It is generally known that in a great many places situated in various parts of the earth, in the interior of mountains and even on plains, sometimes near the surface, and sometimes at a greater or less depth in the interior of mountainous chains rising to a very great elevation above the level of the sea, there are found whole strata of scattered bones belonging to animal species either actually existing, or which formerly existed and are now totally extinct--the chaotic remains of an all destroying inundation that immediately remind us of the general tradition respecting the great Flood. In other places again extensive layers of coral, sea-shells, marine plants, and other products of the sea, imbedded in the firm soil, prove these tracts of land to have been an ancient bottom of the sea. According to all appearance, these are not only monuments of one great natural revolution, but these elemental gigantic sepulchres of the primitive world offer to the mind many and various problems which more nearly, indeed, regard the earth, but as that planet is the habitation of man, have in consequence an indirect, but proximate, reference to mankind and their earliest history. A single example will best serve to point out among so many things, which are no longer perhaps susceptible of explanation, that which is of most moment to the historian; as well as the limits within which he should keep. Not long back, about nine years ago, a cave was discovered in the county of Yorkshire in England, filled for the most part with the bones and skeletons of hyænas, of the same species now found in the southernmost point of Africa--the Cape of Good Hope. These bones were intermixed with those of tigers, bears, wolves, as also of elephants, rhinosceri, and other animals, among which were found the remains of the old large deer, that is not now to be met with in England. The profound Naturalist, Schubert, whom, in subjects of this kind, I willingly take for my guide, observes in his natural history with respect to this newly discovered cavern (which evidently belongs to another, long extinct, and anterior world of nature); that the opinion which would make a whole stratum of bones to have been swept thither by floods in so sound a state, and from so remote a distance, is perfectly inadmissible. He shews it to be much more probable that this cave was the den of a troop of hyænas, which had dragged thither the bones of the other animals; for this fell and rapacious animal feeds by preference on bones, which it knows how to break, as it is in the habit of raking up dead bodies.--What an immense interval separates that now highly civilized state--those flourishing provinces--that country abounding, and almost overteeming with all the fruits of human industry, with all the productions of mechanic skill;--that cultivated garden, that Island-Queen, the mistress of every sea;--what an immense interval separates her from those savage times,