pre-eminently distinguish and glorify the human race! A remarkable peculiarity in the mammalian remains of the tertiary period is the total absence of the ruminating animals, which do not appear until the modern epoch, when we recognize them at once as the companions and useful contributors to the comforts of man. These still retain “the names” which Adam bestowed upon them. The more ancient creations rejoice in the mythical nomenclature of science, of which between fifty and sixty species have been determined. The greater proportion are from the Paris basin; but the district under review contains, in its lower and middle divisions, the remains of some of the more remarkable of the group—as the _Palæotherium_, _Anoplotherium_, _Lophiodon_, _Chœropotamus_, _Didelphis_, _Balœenodon_, and the huge _Mastodon_.—These animals are specifically different from everything now in existence; even Macacus Eocenus will find no lineal descendant in Ceylon, Madagascar, or the Cape; and no Celtic pedigree will meet the case. The race have left our island, and departed from the earth; and to restore them in imagination, we must seek their nearest analogies in the impenetrable fastnesses and prairies of unreclaimed nature. 5. BIRDS are distinctly traceable in this formation. The Eocene clays of the Isle of Sheppey have produced materials sufficiently indicative of the class, in which the true affinities of the aerial inhabitants are detected, and a new genus completely established. The specimens found bear a resemblance to the osteology of the smaller kinds of vultures, and one has been designated Lithornis Vulturinus. The ‘Icones fossilium sectiles’ of Kœnig contains a description of some other ornitholites found in the same locality, considered by the author as belonging to a natatorial or long-toed bird, and denominated Bucklandium Diluvii. The Paris basin is more fruitful in these fossils than the London; from these several species have been determined—more or less allied to the pelican, the sea-lark, curlew, woodcock, buzzard, owl, and quail; thus clearly establishing the link in the chain of being, but still at a wide interval from the gay choristers and domesticated tribes which minister so much to the solace and happiness of man. The geologist traces the connection, and sees in the expanse of ages, as race after race emerge upon the scene, a gradual preparation and tendency of all things to a final result; sea, earth, and air successively possessed by creatures approximating as they advance to those of the human epoch; and man proudly or presumptuously concludes, that all has been “worked solely for his good.” But as the poet has sung—may we not ask, and ask concerning the humblest life which man often despises and as often terribly destroys, but which is never overlooked by Him who made man and all things, and whose tender care is over all his works?—