group. They may, and do 
 present resemblances, more or less near; but there is a 
 change ; and such a change as indicates that between the 
 close of the one formation, and the opening of the other, a 
 considerable period has elapsed. This remark is applicable 
 to the formations of the palaeozoic and secondary periods - 
 hence each group has its characteristic fossils. It is also 
 true in regard to the rocks of the tertiary period, viewed as 
 groups. But it does not apply to the upper beds of the 
 secondary, and lower beds of the tertiary formations. 
 The time that transpired between the depositing of these, 
 was such as, together with the changes that took place, to 
 break the connexion entirely between the fossils of the one 
 and those of the other. No species found in the chalk, the 
 upper bed of the secondary formation, extends into the Lon- 
 don clay, the lowest in the tertiary groups. There is here 
 a break, of a much greater extent than those that appear to 
 exist between each formation and its successor, of the older 
 periods ; and the length of time which it represents, though 
 uncertain, must be great. 
 
 The only other argument produced*, in favor of the anti- 
 quity of the globe, is derived from the relative position in 
 which the various groups that compose the crust are placed. 
 Groups of rock either lie comformable or uncomformable 
 upon each other. There are few that lie conformable, that 
 is, as you would place one volume fair upon another. But 
 even when this is the case, there are certain indications at 
 the junction that demonstrate, that the surface of the 
 lower group was long consolidated, and exposed to the ele- 
 ments, before it was overlaid by the beds of the upper- 
 Thus, if we find the surface-rock partially decomposed and 
 removed, what remains, hollowed out by water, and these 
 hollows occasionally containing loose pebbles, we may reason- 
 ably conclude that these effects the result of time were 
 produced before the overlying rock had been deposited. 
 
04 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 O, how varied are the aspects this planet presents in the 
 course of this vast revolution ! The first certain glance we 
 obtain presents to our view a world whose seas teemed with 
 living inhabitants, chiefly of the fish tribes, of various size, 
 of the most fantastic shapes, and of the most elegant col- 
 ors. Perishable as the last quality is, we have seen rise, 
 phoenix-like, from the plates or scales of one of these fossil 
 fishes, under the influence of a powerful glass, in hues that 
 rival those of the rainbow. Meanwhile, the land presents 
 but a scanty vegetation, which may give shelter and sup- 
 port to living creatures, but none of which come within 
 the sphere of our vision. Another turn, and the earth is 
 clothed with a luxuriant and extensively distributed vege- 
 tion, resembling that of the tropics in the present time ; 
 while the seas and lakes swarm with shell and other 
 fishes. We look again, and behold creatures of monstrous 
 size, and singular conformation, basking on the banks of 
 rivers, gamboling in the fenny pools, crawling on the moist 
 earth, or floating through the air. Another glance, and 
 the noble forests are seen to give shelter to quadrupeds, 
 in comparison to which the largest of the present time 
 appear dwarfish. These browse upon the leaves and tender 
 sprouts, or burrow in the earth in search of roots. Still 
 another glance, and these creatures are being replaced by 
 others more nearly approaching the type of living crea- 
 tion. 
 
 In all this, there is the amplest evidence that the Crea- 
 tor of the " heaven and the earth" is great, and wise, and 
 good. His power is felt in every change, His wisdom is 
 manifest in every arrangement ; and every plant, and tree, 
 and creature, speaks of His goodness. 
 
OF A FORMER WORLD. 53 
 
 A GEOLOGICAL EXCURSION 
 
 TO 
 
 TILGATE FOREST, A.D. 2000. 
 
 BY THOMAS HOOD, ESQ., WITH EMENDATIONS AND ADDITIONS, 
 BY AN ANTIQUARIAN. 
 
 TIME has been called the test of truth, and some old 
 verities have made him testy enough. Scores of ancient 
 authorities has he exploded like Rupert ? s drops, by a blow 
 upon their tails : but at the same time he has bleached 
 many black-looking stories into white ones, and turned 
 some tremendous bouncers into what the French call ac- 
 complished facts. Look at the Magatherium, which a 
 century ago even credulity would have scouted ! The 
 headstrong fiction which Mrs. Malaprop treated as a mere 
 allegory on the banks of the Nile, is now 4he Iguanodon / 
 To venture a prophecy, there are more such prodigies to 
 come true. 
 
 Suppose it a fine morning Anno Domini 2000, and 
 the royal geologists, with Von Hammer at their head 
 pioneers, excavators, borers, trappists, greywackers, carbo- 
 nari, field-sparrers, and what not, are marching to have a 
 grand field-day in Tilgate Forest. A good cover has been 
 marked out for a find. Well ! to work they go ; hammer 
 and tongs, banging, splitting, digging, shoveling, puffing 
 like a smith's bellows hot as his forge dusty as millers 
 muddy as eels what with sandstone and gritstone, 
 and pudding-stone, blue clay and brown, marl and bog- 
 
54 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 earth now unsextonizing a petrified bachelor's button 
 now a stone torn-tit now a marble gooseberry -bush 
 now one of St. Cuthbert's beads* now a couple of Kent- 
 ish cherries, all stone, turned into Scotch pebbles now a 
 fossil red herring now one of St. Patrick's petrified frogs. 
 But these are geological bagatelles ! We want the organic 
 remains of one of Og's bulls, or Gog's hogs that's the 
 Mastodon or Magog's pet lizard, that's the Iguanodon 
 or Polyphemu's elephant, that's the Magatherium. So in 
 they go again, with crash like Thor's Scandinavian ham- 
 mer, and a touch of the earthquake, and lo ! another and a 
 greater Bony-part to exhume ! Huzza ! shouts the field- 
 sparrer. Hold on, cries one, let go, shouts another there 
 he comes, says a third no, he don't, says a fourth. Where's 
 his nose ? 
 
 What fatiguing work it is only to look at him, he's so 
 prodigious ! There, there now, easy ! Just hoist a bit 
 a little, a little more. Pray, pray, pray take care of his 
 lumbar processes, they're very friable Never you fear, zur 
 if he be friable I'll ate 'em.. 
 
 Bravo ! there's his cranium Is that brain, I wonder, or 
 mud? no, 'tis ! Now for the cervical vertebraa. Stop 
 somebody hold his jaw. That's your sort! there's his 
 scapula. Now, then, dig, boys, dig, dig into his ribs. Work 
 away, lads you shall have oceans of strong beer, and 
 mountains of bread and cheese, when you've got him out. 
 We can't be above a hundred yards from his tail ! Huzza ! 
 there's his ! ! I wish I could shout from here to Lon- 
 
 * They cormnonly occur singly in the northern counties, passing under 
 the denominations of " wheel-stones," and " St. Cuthbert's beads," from 
 having been strung as beads, and formerly used as rosaries. Hence the 
 lines in Marmion : 
 
 " On a rock by Lindisfern 
 St Cuthbert sits, and toils to frame 
 The sea-born beads that bear his name." 
 

 OF A FORMER WORLD. 55 
 
 don. There's his ! ! ! Work away, my good fellows 
 
 never give up ; we shall all go down to posterity. It's the 
 first the first the first nobody knows what that's been 
 discovered in the world. 
 
 Here, lend me a spade, and I'll help. So, I'll tell you 
 what, we're all Columbuses, every man Jack of us ! but I 
 can't dig it breaks my back. Never mind : there he is 
 and his tail with a broad arrow at the end ! It's a Hy- 
 Iceosaurus f but no that scapula's a wing it's the Pte- 
 rodactyle by Saint George, it's a flying dragon. 
 
 Huzza ! shouts Boniface, the landlord of the village inn 
 that has the Saint George and the Dragon as his sign. 
 
 Huzza ! echoes every Knight of the Garter. 
 
 Huzza! cries each schoolboy who has read the Seven 
 Champions. 
 
 Huzza, huzza ! roar the illustrators of Schiller's Kampf 
 mit dem Drauchen. 
 
 Huzza, huzza, huzza ! chorus the descendants of Moor of 
 Moor Hall. 
 The legends are all true, then ? 
 
 Not a bit of it ! cries a stony-hearted professor of fossil 
 osteology. Look at the teeth, they're all molar ; he's a My- 
 lodon! That creature ate neither sheep, nor oxen, nor 
 children, nor tender virgins, nor hoary pilgrims, nor even 
 geese and turkeys he lived on 
 
 What ? what ? what ? they all exclaim. Why, on raw 
 potatoes, and undressed salads, to-be-sure ! 
 
 In .Lucretius, we have a description of quadrupeds, rec- 
 ognized as existing previous to man and the present race of 
 animals, which might almost warrant the belief that some 
 fossil gigantic skeleton had met his eye : 
 
 " Hence, doubtless, earth prodigious forms at first 
 Gender'd, of face and members most grotesque ; 
 Monsters, half-man, half-woman 
 
56 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 
 
 Footless, and Landless, void of mouth or eye, 
 Or, from misjunction, maim'd of limb with limb. 
 
 Many a tribe has sunk supprest, 
 Powerless its kind to gender." 
 
APPEIDIX. 
 
 ON THE 
 
 SCENERY IN A PATCH OF INFINITE SPACE.* 
 
 (DEDUCED FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES.) 
 
 " Now trace each orb with telescopic eyes, 
 And solve the eternal clock-work of the skies." 
 
 THE SUN AND SOLAR PHENOMENA OF OUR SYSTEM. The 
 sun the central luminary of our system the scource of 
 light and heat appears to prosecute daily a stately procession 
 through the heavens, owing to the rotation of the earth 
 upon its axis, ascending like an intensely brilliant hall from 
 the eastern horizon, and declining towards the western. 
 Excepting the regions bordering on the poles, every part of 
 our globe, within the interval of twenty-four hours, is 
 brought beneath the action of the solar rays, and withdrawn 
 from them its "mountains and all hills, its fruitful trees 
 and all cedars." The unfailing continuity and nice precis- 
 ion with which this has transpired, age after age, strikingly 
 illustrates the stability of the natural laws. 
 
 The decline of the sun to the horizon is as imposing a spec- 
 tacle as his advance to it, when the atmosphere favors the ex- 
 hibition of his descent. The most gorgeous sunsets are those 
 of the West Indies, during the rainy season ; the sky is 
 then sublimely mantled with gigantic masses of clouds, 
 
 * Infinite space belongs to God, and to God alone. Infinite Power has 
 filled that space with suns and systems, bat there has been room for all. 
 Profettor Mitchell. 
 
