publishing society in Paternoster Row,[65] that has published about everything in natural history but geology, has acknowledged to me that it declines to undertake a work on this science, because of the _theological difficulties_ connected with the subject. Why, what is this but the very way to breed infidelity? The man who studies nature and who studies his Bible, is not ashamed to say he believes them both; though two books, they are both given by inspiration of God. Man may be a liar, but neither nature nor the Bible can lie; and while one tells us the history of man, the other reveals to us the history of the creation, and succession of those beings which preceded the advent of man. We now come to the New Red Sandstone, which must occupy our attention both on account of the unique fossil remains found in it, and also on account of its economic use and value in commerce. Few formations, small as it is, possess so many points of interest to the beginner as the new red sandstone; for, lying just above the carboniferous, and between it and the oolitic group, we find in it certain curiosities of very olden time, that are full of marvellous power to fill us with amaze. Every one remembers Robinson Crusoe’s surprise at finding “the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand,” and how he “stood like one thunder-struck, or as if he had seen an apparition;” and then how he “went again to see if it might not be his fancy, but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the very print of a foot, toes, heel, and every part of a foot;” and then how, after “innumerable fluttering thoughts, and out of himself,” he went home terrified to his fortification.