Be it enough for the geologist rightly to interpret the record of creation,--to declare the truth as he finds it,--to demonstrate, from evidence no clear intellect ever yet resisted, that he, the Creator, from whom even the young lions seek their food, and who giveth to all the beasts, great and small, their meat in due season, ever wrought as he now works in his animal kingdom,--that he gave to the primeval fishes their spines and their stings,--to the primeval reptiles their trenchant teeth and their strong armor of bone,--to the primeval mammals their great tusks and their sharp claws,--that he of old divided all his creatures, as now, into animals of prey and the animals preyed upon,--that from the beginning of things he inseparably established among his non-responsible existences the twin laws of generation and of death,--nay, further, passing from the established truths of _Geologic_ to one of the best established truths of _Theologic_ science,--God's eternal justice and truth,--let us assert, that in the Divine government the matter of fact always determines the question of right, and that whatever has been done by him who rendereth no account to man of his matters, he had in all ages, and in all places, an unchallengeable right to do. The oldest known reptiles appear just a little before the close of the Old Red Sandstone, just as the oldest known fishes appeared just a little before the close of the Silurian System. What seems to be the Upper Old Red of our own country, though there still hangs a shade of doubt on the subject, has furnished the remains of a small reptile, equally akin, it would appear, to the lizards and the batrachians; and what seems to be the Upper Old Red of the United States has exhibited the foot-tracks of a larger animal of the same class, which not a little resemble those which would be impressed on recent sand or clay by the alligator of the Mississippi, did not the alligator of the Mississippi efface its own footprints (a consequence of the shortness of its legs) by the trail of its abdomen. In the Coal Measures, the reptiles hitherto found,--and it is still little more than ten years since the first was detected,--are all allied, though not without a cross of the higher crocodilian or lacertian nature, to the batrachian order,--that lowest order of the reptiles to which the frogs, newts, and salamanders belong. These reptiles of the carboniferous era, though only a few twelvemonths ago we little suspected the fact, seem to have been not very rare in our own neighborhood. My attention was called some time since by Mr. Henry Cadell,--an intelligent practical geologist,--to certain appearances in one of the Duke of Buccleuch's coal pits near Dalkeith, which lie regarded as the tracks of air-breathing quadrupeds; and, after examining a specimen, containing four footprints, which he had brought above ground, and which not a little excited my curiosity, we visited the pit together.