t, which enforces our respect, and
which, at all events, habituates the imagination to regard our planetary
system as having probably been evolved, under the will of Providence, by
the long operation of the established laws of matter.

It is quite a legitimate object of science, therefore, to view the laws of
the physical world--whether they regard its mechanic movement, its
chemistry, or its zoology--in their creative as well as reproductive
functions; and it is the purpose of a work lately published, entitled
"Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," and which has drawn to
itself considerable attention, to collect and arrange whatever hints or
fragments of knowledge science affords, enabling us to bring the
successive phenomena of creation under the formula of general laws. In
this purpose it is impossible to find a shadow of blame, and the work will
probably answer one good end, that of directing the studies of scientific
men into paths but little or timidly explored. But unfortunately, what the
author has collected as the results of science, are, in some instances,
little else than the wild guess-work of speculation. He has no scruple
whatever in imitating those early geographers, who, disliking the blank
spaces of undiscovered regions, were in the habit in their charts

"Of placing elephants instead of towns."

Indeed, his book is an assemblage of all that is most venturous and most
fanciful in modern speculation, in which the most conspicuous place is
allotted to a modification of Lamarck's theory on the development of
animal life.

The charge of an atheistic tendency, as it is the heaviest which can be
made against a work, so it is the last which ought to be hazarded without
sufficient cause. In general, owing to the very sacredness of the subject,
we feel disposed, in all suspicious cases, to pass over in silence both
accusation and defence; and if in the present instance we depart, for a
moment, from this line of conduct, it is only to give expression to a
conviction--which we share, we believe, with all who have both the
interest of science and the interest of theology at heart--that the fair
efforts of the scientific enquirer should never be impeded by needless
objections of a theological character. What we mean is this: though a
suspicion may cross the mind, that a writer does not hold the religious
tenets which we should desire to see every where advocated; yet if we are
persuaded, at the same tim