from the lowest fossiliferous strata to the latest of the tertiaries. Applied to the old red sandstone, they serve to explain the fact that, while the precise relative position of the western beds in the district under review cannot in every instance be determined, large spaces or areas are entirely destitute of organic remains which in the eastern, and not distant, localities are detected in the greatest abundance and variety. The system of rocks is unquestionably the same, but neither cephalaspis, parexus, clematius, holoptychius, glyptosteus, phyllolepis, nor glyptolepis, ever would seem to have frequented these parts; whether for the reasons above assigned, or for any other local cause, or simply that they did not like the region—as the grouse and ptarmigan, even now, will not descend to the plains—is one of the recondite problems of animal life connected with the new as well as the older state of things. These beds may yet, however, be discovered to be fossiliferous, as the smallest space in local distance may reveal their hidden stores, to reward the diligent observer, and add to our knowledge of the aboriginal fauna of the district. The lesson farther taught by the varied phenomena which have passed under review in this chapter would seem to be, that there is nothing fixed or permanent in such arrangements of nature.—These are the beginnings of creation, and both as respects organic and inorganic matter, change and re-construction have prevailed from the earliest periods to which our researches can penetrate.—The Divine Architect did not complete things as we now see them, in one initial act; nor, as we regard quiescence and stability, were the elements and forces of nature so balanced as not to interfere even in violent collision with one another. A world is called into existence. Storms and commotions rend its frame.—Sea and land contend for mastery. And everything within its bounds, like the flux of time, like day and night, summer and winter, life and death, is observed to have emerged into being and form, to have assumed new arrangements, then to have perished; or gradually, as its nature might be, to have consumed away.