"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 time, that this laxity of faith has no real logical connexion with the scientific results with which he is occupied, we ought not to inflict on _them_ any portion of our suspicion or distrust. We shall always protest against confounding the legitimate attempts of science with the erroneous principles of certain schools of metaphysics, which may or may not be connected with them. If there is atheism in the world, we know whence it comes; we know well it is in a very different laboratory than that of the chemist that it has been distilled. The unknown author before us, repeatedly protests against being numbered amongst atheistic philosophers; on our own part, we are thoroughly convinced that no formula of physical science could possibly interfere with a rational belief in the power and wisdom of God; what remains, then, but to treat his book purely in a scientific point of view?