text:  It is quite a legitimate object of science therefore to view the laws of the physical world--whether they regard its mechanic movement its chemistry or its zoology--in their creative as well as reproductive functions; and it is the purpose of a work lately published entitled "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation " and which has drawn to itself considerable attention to collect and arrange whatever hints or fragments of knowledge science affords enabling us to bring the successive phenomena of creation under the formula of general laws