most profiigate lives, became secret accusers of their sons, and obtained lettres de cachet against them !' Tom. II. p. 18146

Such is the miscellaneous structure of the two volumes, with which M. M. Jouy and Jay have been pleased to amuse the good people of Paris. For our own parts, we confess that we are not inclined to look with much indulgence upon the very, light reading and light thinking contained in them. Books of this sort serve to keep up the frivolous and shallow literature which is only fit for a nation of talkers :-they serve up scraps and fragments of knowledge, the mere emptyings of a common-place book, to nurse and encourage the indolence of those who do not like the trouble of thinking for theinselves. It often happens also, that the knowledge thus obtained is of the most spurious sort; having been derived at second-hand from the most questionable sources, because the writer himself has not sufficient erudition to consult the genuine authorities. Of M. Jouy's qualifications as a literary guide, we shall give two instances. In his first volune occurs the following passage, which we take almost at random,

. Sophocles was carried before a tribunal by his children. Aristides and Themistocles were banished. Phocion and Socrates drank hemlock : the memory of the latter (Socrates) was insalted by Cicero himself, who treats him as a usurer in one of his familiar letters, for having given orders to buy up in an under hand way, the goods of his friend the native of Crotona.'

We will say nothing of the school-boy prattle about Sophoeles, Aristides, and Themistocles. That Cicero would have insulted the memory of Socrates, we deem wholly inipossible. We are ignorant of the sources whence M. Jouy has derived the fact; certainly not from any of the letters of Cicero, with which we profess ourselves not wholly unacquainted. The fact is, that the memory of the Grecian sage was held almost in idolatrous veneration by Cicero, and that we can scarcely open one of his philosophical treatises, without meeting with the panegyrio of Socrates in language usuaHy appropriated to superior natures. We suspect that M. Jouy's knowledge of Latin is small, that of Greek he knows still less, and that with whatever portion of either he may be tinctured, it is of tecent acquisition. As to those who have begun their course of classical reading at an advanced period of life, we will remind M. Jouy of the exclamation of Cicero himself : • Ofipabess * autem homines scis, quam insolentes sint.'*

The other blunder is one into which their natural vivacity is too apt to betray French writers, when they trust themselves with remarks on the laws, or constitution, or manners of Great Britain. It should seem as if the dense fogs that overcloud our island, had bedimmed every English institution and every English custom to the vision of a Frenchman. We will translate the passage. It is put into the mouth of an Englishman, who is debating the subject of their different forms of government, with a citizen of the United States.

Perhaps,' says the Englishman, facts will be thrown in my teeth, which give the lie every day to the boasted rights of which we are so proud. I shall be asked, where is the liberty of the country where two or three families manage the government; where all the prejudices, all the abuses of aristocracy are combined ; where the sovereignty of the people is confined to the saturnalia of the hustings; where the citizen who happens to be taking his walk on the banks of the Thames, may be pressed by a few drunken sailors, and, by the order of a subaltern clerk of the admiralty, embarked in a vessel which carries him to the other extremity of the globe, to the tune of Rule Britannia. I shall be asked, where is the liberty of a country where even the habeas corpus does not prevent a person from being thrown into prison for a debt of five shillings. A number of similar questions might be put to me. Instead of answering them, I should say, that we are free in every other respect ; free to knock down a ministerial candidate, to box with an English peer in the street, to sell our wives in the public market, and to break the glasses of the King's carriage on his way to the House of Lords.'

We have put these choice specimens of knowledge, candour, and good breeding into Italics. They need not a formal refutation. Yet, it is such nonsense as this, that the lackney writers of Paris administer to their customers, and it is with such absurdities, that the literary appetite of Paris is content to be fed.

Art. III. Outlines of Oryctology. An Introduction to the Study of

Fossil Organic Remains; especially those found in the British Strata ; intended to aid the Student in his Enquiries respecting the Nature of Fossils, and their Connection with the Formation of the Earth. With Illustrative Plates. By James Parkinson, Fel. low of the Royal College of Surgeons, M.G.S. and W.S. &c. &c.

8vo. pp. 346. (With ten Plates.) Price 12. London. 1822. THAT "HAT our globe has, at some period of remote antiquity,

suffered extensive changes and revolutions, there cannot arise the slightest doubt, independently altogether of the unquestionable record of the Deluge, The nature of these

changes, however, and the manner in which they have been produced, can be inferred only from the monuments which the more indestructible parts of the Earth still exhibit ; and these present to the naturalist and the antiquary the most interesting objects of research and contemplation. They connect the most minute observations with the most sublime and extended conceptions of the duration, magnitude, and infinite diversity of the works of creation, and place before us the infancy, if not the origin of our planet. The pursuit of this branch of philosophy, particularly in its relations to the history of the Creation and of the Deluge, may, perhaps, incline us to view it with too much partiality ; but we cannot look upon any department of human research as more interesting : there is no one that teems with more curious facts, more pleasing details, or more unexpected conclusions. On this, as on other branches of Natural History, much ridicule has been thrown by those who devote themselves to pursuits deemed more intellectual ; yet surely, the Antiquities of the Globe itself, are at least of as much importance as those of any of the particular nations who have inhabited its surface. In the ruins of Pompeii or of Gerasa, we may discover monuments of the power and grandeur of the Romans, and acquire some knowledge of their manner of life; but, in the fossil remains of the quarries of Paris, the London basin, and the banks of the Ohio, we behold the diversified plans of the Creator of the world, and learn, where we cannot comprehend, to worship and adore Him.

