fared so well, in a country less oppressed by the benumbing influences
of theology, as to tempt any man to follow his example. Probably not
uninfluenced by these considerations, his Catholic majesty's
Consul-General for Egypt kept his theories to himself throughout a long
life, for 'Telliamed,' the only scientific work which is known to have
proceeded from his pen, was not printed till 1735, when its author had
reached the ripe age of seventy-nine; and though De Maillet lived three
years longer, his book was not given to the world before 1748. Even
then it was anonymous to those who were not in the secret of the
anagrammatic character of its title; and the preface and dedication are
so worded as, in case of necessity, to give the printer a fair chance
of falling back on the excuse that the work was intended for a mere 'jeu
d'esprit'.

The speculations of the suppositious Indian sage, though quite as sound
as those of many a "Mosaic Geology," which sells exceedingly well, have
no great value if we consider them by the light of modern science. The
waters are supposed to have originally covered the whole globe; to have
deposited the rocky masses which compose its mountains by processes
comparable to those which are now forming mud, sand, and shingle; and
then to have gradually lowered their level, leaving the spoils of their
animal and vegetable inhabitants embedded in the strata. As the dry
land appeared, certain of the aquatic animals are supposed to have
taken to it, and to have become gradually adapted to terrestrial and
aerial modes of existence. But if we regard the general tenor and style
of the reasoning in relation to the state of knowledge of the day, two
circumstances appear very well worthy of remark. The first, that De
Maillet had a notion of the modifiability of living forms (though
without any precise information on the subject), and how such
modifiability might account for the origin of species; the second,