58 SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 which are tinged with the glare of the descending luminary, 
 and which seem to be impatiently waiting for his departure 
 in order to discharge their pent-up wrath on the bosom of 
 the night. In the South Atlantic the sunset has a milder 
 and more sober aspect. In the Eastern tropics it has gene- 
 rally an overpowering fierceness, as though the last expres- 
 sion of the solar heat should be the greatest. But during 
 the summer, in temperate latitudes there is often a serenely 
 beautiful horizon, a mellowness of light, together with a rich 
 and taried coloring on the sky, which combine to render the 
 European sunsets far more attractive than those which are 
 intertropical. The milder radiance of the " great light " 
 in parting from us presents a picture to the eye of the sen- 
 timent of the All-Merciful, "Again, a little while and ye 
 shall see me." And how open to observation are wise Con- 
 trivance and bountiful Design in the unvarying position of 
 the sun in the centre of our system, and the axical rotation 
 of his tributaries, which not only guarantee the regular 
 return of their surfaces to his presence, but the undimin- 
 ished power and splendor of his beams ! If, adopting the 
 nebular hypothesis, we suppose the masses of the sun and of 
 the planets to have been gradually formed, under control of 
 the law of attraction, the question still arises, how it came 
 to pass, that the self-luminous matter was collected into one 
 mass at the centre, and not gathered into many masses like 
 the matter of the planets. So striking did this circum- 
 stance appear to Newton, that he remarked in his first let- 
 ter to Bentley : " I do not think it explicable by mere nat- 
 ural causes, but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and 
 contrivance of a Voluntary Agent." 
 
 The mean distance of the sun from our earth, as deter- 
 mined by observation of the transit of Venus, is ninety-Jive 
 millions of miles ; and according to Laplace, this must be 
 within iV f the true distance, so that no error is involved 
 either way greater than about a million of miles. The im- 
 
OF INFINITE SPACE. 59 
 
 .4 
 
 mense magnitude of the solar body appears from the fact 
 that he occupies so much space in the heavens, and presents 
 such a stately aspect, with so vast an interval between us. If 
 a locomotive had been started five centuries and a half ago, 
 and had been travelling incessantly at the rate of twenty 
 miles an hour, it would only now have accomplished a space 
 equal to that which lies between the terrestrial and the solar 
 surface. Though light comes from the former to the latter in 
 about eight minutes, a cannon ball would not perform the 
 same feat, retaining its full force, under twenty-two years. 
 That an object therefore should be so splendidly visible as 
 the sun, so far removed, and should so powerfully influence 
 us with light and heat, argues the stupendous dimensions of 
 his volume. His direct light is supposed to be equal to 
 that of 5570 wax candles placed at the distance of one 
 foot from an object and so great is the power of his rays, 
 that some of the men employed in constructing the Ply- 
 mouth Breakwater, had their caps burnt in a diving bell, 
 thirty feet under water, owing to their sitting under the 
 focal point of the convex glasses in the upper part of the 
 machine. His real diameter of 882,000 miles is equal to 
 111-J- times that of our earth; "and his circumference of 
 3,764,600 miles describes a bulk nearly a million and 
 a quarter times larger than our globe, and above five 
 hundred times greater than the united volume of all the 
 planetary bodies of our system that revolve around him. If 
 his mass occupied the place of the earth, it would fill up the 
 entire orbit of our moon, and extend into space as far again 
 as the path of that satellite. The density of the solar sub- 
 stance is, however, far less than that of the matter of our 
 globe. If the two bodies could be weighed in a balance, the 
 weight of the sun would not preponderate in the same pro- 
 portion as his bulk, but be only 354,936 times heavier. This 
 proportion is about a fourth less than that of his magni- 
 tude ; so that the same extent of solar substance would be 
 
60 SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 found four times lighter than the same extent of terrestrial 
 substance. 
 
 THE MOON AND LUNAR PHENOMENA OF OUR SYSTEM. 
 Next to the greater light that rules the day, the most useful 
 and interesting to us of all the bodies in our universe, is 
 the lesser light that rules the night. The proximity of the 
 moon, the relation in -which she is linked to the earth, the 
 power she exerts upon our ocean in drawing up its billows, 
 and the great importance of the lunar theory to safe naviga- 
 tion, have intently fixed the eye of science upon her orb ; 
 while the mild radiance with which she shines in the heav- 
 ens, the advantage of her light to the terrestrial traveller, 
 and the beauty and regularity of her changing phases, have 
 elicited the admiration of barbarian and polished races. 
 The unfailing performance within a definite period of a 
 synodical revolution, or the cycle included between each con- 
 junction with the sun, when she is invisible, called synodi- 
 cal, from the Greek word signifying a coming together, has 
 rendered the moon a convenient time-keeper to men in rude 
 states of society, and won for her the love and respect of 
 savage tribes. Among the wandering hordes of the wes- 
 tern continent such a number of moons measures the duration 
 of a journey, and the lapse of events ; and successive lunar 
 appearances are discriminated by coincident terrestrial oc- 
 currences, as the wild-strawberry moon, the wild rice-gath- 
 ering moon, the ice-moon, the deer-rutting nloon, and the 
 leaf -falling moon. Some of the sacred ceremonies of the 
 Jews, in the early periods of their history, were regulated by 
 the sign of the lunar crescent in the heavens, and the rab- 
 bins relate, that persons were stationed on the tops of the 
 mountains to watch for the first appearance of the moon, 
 which event was proclaimed by signal fires throughout the 
 land. For the last six thousand years the eye of man has 
 gazed with delight upon her face, whether in courtly or in 
 rustic life, from old baronial halls or cottages obscure. The 
 
OF INFINITE SPACE. 61 
 
 meek splendor, the quietude, the fidelity, of which the lu- 
 minary is a visible image, bewitch the senses, excite the 
 imagination, and have originated some of the most captiva- 
 ting strains of poetic description, among which the Trojan 
 bivouac scene in the Iliad still stands peerless. 
 
 " The troops exulting sat in order round, 
 And beaming fires illumin'd all the ground. 
 As when the moon, refulgent -lamp of night, 
 O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light ; 
 When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, 
 And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene, 
 Around her throne the vivid planets roll, 
 And stars uunumber'd gild the glowing pole ; 
 O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, 
 And tip with silver every mountain's head ; 
 Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, 
 A flood of glory bursts from all the skies ; 
 The qonscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, 
 Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light." 
 
 An imaginary soliloquy, put into the mouth of Milton by 
 a living writer, strikingly expresses the emotions of such a 
 mind, upon first perceiving the curtains about to fall be- 
 tween him and the resplendence of day and night, through 
 the blindness that attended his declining years. " Beautiful 
 light! beautiful lamp of heaven! what marvel that the 
 blinded and benighted heathen should ignorantly worship 
 thee ? What marvel that a thousand altars, in a thou- 
 sand ages, should have sent up their fumes of adoration unto 
 thee, the mooned Ashtaroth unto thee, the Ephesian Diana 
 unto thee, the nightly visitant of the young-eyed Endy- 
 mion ? What marvel, that to those who knew not, neither 
 had they heard of the One, Uncreate, Invisible, Eternal, 
 thou shouldst have seemed meet Deity to whom to bend the 
 knee, thou first born offspring of his first created gift! 
 thou blessed emanation from his own ethereal glory ! What 
 wonder, when I, his humble follower, his ardent though un- 
 worthy worshipper when I, an honest though an erring 
 
62 SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 Christian, do strive in vain to wean my heart from love of 
 thee; indoctrinating my spirit, that I may kiss the rod, 
 with which I am assured, too well, He soon will chasten me, 
 in changing the fair light, that glorious essence in which my 
 soul rejoiceth, for one black, everlasting, self-imparted mid- 
 night ? Yet so it shall be. A few more revolutions of 
 these puissant planets, a few more mutations of the sweet 
 returning seasons, and to me there shall be no change again 
 on earth for ever ! no choice between the fairest and the 
 foulest ! no difference of night or day ! no charm in the 
 rich gorgeousness of flowery summer, above the sere and 
 mournful autumn ! no cheery aspect in the piled hearth of 
 winter ! no sweet communion with the human eye compas- 
 sionate; no intercourse with the great intellect of old 
 dead, but surviving still in their sublime and solid pages !" 
 
 Our moon is situated in external space, .at a mean dis- 
 tance of 237 thousand miles from the earth. Great as this 
 interval is, when compared with the terrestrial extent, it is 
 only about Toirth part the earth's distance from our sun, 
 and little more than one fourth the diameter of the solar 
 body. It is owing to this proximity to us, that she occu- 
 pies so large a space in the heavens, for the lunar diameter 
 is only 2160 miles. Our own globe is equal in magnitude 
 to /orty-mne such bodies, and the sun to near seventy mil- 
 lions. If loosened from the action of other forces, the earth 
 and the moon would fall together by the power of mutual 
 attraction ; but the earth being not only the larger body, 
 but most dense, and its attraction being far the most power- 
 ful, the moon would descend to it, passing the intervening 
 space in less than five days, our own planet courteously ad- 
 vancing about the distance of its semidiameter to meet the 
 Satellite. 
 
 To the inhabitants of New- York or Boston, whose streets 
 are splendidly illuminated at night, the presence of the moon 
 is more a matter of ornament than of use. But it is other- 
 
OF INFINITE SPACE. 63 
 
 wise when the day has closed with the mariner at sea ; the 
 peasant homeward tracking his way through the drifted 
 snow, the traveler in a strange country ; and the barbarous 
 migratory hordes of men. To such, when the day has de- 
 parted, the moon pursues her nightly circuit through the 
 heavens in beauty and brightness, as a friend in need, chas- 
 ing away the gloom, revealing the features of the scenery? 
 and disclosing the right path.* 
 
 THE STARS OF OUR SYSTEM, AND OF OTHER SYSTEMS, 
 
 THEIR NUMBER, DISTANCES, AND MAGNITUDE. " From the 
 
 earliest ages," says Professor Mitchell, "these bright and 
 beautiful orbs, which fill the heavens, have fixed the atten- 
 tion fastened the gaze excited the curiosity of every con- 
 templative mind. From the Chaldean shepherd, who, while 
 he watched his flocks by night, was wrapped in the contem- . 
 plation of these bright clusters that rose and silently pur- 
 sued their solemn course through Heaven, and quietly sank 
 beneath the horizon, from that early day, through all ages, 
 down to the modern Astronomer, who, with his mighty in- 
 struments, penetrates to the utmost bounds of creation, these 
 objects have ever been regarded with peculiar interest and 
 delight." New York Tribune. 
 
