What holds of Siberia and of North America, is applicable, _a fortiori_, to all the other places where animal remains are found in the same condition. Thus we are carried back to a time when many larger species of animals, now entirely extinct, inhabited the earth, and when varieties of those that are at present confined to particular situations, were, either by the liberty of migration, or by their natural constitution, accommodated to all the diversities of climate. This period, though beyond the limits of ordinary chronology, is posterior to the great revolutions on the earth's surface, and the latest among geological epochs. NOTE XXIII. § 128. _Geology of_ KIRWAN _and_ DE LUC. 419. The two champions of the Neptunian system, who have distinguished themselves most by their hostility to Dr HUTTON, are DE LUC and KIRWAN. They have carried on their attack nearly on the same plan, and have employed against their antagonist the weapons both of theology and science. With a spirit as injurious to the dignity of religion, as to the freedom of philosophical inquiry, they have disregarded a maxim enforced by the authority of Bacon, and by all our experience of the past; "_Tanto magis hæc vanitas inhibenda venit et coërcenda, quia, ex divinorum et humanorum male-sana admixtione, non solum educitur philosophia phantastica, sed etiam religio hæretica. Itaque salutare admodum est, si mente sobriâ, fidei tantum dentur quæ fidei sunt_."[228] [Footnote 228: The whole passage is deserving of attention, and it seems as if the prophetic spirit of Bacon had addressed it to the cosmologists of the present day. "_Pessima enim res errorem_ APOTHEOSIS, _et pro peste intellectús habenda est, si vanis accedat veneratio. Huic autan vanitati nonnulli ex modernis summâ levitate ita indulserunt, ut, in primo capitolo_ GENESEOS, _et aliis Scripturis Sacris, philosophiam naturalem fundari conati sunt:_ Inter VIVA quærentes MORTUA.--"Nov. Organum, lib. i. aphor. 65] Proceeding, accordingly, in direct opposition to rules that, have never yet been violated with impunity, and mistaking the true object of a theory of the earth, they carry back their inquiries to a period prior to the present series of causes and effects, where, having neither experience nor analogy to direct them, they pretend to be guided by a superior light. They would have us to consider their geological speculations as a commentary on the text of MOSES; they endeavour to explain the action of creative power, and, with indiscreet curiosity, would tear off the veil which the hand of the prophet has so wisely respected. But the veil cannot be torn off, and all that is behind it must be to man as that which never has existed.