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This is a sufficient view of the “theory” under which all Europe became a land of philosophical geo logists, for which much of Europe yet fights, and in which much of the rising aspiration is still educated. We need not wonder at the progress of geology. If future writers will pass it, together with the cosmogony of Chaldea, it still influences minds which may be startled at even the following slender criticism, which a systematic writer must not avoid, if he is to do his duty: though, to examine its loud pretences to agree with the sacred records, shall be left to those who can read a Book more often talked of than read. As every reader must needs know the common facts of chemistry, I shall deceive no one by the admission that the whole earth is soluble in a thousand times its weight of water. It was therefore once a thousand times heavier than it is now; so that it remains for this theory to reconcile those two conditions to the laws of the solar system. Again, there being no precipitants, the rocks are formed by the abstraction of the solvent; the unintelligible “subsidence” of this system. If the water entered into abysses, then did one body contain another far larger than itself, as even tints, it would carry the dissolved rocks with it: if evaporated, it at length departed into free space, against the laws of gra vity: if converted into earth, or destroyed, a new che mistry becomes necessary. But the rising and falling of the ocean are treated with as much tranquillity as if the changes of the tide were concerned; as if it could be aught but the destruction and regeneration of oceans; of a hollow sphere whose diameter is more than 8000 miles, and its thickness more than five. If, as has been said, a higher temperature might have rendered it a more active solvent, this is not Mr. Werner’s theory; since his temperature permits the existence of animals.