the hyenas, who caught their prey in the immediate vicinity of their den; and as they could not have dragged it home from any great distance, it follows that the animals they fed on all lived and died not far from the spot where their remains are found."

Mr. Penn opposes this inference on two grounds; first, because the reasoning which is used in order to support it, is extremely unsatisfactory in itself; and secondly, because it is clearly and avowedly inconsistent with his particular views relative to the Mosaical geology.

On the former of these heads he adduces no fewer than nine objections; one of which is, that it does not appear from natural history, that it is of the nature of hyænas, or of any other beasts of prey, to convey their booty to a den, and that always the same den, and there to devour or reserve it. A hyæna's den, he maintains, is, as well as a lion's den, a mere fiction of childhood or of fabulous history, and altogether unknown to the traveller and the naturalist. He asserts, too, the extreme improbability that byænas would engage in the "reflective and tardy" operation of separating pieces from the carcase of a large animal, in order to convey them through a small orifice, either by individual labour, or by acting conjointly with others. Mr. Buckland finds it necessary to suppose, that the hyænas of Yorkshire did regularly dissect elephants and other huge carcases, and convey them piecemeal into the den, in order to account for the "broken and splintered fragments of the larger animals being found co-extensively with the rest in the inmost and smallest recesses." This, however, says our author, does not appear from natural history, to be one among the instincts with which the Creator has endowed the ravenous hyæna or any other voracious quadruped. They do not sever their prey into pieces, and reserve it for future feasts.

Mr. Penn farther amuses himself with a review of the small expedients to which the professor is compelled to have recourse, in order to maintain the consistency of his hypothesis. For example, it is somewhat puzzling to observe, that, amidst the numerous relics of the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the horse, the ox, the deer, the hare, and the rabbit, there should be no skeletons of the hyænas themselves. Mr. Buckland conjectures, that they were occasionally killed and devoured by the stronger individuals of their own species, and that both young and old were always eaten up after natural death. He imagines, too, that the remains of the last survivors are now missing, because "they rushed out of the den and fled for safety to the hills, on the rise of the diluvial

waters;" and that the sole cause of the perfect state of the bones of an hyæna detected at Lawford, was, that it was the last individual of the extirpated race, and therefore could have had no survivors to devour its bones. The professor is obliged to admit, at the same time, that "we have no positive evidence that it is the habit of modern hyenas to devour the bones of their own species."

But, in the second place, the hyæna hypothesis is in direct contradiction to the principles of the Mosaical geology; and this, says Mr. Granville Penn, constitutes the most weighty and really important objection. It admits not of any doubt in the mind of this pious and indefatigable author, that all the bones found in rocks and caves were first put in motion by the waters of the general deluge; conveyed to the several latitudes where they are now found; and finally sunk to the bottom of the primitive sea; which, according to hypothesis, is now the dry land. The channel of the great deep is supposed to have consisted generally of a thick layer of limestone in a soft or muddy state; into which the bones descended by their specific gravity, and were afterwards encrusted in the calcareous paste, when assuming the consistency of rock. Into those parts of the primitive ocean which are now Germany and England, a great variety of animal remains appears to have been transported; and as these portions of the globe have been recently subjected to the prying inspection of mineral geologists, the wrecks of the former earth have been accidentally brought to light, ascertained, and classified, and finally made the subject of philosophical investigation. This is the substance of Mr. Granville Penn's. theory, and on the strength of it,

"He adventures to observe, with that respectful and reluctant frankness which an upright mind will not regard as hostile in such a question, that the eminent Professor of Mineralogy concedes too much to the authority of the phenomena, and too little to the authority of the history; too much to the numerous revolutions of Cuvier, and too little to the binary revolutions, lucidly indicated and distinctly limited by Moses."

The face of the earth which we now see is the "primitive ruin," as Mr. Granville chuses to describe it, which was effected by the direct agency of Divine power on the third day; and which continued under water 1656 years. The flood, in the time of Noah, according to the same authority, was occasioned by the depression of the old land, and by the irruption of the ocean into the new bed which was thereby formed for its reception; a process in no respect well fitted to explain the deposition of the diluvial remains in the sup

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posed layer of calcareous paste which is understood to have lined the bottom of the original seas. A's the channel of the primitive ocean would be entirely emptied by the transference of its waters into this new channel, we are at a loss to perceive how the skeletons of the animals which were destroyed by this event, should be found encrusted in limestone-strata formed at the bottom of that ocean. This is a difficulty. which Mr. Penn has not attempted to remove. But, passing over this obvious objection, we suspect that the short period assigned to the Mosaical diluvium, would not be found sufficient for stripping the various tribes of animals of their flesh and skin, and for separating their skeletons into those splintered bones and fragments which meet the eye of the mineralogists in the caves of England and Germany. Besides, as the waters are supposed to have rushed from the present land, which was formerly sea, into the bed of the present sea, which was formerly land, is it not to be presumed, that all the. moveable substances would obey the impulse of the current,, and be carried into the deep? It is therefore at the bottom of the present sea, and not on the land, that we should ex-. pect to find the remains of antediluvian elephants, rhinoceri, and hippopotami.

