region so differ from those of every other, as to impress us with the conviction that they have not been derived from a common ancestry for each species, in any one locality upon the face of the earth. They are respectively adapted to certain conditions of existence, such as climate, temperature, mutual relations, and no doubt other circumstances of favourable influence which men have not yet discovered, or which never may be discovered in the present state. These conditions cannot be transferred to other situations. The habitation proper to one description of vegetable or animal families would be intolerable, and speedily fatal, to others. Where the extreme of incongruity does not exist, there are causes of unsuitableness, whose action is less powerful, but slowly and surely effective. Even when, as in many parts of the two hemispheres, and on the contrary sides of the equator, there is apparently a similarity of climate; we find not an identity, but only an analogy, of animal and vegetable species. It is confessedly difficult to fix with absolute precision the lines of demarcation for these independent domains of living organized nature. The general fact is established beyond the reach of doubt; but naturalists are waiting for a more complete acquaintance with the plants and animals of every part of the globe, before they deem the natural divisions finally determined. According to the degree of knowledge already attained, the following may be accepted as an approximation. A distinguished christian physiologist and philosopher, Dr. Prichard, was the first to bring forwards correct views upon this interesting subject; and he proposes seven regions for the distribution of animals.* Mr. Swainson pleads for five, but upon a ground of analogy which he has assumed without proof, and which is contrary to impregnable truth.† Others make eleven. With regard to the vegetable kingdom, some eminent naturalists have given their opinion in favour of ten for the old continents, and six for America: § but the great philosophical botanists of Geneva, Messieurs de Candolle, father and son, "than whom," says Professor Hitchcock, no better judges can be named, reckon the number "of distinct botanical provinces at twenty-seven. "This estimate was the result of an examination of "seventy or eighty thousand species." || Mr. Henslow, the Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge, a man to whom Geology, as well as the professional science which he adorns, is under great * Researches into the Physical History of Mankind; vol. I. pp. 68-97; third ed. + On the Geography and Classification of Animals; pp. 14-18. Prof. Hitchcock, in the American Biblical Repository, vol. XI. p. 17; 1838. § Von Schouw's Fundam. Princip. of a Universal Geography of the Veget. Kingd. German Transl. from the Danish, by the author, with an Atlas; Berlin, 1824. || Amer. Bibl. Repos. as above. Lyell's Principles of Geology, vol. III. p. 7. Distributions into more numerous groups are ascribed to Von Schouw and De Candolle, in the Abridgment of Malte Brun's and Balbi's Geogr. Edinb. 1840, part I. p. 90-93; and into a smaller number, twenty, by De Candolle, as stated by Dr. Prichard in his Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, vol. I. p. 32, third ed.; these differences may be owing to the consultation of different works or editions of the authors, independently of the inherent difficulties of the subject. 66 obligations, remarks that "We do not as yet possess any very accurate information respecting the num"ber and exact extent of the well-defined botanical regions into which the surface of the earth may be 99* mapped out: but he proposes forty-five as an approximating estimate. 66 66 Hence it follows that there must have been separate original creations, perhaps at different and respectively distant epochs. Man, whom the Creator formed to "have dominion over the works of his "hands," to a wide extent of the inferior natures, was brought into being in ONE pair; from which all the varieties of our kind have descended. They are only varieties, effected by circumstances, and not species, which would imply separate primary ancestors. This position, unhappily rejected by some persons, is not only a fact which lies at the foundation of revealed religion, but it is confirmed by an accumulation of proof from anatomical structure, from history, from the theory of language, and from the philosophy of intellectual and moral qualities. For this assertion, I may appeal to the authority of the veteran Blumenbach,† who occupies a station among the highest, in the Comparative Anatomy of the different races of men; and to both the authority and the luminous arguments of Dr. Prichard, in the work before referred to.‡ * Descriptive and Physiological Botany; p. 305. Born 1752; appointed Professor of Medicine in the University of Göttingen in 1778; and died, Jan. 22, 1840. Supplementary Note E, on the Varieties of the Human Species. Man, and a small number of animals peculiarly serviceable to man, are endowed with a capacity of adaptation to all the differences of climate and other circumstances, not indeed unlimited, but extending through a wide range.* This capacity requires, for its complete developement, a gradual proceeding in subjection to the agents of change; for which the life of no individual is sufficiently long, nor even the duration of several generations. The process must be carried on through many steps of descent; and in its course, considerable alterations of structure are slowly produced. * Sec. ed. On the borders of the sandy deserts of Africa, and in many other portions of the hot regions of the globe, men live where the ground under their feet is often 1400 and even more (Fahr.) and the mean heat of the air around them is from 80 to 90o. On the other hand, in the inhabited country of the Tschutschoi, a little within the Arctic circle, Admiral Von Wrangell, in the winter of 1820, had in his house-400 i.e. 720 below the freezing point of water. "The people moved about in the frost of 41o, as gaily as if it were summer. The Yakuts are still more hardy than the Tschutschoi: lying on the ground in the open air, and often insufficiently protected by clothing, they can endure, without the least injury, a degree of cold which would be inevitably [and almost instantaneously] fatal to a European."-Athenæum, June 13, 1840; Review of Von Wrangell's Expedition to the Polar Sea; edited by Colonel Sabine from the Translation of his accomplished lady. The greatest natural cold known is, from the observation of Sir Edward Parry, -550; of Sir John Ross, -60o. LECTURE III. ROMANS XI. 36. Of HIM, and through HIM, and to HIM, are all things to whom be glory for ever. : SOME of the most important positions affirmed in the preceding lecture could not fail to be perceived by my attentive hearers, to be at variance with certain sentiments or interpretations, which are extensively received under the supposition of their being declared, or at least implied, in the Holy Scriptures. It is now my duty to state, in particular detail, what those sentiments and opinions are; and in what manner they stand in contradiction to the facts in the natural history of the earth, to which we have adverted. My auditors will do me the favour to observe, that I speak of opinions and interpretations; the sentiments which men have taken up, and promulgated as the declarations of the Bible. We have not yet arrived at the part of these lectures in which we shall have to examine whether those interpretations are the genuine sense of the divine oracles. It would not be proper to anticipate that inquiry: yet I cannot but be anxious that my friends should keep constantly in mind the avowal made in the first lecture; namely, my conviction that those interpretations are erroneous. I solicit this favour as a |