And even ere these last existed as living trees, the coniferous lignite of the Lower Old Red Sandstone found at Cromarty had passed into the fossil state, and lay as a semi-calcareous, semi-bituminous mass, amid perished _Dipterians_ and extinct _Coccostei_. So much for the Geology of the German Professor. And be it remarked, that the _actualities_ in this question can be determined by only the geologist. The mere naturalist may indicate from the analogies of his science, what possibly _might_ have taken place, but what really _did_ take place, and the true order in which the events occurred, it is the part of the geologist to determine. It cannot be out of place to remark, further, that geological discovery is in no degree responsible for the infidelity of the development hypothesis; seeing that, in the first place, the hypothesis _is greatly more ancient than the discoveries_, and, in the second, that its more prominent assertors are _exactly the men who know least of geological fact_. But to this special point I shall again refer. The author of the “Vestiges” is at one, regarding the supposed marine origin of terrestrial plants, with Maillet and Oken; and he regards the theory, we find him stating in his “Explanations,” as the true key to the well-established fact, that the vegetation of groupes of islands generally corresponds with that of the larger masses of land in their neighborhood. Marine plants of the same kinds crept out of the sea, it would seem, upon the islands on the one hand, and upon the larger masses of land on the other, and thus produced the same flora in each; just as tadpoles, after passing their transition state, creep out of their canal or river on the opposite banks, and thus give to the fields or meadows on the right-hand side a supply of frogs, of the same appearance and size as those poured out upon the fields and meadows of the left. “Thus, for example,” we find him saying, “the Galapagos exhibit general characters in common with South America; and the Cape de Verd islands, with Africa. They are, in Mr. Darwin’s happy phrase, satellites to those continents, in respect of natural history. Again,” he continues, “when masses of land are only divided from each other by narrow seas, there is usually a community of forms. The European and African shores of the Mediterranean present an example. Our own islands afford another of far higher value. It appears that the flora of Ireland and Great Britain is various, or rather that we have five floras or distinct sets of plants, and that each of these is partaken of by a portion of the opposite continent. There are, first, a flora confined to the west of Ireland, and imparted likewise to the north-west of Spain; second, a flora in the south-west promontory of England and of Ireland, extending across the Channel to the north-west coast of France; third, one common to the south-east of England and north of France; fourth, an Alpine flora developed in