 The prevailing ideas of men concerning the multitude of 
 the stars, though founded upon wrong premises, are yet in 
 harmony with the literal fact, for the conclusion drawn from 
 the hasty observation of the eye, which a persevering sur- 
 vey would at once disprove, is itself established by telescopic 
 examination. So enormous is the number of the stars, yet 
 so completely incalculable are they, as to admit of their 
 
 * The comparative proportion which the light of the moon leaves to 
 that of the sun is a problem to the solution of which the attention of seve- 
 ral philosophers has been directed. The whole heavens covered with 
 full moons would scarcely make daylight. From various experiment* 
 that have been made, it is supposed that the lunar light is only equal to 
 the 300,000th part that of the sun. 
 
64 SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 being joined with the sand upon the sea-shore, as a figure 
 of speech denoting a numeration which we cannot de- 
 fine. The common phrase of the Sacred Yolume, the hosts 
 of heaven, alludes to their multitude ; and the fact is ad- 
 vanced as an illustration of the infinite grasp of the Crea- 
 tor's mind, that he is acquainted minutely with these multi- 
 tudinous worlds, which immeasurably exceed our utmost es- 
 timates. " He calleth them all by names by the greatness 
 of his might, for that he is strong in power ; not one 
 faileth." 
 
 " There is," says Professor Mitchell, in one of his inter- 
 esting lectures, " no limit to the stars. Do they go on, the 
 one behind the other, without end ? I answer, no. Then 
 do you mean to say there is a limit to creation ? I answer, 
 no. I mean to say that the stars are grouped together in 
 mighty clusters of millions and millions, as distant from 
 our clusters as is our sun from their suns. Herschel it 
 was that solved this problem. He commences his investiga- 
 tions by examining the most brilliant part of the Milky Way. 
 He takes a telescope and finds that this spot yields to him 
 one hundred beautiful stars, in the distance appearing the 
 size of hazle-nuts. He takes a greater Telescope four new 
 stars are brought up and the others grow brighter and more 
 beautiful. He takes his forty feet telescope, and he sees all 
 clear, the stars shining like bright diamonds, and in the 
 shade beyond, all is blank. This at once settles the ques- 
 tion. There are no more stars beyond that limit, and, no 
 matter how great the depths, he has overcome them all. But 
 do we stop here P I answer ', no. When Ive have reached the 
 utmost limits of our own mighty clusters, then it is that 
 we begin an investigation of a far different kind. We 
 pass the confines of our own Universe and sweep on 
 through space, millions upon millions of miles, till, look- 
 ing behind, we see the stars that compose our own system, 
 lying in one vast cluster ; but before, all is blank. Is there 
 
OF INFINITE SPACE. 65 
 
 nothing- there hid in the dark, unfathomable realms? 
 There are some dim hazy spots looming up in the dis- 
 tance. Bring to our aid the telescope Lo ! there burst 
 into view tens of thousands suns and stars ! Here is 
 another Universe burst in upon us, and there is not only 
 one; they are scattered by hundreds and thousands 
 through space. Let any one look out at night and count 
 the stars. You can do it. It has been done. And no eye 
 has ever been able to count above the horizon, at one time, 
 over fifteen hundred stars. How close do they appear to 
 be, one to another, and how numerous their hosts. Yet 
 there, are more of these mighty Universes scattered through 
 space than there are stars in our system.* There is one 
 in the constellation Hercules, which examined with a tele- 
 scope of low power, presents the appearance of a milky 
 spot, but ivith the mighty instrument we use, it is discov- 
 ered to contain one thousand stars, occupying so small a 
 point in space that it would seem you might almost grasp 
 them in your hand. Yet they are so far separated, that 
 light, which travels twelve millions of miles in a minute, 
 requires ten thousand years to cross the diameter of its 
 orbit. These facts are startling ; yet we must receive them, 
 for the evidence is so strong that it becomes perfectly irre- 
 sistible." New York Tribune. 
 
 However marvellous the statement, it is strictly true, that 
 when we gaze upon the heavens, observe the stars, and note 
 down their positions, we are witnessing and chronicling 
 their appearances in by-gone time, and not the present aspect 
 of the phenomena. The ray that meets the eye from the 
 nearest siderial object brings intelligence of its past estate; 
 and that Past includes years in relation to the front ranks of 
 the stellar army, and ages with respect to the general body. 
 
 *"I fearlessly assert," saya Professor Mitchell, "that the day will 
 never come when the centre of the entire Universe will be found by 
 
66 SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 When we reflect upon these facts, and remember that the 
 faint nebulous clusters are far more remote from tfie dis- 
 tinct stars than they from us that the light which man- 
 ifests their presence now may have left its source when the 
 Tudor, Norman, or Saxon race occupied the throne of Eng- 
 land we catch a glimpse of the immensity of space, and of 
 the infinity of that being who originated the great govern- 
 ment of which it is the scene. 
 
 We have nothing to guide us respecting the magnitude of 
 the stars beyond their visibility, when so vastly remote. 
 The planet Saturn is magnified by the telescope larger than 
 the moon to the naked eye, though 900 millions of miles 
 distant ; but instrumental power fails in giving an appre- 
 ciable magnitude to the stars. It brings countless multi- 
 tudes into view hid from the unassisted sight ; it makes us 
 sensible of their presence ; it increases their brilliancy : but 
 beyond this, it supplies us with no information respecting 
 their volume and mass. Halley remarked, that " the diani- 
 ters of Spica Yirginis and Aldebaran are so small, that when 
 they happen to immerge behind the dark edge of the moon, 
 they are so far from losing their light gradually, as they 
 must do if they were of any sensible magnitude, that they 
 vanish at once with all their lustre, and emerge likewise in 
 a moment, not small at first, but at once appear with their 
 full light, even although the emersion happen when very 
 near the cusp, where, if they were ' four seconds in diameter/ 
 they would be many seconds of time in getting entirely sep- 
 arated from the limb. But the contrary appears to all 
 those who have observed the occultations of those bright 
 stars." The largest and most brilliant of the stars, if oc- 
 culted at the dark limb of the moon, Sir John Herschel ob- 
 serves, "is, as it were, extinguished in mid-air, without 
 notice or visible cause for its disappearance, which, as it 
 happens instantaneously, and without the slightest previous 
 diminution of its light, is always surprising ; and if the star 
 
OF INFINITE SPACE. 67 
 
 be a large and bright one ; even startling from its sudden- 
 ness." The simple fact of the visibility of the stars across 
 the mighty expanse which we know to exist between them 
 and ourselves, necessarily gives us high ideas of their di- 
 mensions. Calculations have been made, from a compari- 
 son of the light of the stars with that of the sun, but the 
 result can only be regarded as a rude approximation. Let 
 us consider the case of Sirius, the brightest in the heavens. 
 The light of Sirius, as determined by Sir John Herschel, 
 is 324 times that of an average star of the sixth magni- 
 tude. The ratio of his light to that of the sun has been 
 calculated by Dr. Wollaston to be as 1 to 20,000,000,000. 
 To diminish the light afforded to us by the sun to that of 
 Sirius, the sun must be removed to 141,400 times his pres- 
 ent distance, or to a distance of 13,433,000,000 miles. But 
 no star can be within the range of 19 billions of miles. 
 The fact therefore of Sirius being immensely larger than 
 our sun, from the preceding comparison, is at least certain, 
 though to what extent we know not. Dr. Wollaston as- 
 sumes, upon reasonable grounds, a much lower limit of pos- 
 sible parallax than that which would give Sirius a computed 
 distance of 19 billions of miles ; and hence concludes, that, 
 occupying the sun's place, he would appear 3-7 times larger, 
 and give 13*8 times more light, or be equal to nearly four- 
 teen suns. 
 
 Eudoxus of Cnidus, a contemporary of Plato, about 370 
 years before Christ, sent forth a description of the face of 
 the heavens, containing the names and characters of all the 
 constellations recognized ^n his time. Though this produc- 
 tion has perished, yet a poetical paraphrase of it, written 
 about a century later, is still extant, the work of Aratus, a 
 Cilician, and probably a native of Tarsus. This astronom- 
 ical poem opens with a statement of the dependence of all 
 things upon Jupiter, whose children all men are, and who 
 has given the stars as the guides of agriculture. 
 
 
68 SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 " With Jove we must begin ; not from Him rove ; 
 Him always praise, for all is full of Jove ! 
 He fills all places where mankind resort, 
 The wide-spread sea, with ev'ry shelt'ring port. 
 Jove's presence fills all space, upholds this ball ; 
 All need his aid, his power sustains us all. 
 For we his offspring are ; and He in love 
 Points out to man his labor from above ; 
 Where signs unerring show when best the soil 
 By well-tim'd culture shall repay our toil." 
 
 NOTE. The superficial extent of the earth includes up- 
 ward of a hundred and ninety-seven millions of square miles, 
 and its solid contents amount to two hundred and sixty 
 thousand millions of cubical miles. Huge as this ball is, it 
 sinks into insignificance, when contrasted with Jupiter, Sat- 
 urn, or Uranus. The areas, and solid contents, of these 
 planets, are about as follows : 
 
 Area. Solid contents. 
 
 Jupiter 24,884,000,000 square miles 368,283,200,000,000 cubic miles 
 Saturn* 19,600,000,000 261,326,800,000,000 
 
 Uranus 3,848,460,000 22,437,804,000,000 
 
 Including the other planets and the satellites, their com- 
 bined surface cannot be estimated at less than sixty thousand 
 millions of square miles, which is about three hundred times 
 the surface of the globe. The mind can only imperfectly 
 embrace this vastness of territory ; yet it is but as a prov- 
 ince to an empire when compared with a single object in the 
 system the Sun. In its solid bulk, as already stated, the 
 solar globe is equal to five hundred times the volumes of 
 the planets, and to nearly one and a quarter millions such 
 worlds as ours. 
 
 * MARS, the nearest to us of the exterior planets, was, in former ages 
 of superstition, the dread of the terrestrials on account of his fiery aspect, 
 and ministered more than any other celestial object to give employment 
 to the astrologers, and to fill their coffers : 
 
 " But most is Mars amisse of all the rest; 
 And next to him old Saturne." 
 
