the "eleven thousand virgins;" but there was virtue in the jaw-bones of the Mosasaurus, and safety in their neighborhood. The French _savans_, like all the other _savans_ of Europe, had heard of Hoffmann's fossil, and the French artillery had been directed to play wide of the place where it lay. Maestricht surrendered; the fossil was found secreted in a vault, and sent away to the _Jardin des Plantes_ at Paris, maugre the canon, to delight there the heart of Cuvier; and the French, generously addressing themselves to the heirs of Hoffmann as its legitimate owners, made over to them a considerable sum of money as its price. They reversed the finding of the Maestricht judges; and all save the monks of St. Peter's have acquiesced in the justice of the decision. CHAPTER VI. Something for Non-geologists--Man Destructive--A Better and Last Creation coming--A Rainy Sabbath--The Meeting House--The Congregation--The Sermon in Gaelic--The Old Wondrous Story--The Drunken Minister of Eigg--Presbyterianism without Life--Dr. Johnson's Account of the Conversion of the People of Rum--Romanism at Eigg--The Two Boys--The Freebooter of Eigg--Voyage Resumed--The Homeless Minister--Harbor of Isle Ornsay--Interesting Gneiss Deposit--A Norwegian Keep--Gneiss at Knock--Curious Chemistry--Sea-cliffs beyond Portsea--The Goblin Luidag--Scenery of Skye. I reckon among my readers a class of non-geologists, who think my geological chapters would be less dull if I left out the geology; and another class of semi-geologists, who say there was decidedly too much geology in my last. With the present chapter, as there threatens to be an utter lack of science in the earlier half of it, and very little, if any, in the latter half, I trust both classes may be in some degree satisfied. It will bear reference to but the existing system of things,--assuredly not the last of the consecutive creations,--and to a species of animal that, save in the celebrated Guadaloupe specimens, has not yet been found locked up in stone. There have been much of violence and suffering in the old immature stages of being,--much, from the era of the Holoptychius, with its sharp murderous teeth and strong armor of bone, down to that of the cannibal Ichthyosaurus, that bears the broken remains of its own kind in its bowels,--much, again, from the times of the crocodile of the Oolite, down to the times of the fossil hyena and gigantic shark of the Tertiary. Nor, I fear, have matters greatly improved in that latest-born creation in the series, that recognizes as its delegated lord the first tenant of earth accountable to his Maker. But there is a better and a last creation coming, in which man shall re-appear, not to oppress and devour his fellow-men, and in which there shall be no such wrongs perpetrated as it is my present purpose to record,--"new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."