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a ruminant approaching in character to the Pachyderms. But even this huge creature sinks into insignificance beside another of the Indian Tertiary animals, a tortoise, of which many remains have been found, and which from these would appear have been identical with existing species of land habits, but the carapace or back-plate of which reached the extraordinary length of twenty feet. The Megalochelys Atlas, as this animal has been called, would greatly exceed the largest of living land animals in bulk with the head and tail included in the measurement, it could not be much less than thirty feet long. Dr Falconer, who discovered this singular animal, thinks it may have survived as a species till the peopling of India with human beings, and he thinks it may account for some of the tales of Hindoo mythology, particularly that which represents the world as supported by an elephant standing on the back of a tortoise.

A few bones of monkeys, the family of animals approaching nearest to the human species, have been found in various parts of the world-at Kyson, near Woodbridge, in Surrey; in South America, and in India-all of them in Tertiary strata. As yet, no remains of human beings have been discovered in any similar situation. And hence it is inferred that the formation of the rocks terminating with the uppermost Tertiaries had been completed before man came into existence.

DILUVIAL AGENCY-ELEVATION OF THE LAND OUT OF THE SEA.

The last of our ages is that of the Superficial Deposits, a series of accumulations differing in some respects from rocks, but significant of events scarcely less remarkable than those which we have seen inferred from the earlier formations. This age might, without much impropriety, be called the Age of Great Floods, for it is evident that vast currents of water had traversed the surface of the earth during this time. The first effect of these has been to wear off such prominences as had been left by previous volcanic disturbances of the earth's crust, leaving all bare where once there had been great roughness. For example, there is in Northumberland a break of the superficial strata (carboniferous formation), the consequence of which had been to leave those on one side 500 feet above those on the other side of the fracture. Yet, throughout a course of thirty miles, no trace of this is seen on the surface; all has been worn by floods down to one general level. Another effect was to scoop or wear out great valleys (called valleys of denudation) in surfaces originally level. The matter thus worn off had been carried away in the flood, and dispersed over the surface at the bottom, wherever the form of the ground was favourable to its reception; hence the vast beds of blue and red clay which are found in so many places immediately above the rocks-the till of the agriculturist. Amongst these are generally found imbedded blocks of stone, often of large size, which had been likewise carried off from the mountain

masses to which they originally belonged. In some places, such blocks are also scattered in great numbers over the present surface of the ground, some bearing a water-worn appearance, and others not. It has long been a marvel to geologists how such masses could be transported so far as they appear to have been in many instances. For example, there are masses of Shap Fell all over the country within forty miles round. A piece of Criffel rests on the opposite side of the Solway Firth. Nay, there are blocks on the east coast of England which are supposed to have travelled from the mountains of Norway. One supposition is, that when the land was covered by sea, these masses of stone had been carried off from their native situations by icebergs, which, traversing the ocean, and gradually melting away, dropped them to the bottom. Another view of the subject represents them as carried along by glaciers over the surface of the earth, in the same manner as pieces of rock are still by these means transported along Alpine slopes. For the present, the subject may be said to rest in doubt.

One thing is certainly clear-that the land was, for a time after the close of the Tertiary Formation, covered more or less by the sea. Not only have we this evidenced by the superficial clays, which alone could have had a watery origin, but we see incontestable monuments of it in beds of sea-shells found on grounds now several hundred feet above the level of the ocean. More than this, there are in many countries traces of former sea-beaches, in a succession mounting to as great a height as the position of the shells. All round the coast of Great Britain, there are clear appearances of a sea-beach from forty to sixty feet above the present sea-level. It is in some places a smooth plain several miles in extent, and of considerable breadth, and exactly of that powdery formation which might be expected if a large tract of sandy beach were at this time to be raised up beyond the reach of the sea, and left to become “dry land." Sometimes this beach can be traced on a steep coast or hill-side, in the form of a narrow sloping platform, the sea having worked out such a margin for itself on what was originally a uniform cliff or descent. Such beaches are seen in hilly districts rising in succession above each other to a considerable height, the highest being of course the oldest, or the first formed. They have been observed in Norway and Lapland as well as in Britain, and there are traces of them still more clear in South America. They undoubtedly indicate a rise of the land out of the sea by successive movements, and probably at long intervals. Nor can this be difficult of belief, when we know from accurate observation that the Swedish side of the Baltic is continually though slowly rising at the present time—the rate being about three feet in a century-and that a large tract of the coast of Chili rose four feet in a single night in 1822, in consequence of an earthquake.

S

LAVERY, in one form or other, has existed in the world from the most remote period of history. It existed, as we know, among the patriarchs, and it was a recognised institution among the Jews. So also it existed among the ancient pagan nations-the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans. When we are engaged in reading the history of any ancient state, we are apt to forget that it is only the free inhabitants whom we hear much about; and that, under the same roofs with these free men, there was living an immense population of bondsmen or slaves, who made no appearance in public affairs, and who, by their unhappy fate, were doomed to the performance of menial offices, without the hope of alleviation in their condition.

