[page] 6

HOME AND COLONIAL LIBRARY, NO. XXII.

DARWIN'S JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD. PART 1. Murray, London.—

This number contains in the form of a journal the history of the voyage of the Beagle, and a sketch of the observations made by the writer on the natural history and the geology of the countries he visited. In the course of the voyage many relics were found of those large animals, like oxen and elephants, which have lately obtained the name of megatheria, or the gigantic beasts of the ancient world. The journal before us tends to remove one of the difficulties which has embarrassed contending writer upon this subject. Hitherto the remains of these beasts have been discovered in depths and strata which have enabled sceptical and infidel writers on geology to claim for them with some speciousness an origin much earlier than the Deluge. In the journal before us it appears that these bones were discovered by the officers of the Beagle upon the very surface of some newly discovered coast and islands, and, as the writer of the journal says, so mingled up in common with the animal and vegetable matter of the present day, as to prove that these remains must have been deposited, and of course that these vast animals must have lived, in these unknown islands a very few centuries ago. Of so little worth is the current geology of the day, and so quickly is it hastening to the same oblivion into which the Huttonian and Plutonian theories have passed within our own memory.