The philosopher here, in these views as to the primitive diversity of the ichthyoid types in the old red sandstone, adduces such illustrations and others not quoted, as subversive of the theory of the successive transformation of species, and of the descent of organized beings now living, from a small number of primitive forms. He asserts the doctrine that the characteristic fossils of each well-marked geological epoch are the representatives of so many distinct creations, and affirms that he has demonstrated by a vast number of species that the presumed identifications are exaggerated approximations of species, resembling one another, but nevertheless specifically distinct. M. Agassiz introduces the same doctrine in his latest great work, the “Iconographie,” wherein he goes the length of saying, that, even when species are, so far as the eye can judge, identical, they may not be so—that there may exist species so nearly allied, as to render it impossible to distinguish them—and reiterates that each geological epoch is characterized by a distinct system of created beings (the results of a new intervention of creative power), including not only different species from those of the preceding system, but also new types. Under his safe guidance we have glanced at the earliest groups and forms of life upon the globe, and have seen the simple structures of the beginning succeeded by higher, if not more perfect or more complex, at least by creatures capable of a wider range of action and enjoyment. The deductions and sweeping inferences of geologists may be often vague and uncertain; but a science, whose direct aim is to decipher the records of the past and compare the successive types of animal life upon the earth, deals with important objects, and leads to salutary trains of thought, keeping continually before the view the Fountain-Head of all being; and adding a new proof to the sublime doctrine, that Man who is privileged so to range through creation and time will himself outlive a term of existence, measurable by a few points of space and a few moments of eternity. [Illustration: Pamphractus Andersoni.] CHAPTER VI. TRAP ROCKS.