In tracing the hand of God in those monuments which now remain of a former order of things, two methods have been adopted by naturalists. The one is, to follow, according to their relative antiquity, the arrangement of the rocks which compose the crust of the globe, and to consider the various organic remains which they contain. The want of sufficient data is an insuperable objection to this arrangement, although it is in other respects the most eligible. The only good classification of rocks that has been made with this view, is that of Werner, but it is by no means so free from exception as to warrant its general adoption. The other method is, to arrange organic remains according to the classes and orders of animals and vegetables from which they seem to have sprung; the

; arrangement which Mr. Parkinson has adopted both in the work before us, and in his former splendid work, “ The Organic “ Remains of a Former World.” To humour the natural propensity which the mind has to ascend, rather than to descend in a scale, he begins with vegetable remains, and thence proceeds to consider the remains of zoophytes, and the more perfect animals in their order. In this course we shall follow

1

him, by abstracting and condensing the most interesting facts which he has collected.

The remains of vegetables are, perhaps, with the exception of shells and zoophytes, the most numerous and extensive; specimens occurring of all the different natural orders, from the most delicate moss to the largest tree, and of almost every degree of hardness which rocks are found to possess. As the species cannot, however, owing to the usual state of the parts, be classed according to any Botanical System, we may obtain clearer notions of this part of the subject, by considering them, as is partially done by Mr. Parkinson, in a mineralogical point of view, according to the substances into which they are found converted.

Mr. Parkinson characterizes the first stage of vegetable mineralization, by the term Bituminous. Wood,

moss, and other vegetable productions, are changed into this state, not, apparently, hy being penetrated with any thing like a petrifying solution, nor by being exposed to subterranean fire or heat, but by the presence of moisture, the exclusion of air, and their being compressed by superincumbent materials.

Pressure alone, indeed, is adequate to the conversion of such productions into a substance of very great hardness ; for, by artificial pressure, sphagna, byssi, and other soft mosses, have been brought to take a tolerable polish like the hard woods and marble. But when the change arising from pressure is modified by the presence of moisture and the exclusion of air, vegetable substances acquire very peculiar properties. They commonly preserve their original texture and appearance so perfectly that the particular tree or plant can be recognised. Even trees of great diameter are often changed to their very centre, while their leaves and the most delicate parts which are so changed, often preserve their texture uninjured. They are then found to resist the further action of water, and, wben applied to useful purposes, to be almost impenetrable to it; but the water that may chance to be lodged among their minute interstices, they tenaciously retain. The bark is frequently unchanged, and, in the case of birch and some other trees, preserves its colour and glossy, varnished appearance. They are in general very unfriendly to animal life, and are therefore indestructible by insects.

Wood and other vegetable productions in the different stages of bituminization, are found in peat-bogs, and at Bovey, Balycastle, the Cape of Good Hope, and many other places. This is the Bovey coal of this country, and the Suturbrand of Iceland,

• This fossil wood,' says Mr. Parkinson, 'may be said to pass into

jet, which is found, especially in the neighbourhood of Whitby, in Yorkshire, in a state very nearly approximating to that of Bovey coal.....Jet is found in other situations, in a different form; resembling, in its shape and the markings of its surface, parts of the branches and trunks of trees, but rarely possessing, internally, any marks of vegetable origin; a circumstance easily accounted for, if its previous softening be admitted.' p. 7.

The evidence for this transition, given by M. M. Chaptal and Fourcroy, though omitted by our Author, is still more decisive. The latter mentions a specimen in which the one end was obviously wood but little changed, and the other pure jet. The former transmitted to the cabinet of Languedoc, several specimens which were ligneous externally, and perfect jet in the internal parts, distinctly exhibiting the transition of the one into the other. According to Chaptal also, there have been dug up at Montpellier, whole cart-loads of trees converted into jet; their original forms being so distinctly preserved, that he could often detect the species to which they belonged. He instances a walnut-tree completely converted into jet, found at Vachey, and a specimen of a beech similarly changed, from Bosrup in Scania. The same distinguished Author found a wooden pail, and also a wooden shovel, converted into pure jet. It would shew, we think, a very sceptical spirit, to hesitate in our decision, after such proofs, resting on the testimony of men so eminent in science.

The next class are those vegetable substances which may be more correctly said to be petrified, than the bituminated sorts. The stony materials which are most usually found to constitute petrifactions of this description, are flint, lime, and bituminous earth, of which the flint is by far the most common. There is often a new transmutation, or change of substance, in the fossil vegetable ; but sometimes there is only an earthy impregnation. The stony matter, especially in flint, is commonly diffused through every part of the petrified mass, and seems to be ultimately united with their integral molecules. It has been principally formed in minute crystallizations, which, by mutual and regular apposition, have gradually formed a concrete substance; a process plainly indicated by most of the specimens of this kind having an investiture or crust of extremely minute crystals, which are sometimes even visible on each fascicle of the fibres, and on the sides of interstices and cavities. Of wood so petrified, there seem to be two sorts, namely, that which has, and that which has not, undergone bituminous fermentation. The latter is usually in the state of rotten wood as to its texture, but its specific gravity soon undeceives those who suppose it to be wood of this kind.