The Mosaical account of the flood most certainly affords no warrant for the singular views, in regard to it, which Mr. Granville Penn is pleased to entertain. On the smooth surface of the waters, on which the ark floated so many months, we can no doubt easily imagine that the carcases of animals would also float; and were we told, that when the waters subsided, the remains of those animals were deposited in the mud which, during the continuance of the deluge, had formed at the bottom, we should not find it very hard to yield our credence to any hypothesis founded upon such a statement. But a theory which requires the very improbable accommo-.dation of circumstances which is contained in the following paragraph, shocks our belief, while it excites our ridicule and contempt.

"The tremendous concussions and collisions which the framework of many of such vast congeries of floating bodies must have sustained, from the force and conflicts of the waves dashing them against each other in their long and tempestuous traverse, and from the force likewise of the oceanic vortices which finally precipitated them downwards on their mineral bed, and plunged them promiscuously, thus shattered, within it, will be readily apprehended by contemplating the enormous power exercised by the same terrific agents in crashing and engulphing the stoutest frameworks of floating vessels subjected to their fury; and the skeletons, thus va

riously and violently dislocated and fractured within their integuments, would have been prepared to separate their parts, when the flesh and the integuments should eventually have perished.”

Does the Mosaical record give any countenance to the supposition of such tremendous concussions and collisions, such force and conflict of waves, and such oceanic vortices? And who, before the era of Mr. Granville Penn, ever imagined that the action of a troubled water would dislocate and fracture the bones of animals, still covered with flesh and skin, to such a degree, that when the integuments had decayed, the skeleton would instantly fall asunder. Besides, it has always been used as one of the strongest arguments against the supposition that the bones of Kirkdale and similar caverns have been carried from any distance, that, so far from bearing decided marks of friction, the smallest processes of the joints have not even been rounded off, but appear as entire and unworn as those of bones newly taken out of a grave. There has not, therefore, been any of those tremendous concussions and collisions which the "framework" of the skeletons of antediluvian bodies are imagined to have sustained. Such conflict of waves and oceanic vortices are altogether the creation of Mr. Penn's prolific brain, equally inconsistent with probability and the sacred narrative.

The absence of human bones among those of the inferior animals has been the occasion of various conjectures in the philosophical world. It has been thought probable, for instance, that the convulsion of nature which destroyed those animals, of which the relics are collected in most countries of the world, must have taken place before the human race had extended itself to any great distance from its parent seat. This inquiry, however, creates no difficulty to our author. He is satisfied that the bones of all the men and women who were upon the earth, when Noah entered the ark, are lodged at the bottom of the sea. "There must," says he, "have been an extreme difference in the condition of the two orders of beings, brute and human, under the circumstances of that tremendous catastrophe." The former, he thinks, would allow themselves to be swept away wherever they happened to be overtaken by the rising waters. Sur prised by the sudden subsidence of the land, they must have been taken off by the inundation, and launched upon the surface of the advancing sea. The human population, on the other hand, are supposed to have yielded to the influence of fear, and with one consent retreated from the waters, drawing themselves towards the centre of a circle, which was continually diminishing.

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"Until at length," says Mr. Penn, "assembled in a multitudinous mass in the narrow central interior, they would not have been washed into the waters, and carried away by any reflux; because they would not have been absorbed into the vortex created by the conflux of the two seas meeting from the opposite hemispheres, on the subsidence of the last intervening land; and would thus have been carried downward with violence into the profundity of the new sea, and there their exuviæ must for ever remain uninvestigable by man."

Such views are extremely convenient for a theorist. The whole human race, as if instructed by Mr. G. Penn, collect themselves into a flock, and are buried where they stood. The brutes, on the contrary, to suit his purpose, are carried off one by one, and are deposited at the bottom of the old sea; the rush and assault of which had swept them away. It was the reflux, however, we should add, which, in opposition to the current, took them to the very place whence the waters came. But, after all, the brutes were as likely to run to the hills as the men were, and fully better qualified to make good their retreat; for the instinctive fear of death, on their part, would communicate to their limbs a degree of motion not less prompt and unincumbered, than the reflection and terror of man would produce in his limbs. This imagination, therefore, entertained by Mr. Granville Penn, is as gratuitous and groundless as his disruptions and bursting of the primitive rocks, the second day after they were made, to make room for a sea, the existence of which seems not till then to have been contemplated.

This Mosaical geology, therefore, brings no acceptable tribute either to philosophy or to religion. It attempts an union of two things which have nothing in common, and which cannot be associated without sustaining a mutual injury. It claims a divine authority for the most incoherent speculations that ever were obtruded upon the world under the name of science. It loads the inspired record with a tissue of fanciful hypotheses, and goes as far as it can to convert the oracles of faith into the text-book of a very disputable geology. We again declare, however, that the motives of the author appear to us to be not only perfectly pure, but even laudable and benevolent. He wishes well at once to science and to revealed religion; but we are compelled to add, his labours tend most obviously and directly to the disparagement of both.