without a taint of defect, abortion, or retrogradation that looks like an anticipation of an evil world.

The other type of fishes of the same early age, (or Age of Fishes,) was that of the sharks, (Placoids of Agassiz.) These had their climax in the Reptilian Age, when the sharks were of great size and very numerous. The decline of the type was not deformity or abortion, but progress to a condition of the world less fierce in its animal tribes-the eminent characteristic of the Age of Man.

Reptiles began in the Coal era, (or close of the Devonian,) with species of the lowest tribe of reptiles; and from these there was approximately a regular progress to a maximum in the Reptilian Age. Now, in this more benign Age of Man, there are six or eight species of crocodilian size where there were hundreds equally large, and larger, in earlier periods. The reptiles illustrate gradual progress of grade from their beginning to the period of maximum; while the fishes, owing to their having the tinge of a higher group to begin with, made but little progress of grade, although, as explained, true progress in type.

Birds have their maximum display at the present time. The great birds of the earliest tribes are supposed to have been related to the ostrich, and no zoologist regards the ostrich as among the birds highest in grade. Size is as often a mark of inferiority as of superiority. Enlargement without elevation of the life-system is necessarily degradation, or proof of inferiority.

The class of Crustacea, which began in the earliest of Silurian periods, continued to rise in grade with the successive creations, to the present age, until which the highest group had not appeared. But trilobites, of the lower division of crustaceans, began in the Silurian, had their fullest expansion before the Silurian closed, continued through the Devonian in a succession of new species, and finally, the last lived in the Coal era, when they were of rare occurrence. They were part of the older cast-off tribes of the earth.

The quadrupeds began in the Reptilian Age, in small marsupial (opossum-like) and insect-eating (mole-like) species; they

continued to increase in numbers and grade to near the close of the Age of Mammals, when they were finally more numerous, more ferocious, and, in average size, four-fold larger than now. This was the time when brutes had the sway of the world.

A few words on the population of England at that time, partly from Prof. Owen of London, will give an idea of brute Britain in the post-tertiary period:

"Gigantic elephants of nearly twice the bulk of the largest individuals that now exist in Ceylon and Africa, roamed here in herds, if we may judge from the abundance of their remains. Two-horned rhinoceroses, of at least two species, forced their way through the ancient forests, or wallowed in the swamps. The lakes and rivers were tenanted by hippopotamuses as bulky and with as formidable tusks as those of Africa. Three kinds of wild oxen, two of which were of colossal strength, and one of them maned and villous like the bonassus, found subsistence in the plains. There were also deer of gigantic dimensions, wild horses and boars, a wild cat, lynx, leopard, a British tiger much larger than that of Bengal, and another carnivorous animal, called machærodus, quite as large, which, from the great length and sharpness of its sabre-shaped canine teeth, sometimes eight inches long, was probably the most ferocious and destructive of its peculiarly carnivorous family. Besides these, troops of hyenas larger than the fierce Hyena crocuta of South Africa, which they most resemble, crunched the bones of the carcasses relinquished by the nobler beasts of prey, and doubtless often themselves waged a war of extermination on the feebler quadrupeds. There were also in Britain a savage bear larger than the grisly bear of the Rocky Mountains, wolves, foxes, badgers, otters, beavers, hares, rabbits, bats, moles, rats, and mice. The bones of these species, all of which are extinct, are found in the rocks and caverns of the country. The teeth of at least seventy-five hyenas have been found in one cave, along with the bones of various animals, from elephants to hares, on which they fed; and the marks left on some of the bones exactly fit the hyena teeth which occur with them. Fragments and chips of bones cover the bottom of the cavern, and the abundant hyena excrements are just like those of the modern South African hyena, which is especially greedy of bones. Not a trace of the remains of man or of his works, are found with these remains. It was no time for man in the world."

These are a few examples of the kind of progress that took place among the animal races. The dwindling before the age of man was no evidence of increasing defect or deformity. It was eminently an exaltation of the world. It was a withdrawal, to a great extent, of the hideous and ferocious, the so-called anticipations of sin, and a multiplying of the useful and beautiful, adding tribes particularly adapted to man's wants. The modern tribes of fishes, as above mentioned,

embrace all edible fishes, and the finest in form and color of the class. The highest of the vegetable tribes, the Dicotyledons, (including all our fruit and shade trees, excepting the Pine family,) and also the elegant palms, man's special attendant and benefactor in many tropical lands, began at the same time with the fishes. Thus, in all things, in rivers, mountains, meadow-lands, forests, fruits, flowers, birds, and all the animal tribes, the earth, in its latest era before man, was literally being set in order for the new occupant. And when man appeared, nature spoke in gentler tones than ever before, and bore tokens of love and beauty in all her offerings, as if to woo him with her smiles, and direct his soul to the beneficent Parent above. It was "good," "very good."

