“_To the Editor of the Scottish Press._ “SIR,—I occasionally observe articles in your neighbor and contemporary the _Witness_, characteristically headed ‘Rambles of a Geologist,’ wherein the writer with great zeal once more ‘slays the slain’ heresies of the ‘Vestiges of Creation.’ This writer (of the ‘Rambles,’ I mean) nevertheless, and at the same time, announces his own tenets to be much of the same sort, as applied to mere dead matter, that those of the ‘Vestiges’ are with regard to living organisms. He maintains that the world, during the last million of years, has been of itself rising or developing, without the interposition of a miracle, from chaos into its present state; and, of course, as it is still, as a world, confessedly far below the acme of physical perfection, that it must be just now on its passage, self-progressing, towards that point, which terminus it may reach in another million of years hence.[!!!] The author of the ‘Vestiges,’ as quoted by the author of the ‘Rambles,’ in the last number of the _Witness_, complains that the latter and his allies are not at all so liberal to him as, from their present circumstances and position, he had a right to expect. He (the author of the ‘Vestiges’) reminds his opponents that they have themselves only lately emerged from the antiquated scriptural notions that our world was the direct and almost immediate construction of its Creator,—as much so, in fact, as any of its organized tenants,—and that it was then created in a state of physical excellence, the highest possible, to render it a suitable habitation for these tenants, and all this only about six or seven thousand years ago,—to the new light of their present _physico-Lamarckian_ views; and he asks, and certainly not without reason, why should _these men_, so circumstanced, be so anxious to stop him in his attempt to move one step further forward in the very direction they themselves have made the last move?—that is, in his endeavor to extend their own principles of self-development from mere matter to living creatures. Now, Sir, I confess myself to be one of those (and possibly you may have more readers similarly constituted) who not only cannot see any great difference between merely _physical_ and _organic_ development,[!!] but who would be inclined to allow the latter, absurd as it is, the advantage in point of likelihood.[!!!] The author of the ‘Rambles,’ however, in the face of this, assures us that _his_ views of physical self-development and long chronology belong to the inductive sciences. Now, I could at this stage of his rambles have wished very much that, instead of merely _saying_ so, he had given his _demonstration_. He refers, indeed, to several great men, who, he says, are of his opinion. Most that these men have