of genera and species--Strabo's theory of elevation by
earthquakes--Pliny--Concluding Remarks on the knowledge of the
Ancients.

_Oriental Cosmogony._--The earliest doctrines of the Indian and Egyptian
schools of philosophy agreed in ascribing the first creation of the
world to an omnipotent and infinite Being. They concurred also in
representing this Being, who had existed from all eternity, as having
repeatedly destroyed and reproduced the world and all its inhabitants.
In the sacred volume of the Hindoos, called the Ordinances of Menu,
comprising the Indian system of duties religious and civil, we find a
preliminary chapter treating of the Creation, in which the cosmogony is
known to have been derived from earlier writings and traditions; and
principally from certain hymns of high antiquity, called the Vedas.
These hymns were first put together, according to Mr. Colebrooke,[1] in
a connected series, about thirteen centuries before the Christian era,
but they appear from internal evidence to have been written at various
antecedent periods. In them, as we learn from the researches of
Professor Wilson, the eminent Sanscrit scholar, two distinct
philosophical systems are discoverable. According to one of them, all
things were originally brought into existence by the sole will of a
single First Cause, which existed from eternity; according to the other,
there have always existed two principles, the one material, but without
form, the other spiritual and capable of compelling "inert matter to
develop its sensible properties." This development of matter into
"individual and visible existences" is called creation, and is assigned
to a subordinate agent, or the creative faculty of the Supreme Being
embodied in the person of Brahma.

In the first chapter of the Ordinances of Menu above alluded to, we meet
with the following passages relating to former destructions and
renovations of the world:--

"The Being, whose powers are incomprehensible, having created me (Menu)
and this universe, again became absorbed in the supreme spirit, changing
the time of energy for the hour of repose.

"When that Power awakes, then has this world its full expansion; but
when he slumbers with a tranquil spirit, then the whole system fades
away..... For while he reposes, as it were, embodied spirits endowed
with principles of action depart from their several acts, and the mind
itself becomes inert."

The absorption of all bei