to both Lords and Commons; and Sir Heneage Finch would have admired the cheerfulness with which it was surrendered by parliament in 1840. Six millions and a-half of franks were carried in 1839, and only 76 millions of chargeable letters.

The number of chargeable letters that passed through the post-office of the United Kingdom in 1855, was 456,216,176-making a sixfold increase in sixteen years. The gross revenue now exceeds that of 1839; the net income is gradually rising up to the old mark and incalculable advantages have been conferred upon the nation by the new system. Yet Col. Maberly, of the General Post-Office, discovered, at the end of the first week, that Mr. Hill's plan had failed; and (to quote his own words) he charged the officials to take care that no obstacle was thrown in its way, so as to give a colour to the allegation, which he had no doubt would be made, that its failure was owing to the unwillingness of the government to carry it fairly into execution. The prophetic Colonel waited in vain. The plan prospered; and one more improvement, introduced by amateur hands, was thus added to Dockwra's, and Allen's, and Palmer's. The world will continue to progress, despite the Hodgsons, the Drapers, and the Maberlys. The packhorse and the postboy-the coach without springs and the coach with springs-the diligence at three or four, and the stage-coach at ten or eleven miles an hourhave each given way, the one to the other. The turnpike road, considered at one time almost perfection, has given way to railroads; the stage-coach has been set aside by the locomotive engine; and, to crown all, high and varying rates of postage have been substituted by one uniform charge of a penny.

GEOLOGY, AND THE EXTINCT ANIMALS

OF THE ANCIENT WORLD.

BY

B. WATERHOUSE HAWKINS, Esq. F.G.S., F.L.S. The Bestorer of the Extinct Animals at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham.

[THE following lecture, illustrative of visual Education applied to Geology, was delivered in the Manchester Town Hall, for the benefit of the widow of Mr. A. C. G. Jobert, author of several geological and educational works of great merit; and the friend of Cuvier, Sedgwick, and other eminent naturalists and geologists. A. J. Scott, Esq. M.A., of Owens College, presided.]

GEOLOGY is the ancient history of the earth: it takes us back to the remote periods of our planet's existence, and discloses to us the strange mutations its surface has undergone, and the various successive races of animated beings that found subsistence upon it ages anterior to the period when man himself appeared upon the scene. Before geology had made these marvellous additions to our knowledge, men looked back to the origin of our race some six thousand years ago-when the earth, which the Almighty has assigned to us as our temporary home, started into being at the bidding of His creative voice-in

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total ignorance of the varied and multitudinous forms of animal life which, since the Deluge, have become extinct. Geology has, so to speak, lifted the curtain on our earth's past history, and disclosed to us the interesting fact that races of animated beings formerly inhabited in vast numbers various localities of the antediluvian world, and whose remains are often so perfectly preserved, as to give a clear insight into the wonders of their structure, and an approximate idea of their multitude, as well as the circumstances and conditions of the earth which were necessary to those various forms of existence.

Of this early and interesting period of our earth's duration, geology, as I have said, is the history; and a marvellous history it is. History of human things is often partial and unjust-vitiated by the faults and the failings of the feeble mortal by whom it is penned; but this great history of the earth's antiquity, written by the hand of God Himself, in characters that once had life,-inscribed upon the stones beneath our feet, and on the rocks and hills around us,-is free from every such disfigurement; and though obscure in parts, from our own feebleness of comprehension, and our partial acquaintance with its records, it is in the main full and clear, and enables us to realise the ancient condition of the globe, and the strange succession of living forms that subsisted on its surface. It has very properly been said, indeed, that so plain and unmistakeable are the teachings of geology, that many of the facts of even modern history are less clearly ascertained, than are many of the events which took place in the earliest ages of the earth's existence.

The whole period of time during which the earth has existed is divided by geologistsor, rather, it naturally divides itself-into three great epochs, characterised by three different forms of animal life. Three distinct animal dynasties (to employ the language of the celebrated Professor Edward Forbes)

represent and mark three apparent epochs of the earth's history. The first, or earliest period, is characterised by invertebrated animals and fishes; the entire life of the globe being then, so far as science has ascertained, confined to the waters of the ocean, in which fishes were the highest types of existence. In the second, or middle epoch, we make an advance, and enter upon the dynasty of reptiles,-amphibious, aquatic, and terrestrial; these latter, for the most part, coming last upon the scene. They were of colossal proportions, and in many instances fed only on the abundant vegetation of the time; and thus, as it were, heralded the approach of the great herbivorous mammalia by which they were succeeded. The third, or tertiary, which we may also call the modern epoch, is well designated as the period of the mammalian dynasty. It extended, like the two for. mer epochs, over a vast interval of time, and exhi bited several variations in the mammalian type, many of which, though now extinct, were apparently con temporary with man himself.

Nothing is more obvious, on a careful review of these great epochs of geological time, than that the earth, by a gradual and designed refinement, so to speak, has been fitted and prepared for the abode of man. Remembering the use that has been made by certain would-be philosophers, of the apparently gradual advance in complexity of organisation amongst the animated tribes which successively tenanted the earth during these three great epochs, I may be permitted to remark here, that nothing is more certain than that geology affords no real countenance to that doctrine of development which has of late years been so unwisely revived. I shall have occasion, as I proceed, to point out incidentally how entirely opposed to this opinion is the evidence afforded by the structure of those monsters of the ancient world which I shall have the pleasure presently to introduce to you; and a similar disproof of the doctrine is fur

nished by almost every class of fossil remains. There have been no such gradual advances from simple to higher forms of life, as are involved in the idea of a progressive development of species, one from the other; and however proud the adherents of this doctrine may be of their assumed ancestral connection with the monkey tribe, geology certainly affords no encouragement to such a singular predilection.

The earliest inhabitants of our globe with which science has yet made us acquainted, occur in the Cambrian or Lower Silurian formation, which has been so admirably illustrated by the vast learning and research of Sir Roderick Murchison and Professor Sedgwick. During the time these formations were being deposited, there was an abundance of curious and extraordinary creatures, among which we find the star fishes, corals, crustacean or crab-like animals and mollusca or soft animals, which are better known to us by their outward covering of shell. Among the most extraordinary of these early forms of animal existence is the Trilobite, belonging to the class Crustacea, of the sub-kingdom Articulator; called Trilobite from the three-lobed structure of its case. The principal or most striking feature in the structure of the Trilobite, is its peculiarly powerful organ of vision, which is so complete in the number and power of its lenses, that its only analogue is to be found in some of the higher order of insects of the present day. Why I draw your attention more particularly to the minute and beautiful proportions of this singular animal, is, that you may remark that at this early period of the animal creation we ought to find, according to the Development Theory, creatures of the most simple structure-mere aglomerations of monades, made experimentally during nature's ap prenticeship. But no-it is not so: here we find a creature small and insignificant only when compared with our own nature; perfect in all its parts, elaborate and complete to the highest point of refinement