Article VII. is an able notice, by Dr Hirschfeld, of Dr Carus's Atlas of Cranioscopy, Part I., containing drawings of the skulls of Schiller, Talleyrand, a Greenlander, a Cretin, Napoleon, an ancient Scandinavian, a Caffre, and a Bali. We have already noticed Dr Carus's views (xv. 154; xvi. 408); and there is nothing new in the present production.

Article VIII. is a phrenological analysis of the character of Dr Justinus Kerner, by Dr Castle, which also has been already noticed in this Journal, vol. xvi. p. 296.

Article IX. contains an interesting notice, by Dr Scheve, of "The Central Archives for Medical Knowledge for the whole States of Germany, by Dr J. B. Freidreich.'

Article X. consists of miscellaneous notices, which are interesting and instructive, and shew that the progress of the science in Germany is satisfactory.

The Number concludes with an able and interesting account, by Dr Scheve, of the crime, character, and cerebral development of Christina Beckenbach, who was decapitated at Heidelberg, on 22d January 1844, for poisoning her husband with arsenic. The skull, of which four lithographic views are given, is remarkably well drawn, and presents the usual appearance found in such characters. The base of the brain, particularly at Destructiveness and Secretiveness, is very large, and the coronal region shallow in proportion. Veneration is particularly defective; and she told Dr Scheve, who knew her before she poisoned her husband, that although she could repeat the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, she "could never pray one word within her own mind." The article contains some sound and touching remarks on capital punishment; and Dr Scheve most justly asks, "Who among us can assert that he, if born with an organization like Beckenbach's, and trained as she was, would not also have acted as she did ?" He condemns this infliction as uncalled for by sound policy, and unjustifiable in reason. There is a mildness of spirit and soundness of thinking in this and in Dr Scheve's other articles, which invest them with a peculiarly engaging quality, calculated to exercise a very beneficial influence on the reader's mind.

The length to which this notice has extended prevents us from now entering on No. VI. of the Journal, which also we have received.

II.-Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.

John Churchill. 1844. Post 8vo, pp. 390.

London:

This is a bold, original, and interesting work, calmly and philosophically written. Although the author has restrained his imagination, and subjected his thoughts and style to the guidance of his understanding, yet the grandeur of the conceptions, and the occasional bursts of eloquence which occur in his pages, produce the effect of a great historical poem.

As the boundaries of science become extended, the conclusion is rendered more and more probable, that the Deity, when he created the material universe, conferred upon it such properties, and prescribed to it such modes of action, that all subsequent phenomena have resulted from its original constitution, without any new or special interference on the part of the great Governor and Upholder of all things. In the present imperfect condition of human knowledge, and considering the small portion of the mighty drama of the universe which our race, so recently created, has had an opportunity of witnessing, demonstrative evidence of the opinion referred to is hardly to be looked for, and most inquirers have even concluded that science, in its details, is adverse instead of favourable to the hypothesis. The author of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, assuming the likelihood that every event since the creation-every new appearance, whether in the mineral, vegetable, or animal kingdoms-has resulted from general laws originally impressed upon the universe, makes it his business to shew that the details of science are really less opposed to this view than has often been believed, and that the great events of the remote past are still dimly represented on a reduced scale by analogous observable phenomena.

Starting with nebulous matter, as apparently the first condition in which all existing bodies have been, he expounds the manner in which (according to recent astronomers) suns, planets, and satellites, have successively been developed. He next proceeds to consider the "constituent materials of the earth, and of the other bodies of space;" and observes, "that the nebular hypothesis almost necessarily supposes matter to have originally formed one mass. We have seen the same physical laws preside over the whole." The inference deduced is, that the whole consist of similar elements, "under the qualification that, possibly, various bodies, under peculiar circumstances attending their formation, may con

tain elements which are wanting, and lack some which are present in others, or that some may entirely consist of elements in which others are entirely deficient." If we admit such extensive differences, it seems incorrect to say that "the whole consist of similar elements." The term "element," he remarks, is applied by the chemist to a certain limited number of substances (fifty-four or fifty-five are ascertained), which, in their combinations, form all the matter of every kind present in and about our globe. "It has, indeed, been surmised that these so-called elements are only modifications of a primordial form of matter, brought about under certain conditions; but if this should prove to be the case, it would little affect the view which we are taking of cosmical arrangements. Analogy would lead us to conclude that the combinations of the primordial matter, forming our so-called elements, are as universal or as liable to take place every where as are the laws of gravitation and centrifugal force. We must, therefore, presume that the gases, the metals, the earths, and other simple substances (besides whatever more, of which we have no acquaintance), exist, or are liable to come into existence under proper conditions, as well in the astral system, which is thirty-five thousand times more distant than Sirius, as within the bounds of our own solar system, or our own globe."-P. 28.

