from the atmosphere by conductors either in fair or foul Magnetic attraction which guides the needle of the com- pass, caused by the influence of the sun upon the earth The Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis, or the northern and southern lights, produced by the caloric, that runs from the equator to the poles, and there passes upward into the rarer regions of the atmosphere- Gravitation, also, produced by the sun.. Cohesive attraction proved by a variety of experiments, to be the effect of caloric- Both the diurnal rotation and annual revolution of our earth, and of all the planets of 189 LECTURE I. THE ORIGIN OF OUR GLOBE ASTRONOMICALLY AND GEOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED, AND THE MOSAIC HISTORY OF IT JUSTIFIED AND DEFENDED BY SCIENCE. A subject, more popular and attractive to the masses than the above, might, I am well aware, have been selected for discussion,-for the public taste has, in a measure, been vitiated by the too great prevalence of frivolous reading matter, but none more intrinsically important can be named among all the various topics of remark:-For, certainly, to no higher or nobler purpose can the powers of mind-the force of argument or the developments of science be devoted, than to the defence of the word and unimpeachable veracity of Him, who established all mental, moral and physical law, from the assaults, which have, from time to time, been made upon them. Strange, indeed, is it, that there should be any necessity for such a defence; but yet it is as true as it is strange. With the most plausible sophistries—with an almost unlimited invention of petty quibbles and objections-with an untiring industry, worthy of a better cause sometimes even with a rankling, spiteful and burning malice, the very incarnation of the pit, have that word and veracity been assailed. But against no |