purpose of this clause. It applies directly and exclusively to the executive. Any attempt to apply it to the legislative or judicial departments would render it totally useless and nugatory. It indirectly recognizes the general right to liberty, and to the use of this remedy; together with the occasional right of the war power, in appropriate cases, to interfere with both. Since the breaking out of the present rebellion, it has been so understood, used, and practised, with the general approbation. of good and patriotic citizens; and by the habeas corpus act of March, 1863, it has received the full indorsement and sanction of the legislative department of the government. By that act the authority of the President, the commander-in-chief, is made a full and perfect defence, in all courts, to any action or prosecution, civil or criminal, pending or to be commenced, for any search, seizure, arrest, or imprisonment, "made or to be made, at any time during the present rebellion," whether instituted by habeas corpus or otherwise. It is to be hoped that the construction of the Constitution on this point, so used, approved, and sanctioned, may be considered as settled.

The common law of England is substantially the same. The king suspends the writ, and Parliament indemnifies his ministers. This is the established form of proceeding. But it is only a form, after all. The suspension is legal and valid, without regard to the indemnity; and if the sovereign should fail to make it in a proper case, and public detriment should accrue in consequence, no doubt his ministers would be held liable to impeachment for the neglect. Indemnity or no indemnity is only the mode of approving or changing the ministry. If Parliament should refuse the indemnity, the consequence would be that the ministry would resign, on account of the failure to carry a majority of Parliament to sustain them, but the validity of the king's act would not be in the least affected.

Under our Constitution the same form might be useful to the same extent of showing unity and strength in support of the government. But the disapproval of the legislature would not be attended with the same consequences in this country as in England. By our Constitution, the different departments of the government are intended to be separate and distinct, each acting independently, and on its own responsibility. This re

sponsibility with the executive and judiciary is so concentrated as to be worth something. But with the legislature it is so diluted as to be of little if any efficacy. In England the omnipotence of Parliament effectually swallows up the other departments. One house exercises the supreme judicial power, and the other exercises the executive power, by controlling the ministry. The framers of our Constitution exhausted their wisdom in endeavors to find some check or restraint for the overwhelming supremacy of the legislative power. But it is to be feared that their failure in this respect will prove as signal, as in the mode of designating the executive.

ART. IV. Manual of Geology: treating of the Principles of the Science, with special reference to American Geological History, for the Use of Colleges, Academies, and Schools. By JAMES D. DANA, M. A., LL. D. Philadelphia: Bliss & Co. 1863. 8vo. pp. 798.

WE suppose that no naturalist in this country has achieved a more distinguished position than the author of this Manual. Perhaps no other has attained equal eminence in two or more very distinct departments of scientific research. Beginning with inorganic nature, Professor Dana's System of Mineralogy

the work of his earlier years gained at once, and in successive editions has maintained, the foremost rank. Advancing to the organic world, and to forms which, to the general apprehension, seem to combine stone, plant, and animal in one, in his splendid volume on the Coral-Zoophytes of the South Pacific Exploring Expedition, he proved his talent for the higher order of morphological studies, elucidated the laws of growth, and revised the systematic arrangement of these curious animals and communities. One of his earliest publications was a brief and unpretending paper upon a minute crustacean animal; in later years his elaboration of the Crustacea of the Exploring Expedition, forming an ample volume or pair of volumes of the publications of that expedition, not

only added greatly to our knowledge in this department, but led to some morphological generalizations, which he has recently applied in a very interesting way to the elucidation of one of the scientific questions of the day, namely, that of man's zoological position. Turning next to the special department assigned to him in the Pacific Exploring Expedition, Geology, that science which, uniting the threads of most other natural sciences, would, as it were, weave into one connected and systematic narrative the whole physical and natural history of the earth throughout all past time, the luminous Report in which Professor Dana published the results of his geological studies during that important exploration appears to contain the germs of most of the characteristic views which are developed, with more or less fulness, in the treatise before us.

The main ideas which underlie, and the spirit which animates, this work, may be briefly indicated by a few detached sentences of the Preface and Introduction. After stating the two reasons which have given to this Manual its American character, namely, the desire to adapt it to the needs of our own students, and a conviction that the geology of this continent exhibits a peculiar simplicity and unity, the author adds:

"North America stands alone in the ocean, a simple, isolated specimen of a continent (even South America lying to the eastward of its meridians), and the laws of progress have been undisturbed by the conflicting movements of other lands. The author has, therefore, written out American Geology by itself as a continuous history."