OF INFINITE SPACE. 69 
 
 BODIES, AND SUBSTANCES, THAT HAVE FALLEN FROM 
 
 HEAVEN. From every region of the globe, and in all ages 
 of time within the range of history, exhibitions of apparent 
 instability in the heavens have been observed, when the cur- 
 tains of the evening have been drawn. Suddenly, a line of 
 light arrests the eye, darting like an arrow through a va- 
 rying extent of space, and in a moment the firmament is as 
 sombre as before. The appearance is exactly that of a star 
 falling from its sphere, and hence the popular title of shoot- 
 ing star applied to it. The apparent magnitudes of these 
 meteorites are widely different, and also their brilliancy. 
 Occasionally, they are far more resplendent than the bright- 
 est of the planets, and throw a very perceptible illumination 
 upon the path of the observer. A second or two commonly 
 suffices for the individual display, but in some instances it 
 has lasted several minutes. In every climate it is witnessed, 
 and at all times of the year, but most frequently in the 
 autumnal months. As far back as records go, we meet with 
 allusions to these swift and evanescent luminous travelers. 
 Minerva's hasty flight from the peaks of Olympus to break 
 the truce between the Greeks and Trojans, is compared by 
 Homer to the emisssion of a brilliant star. Virgil, in the 
 first book of the Georgics, mentions the shooting stars as 
 prognosticating weather changes : 
 
 " And oft, before tempestuous winds arise, 
 The seeming stars fall headlong from the skies, 
 And, shooting through the darkness, gild the night 
 With sweeping glories and long trains of light." 
 
 Antiquity refers us to several objects as having descended 
 from the skies, the gifts of the immortal gods. Such was 
 the Palladium of Troy, the image of the goddess of Ephesus, 
 and the sacred shield of Numa. The folly of the ancients 
 in believing such narrations has often been the subject of 
 remark ; but, however fabulous the particular cases referred 
 
SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 to, the modern have been compelled to renounce their scep- 
 ticisms respecting the fact itself, of the actual transition 
 of bodies and substances from celestial space to terrestrial 
 regions ; and no doubt the ancient faith upon this subject 
 was founded upon observed events. The following table ex- 
 hibits a collection of instances of the fall of stones, &c. 2 
 
 li 
 
 Si .-a 
 
 S 2 3 
 
 -^.,l 
 
 fl 
 
 *rt? 
 
 .1 
 
 u 
 
 A & 
 II 
 
 \^' 
 
 
 .fi 
 
 H!S 
 
 --C a 
 S nl 
 
 i ; 
 
 oT bpw e 
 g ^ 
 
 .2 s s"J 
 S^S-gd 
 ^2S= , 
 fro 7.-1 
 
 til 
 
 2 s's 
 
 I sSi 
 
 s ss- 
 
 PS 
 
 S c 
 
 5-CV, 
 
 -a C cs 
 
 2 a" 
 
 fill 
 
 I -8 ^^ gl 
 
 2: o oj - t S 
 
 jit 
 
 II 
 
 * |1 
 
 iJili 
 
 ^-^H^S 
 ^^ g.5^g 
 
 Li's 
 
 fiiti. 
 
 i^lofl. 
 
 5 a) S a i 
 *J.J|1 
 
 oa&aS&i 
 
 
 ztt**&ai&ttK&a&tt 
 
 ! 
 
 ^^ 
 
 I! 
 
 I 
 
 . 
 
 2 t, 
 ? o 
 
 2 
 Jl 
 
 
 
 S^Isg-3 -5 
 -^g^^ 2 Sc^ S 
 
 S|.S^5??!i* 
 
 u.'Js^SS 
 
 : ^llllf 
 
 n 
 
 
 D o> P ca 
 o o^ o 
 
 Itj5 iisiiiirfrfi 
 
 |illll||lll||ll|lil| 
 
 ^r-*4^J-J--4rT^4--rf-rf<-^'5 r 5 t: ^' h:- *^ ^fTl--4 ^ 
 
OF INFINITE SPACE. 71 
 
 together with the eras of their descent, and the persons on 
 whose evidence the facts rest ; but the list might be greatly 
 extended. 
 
 The following are the principal facts with reference to 
 these substances, upon which general dependence may be 
 placed. Immediately after the descent of the stones or other 
 bodies, they are intensely hot. They are covered with a 
 fused black incrustation consisting chiefly of oxide of iron ; 
 and what is most remarkable, their chemical analysis de- 
 velops the same substances in nearly the same proportions, 
 though one may have reached the earth in India and an- 
 other in England. Their specific gravities are about the 
 same; considering 1000 as the proportionate number for 
 the specific gravity of water, that of some of the stones has 
 been found to be 
 
 Ennesheim stone - 3233 
 
 Benares - - - 3352 
 Sienna - 3418 
 
 Yorkshire - - 3508 
 Bachalay's - - 3535 
 Bohemia - - - 4281 
 
 Gassendi's - - - 345G 
 
 The greater specific gravity of the Bohemian stone arose 
 from its containing a larger proportion of iron. An an- 
 alysis of one of the stones that fell at L'Aigle gives 
 
 Silica - - 46 per cent 
 Magnesia - 10 
 Iron 45 
 
 Nickel - -- - - 2 
 Sulphur ... 5 
 Zinc .... 1 
 
 Iron is found in all these bodies, and in a considerable 
 quantity, with the rare metal nickel. It is a singular fact, 
 that though a chemical examination of their composition 
 has not discovered any substance with which we were not 
 previously acquainted, yet no other bodies have yet been 
 found, native to the earth, which contain the same ingre- 
 dients combined. Neither products of the volcanoes, whether 
 extinct or in action, nor the stratified or unstratified rocks, 
 have exhibited a sample of that combination of metallic 
 and earthy substances which the meteoric stones present 
 During the era that science has admitted their path to the 
 
72 SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 earth as a physical truth, scarcely amounting to half a cen- 
 tury, few years have elapsed without a known instance of 
 descent occurring in some region of the globe. To the list, 
 already given, upward of seventy cases might be added, 
 which have transpired during the last forty years. A report 
 relating to one of the most recent, which fell in a valley 
 near the Cape of Good Hope, with the affidavits of the wit- 
 nesses, was communicated to the Royal Society by Sir John 
 Herschel, in March 1840. Previously to the descent, the 
 usual sound of explosion was heard, and some of the frag- 
 ments falling upon grass caused it instantly to smoke, and 
 were too hot to admit of being touched. When, however, 
 we consider the wide range of the ocean, and the vast unoc- 
 cupied regions of the globe, its mountains, deserts, and for- 
 ests, we can hardly fail to admit that the observed cases of 
 descent must form but a small proportion of the actual num- 
 ber ; and obviously in countries upon which the human race 
 are thickly planted, many may escape notice through de- 
 scending in the night, and will lie imbedded in the soil till 
 some accidental circumstance exposes their existence. Some 
 too are no doubt completely fused and dissipated in the at- 
 mosphere, while others move by us horizontally as brilliant 
 lights, and pass into the depths of space. The volume of 
 some of these passing bodies is very great. One which trav- 
 eled within twenty-Jive miles of the surface, and cast down 
 a fragment, was supposed to weigh upward of 'half a mil- 
 lion of tons. But for its great velocity of about twenty 
 miles in a second, the whole mass would have been precipi- 
 ted to the earth. 
 
 A multitude of theories have been devised to account for 
 the origin of these remarkable bodies, but hitherto no defi- 
 nite conclusion has been arrived at respecting them. Ad- 
 mitting the existence of such bodies to be placed beyond all 
 doubt, the question of their origin, whether original accu- 
 mulations of matter, old as the planetary orbs, or the dis- 
 
OF INFINITE SPACE. 73 
 
 - 
 
 persed trains of comets, or the remains of a ruined world, is 
 a point beyond the power of the human understanding to 
 reach. 
 
 COMETS. Of all the celestial objects which have arrested 
 the attention of mankind, none have excited such general 
 and lively apprehension as that of comets. A volume of no 
 inconsiderable dimensions might be compiled, and not with- 
 out interest, from the accounts of old chronicles respecting 
 their appearances, registering the quaintly expressed opin- 
 ions of the chroniclers concerning them, the terrestrial 
 events they have tacked to them as effects to a cause, and 
 the deportment to which men have been moved by the ap- 
 parition of 
 
 " the blazing star 
 
 Tbreat'ning the world with famine, plague, and war ; 
 To princes, death ; to kingdoms, many crosses ; 
 To all estates, inevitable losses ; 
 To herdsmen, rot ; to ploughmen, hapless seasons ; 
 To sailors, storms ; to cities, civil treasons." 
 
 We have the word comet from the Greek xofiij, or hair, 
 a title which had its origin in the hairy appearance often 
 exhibited, a nebulosity, haze, or kind of luminous vapor, 
 being one of the characteristics of these bodies. Their 
 general features are a definite point or nucleus, a nebulous 
 light surrounding the nucleus, the hair, called by the French 
 chevelure, and a luminous train preceding or following the 
 nucleus. Milton refers to one of these attributes in a pas- 
 sage which countenances the popular superstition : 
 
 " Satan stood 
 
 Unterrified, and like a comet burned, 
 That fires the length of Ophiucus huge, ' 
 In th' arctic sky, and from its horrid hair, 
 Shakes, pestilence and war." 
 
 Anciently, when the train preceded the nucleus, as is the 
 case when a comet has passed its perihelion, and recedes 
 
T4 SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 
 
 from the sun, it was called the beard, being only termed the 
 tail when seen following the nucleus as the sun is approach- 
 ed. This distinction has disappeared from all modern 
 astronomical works, and the latter name is given to the ap- 
 pendage, whatever its apparent position. Neither this 
 luminous attendant, the tail, nor the nucleus, are now con- 
 sidered essential cometary elements, but all bodies are 
 classed as comets which have a motion of their own, and 
 describe orbits of an extremely elongated form. There 
 are several plain points of difference between comets and 
 planets. The planets move in the same direction from 
 west to east, which is astronomically called direct motion ; 
 but the movements of comets are often from east to west, or 
 retrograde. The orbits of all the planets are confined to a 
 zone of no great breadth on either side of the ecliptic ; but 
 the paths of comets cut the ecliptic in every direction, some 
 being even perpendicular to it, traversing the heavens in all 
 parts. The contrast is striking likewise between the forms 
 of their respective orbits. A hoop will with no great inac- 
 curacy represent the courses of the planets, but the cometary 
 paths are immensely elongated ellipses, their breadth bear- 
 ing no proportion to their length. Only one end of the 
 ellipse lies within the visible limits of the solar system, in 
 the case of the great majority of these bodies. They only 
 visit our gaze therefore during one part of their course, and 
 that a very small part, traveling during the rest of their 
 journey far beyond the range of the most distant planet, 
 into spaces inaccessible to our sight. The circumstances of 
 their motions plainly distinguish them from the planets, 
 fixed stars, and nebulae. Planetary configuration is also 
 uniformly globular, but the external appearances of comets 
 exhibit great diversities of form, from that of an irregular 
 wisp of cloud to a simple spherical luminosity, or a strongly 
 defined scimitar-shaped aspect. 
 