It thus appears, in view of the preceding discussion, that not only are deformity, catastrophe, pain, and death, involved in the profoundest laws of nature, but a degree of absence of external beauty, and a full display of animal passions are in the scheme, owing to the very nature of that scheme; and hence, whatever taint or anticipation of sin there is in these qualities, belongs to the fundamental idea of the scheme. Moreover, geological history is a history of beneficent progress, upward in the grand system, to the last.

X. If we look abroad into space, we find the physical laws of the earth to be the physical laws of the universe; and as there are volcanoes, arctic ice, and barren deserts on the earth, so uninhabitable fire regions are scattered throughout the universe-for each sun or star that shines by its own light is probably quite too warm for life; and then there are others that are too cold and dark, or like the moon, too dry and barren. The process of development through fires and quakings and dire catastrophes, is in all probability universal for all orbs.

Are then the heavens blurred all over with anticipations of sin, even to the very light and glory of the stars?

Let us now take up the subject from the other end, and review some of the anticipations of man in nature. Nature,

as already observed, is full of these anticipations. The soul was breathed into a body made of the dust of the earth, that is, constituted in accordance with the system of nature. Let us then trace out the first origin of the lines that are binding man to the depths of time and of all existence.

A. In the Inorganic World. 1. In the very inception of nature, and, as its fundamental characteristic, went forth the all-comprehensive idea of law, with the condition it implies— perfection on obedience, imperfection on disobedience.

2. The mutual interaction, under law, of all forces, was another primal edict, involving the mutual influence of all existence. It is an expression of the oneness of nature.

3. Definite units of force on a finite mathematical basis (for such are the elements) were instituted as the foundation of a system of individualities or species in inorganic nature, and also organic nature; so that, while the forces of nature are in unceasing flow or interchange, she is essentially constant in her individualities.

4. A degree of variation in all units or individualities, was involved in the mutual interaction of forces under the diverse conditions in nature; (1,) variations within the limits of perfection; (2,) the possibility of variations transgressing those limits, producing deformities or imperfections; but, (3,) not variations perverting the fundamental law or force of an individuality, except through a system of combinations originating other species.

5. Tendency to normal results, or the right, appears (1) the universal sway of the law of definite chemical combination; (2,) the constancy of crystalline forms for any spe cies whenever it occurs crystallized; (3,) the tendency of a substance crystallizing among impurities, to come forth in pure, uncontaminated crystals; and in other ways. The tendency to crystallize in perfect crystals is comparatively feeble, so that abnormal or imperfect forms (as in the massive structure) are more common, and generally better in nature, than the normal.

6. The system of movements in the spheres of the universe, and also the elliptical form of orbits, involve changes by

cycles in the physical conditions of spheres, as, for example, (in case the spheres are not self-luminous,) alternations of light and darkness, heat and cold, variation in the seasons, etc., -whence there would be some corresponding periodicity of phase or condition in the units or individualities (or species) on these spheres.

A law of periodicity characterizes all action in nature. For the ultimate forces act in waves or vibrations; and in all progressing movements or developments there are also wavesthat is, alternating maxima and minima of power and effects, or alternating activity and comparative inactivity or rest.

B. At the institution of the Vegetable Kingdom, or the creation of the first plant, additional laws were established that were to preside over man's constitution. Besides the institution of a new system of units, and the general laws of life,

1. There appeared the cycle of growth, with death in the

movement.

2. The law of perfection from obeyed and imperfection from violated law, received the additional condition that imperfection is generally evil, and may extend to abortions.

3. But along with this increased sternness in law, there was a compensation in the increased strength of the tendency to the normal or right-that is, a tendency to continue in the normal course of development, growth, or action, so that each species should produce only its kind; each organ perform regularly its appointed function, and if disordered, should tend through its own nature or function, and the force of the organism, under the proper stimulus of food, light, and heat, to eliminate the elements of disorder and so purify itself; or, if an injury, as an incision, take place, the process of reproduction should go on in the cells of the separate parts, until the wound is healed; and that even what is wanting in the organism, should be, within certain limits, resupplied. Here is tendency to the right in organic nature, making evils rare. It is due simply to this-that a specific kind and amount of force, as that of a cell in an organism, was ordained to produce a specific result, or work out a specific compound. The cell produces its kind, as the species produces its kind, being