And these three blessings all are striving to maintain, to restore, or to acquire. Life, health, pleasure—these are the great stimulants to all human exertion, and how best to promote them ought to be the aim of human study. The suite of rocks which compose the carboniferous system is one clearly of pre-arrangement, and designed for man’s use. The strata, now beneath us, as undeniably evince a like beneficent purpose. The treasures of saline rock, gypseous marls, iron sands, and pyritous clays, may be mysterious all, in their origin: but their uses and their ends, human wants and frailties have long since established. The cravings of appetite satisfied, every creature has an instinct, which unerringly leads it to seek a remedy against injury and disease; and a provision for the one equally with the other, has been made by Him who notices the sparrow in his fall, and careth for the ravens of the desert. Slow of apprehension the mind, that cannot discern in the strata under review, a striking instance of foresight, a gift of benevolent wisdom, recesses long since stored with medicaments and restoratives for human frailties; and, though no angel now is there to trouble the waters, a kind Providence has designed them, and a good heart will use them, as tokens of its love. II. THE ORGANIC REMAINS are chiefly of a fluviatile and terrestrial character. The beds in which they occur were deposited in the channel, or delta, of a river of great breadth, and demonstrate the existence of a large extent of neighboring country. These beds range from Hastings into Dorsetshire, but are not found to the north of the Thames. In Portland and the Isle of Wight they likewise exist with all their peculiar organisms in the greatest abundance. In the latter locality, the wealden beds form the cliffs between Atherfield Point and Compton Bay; they also overhang the Bay of Sandown. The Purbeck beds and sands are well displayed at Durdle Cove, Warbarrow, and Swanage Bays; and in the Vale of Wardour the same strata are developed. In every one of these beautiful, picturesque, accessible, and very limited districts, you have congregated specimens of the fauna and flora of rivers, groves, forests, and plains, which have no longer a place on the terraqueous globe. Compared with the living or extinct races they constitute a chapter in natural history nowhere else to be seen or studied.