OF INFINITE SPACE. 76 
 
 " A pathless comet, and a curse, 
 The menace of the universe ; 
 Still rolling on with innate force, 
 Without a sphere, without a course." 
 
 We believe it is generally understood that Halley was the 
 first to foretel the precise periodical return of one of these 
 bodies. This, however, has been disputed, and assigned to 
 Newton, on evidence recently detailed in one of the leading 
 journals, but which certainly cannot be admitted to invali- 
 date his pretensions. It is affirmed that previously to the 
 appearance of the comet of 1 736, Colonel Guise told Whis- 
 ton that Sir Isaac Newton had said in his presence, that 
 " though he would not say he was sure of it, nor would 
 publish it, he had some reason to believe that a comet would 
 return about the latter end of 1736." Another witness 
 also, Mr. Howard, is cited, as having heard him make a 
 similar remark ; and upon being questioned concerning it, 
 it is stated that " he seemed to draw back, as sorry that he 
 had said so much, but still could not deny that he had such 
 an expectation." Whiston therefore says : " As far as we 
 yet know, Sir Isaac is the very first man, and this the very 
 first instance, where the coming of a comet has been predict- 
 ed beforehand, and has actually come according to that pre- 
 diction, from the beginning of the creation to this day." 
 Thompson seems to fall in with this idea in panegyrising the 
 great philosopher : 
 
 " He, first of men, with awful wing pursued 
 The comet through the long elliptic curve, 
 As 'long innumerous worlds he wound his way, 
 Till to the forehead of our evening sky 
 Return'd, the blazing wonder glares anew, 
 And o'er the trembling nations shakes dismay." 
 
 This is all the evidence that can be arrayed in favor of 
 Newton ; and obviously its hearsay source, with the dubidtis 
 tone of the testimony reported, cannot weigh a feather in 
 
SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 the scale against the claims of Halley, whose prediction was 
 the result of careful comparison, and as such boldly pub- 
 lished to the world. 
 
 In the autumn of 1811, within the memory of many of the 
 present generation, by far the finest comet suddenly appeared 
 to adorn our heavens, that has been seen since the age of New- 
 ton. It was first beheld in Great Britain in the beginning 
 of September, and was visible for more than three months 
 in succession to the naked eye, shining with great splendor, 
 the observed of all observers. This was a comet of the first 
 class in point of magnitude and luminosity. Its brilliant 
 tail, at its greatest elongation, had an extent of 123 mil- 
 lions of miles, by a breadth of 15 millions ; and thus 
 supposing the nucleus of the comet to have been placed on 
 the sun, and the tail in the plane of the orbits of the planet 
 it would have reached over those of Mercury, Yenus, the 
 Earth, and have bordered on that of Mars. At its nearest 
 approach to us, the comet was yet distant 141 millions of 
 miles, so that even had the tail pointed to the earth, its ex- 
 tremity would have been 18 millions of miles away from its 
 surface. The following are the calculations respecting its 
 period of revolution : 
 
 Years. 
 3056 
 3383 
 
 Authority. 
 Callendrelli 
 - Bessel 
 
 Years. 
 3757 
 4237 
 
 Authority. 
 
 Ferrer 
 
 Lemaur. 
 
 The mind is astounded at a journey requiring the least of 
 these cycles for its accomplishment a period equal to that 
 extending from the fabulous age of Grecian story to the pres- 
 ent ; nor is the thought less wonderful, of the chain of solar 
 influence following the traveler through the whole of its 
 course, and preventing its elopement into the regions of 
 immensity. The laws of the system, indeed, impose upon 
 the long-period comets vast differences of velocity. The 
 same body that rushes round the sun at the nearest point of 
 contact with prodigious speed, will move but sluggishly 
 
OF INFINITE SPACE. 77 
 
 through the remoter parts of its orbit. In computing the 
 periodic time of the comet of 1811, Lemaur assigned 775 
 years to the half of the ellipse nearest the sun, and 3462 to 
 the more distant half. The appearance of this comet was 
 strikingly ornamental to the evening sky. Many a reaper 
 late in the harvest field stayed his hand, and many a peas- 
 ant homeward-bound stopped in the way, to gaze upon the 
 celestial novelty as it grew into distinctness with the de- 
 clining day. The Ettrick shepherd has left a memorial of 
 his impressions in the well-known lines : 
 
 44 Stranger of heaven, I bid thee hail ! 
 
 Shred from the pall of glory riven, 
 That flashest iu celestial gale 
 Broad pennon of the King of Heaven 
 
 44 Whate'er portends thy front of fire, 
 
 And streaming locks so lovely pale ; 
 Or peace to man, or judgments dire, 
 Stranger of heaven, I bid thee hail !" 
 
 NEBULJE. Far more astonishing than any of the details 
 upon which we have hitherto dwelt, are those relating to 
 the class of celestial objects we have now to consider, the in- 
 vestigation of which is at present the ^ghest branch of 
 practical astronomy. In directing our attention to Nebulae, 
 we leave what may comparatively be called home regions, 
 strange as the phrase appears, when we recollect the distance 
 intervening between us and the nearest of the stars. But 
 such language is strictly appropriate with reference to the 
 stars visible to the naked eye, and reached by ordinary tel- 
 escopic aid. They form our firmament or cluster, near the 
 centre of which the solar system is supposed to be situate, 
 the Milky Way being apparently its outward boundary. Yet 
 besides this province with which we are connected, incalcu- 
 lably vast as it is, perfectly inestimable both in length, 
 breadth, depth, and height, there are other provinces within 
 view, equally as capacious, distinct firmaments of clusters, 
 
78 SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 scattered through those territories of the universe that are 
 accessible to our gaze ; and could we be removed to any 
 of them, the whole of that great scheme of existence cir- 
 cumscribed by the Milky Way, might seem compressed 
 into a small globular patch in space, the aspect presented 
 by the nebulce to ourselves. The term nebula, signifying a 
 cloud or mist, is a denomination given to spots of pale light, 
 which are sprinkled in the heavens, a few of which may be 
 detected by the unaided eye. They vary considerably in 
 shape, size, and luminosity ; and occur in numbers, which 
 every improvement of the telescope increases. 
 
 It was one of the great tasks of Sir William Herschel to 
 gauge the heavens, and to ascertain the relative distances of 
 the resolved and resolvable clusters ; and, as many of those 
 views which were deemed wild and visionary by his com- 
 peers, have, since his day, been triumphantly established, his 
 inquiries and conclusions in general are entitled to attention 
 and confidence. To the centres of the easily resolved sphe- 
 rical nebulae of the largest diameter, he assigned a remote- 
 ness 400 times that of Sirius. Those of half their diam- 
 eter, whose stars appear to be more closely wedged, he 
 supposed to be double the distance of the former ; and at 
 four times their distance, or 2400 times more remote than 
 Sirius, he placed those clusters which plainly indicate resolva- 
 bility, but whose components are not with our present means 
 apprehensible. In the last case we have an extent of space 
 equal to at least 45,000,000,000,000,000, or forty-five thou- 
 sand billions of miles. The dumb-bell nebula is certainly 
 not within that range, and probably much farther off. Light, 
 which comes to us from the sun in eight minutes flashing 
 along at the immense rate of 190,000 miles in a second of 
 time, or nearly twelve millions of miles in a minute, would 
 require upwards of seven thousand years to perform its 
 passage across the gulf! But Herschel went to a still 
 more tremendous depth in space that of 35,175 times the 
 

 OP INFINITE SPACE. 79 
 
 distance of Sirius as the site of some clusters; a com- 
 parison with which the distance of the stars themselves 
 from us, mighty as it appears, shrinks into insignificance. 
 Such is Creation ! or at least that part of it with which we 
 have some acquaintance. These are views which render the 
 language of Coleridge not chargeable with extravagance: 
 "It is surely not impossible," said that highly gifted man, 
 " that to some infinitely superior Being the whole universe 
 may be as one plain the distance between planet and 
 planet being only as the pores in a grain of sand, and the 
 spaces between system and system no greater than the in- 
 tervals between one grain and a, grain adjacent /" 
 
 The dimensions of one of these nebula alone is so enor- 
 mous, that it subtends an angle of nearly 10 ', and suppos- 
 ing it at the distance of a star of the eighth magnitude, its 
 size must be at least 3,208,600,000,000,000,000, or more 
 than three trillions of times that of our sun. Upon com- 
 paring the present appearance of this great nebula with for- 
 mer drawings of it, it appears to have undergone some 
 marked changes, at least if the older representations are to 
 be depended upon. The following memorandum was made 
 by Herschel when he viewed it in 1774 : " Its shape is not 
 like that which Dr. Smith has delineated in his ' Optics/ 
 though somewhat resembling it ; from this we may infer 
 that there are undoubtedly changes among the regions of 
 the fixed stars ; and perhaps, from a careful observation of 
 this lucid spot, something may be concluded concerning the 
 nature of it." What this immense looming mass portends, 
 we know not, but the surmise is not improbable, that here 
 we have the germ of systems of worlds to be evolved in 
 future ages, where Life, Beauty, and Intelligence are 
 destined to play their various phases. 
 
