THE CARBONIFEROUS SYSTEM—PERIOD OF GIGANTIC VEGETABLES. The system of rocks termed the Carboniferous constitutes the most remarkable, as well as the most valuable, group in the whole range of geological investigation. The strata of which this system is composed, evince design in the clearest and the most unequivocal manner, testifying to the mandate given on the third day of Creation, that the earth was to bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind; and which, in the prodigious development of vegetable matter that so early and rapidly ensued, demonstrate such productive powers of nature to have been chiefly prospective, and preparatory to the still higher development of life that was to follow. Milton has finely imagined a tradition in heaven, long subsisting, concerning the creation of a new world, and of man for whose habitation it was intended: “Space may produce new worlds, whereof so rife, There went a fame in heaven, that He ere long Intended to create, and therein plant A generation, whom his choice regard Should favor equal to the sons of heaven; The happy seat Of some new race, called Man.” The idea here so beautifully expressed is, that the cosmical arrangements of the earth were, from the beginning, so conducted as to be subservient to man’s well-being; and, certainly, nothing could show more the dignity of the new race, or the interest taken in them by their Creator, than this tradition which ran of them in other spheres. But geology, more to be relied on than poetry, furnishes demonstrative evidence of the anterior designs and purposes of Omnipotent Wisdom in actually fitting up “the happy seat,” and in storing it beforehand with materials suited to the wants and comfortable subsistence of him who was to be its loftiest inhabitant. The coal-metals, in the discovery of their history and position, alone vindicate the importance of geology as a science. The whole group with which they are associated, in their mineral and vegetable contents, their place in the system, and the means provided at once for protection and excavation, manifest a series of contrivances so expressive of design, as cannot fail, when read aright, to draw forth our gratitude and wonder.