of land animals, while contemporarily therewith other portions of the
globe might be undergoing changes beneath the ocean. It is not
improbable that the human species dwelt nearly stationary for ages on
the old continents of Africa and Asia, while Europe and America were
covered with water. Supposing these new continents formed, either by the
gradual subsidence of the sea or the rising of its bed, successive
inhabitants would follow in the order presented by existing organic
remains. While covered by the sea, what now form Europe and America
could only be peopled by marine animals; but as the land rose or the
waters subsided into their ocean channels, and dry land appeared,
reptiles and amphibiæ might become the occupants; next, as the earth
became drier and more salubrious, the new continent would be resorted to
by terrestrial animals; in a still more advanced stage of purification
and salubrity, man himself, as the lord of all the preceding classes of
immigrants, would take possession, and as he still continues the living
occupant it is premature to look for his petrifaction.


ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES.

Science has mastered many perplexities, but is almost powerless as ever
in generation. All that lives, and still more all that moves, must have
a pre-existing germ formed independently of the created being, but which
is essential to its existence, and fixes the type of organization. The
old adage--_omne animal ab ovo_--may be taken as generally true. But
though every animal has its primordial egg or germ, all germs are not
identical. In the beginning of life there are other organic elements
besides the ovum. Partly on direct proof and partly on good analogy, it
may be inferred that these differ in different species--that each in the
first stages of existence is bound by a different and immutable mode of