 An object of the same class appears in the girdle of An- 
 dromeda, called the " transcendently beautiful Queen of the 
 nebulse," the oldest known nebula, supposed also to be one of 
 
80 SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 the nearest. It is visible to the naked eye in the absence of 
 the moon, and has often been mistaken for a comet. A no- 
 tice of it occurs as early as the commencement of the tenth 
 century. The first telescopic view was obtained by Simon 
 Marius, December 15, 1612, who compared it to a candle 
 shining through a horn, that is, a diluted light increasing 
 in density towards a centre. This nebula is of an oval or 
 lenticular shape, and forms nearly a right-angled triangle 
 with Alrnaach Mirach, the two chief stars of Andromeda. 
 A good eye may pick it up on a favorable night, by project- 
 ing a line from Sheratan, the second star in Aries, through 
 Mirach to about 4d beyond. It is about half a degree long, 
 and from 15' to 20' broad. Herschel, who deemed this 
 one of the nearest nebulas in the heavens, remarks : " The 
 brightest part of it approaches to the resolvable nebulosity, 
 and begins to show a faint red color ; which from many ob- 
 servations on the magnitude and color of nebulae, I believe 
 to be an indication that its distance in the colored part does 
 not exceed 2000 times the distance of Sirius." This is the 
 rather extensive interval of 38,000,000,000,000,000, of 
 miles, a space which light will reytiire more than 6000 
 years to traverse, so that a ray that now meets the eye 
 must have started from its source before the creation of 
 man, and a ray that is now leaving it will not accomplish 
 the distance till the world is six thousand years older. 
 
 Those who have treated the nebulae hypothesis with ridi- 
 cule have strangely forgotten what is daily passing before 
 their eyes forgotten the uniform plan of Providence with 
 reference to the world in which we live. What is man 
 full-grown, active, intellectual man as he appears in the 
 maturity of his powers, the noontide of his day, but an 
 example of ascension from a crude to a higher condition ? 
 By gradual and slow degrees, he acquires his vigor of frame, 
 fluency of speech, agility of movement, and furniture of mind. 
 
 We have no more occasion to stumble at the idea that 
 
OF INFINITE SPACE. 81 
 
 our world dates its origin from a few primordial elements, 
 endowed with properties to complete the structure, than a 
 colony of ants, at a tree root, would have cause to start at 
 the fact, could they be made cognizant of it, that leaves, 
 branches, and trunk proceeded from a single seed. The law 
 that unites the atoms that compose the earth, forms every 
 rain-drop, and moulds the tear that trickles down the cheek 
 of sorrow -in prevailing operation millions of leagues away 
 from our terrestrial residence, binding together in spherical 
 masses whole sidereal systems. Such a fact, however, com- 
 monly suggests no farther remarks than that the laws of 
 nature every where prevail, and with this, thought in general 
 ends. But " what" says Paley, " do we mean by the laics 
 of nature, or by any law ? Effects are produced by 
 power, and not by laws. A law cannot execute itself. A 
 law refers us to an agent" An irresistible conviction is 
 forced upon us, of the universal agency, and, consequently, 
 the omnipresence of one Lawgiver, by the universal pres- 
 ence and execution of kindred laws ; and confessedly incom- 
 prehensible as is the modus of His operation, it would bo 
 not more irreligious to stumble at this than unphilosophical, 
 considering the immense amount of things of which we 
 have certain evidence that they are, without having any 
 glimpse as to how they are. We cannot at all understand the 
 physical agency of the Deity ; but paying deference to the 
 strong facts of nature, we are led to the conclusion that He 
 
 " Lives through all life, extends through all extent 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent," 
 
 However it may savor of the gigantesque, it is suffi- 
 ciently evidenced that an area of the heavens not exceeding 
 T L of the lunar diameter, contains a system of stars ri- 
 valling' in number those which constitute our firmament, 
 and appearing only as a single faint luminosity to its. 
 Yet there are thousands of areas so occupied. It follows. 
 
 6 
 
82 SCENERY IN A PATCH 
 
 therefore, that our firmament is but one of a series : one of 
 the smaller chambers in the great mansion of the universe. 
 All the stars and constellations that shine in the midnight 
 sky, constitute a stellar scheme which is but a unit of a 
 countless number. As seen from the faint objects we dis- 
 cern in the side of Hercules and the sword-handle of Per- 
 seus, our whole sphere would be compressed into a small 
 streak of light, and appear in space like a snow flake in our 
 atmosphere ! 
 
 " Distrusting the power of the Refracting Telescope," 
 says Professor Mitchell, " Lord Rosse determined to give 
 his energies to the construction of a Reflecting Telescope, 
 that would enable him to make grander discoveries than had 
 hitherto been made. He wanted an instrument that would 
 burst through the barriers that had hitherto bounded human 
 vision ; that would show him what lay in the vast deep 
 beyond. I need not detail to you the construction of this 
 mighty instrument. Instead of limiting it to four feet 
 in diameter, as Herschel did, he has given his speculum six 
 feet, with a focal distance of sixty feet. The power of this 
 instrument is almost incredible. Such is its capacity that 
 if a star of the first magnitude were removed to such a 
 distance that its light would be sixty thousand years in 
 traveling to the earth } this telescope would reveal it ; were 
 it removed so far that its light would be three millions of 
 years in reaching us, this telescope would show it to the 
 human eye. With such an instrument, then it is not won- 
 derful that great discoveries should be made. It has but 
 been pointed to the heavens ; we have only entered upon the 
 beginning of its career, but it has already accomplished 
 mighty things. There are scattered throughout the heav- 
 ens objects nebulous in their appearance which would not 
 yield up their character to the instruments heretofore em- 
 ployed; but this instrument resolves them completely. 
 Among the different objects that have been subjected to its 
 
OP INFINITE SPACE. 83 
 
 scrutiny, is the wonderful nebula in the constellation Orion. 
 I have had an opportunity of examining it. It is one of the 
 most curious objects in the whole heavens. It is not round, 
 and it throws off furious lights. This object has been sub- 
 jected to the examination of every instrument from the time 
 of Herschel, but it grew more and more mysterious, more 
 difficult to understand, more strange and diverse in its char- 
 acter. When Lord Ross's great telescope was directed to 
 its examination, it for a long time resisted its power. He 
 found it necessary to wait night after night and month 
 after month, until finally a favoring combination of circum- 
 stances gave to 'him a pure atmosphere. He directed his 
 telescope to the object, and lo ! its station revealed itself, the 
 stars of which it is composed, burst upon the sight for the 
 first time, and the problem was solved forever. Here is one 
 of the mightiest triumphs of this instrument, but it has 
 gone on from point to npint revealing combinations of stars 
 wonderful beyond what the imagination could conceive. " 
 New York Tribune. 
 
MEMOIE OE GALILEO. 
 
 " When in dungeon damply lying, 
 Faint and tortured, hardly dying, 
 Yet for truth, with honest pride, 
 Yet, 'It moves! it moves 1 ' he cried.' 
 
 GALILEO GALILEI, the eldest son of Vincentio Galilei, 
 was born at Pisa in Italy, on the 15th of February, 1564. 
 Like most experimental philosopher^ Galileo, in his earliest 
 years, gave indications of that bent of mind, and intellec- 
 tual superiority, which has made him rank so high among 
 the philosophers of antiquity. Although his father was by 
 no means wealthy, Galileo received a tolerable education. 
 He was desirous of following the profession of a painter ; 
 but in obedience to his father's desire, he entered as a scholar 
 of arts at the university of Pisa, on the 5th of November, 
 1581, and applied himself to the study of medicine. Music 
 was a favorite study of Galileo's. In studying the princi- 
 ples of this science, he found it necessary to learn something 
 of geometry, and commenced with Euclid's Elements. The 
 demonstrations of the mathematician, and the new and won- 
 drous truths which this science unfolds, took such hold of 
 the ardent mind of Galileo, that after many fruitless at- 
 tempts to confine him to the study of medicine, his father 
 gave up the attempt, and allowed him to follow his own 
 inclinations. From Euclid he ascended to the higher mathe- 
 maticians ; and, while studying Archimedes' treatise on hy- 
 
MEMOIR OF GALILEO. 85 
 
 drostatics, he wrote an essay on the hydrostatical balance, 
 explaining its construction, and the mode by which the phi- 
 losopher of Syracuse detected the fraud committed by the 
 jewellers making Hiero's crown. This work introduced 
 Galileo to Guido Ubaldi, an eminent mathematician, who 
 engaged him to investigate the subject of the centre of 
 gravity in solid bodies ; and the treatise which he produced 
 upon this subject was the foundation of his future celebrity 
 Through his connexion with Ubaldi, Galileo was appoin- 
 ted lecturer on mathematics at Pisa in 1589, with a yearly 
 salary of sixty crowns, which he increased by devoting some 
 time to private teaching. At the early age of eighteen, 
 Galileo doubted the philosophy of Aristotle; and on his 
 establishment at Pisa, commenced to overthrow the doc- 
 trines of this philosopher. His first inquiries were into 
 the mechanical doctrines of Aristotle, which he soon dis- 
 covered to be untenable. The errors which he found exist- 
 ing, he exposed to his pupils, and a rancorous controversy 
 commenced between the followers of Aristotle on the one 
 side, and Galileo and his pupils on the other. Argument, 
 and even experiment, failed in convincing Galileo's oppo- 
 nents. The doctrine of Aristotle, that the heavier of two 
 falling bodies would fall quicker, was proved by the experi- 
 ment of dropping bodies of different weights from the lean- 
 ing tower at Pisa; but although these bodies struck the 
 ground nearly at the same instant, the followers of Aristo- 
 tle remained unconvinced, or at least unconverted. Con- 
 scious of his superiority, and the truth of his doctrines, 
 Galileo turned not only the powers of argument, but the 
 shafts of ridicule and sarcasm against his opponents ; thus 
 raising up a personal enmity, which afterwards developed 
 itself in bitter persecution. Other circumstances increased 
 the rancor of his enemies, and at last made his position so 
 uncomfortable, that he gave up his situation at Pisa, and 
 accepted the professorship of mathematics at the university 
 
SO MEMOIR OF GALILEO. 
 
 of Padua ; with an income of 180 florins. The death of 
 his father having burdened Galileo with the family, he had 
 to apply himself here as at Pisa, to private teaching. Not- 
 withstanding his public and private duties, however, he still 
 found leisure to make several discoveries and inventions, 
 which were circulated in manuscript amongst his friends. 
 Some of these abused the confidence reposed in them, and 
 published several of Galileo's inventions as their own. 
 
