Granite, the derivative rock, is found, accordingly, in every region of the globe—the lowest as well as the most universally distributed—the basis as well as the apex of every great mountain chain. No true Highland scenery is anywhere to be found that does not embrace granite as the most prominent feature in the picture. Not a hill in Scotland, two thousand feet high, but incloses a portion of this rock. The beauties of the English lake country are all derived from this source. The lofty serrated peaks of Wales have been raised upon its crystal foundations. The north-west and central portions of France, the Swiss and Tyrolese Alps, the vast expanse betwixt Dresden and Vienna, the Caucasus, great part of the Himalayan, Uralian, and Altai mountains, and large elevated districts in China, are all less or more of granite formation. Through Northern Russia and Scandinavia the granite may be regarded as merely a continuation of our Scottish range—one great stony girdle, which forms the primary mineral boundary of Northern Europe. America, Africa, Australia, possess not a single ridge of celebrity through which the same fundamental rock is not traceable in every district. How simple, uniform, universal the component elements of the globe! One and the same atmosphere surrounds it, one ocean washes it, one system of massive pillars supports it, one sun enlightens it. How direct and irresistible the inference, that one intelligent, all-powerful Being fashioned and framed it! The separation of the dry land from the waters was, doubtless, effected through the instrumentality of means. The igneous theory of granite, and other amorphous rocks, is in accordance with this supposition, which thereby imparts a sacred and peculiar interest to all our investigations respecting the origin and elevation of mountains. The range of geological investigation is thus wide as the circumference of the globe—deep as the foundations of the earth—and sublime thoughts are everywhere awakened of Him— Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things! CHAPTER III. THE SILURIAN SYSTEM. FIRST TRACES OF LIFE.