The natural history of the earth is next discussed, and a succinct and lucid account is given of the common theory of the formation of the primary and subsequent rocks. This is so well known, that it is unnecessary to state it in detail. The primary rocks "contain none of the petrified remains of vegetables and animals which abound so much in subsequently formed rocks, and tell so wondrous a tale of the past history of our globe.'

The secondary rocks are formed in a great measure from the substance of those which went before them; but limestone, composed of lime and carbonic acid, now appears, and the latter is an ingredient which had not been met with in the primary rocks.* Carbon, an element of this acid, is also the main ingredient in organic things. "There is reason to believe that its primeval condition was that of a gas, confined in the interior of the earth, and diffused in the atmosphere.' Marine polypes are capable of appropriating this gas, in connexion with lime, from the waters of the ocean, where it is held in solution, and they deposit it in coral reefs equal in

* Such is the author's proposition; but he must have forgotten that limestone is found in small quantities as a primary rock-in Glen Tilt and on the banks of Loch Earn, for example.

extent to many strata. The appearance of limestone beds, then, is presumed to be connected with the commencement of organic life upon our planet, and, indeed, a consequent and a symptom of it. As 16,000 cubic feet of carbonic acid gas are locked up in every cubic yard of limestone, and as carbon forms 64 to 75 per cent. of coal, an enormous quantity of it must at one time have been in the atmosphere. An atmosphere highly charged with carbonic acid gas would be incapable of supporting land animals. Accordingly, the first organised beings traced in the history of the globe are zoophytes, polypes, and a few single and double valved shell-fish (mollusks), all of them creatures of the sea.

Ascending to the next groups, the traces of life become more abundant, and sea-plants appear. The numbers of species are greater, and the animals are of a higher class. When we arrive at the old red sandstone formation, fishes become abundant, and marine plants continue to multiply; but no land animals or plants are found, for apparently no dry land yet existed. With the secondary rocks or carboniferous formation, land was formed, and land-plants are here traced in prodigious abundance. Gigantic shrubs, fostered by a warm climate, and a vast supply of carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere, flourished, were swept away by torrents, were deposited at the bottoms of lakes, or of the sea, and formed beds of coal. In the era of the new red sandstone, terrestrial zoology commences with reptiles, and traces of birds are met with. In the era of the oolite begin the mammalia; and in that of the more superficial formations, we find the commencement of the present species.

After giving, in detail, this history of the globe, the author arrives at the question, "In what way was the creation of animated beings effected? The ordinary notion may, I think, be not unjustly described as this,-that the almighty Author produced the progenitors of all existing species by some sort of personal or immediate exertion. But how does this notion comport with what we have seen of the gradual advance of species from the humblest to the highest? How can we suppose an immediate exertion of this creative power at one time to produce zoophytes, another time to add a few marine mollusks, another to bring in one or two conchifers, again to produce crustaceous fishes, again perfect fishes, and so on to the end? This would surely be to take a very mean view of the creative power,-to, in short, anthropomorphize it, or reduce it to some such character as that borne by the ordinary procedings of mankind." Some other idea must then in which the divine Author

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be come to, with regard to the mode

proceeded in the organic creation." Let us seek in the history of the earth's formation for a new suggestion on this point. We have seen powerful evidence, that the construction of this globe and its associates, and inferentially that of all the other globes of space, was the result, not of any immediate or personal exertion on the part of the Deity, but of natural laws which are expressions of his will. What is to hinder our supposing that the organic creation is also a result of natural laws, which are in like manner an expression of his will? More than this, the fact of the cosmical arrangements being an effect of natural law, is a powerful argument for the organic arrangements being so likewise; for how can we suppose that the august Being who brought all these countless worlds into form, by the simple establishment of a natural principle flowing from his mind, was to interfere personally and specially on every occasion when a new shellfish or reptile was to be ushered into existence on one of these worlds? Surely this idea is too ridiculous to be for a moment, entertained."

This is the theory to announce, elucidate, and support which, the book has evidently been written; and we regret that we cannot enter into the scientific details by which plausibility is given to it. The work takes an extensive survey of the phenomena of the world, physical, vegetable, and animal, and refers constantly to authorities in science for the statements which it propounds; and it is so concisely written, that justice cannot be done to it in an analysis. The style, also, is at once so simple, correct, and concentrated, that abridgment is almost impossible. We must again,

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therefore, allow the author to speak for himself. The idea," says he, says he," which I form of the progress of organic life upon the globe-and the hypothesis is applicable to all similar theatres of vital being-is, that the simplest and most primitive type, under a law to which that of like-production is subordinate, gave birth to the type next above it, that this again produced the next higher, and so on to the very highest, the stages of advance being in all cases very small—namely, from one species only to another; so that the phenomenon has always been of a simple and modest character. Whether the whole of any species was at once translated forward, or only a few parents were employed to give birth to the new type, must remain undetermined; but, supposing that the former was the case, we must presume that the moves along the line or lines were simultaneous; so that the place vacated by one species was immediately taken by the next in succession, and so on back to the first, for the supply of which