 The doctrines of Copernicus, regarding the stability of the 
 sun and the revolution of the planets, were the subject of 
 disputation among the learned in the time of Galileo. He 
 early became a convert to the new doctrines, and believed 
 in them even at the time he was teaching the opposite or 
 Ptolemaic system, which regarded the earth as stationary, 
 and the sun a revolving body. Shortly after he went to 
 Padua, he published a treatise on the sphere, in which the 
 system of Ptolemy was supported by the very arguments 
 which he afterward ridiculed. It is rather considered, how- 
 ever, that it was some time after the publication of this 
 treatise that Galileo changed his opinions. About this time 
 he commenced a correspondence with Kepler, the German 
 astronomer, which continued till his death. 
 
 In 1593, he contracted a chronic disorder, from inadvert- 
 ently sleeping at an open window, which afflicted him at in- 
 tervals during the rest of his life. At this time, Galileo's 
 reputation as a philosopher was widely extended all over 
 Europe, and many of the nobility became his pupils. His 
 first engagement as professor at Padua was for six years. 
 On the expiry of this term, he was re-engaged for other six 
 years, at an advanced salary of 320 florins. The first im- 
 portant discovery of Galileo was, that the vibrations of a 
 pendulum are performed in equal times, whatever be the size 
 of the arc described, within certain limits. In 1604, a new 
 star was discovered by astronomers in the constellation of 
 Ophiucus, and formed the subject of much speculation By 
 
MEMOIR OF GALILEO. 87 
 
 some it was set down as a meteor ; but from the absence of 
 parallax, Galileo proved it to be one of the fixed stars, sit- 
 uated far beyond the bounds of our own system. 
 
 Galileo was again appointed professor at Padua, in 1606, 
 and his salary increased to 520 florins. So great had his 
 fame as a philosopher arisen, that the lecture-room could not 
 contain his hearers, which obliged him often to lecture in the 
 open air. Among other pursuits, he investigated the prop- 
 erties of the loadstone, and discovered a method of arming 
 them, so as to double their magnetic power. Galileo still 
 kept up communication with the family of the Duke of 
 Tuscany, who had been his early patron. Cosmo, who had 
 succeeded his father Ferdinand, had been one of Galileo's 
 pupils, and being imbued with an ardent wish to promote 
 science, formed the desire of attaching his former master to 
 his household. Negotiations were accordingly commenced. 
 His salary, as professor at Padua, was to be greatly in- 
 creased on the expiry of his engagement. The seclusion of 
 private life, however, offered far greater charms to the studi- 
 ous philosopher. He was anxious to escape the performance 
 of public and private duties, which continually interrupted 
 his own studies. He accordingly accepted the situation of 
 philosopher and principal mathematician to the Grand Duke 
 of Tuscany, with a salary of 1000 florins, and took uf) 
 his residence at Florence. The only duties attached to this 
 situation, were, to lecture occasionally to sovereign princes. 
 It was expressly stipulated that he should have the most 
 perfect command of his own time, to devote to study and 
 the completion of some projected works. 
 
 During the progress of the arrangements for leaving Padua, 
 Galileo paid a visit to Venice. Here he became informed of 
 an optical instrument, presented by a Dutchman to Prince 
 Maurice of Nassau, which possessed the property of enlarging 
 objects, and bringing them nearer the observer. This was 
 confirmed by a letter which Galileo received a few days af- 
 
88 MEMOIR OF GALILEO. 
 
 terward from Paris. To the consideration of this subject Le 
 immediately applied himself, and the first night after his re- 
 turn to Padua, he discovered what he sought in the doctrine 
 of refracting light. He fitted a spectacle-glass to each end of 
 a leaden tube, one of which was plano-convex, and the other 
 plano-concave, and on applying his eye to the concave glass, 
 he found that it magnified. Delighted with his discovery, 
 he carried his little instrument in triumph to Yenice, where 
 it created a most intense excitement, and for a month thou- 
 sands flocked to see it. He made a present of it to the Ve- 
 netian Senate, and received in return a perpetual grant of 
 the professorship at Padua, and an increase of salary from 
 520 to 1000 florins. It was shortly after this that he entered 
 the household of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. 
 
 After disposing of his first instrument, which magnified 
 only three times, Galileo applied himself to the making of 
 another, which magnified eight times, and "at length," as he 
 says himself, " sparing neither labor nor expense," he con- 
 structed an instrument which magnified thirty times. With 
 this instrument he discovered the inequalities in the moon's 
 surface. " The dark and luminous spaces he regarded as in- 
 dicating seas and continents, which reflected in different de- 
 grees the incidental light of the sun ; and he ascribed the 
 phosphorescence, as it has been improperly called, or the sec- 
 ondary light which is seen on the dark limb of the moon in 
 her first and last quarters, to the reflection of the sun's light 
 from the earth." With the telescope he discovered a strik- 
 ing difference between the appearance of the fixed stars and 
 the planets. The latter exhibited round and well-defined 
 discs like the moon, while the former, even of the first mag- 
 nitude, appeared but as lucid points. He was likewise ena- 
 bled to resolve portions of nebulae and clusters, which appear- 
 ed to be hazy spots in the heavens, into distinct and numer- 
 ous stars. 
 
 On the 7th of January, 1610, he discovered three of 
 
MEMOIR OF GALILEO. 89 
 
 Jupiter's satellites. When he first observed them ; two were 
 on the east side, and one on the west side of the planet, all 
 in a straight line, parallel to the ecliptic, and much brighter 
 than fixed stars of their magnitude. He regarded them at 
 first as fixed stars ; but, on chancing to direct his attention 
 to them again on the 8th of January, he found all the three 
 to be on the west side of Jupiter, and nearer each other. 
 Disregarding the circumstance of these stars having ap- 
 proached each other, he considered how Jupiter could be to 
 the east of them, when the day before he had been to the 
 west of two of them ; and the conclusion he came to was, 
 " that the motion of Jupiter was direct contrary to the as- 
 tronomical calculations, and that he had got before these 
 two stars by his own motion." On the 10th, however, an- 
 other observation showed him only two stars, and both on 
 the east side of Jupiter. It was evident that the planet 
 could not have moved from west to east on the 8th of Jan- 
 uary, and two days after have moved from east to west. 
 Under these circumstances he came to the conclusion, that 
 the different appearances arose from the motion of the stars 
 themselves. On the llth, there were two stars on the east 
 side of Jupiter, but the one was twice the size of the other. 
 " This fact threw a new light upon Galileo's difficulties, and 
 he immediately drew the conclusion which he considered to 
 be indubitable, 'that there were in the heavens three stars, 
 which revolved round Jupiter in the same manner as Venus 
 and Mercury revolve round the sun.' "* On the 13th, Ga- 
 lileo discovered the fourth satellite of Jupiter. Having 
 made these discoveries, he named them the Medician stars, 
 in honor of his patron, Cosmo de Medici, grand-duke of 
 Tuscany, and published an account of them in a work en- 
 titled the "Sidereal Messenger." 
 
 These discoveries, the fruits of the newly discovered tel- 
 
 * " Martyrs of Science/' by Sir D. Brewster. 
 
90 MEMOIR OF GALILEO. 
 
 escope, astonished the whole scientific world. The ideas, 
 however, which Galileo enunciated in his " Sidereal Mes- 
 senger/' were attacked on all hands by the Aristotelians. 
 They even denied the existence of the four satellites which 
 Galileo had discovered : some affirming he was deceived by 
 reflected rays ; and others, that it was a ruse to afford him- 
 self a subject for discussion. Their existence having been 
 at last indisputably established, others began to claim the 
 priority of discovery, and to pretend that they had dis- 
 covered additional satellites of Jupiter. Some gave this 
 planet as many as twelve moons ; but they were gradually 
 found out to be fixed stars, and Galileo remained the ori- 
 ginal discoverer of the four secondary planets. 
 
 Before the close of 1610, Galileo discovered Saturn's ring, 
 although not conscious of its true nature, or the appear- 
 ance which it presents when highly magnified. He de- 
 scribed Saturn as a triple star, each retaining its relative 
 position. Shortly after, he discovered that Yenus presented 
 phases like the moon, when at different parts of her orbit. 
 He likewise discovered spots on the sun's surface, from which 
 he calculated that that luminary had a motion on its axis, 
 completed in about twenty-eight days. In 1612, he pub- 
 lished a treatise on floating bodies, displaying a knowledge 
 of many true principles in hydrostatics. It was violently 
 attacked j but the master mind of Galileo refuted his oppo- 
 nents as soon almost as they appeared. 
 
 The great objection raised by the priesthood and follow- 
 ers of Aristotle, against the doctrines advanced by Galileo, 
 was, that they were contrary to Scripture, and ran coun- 
 ter to the doctrine of the Church. In refuting these and 
 other objections, Galileo added to the calm arguments of 
 reason the bitterness of sarcasm. In 1613 he published a 
 letter to prove that the Scriptures were not to be taken as 
 guides in philosophy, and that the language found in the 
 Bible was wrongly interpreted, and might with equal pro- 
 
MEMOIR OP GALILEO. 91 
 
 priety have been urged against the doctrines of Ptolemy. 
 The storm which had been gathering over the devoted head 
 of the philosopher at last broke forth. He was denounced 
 from the pulpit by one Caccini, a friar. The general of 
 the order to which this friar belonged apologized for this 
 attack ; and stimulated by a strong love of truth, and to 
 silence his antagonists, Galileo published another letter de- 
 fending his vieics of Scripture, applied to his own and 
 the system of Ptolemy. 
 
 These letters were denounced to. the Inquisition, and steps 
 taken to bring Galileo before the bar of that sanguinary 
 tribunal. It is a disputed point whether Galileo, on hear- 
 ing of the steps taken against him, went to Rome of his 
 own accord, or whether he was cited there. He appeared at 
 Rome at the latter end of 1615, and* was shortly after sum- 
 moned before the Inquisition, to answer the charges of hav- 
 ing heretically maintained the motion of the earth, and the 
 stability of the sun, and with having taught it to others. 
 The Inquisitors met, and after considering these charges, 
 decreed, that Galileo should be enjoined to renounce those 
 opinions, and to pledge himself neither to teach, defend, nor 
 publish them ; and that, in the event of refusal, he should 
 be thrown into prison. To these Galileo agreed, and was 
 dismissed. 
 