"It has been the author's aim to present for study, not a series of rocks with their dead fossils, but the successive phases in the history of the earth, its continents, seas, climates, life, and the various operations in progress."

"Geology is rapidly taking its place as an introduction to the higher. history of man. If the author has sought to exalt a favorite science, it has been with the desire that man in whom geological history had its consummation, the prophecies of succeeding ages their fulfilment -might better comprehend his own nobility and the true purpose of his existence."

"The earth..... has been brought to its present condition through a series of changes or progressive formations, and from a state as utterly VOL. XCVII. - NO. 201. 32

featureless as a germ. Moreover, like any plant or animal, it has its special systems of interior and exterior structure, and of interior and exterior conditions, movements, and changes; and, although Infinite Mind has guided all events towards the great end, a world for mind, -the earth has, under this guidance and appointed law, passed through a regular course of history or growth. Having, therefore, as a sphere, its comprehensive system of growth, it is a unit or individuality, ..... a WORLD-KINGDOM."

"The systematic arrangement in the earth's features is everywhere as marked as that of any organic species; and this system over the exterior is an expression of the laws of structure beneath. The oceanic depressions or basins, with their ranges of islands, and the continental plains and elevations, are all in orderly plan, are the ultimate results of the whole line of progress of the earth; and, by their very comprehensiveness, as the earth's great feature-marks, they indicate the profoundest and most comprehensive movements in the forming sphere, just as the exterior configuration of an animal indicates its interior history."

So the world is regarded not only as a cosmos, but as an organism, at least as an organic whole, developed as it were from a germ in the long gestation of the ages. Thus the geographical conceptions of Ritter, familiar to us as expounded by his pupil Guyot, are by a kindred mind felicitously applied, not merely to the present configuration, but to the genesis of our world.

Under this fundamental view, Physiographic Geologythe general survey of the earth's external form and systematic features takes precedence in this Manual, and is concisely presented in forty pages. Next, about twice as many pages are devoted to Lithological Geology, treating of the elements of the earth's structure, first, of the kinds of rocks, and the materials, mineral and fossil, of which they are composed; and then of their condition, or general structure. Then comes Historical Geology, forming the main body of the volume, combining an account of the rocks in the order of their formation with the concurrent steps in the progress of life, from the Azoic time or age, in which no records of organic things are discoverable, through the Paleozoic - the age first of mollusks, then of fishes, then of coal-plants * — and the Mesozoic,

* Since the publication of the work under notice, a distinguished naturalist has

when reptiles predominated, to the Canozoic, to the age of Mammalia, and finally to the Era of Mind, the age of man, at length placed upon the completed earth" to have dominion. over it," which earth now subserves its chief and predestined end in nurturing this ultimate creation, this "archon of mammals," for a still more exalted stage, that of spiritual existence.

Finally, Dynamical Geology, or an account of the physical agencies or forces which have been active in the production of geological changes, and of the laws and modes of their action, occupies about a hundred and forty interesting pages; and is followed by a few words upon Cosmogony. The latter is merely a summary of the views of Guyot, looking to a harmony of the Mosaic cosmogony with modern science, views which Professor Dana has adopted and maintained elsewhere more in detail, and which, under the circumstances, are naturally enough here reproduced. We regard them with curious interest, but without much sympathy for the anxious feeling which demands such harmonies. We have faith in revelation, and faith in science, in each after its kind; but, as respects cosmogony, we are not called upon to yield an implicit assent to any proposed reconciliation of the two. Yet at the same time we would reverently acknowledge the value of the fact, that the general order of events in creation, as asserted or implied in the Mosaic narrative, on the whole appears to accord, or may be fairly made to accord, with that deduced by science.

An Appendix contains a few special notes, of scientific interest, a Catalogue of American Localities of Fossils, a brief Synopsis of the contents of the work, a list of authorities, and some

proposed the removal of the Carboniferous or great coal period from the Paleozoic to the Mesozoic, from the ancient to the mediaval geological age, drawing the great line of distinction between the Devonian and Carboniferous, instead of between the close of the latter, or the Permian, and the Triassic period or epoch. Had the innova. tion been earlier proposed, we do not suppose it would have been adopted in the work before us, either on the ground of change wrought by great mountain disturbance, or on palæontological data. So far as we can judge, the clearest and most marked division of all in the life of the globe seems to have been between the Permian and the Triassic, while no such chasm separates the Carboniferous from the Devonian. Reptiles (mostly Batrachian) indeed existed in the Carboniferous, but so did coalplants in the Devonian, in numerous species, some of them true Gymnosperms even, if we may trust Mr. Dawson.