f the United States, which he classes with the Pyrenees
and Appennines, he must be mistaken, for no formations later than the
transition limestone are to be found in their vicinity. In respect to
the highlands of the state of New-York, and their branch of primitive
rocks, which extends along the Hudson to the island of New-York, the
sandstone of New-Jersey appears to continue horizontally until it
reaches their bases, and no rocks appear to have been raised on the
south-eastern side of the highlands, which are the easternmost of the
five parallel ridges of the Alleghanies, older than the slate; but on
their north-western side the transition limestone appears to have been
raised. They therefore are older than any mountains examined by M. de
Beaumont, and were we to hazard a conjecture, we should class them with
the Grampians of Scotland, and the mountains of Wales, in both of which
slate is the only rock of the transition series that appears to have
been elevated.

To complete our subject, it would be necessary that we should enter into
a discussion of the manner in which the ocean is now acting, by its
currents and tides, to distribute and deposit in its bed the sediment
which rivers and streams are constantly hurrying into it; and that we
should form some estimate, from what occurs within our reach, of the
effects produced in these deposits by the vast number of organized
beings that must people them, the deposits of vegetable matter, and the
exuviae, of animals. Such discussion would, however, be in a considerable
degree purely conjectural, and we therefore shall not enter into it. It
is sufficient to say, that formations analogous to those which the
elevation of the continents has exposed to our view, must be now taking
place in the bed of the ocean, whence they may be in their turn raised,
to task the ingenuity of future races of reasoning beings.

* * * * *

Inquiries into the history of the changes which our earth has undergone,
as they lead with infallible evidence to the proof of an existence of
this globe at a period almost infinitely more remote than that at which
man became its inhabitant, have been stigmatized as impious. The
intolerant theologian, adhering with pertinacity to his own system of
interpretation, fulminates anathemas against all who find in natural
appearances convincing evidence, that the earth was not suddenly and by
a single fiat called into existence in the