 Philip III., King of Spain, a country at that time exten- 
 sively engaged in maritime enterprise, had offered a reward 
 for the discovery of an improved mode of finding the longi- 
 tude at sea. To this problem Galileo turned his attention, 
 and proposed to make the satellites of Jupiter subservient 
 to effecting this purpose. Communications on the subject 
 were made to the Spanish court, and so great was Galileo's 
 desire to carry out his project, that he offered to go to Spain 
 and reside there till he had communicated a knowledge of 
 his method. Nothing satisfactory came out of these nego- 
 ciations, which were occasionally revived during a period of 
 
92 MEMOIR OF GALILEO. 
 
 ten or twelve years. In 1618, three comets visited our sys- 
 tem, and engaged the attention of the learned men of the 
 time. Galileo was prevented by illness, from making obser- 
 vations on these erratic bodies ; but he became deeply in- 
 volved in controversy respecting them, and, it is asserted, 
 maintained the opinion that they were meteors. 
 
 Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a sincere friend of Galileo's, 
 was raised to the papal throne; and, although in ill-health 
 at the time, Galileo set out for Rome, to congratulate the 
 new pope on his elevation,, and secure a continuation of his 
 friendship. He was kindly received; and after repeated 
 audiences, the receipt of several presents, and the promise 
 of a pension to his son, he was dismissed by the pope with 
 every expression of friendship and regard. 
 
 Galileo was scarcely free from the fangs of the inquisi- 
 tion, than his innate love of truth, and abhorrence of a sys- 
 tem which set the erring judgment of men superior to the dic- 
 tates of reason and the phenomena of nature, prompted him 
 to repeat his offences. In 1618, he communicated to the 
 archduke Leopold his theory of the tides ; and, in doing so, 
 alluded, in sarcastic terms, to the proceedings of the church. 
 The same spirit pervaded others of his writings. In 1632, 
 he published a work, under the title of the System of the 
 World of Galileo Galilei, demonstrating the Copernican 
 theory. To shield himself from Inquisitorial persecution, 
 he adopted a system of dialogue, in which three assumed 
 characters are exhibited in debate upon the respective sys- 
 tems. One of these takes up, and defends the system of 
 Copernicus ; another suggests doubts and difficulties ; and 
 the third stands up for the system of Ptolemy. This work 
 attracted great notice, and the church having committed 
 itself by denouncing the new doctrines, at once laid on its 
 strong arm to crush the audacious innovator of its dogmas. 
 
 Proceedings w^re immediately adopted to summon Galileo 
 again before the Inqnhihion. Rcprese^t&Mcnr w<*rp 
 
MEMOIR OP GALILEO. 93 
 
 through the Tuscan ambassador at the papal court, to ob- 
 tain a written statement of the charges, that Galileo might 
 prepare for his defence. This, however, was refused, and a 
 summons was soon issued for him to appear at Rome. At 
 this time a contagious epidemic was raging in Tuscany, and 
 a strict quarantine was enforced at Rome. Representations 
 were made of the miseries which a journey under these cir- 
 cumstances would impose upon Galileo, who at the time was 
 suffering from advanced age and ill health. Personal at- 
 tendance was however peremptorily demanded. Some res- 
 pect was certainly paid to the talents and infirmities of 
 Galileo during the progress of his trial. He was allowed 
 to reside in the palace of the Tuscan ambassador, and even 
 permitted to visit the public gardens. 
 
 On the 22d of June, 1633, the Inquisitors assembled to 
 pronounce sentence on the philosopher. From passages in 
 the sentence, it is suspected that Galileo was put to the tor- 
 ture. The sentence itself is too long for insertion ; but the 
 following extract will convey an idea of its nature : 
 
 " By the desire of his Holiness, and of the most eminent Lords Cardi- 
 nals of this supreme and universal Inquisition, the two propositions of 
 the stability of the sun and the motion of the earth were qualified, by the 
 theological qualifiers as follows : 
 
 1st. " The proposition that the sun is the centre of the world, and im- 
 moveable from its place, is absurd, philosophically false, and formally 
 heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture. 
 
 2d. " The proposition that the earth is not the centre of the world, nor 
 immoveable ; but that it moves and also with a diurnal motion, is absurd, 
 philosophically false ; and theologically considered, at least erroneous in 
 faith. 
 
 " We decree that the book of the Dialogues of Galileo Galilei be pro- 
 hibited by edict ; we condemn you to the prison of this office during 
 pleasure ; we order you for the next three years to recite once a-week 
 the seven penitential psalms." 
 
 Had Galileo stood up boldly in defence of his opinions ? 
 he might not perhaps have disarmed the persecuting spirit 
 
94 MEMOIR OP GALILEO. 
 
 of the Inquisitors, but he might have confounded their ac- 
 cusations, and either stood the free champion of truth, or 
 fallen the proud martyr of science. He had observation 
 and experience on his side against which no one could shut 
 his eyes ; he had arguments to advance which could neither 
 be eluded nor contradicted j and more, he had the precedent 
 of the church itself acknowledging, and in a manner pat- 
 ronizing the very opinions for holding which they were per- 
 secuting him. At the very moment that he stood clothed 
 in penitential sackcloth before the bar of the Inquistion, the 
 work of Corpernicus (himself a Catholic priest), dedicated 
 to the Pope, stood in the library of the Vatican ; and in the 
 very year of Galileo's first persecution, a work was issued 
 by a Carmelite monk at Naples, upholding the same opin- 
 ions, and its author never called in question. By confessing 
 to the charges of the Inquisition, Galileo in a manner jus- 
 tified its proceedings. And, however detrimental it may 
 have been to the interests of science, however degrading to 
 the spirit of humanity, we must look upon the ancient phi- 
 losopher with a kindly eye. He lived in a time when the 
 mind of society was bound down in reverence and fear to 
 the dictates of the church. His expanded mind might in 
 its vigor have braved persecution, and even death, before 
 perjuring himself in the eyes of the world. But old age 
 had laid its withering hand upon him ; physical suffering 
 had broken down his frame ; and, dreading to sigh out his 
 few remaining days in the \nely dungeons of the inquisi- 
 tion, he quailed before the dread power of that fearful in- 
 stitution, and passively renounced, in words, those opinions 
 which he knew to be true, and which the progress of science 
 has since demonstrated. On his knees, and with his hand 
 upon the Scriptures, he solemnly abjured the opinions he had 
 taught, in the following words : 
 
 " With a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I abjure, curse, and detest 
 the said errors and heresies, (viz., that the earth moves, &c.) I swear 
 
MEMOIR OF GALILEO. 95 
 
 that I will never in future say or assert anything, verbally, or in writing, 
 which may give rise to a similar suspicion against me. 
 
 " I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured as above with my own hand." 
 
 Rising from his knees, Galileo, it is said, stamped with 
 his foot upon the ground, and whispered to a friend, " It 
 does move, though." 
 
 Immediately on the ceremony being concluded, Galileo 
 was conducted to the prisons of the Inquisition. The ab- 
 juration and sentence were publicly read in the principal 
 universities. After four days' confinement, the interest of 
 the Duke of Tuscany procured his liberty to reside under 
 surveillance in the house of the Tuscan ambassador, from 
 whence he was shortly removed to the palace of the arch- 
 bishop Piccolomoni, at Sienna. Here he resided six months, 
 and was kindly treated ; he was then permitted to return to 
 his own home, near Florence ; still, however, under restraint. 
 Shortly after returning home, Galileo suffered great afflic- 
 tion from the loss of his favorite daughter. From 1634 to 
 163S, he remained a prisoner in his own house, during nearly 
 the whole of which time he suffered greatly from ill-health 
 every application for a remission of his sentence being re- 
 jected. 
 
 In 1638, he obtained leave to visit Florence, for the bene- 
 fit of his health ; but under such strict terms, that he dared 
 neither visit his friends nor admit them to his house, and 
 required even a special order to be allowed to attend mass. 
 From 1633 to 1638, Galileo, wHo applied himself as closely 
 to study as his health would permit, composed his " Dia- 
 logues on Local Motion." So fearful were his enemies that 
 the true spirit of the philosopher might again break out, 
 that a license was not granted for its publication, and it had 
 to be printed in Holland. 
 
 About 1636, Galileo discovered the moon's diurnal and 
 longitudinal libration. This was his last telescopic dis- 
 covery. He had for years been afflicted with disease in the 
 
96 MEMOIR OF GALILEO. 
 
 right eye; in 1637 his left was also attacked, and in a few 
 months the bodily eyes of the philosopher were darkened 
 forever. After publishing his Dialogues on Motion, he 
 renewed his attempts to introduce his system of finding the 
 1 ongitude at sea. He made offers Co the Dutch government, 
 who appointed commissioners to investigate the subject. 
 This correspondence ended in nothing. Galileo was pre- 
 sented with a golden chain as a token of respect ; and after 
 his blindness one of his pupils undertook to arrange and 
 complete his calculations and observations. All parties en- 
 gaged in this matter died before it could be brought before 
 the world. This, however, is the less to be regretted ; for 
 the method proposed has never yet been found answerable to 
 the desired purpose. 
 
 After Galileo had become blind, the Inquisition exercised 
 a little more lenity towards their victim. Many eminent 
 men of the day visited him, among whom was Milton. He 
 projected a continuation of his Dialogues on Motion j but 
 while preparing it, he' was seized with his last illness, and 
 in two months the spirit of the injured philosopher was re- 
 moved from the enmity of his persecutors. Not content, 
 however, with striking him down while living, the vengeance 
 of the Inquisition followed Galileo even in death. His 
 right to make a will, and of being buried in consecrated ground 
 was disputed; and although these were withdrawn, his 
 friends were prohibited from erecting a monument over his 
 remains, and his body lay for thirty years buried in an ob- 
 scure corner of the church. In 1737, his body was exhumed 
 and re-interred under the splendid monument which now 
 covers it. On this monument is a bust of Galileo, and 
 figures of geometry and astronomy. His house at Arcetri, 
 about a mile from Florence, still remains, an interesting 
 relic to lovers of science. 
 


 m 
 $ 
 
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 :; Lefc the moon 
 
 Shine on thee in thy solitary walk ; 
 
 And let the misty mountain -winds be free 
 
 To blow against the* ; and isi after years, 
 
 When these -wild ecstasies shall be matured 
 
 Into a solsar pleasure vhen thy mind 
 
 Shall fl a mansion for all lowly forms, 
 
 Thy msmory be a dwelling place 
 
 For all sweet sounds and Harmonies, oh ! then 
 
 If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief 
 
 Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts 
 
 f tender joy wilt thou remember me 
 
 And these my benedictions ! " WORDSWOK-BM. 
 
 
 
 
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