that they can be read only by the higher powers of the microscope; while of many we have no other relic save the passing footprint or the slimy trail that was left on the yielding sands of a former sea-shore. In whatever state they may be found, they are taken up by the paleontologist, compared with existing plants and animals, and arranged, as far as their nature will permit, according to the classifications of the botanist and zoologist. To the palæontologist, therefore, we commit these relics of primeval life, and ask of him to tell-Whether they are the same in kind as those that now adorn our fields and people the land and waters; whether they were of a simpler and lowlier kind that gradually rose, as time rolled on, to their present forms; whether they were of tinier or of more gigantic dimensions; or whether they varied according to external conditions-here dwarfing and dying out, and there some newer creations increasing and spreading under conditions that were favourable to their existence? In fine, we ask of him the history of these extinct forms, as we demand from the botanist and zoologist the history of the plants and animals that now flourish around us; and, combining the living with the extinct, and the recent with the remote, the highest aim of our science is to discover the Creative Plan which binds the whole into one unbroken and harmonious life-system.

It is true that many of these fossils are so fragmentary and obscure that they cannot yet be deciphered, and others are so different from anything now existing in the vegetable or animal world that no definite place can be assigned them. It is also true that the science of Paleontology has little more than passed its infancy, and that of the innumerable relics entombed in the rocky strata of different regions only a small proportion can have yet been discovered. Notwithstanding all this, so enthusiastic has been the research,

and so attractive the study, that much satisfactory work has been done, and, by the aid of some of the highest minds in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and America, palæontology has already taken a permanent place on the roll of human knowledge. Under the hand of a Brongniart, a Goëppert, or a Lindley, these stony stems have started anew into life and verdure, and tangled the swampy jungle or waved in the upland forest; under the reconstructing skill of a Cuvier, an Agassiz, or an Owen, these scattered bones have been reunited in intelligible symmetry, and once more repeopled the earth, the air, and the ocean; while under the magic lenses of an Ehrenberg these muds, and marls, and chalks, have become instinct with life, and ancient waters swarm with innumerable forms.

"The dust we tread upon was once alive."

Much as these and many others have done, year after year is still adding largely to our knowledge of the PAST LIFE of the Globe; and the time, it is hoped, is not far distant when Geology shall be enabled to read, through these fossil chips and fragments, the Life-History of the World, with as much, if not with greater, certainty than we can now read the phases of human history itself, as displayed in the successive developments of Ninevites and Egyptians, of Greeks and Romans, of medieval Goths and modern Anglo-Saxons.

Exciting, however, as this history of the world's Past must be, even to minds the most illiterate, it may be fairly questioned at the outset-To whom, and for what purpose, is all this research and ingenuity expended? Is Palæontology a theme merely for the gratification of idle curiosity and ignorant wonder; or has it, like every true science, qualities of sterling value that appeal at once to the intellectual and physical exigencies of Man? Does it bear in any way on the industrial purposes of life; does it present

itself in the light of an exalting intellectual exercise; or, combining both these qualities, does it lead to sounder and more ennobling views of our relationship to God and Creation? If it does neither, it is no true science, and stands unworthy to be ranked with the legitimate subjects of intellectual research. Luckily, however, it does all, and recommends itself, as it were, instinctively to the inquiring and reflective mind. Guided by its deductions, the identification of rock formations, which was formerly in a great measure a matter of hap-hazard, is now a certainty. Fifty years ago the miner and engineer had little to direct them in their researches, save the very variable tints of colour, the structure, or other external aspects of rock-masses. Now, however, a fossil branch, a tooth, or a few scattered fishscales, will enable them to identify with certainty strata in distant localities, and so save years of unnecessary toil and thousands of useless expenditure. There is, for instance, in Britain a red sandstone beneath, and a red sandstone above, our most valuable coal-fields—so like in many respects, that which is which mere mineral characteristics cannot always determine. Shall we ignorantly dig through the one for that mineral fuel which never lies beneath it; or shall we, mistaking the other, maintain that it is folly to pierce through its strata? Where the mere mineralogist stands perplexed, the palæontologist proceeds in the confidence of certainty, from the detection of a Holoptychian fish-scale which stamps the existence of the Old Red, or the discovery of a tiny Palæoniscus which is equally decisive of the New. Exalted as may be the task of solving the physical and vital problems of the globe, the duty of turning to account its mineral and metallic treasures is not less worthy or important. Science acquires fresh power and position when combined with practice; Philosophy new dignity when ministering to Humanity.

Again, a science that opens up so much of the Past, that reveals so many new forms of life and organisation, cannot fail to have an exalting effect as a purely intellectual exercise. The anatomical reasonings-the skill required to reconstruct such scattered fragments-the detection of means to an end-all this, and much more that must readily suggest itself to the thinking mind, cannot fail to stamp Palæontology as one of the highest themes that can engage enlightened intelligence. Nor is the new light which its deductions have thrown on other branches of natural science among the least of its claims to general attention. The revivifying, as it were, of so many extinct forms of existence has given a new significance to the science of Life; and henceforth no view of the vegetable or animal kingdoms can lay claim to a truly scientific character that does not embody the discoveries of the palæontologist. In fact, so inseparably woven into ONE GREAT SYSTEM are all fossil forms with those now existing, that we cannot treat of the one without considering the other; and can never hope to arrive at a knowledge of Creative Law by any method which, however accurate as regards the one, is not equally careful and accurate as regards the other. Furthermore, connected as the whole phases of external nature are into one beautiful COSMOS, the mind that remains in ignorance of their history can form but a very imperfect, if not an altogether erroneous, notion of its own relationship and connection therewith. For, while the scope of human duty is circumscribed by our relations to external nature, by our relations to our fellow-men, and by our relations to God, a knowledge of these relations as manifested in the great scheme of Creation is altogether indispensable. In the eloquent language of our motto-" So long as we are ignorant of these things, the perfect development of the human mind cannot be hoped for or even conceived. With

out this knowledge, the immortal spirit of man cannot attain to a consciousness of its own dignity, or of the rank which it occupies in Creation." Still more: if existing nature furnishes the theologian with irrefragable proofs of unity of plan and design throughout Creation-if his conceptions of Deity are enlarged and his reverence increased by the study of these adaptations-much more must they be exalted when he finds the same harmonies of design and the same unity of plan running through untold ages, and spreading and ramifying through forms so numerous and varied that, varied and rife as existing Life may be, it constitutes but the merest fraction of the Life that has been, and of the forms that have passed away.

Such is the nature and scope of Paleontology-a science whose function is to extract from the sandstones, and limestones, and clays of the stratified crust, the petrified remains of plants and animals, and from these remains to reconstruct the forms to which they belonged, so as to arrive at some intelligible conception of the Life that formerly tenanted the land and peopled the waters. These sandstones, and limestones, and clays, in all their various repetitions, are but the sediments of pre-existing lakes and estuaries and seas; and the fossils they imbed will be more or less perfectly preserved, just as they were deposited in the areas where they lived and grew, or were drifted from a distance in detached and scattered fragments-according as they were rapidly enveloped from further decay, or exposed to the wasting influences of the air and water— and, above all, according to the preservative character of the stratum that contains them. Their imperfection, and the difficulty of reading aright their characters, is greatly increased by the fact that they are for the most part the chance findings of the quarryman and miner, and extracted