seen dead matter assuming the forms of life and animation, and light and power arising out of death and sleep.  The ideas therefore transmitted to or presented by Moses respecting the origin of the world and of man were of the most simple kind, and such as suited the early state of society; but, though general and simple truths, they were divine truths, yet clothed in a language and suited to the ideas of a rude and uninstructed people.  And, when I state my satisfaction in finding that they are not contradicted by the refined researches of modern geologists, I do not mean to deduce from them a system of science.  I believe that light was the creation of an act of the Divine will; but I do not mean to say that the words, “Let there be light, and there was light,” were orally spoken by the Deity, nor do I mean to imply that the modern discoveries respecting light are at all connected with this sublime and magnificent passage.

Onu.—­Having resided for a long time in Edinburgh, and having heard a number of discussions on the theory of Dr. Hutton, or the plutonic theory of geology, and having been exceedingly struck both by its simplicity and beauty, its harmony with existing facts, and the proofs afforded to it by some beautiful chemical experiments, I do not feel disposed immediately to renounce it for the views which I have just heard explained; for the principal facts which our new acquaintance has stated are, I think, not inconsistent with the refined philosophical systems of Professor Playfair and Sir James Hall.

The Unknown.—­I have no objection to the refined plutonic view, as capable of explaining many existing phenomena; indeed, you must be aware that I have myself had recourse to it.  What I contend against is, its application to explain the formations of the secondary rocks, which I think clearly belong to an order of facts not at all embraced by it.  In the plutonic system there is one simple and constant order assumed, which may be supposed eternal.  The surface is constantly imagined to be disintegrated, destroyed, degraded, and washed into the bosom of the ocean by water, and as constantly consolidated, elevated, and regenerated by fire, and the ruins of the old form the foundations of the new world.  It is supposed that there are always the same types, both of dead and living matter; that the remains of rocks, of vegetables, and animals of one age are found embedded in rocks raised from the bottom of the ocean in another.  Now, to support this view, not only the remains of living beings which at present people the globe might be expected to be found in the oldest secondary strata, but even those of the arts of man, the most powerful and populous of its inhabitants, which is well known not to be the case.  On the contrary, each stratum of the secondary rocks contains remains of peculiar and mostly now unknown species of vegetables and animals.  In those strata which are deepest, and which must