The

And was no remorse experienced by nations or individuals in reducing members of the human family to compulsory and perpetual servitude? History discloses no such sentiment. practice arose out of the selfishness of barbarism, and did not appear to its perpetrators either sinful or unjust. Debtors were seized, and, in liquidation of petty claims, sold like ordinary property by their ruthless creditors. Gamblers, having lost everything, staked their persons as a last chance; and being unsuccessful, became the bondsmen of the fortunate winner. Men, for their crimes, were deprived of liberty, and publicly sold into bondage. In cases of famine, parents disposed of their children as a marketable commodity, to relieve their own wants, and at the same time provide food for their offspring. And lastly, came war, the scourge of mankind, and the fruitful cause of slavery in

all ancient nations. "It was a law established from time immemorial among the states of antiquity," says a Greek author, "to oblige those to undergo the severities of servitude whom victory had thrown into their hands." There was an exception, however, in the case of civil war, the prisoners taken in which were not made slaves, but generally massacred. Besides the regular wars between nation and nation, it sometimes happened that a vagrant population overran an adjoining country, and made the peaceful and dispossessed inhabitants their slaves. Thus the Spartans were served by a race of hereditary bondsmen, the old inhabitants of the district, called Helots—a term afterwards used by the Romans to designate men in a servile condition. The unfortunate Helots of Sparta occasionally rose in rebellion against their masters, and attempted to gain their liberty; but these efforts were always suppressed with merciless slaughter.

We have, in these and other circumstances, the most conclusive evidence that slavery in ancient times existed on no ground of philosophy or morals-was not sustained on any fine-spun plea that one man was radically inferior to another; but was, as it is still, only a result of rapacity and force. It was long, indeed, before mankind could be brought to recognise its iniquity or impropriety; and even yet, certain nations find a difficulty in viewing it in its true light. There being thus still some controversy on the subject, and liability to misconception, we think it proper to state that, according to an enlightened philosophy, each human being retains inherently the right to his own person, and can neither sell himself, nor be legally bound by any act of aggression on his natural liberty. Slavery, therefore, can never be a legal relation. It rests entirely on force. The slave, being treated as property, and not allowed legal rights, cannot be under legal obligations. Slavery is also inconsistent with the moral nature of man. Each man has an individual worth, significance, and responsibility; is bound to the work of self-improvement, and to labour in a sphere for which his capacity is adapted. To give up this individual liberty, is to disqualify himself for fulfilling the great objects of his being. Hence political societies, which have made a considerable degree of advancement, do not allow any one to resign his liberty, any more than his life, to the pleasure of another. In fact, the great object of political institutions in civilised nations, is to enable man to fulfil, most perfectly, the ends of his individual being. Christianity, moreover, which enjoins us, while we remain in this world, to regulate our conduct with reference to a better, lays down the doctrine of brotherhood and mutual love, of doing as we would be done by,' as one of its fundamental maxims, which is wholly opposed to the idea of one man becoming the property of another. These two principles of mutual obligation, and the worth of the individual, were beyond the comprehension

of the states of antiquity, but are now at the basis of morals, politics, and religion."*

Regardless, or ignorant of such principles, the most enlightened nations of antiquity, as we have said, gave the broadest sanction to slavery; and to this, among other causes, was doubtless owing their final dismemberment. In ancient Rome, the slaves formed a motley population. Some of these unfortunate beings were foreigners from far distant countries, others were natives-some were less civilised than their masters, others much more so—some were employed in tilling their masters' fields, others in teaching their masters the sciences-some were working in chains, and enduring the lash, others living in comfort, and even petted. Thus a rich citizen of Rome, at the commencement of the Christian era, would possess slaves of all nations, filling appropriate offices in his establishment—dark-haired beauties from the east, and golden-haired beauties from the north; cooks from the south of Italy; learned men and musicians from Greece or Egypt; menials and drudges from the remotest part of Scythia, the interior of Africa, or the savage island of Britain. Yes, eighteen centuries ago, when Britain was a distant colony of Rome, the unfortunate inhabitants of our own dear island, torn from their homes, toiled for a Roman master, along with the dark-skinned and more pliant native of Ethiopia.

Out of this promiscuous system of slavery arose the form of slavery with which we in modern times are best acquaintedNegro slavery.

Negroland, or Nigritia, is that part of the interior of Africa stretching from the great desert on the north to the unascertained commencement of Caffreland on the south, and from the Atlantic on the west to Abyssinia on the east. In fact, the entire interior of this great continent may be called the land of the negroes. The ancients distinguished it from the comparatively civilised countries lying along the coasts of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea by calling the latter Libya, and the former Ethiopia. It is upon Ethiopia in an especial manner that the curse of slavery has fallen. At first, as we have already said, it bore but a share of the burden; Britons and Scythians were the fellowslaves of the Ethiopian: but at last all the other nations of the earth seemed to conspire against the negro race, agreeing never to enslave each other, but to make the blacks the slaves of all alike. Thus, this one race of human beings has been singled out, whether owing to the accident of colour, or to their peculiar fitness for certain kinds of labour, for infamy and misfortune; and the abolition of the practice of promiscuous slavery in the modern world was purchased by the introduction of a slavery confined entirely to negroes.

The nations and tribes of negroes in Africa, who thus ulti

*Conversations Lexicon.