our tails again_? What if the first man who was detected with such an appendage should be obliged to confess himself the author of the _Vestiges_--a person yet unknown--who would naturally get the start of his species by having had the earliest habit of thinking on the matter? I confess I never hear a man of note talk fluently about it without a curious glance at his proportions, to see whether there may be ground to conjecture that he may have more of "mortal coil" than others, in anaxyridical concealment. I do not feel sure that even a paternal love for his theory would induce him, in the case I am supposing, to exhibit himself at the British Association, With a hole behind which his tail peeped through. The first sentence of this book (1840) is a cast of the log, which shows our rate of progress. "It is familiar knowledge that the earth which we inhabit is a globe of somewhat less than 8,000 miles in diameter, being one of a series of eleven which revolve at different distances around the sun." The _eleven_! Not to mention the Iscariot which Le Verrier and Adams calculated into existence, there is more than a septuagint of _new_ planetoids. ON RELIGIOUS INSURANCE. The Constitution and Rules of the Ancient and Universal 'Benefit Society' established by Jesus Christ, exhibited, and its advantages and claims maintained, against all Modern and {346} merely Human Institutions of the kind: A Letter very respectfully addressed to the Rev. James Everett,[723] and occasioned by certain remarks made by him, in a speech to the Members of the 'Wesleyan Centenary Institute' Benefit Society. Dated York, Dec. 7, 1840. By Thomas Smith.[724] 12mo, (pp. 8.)