THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF PALEONTOLOGY. 165 



unnatural obstructions, and the rise of our new civilization is merely 

 the reappearance of a river Avhich once flowed with a less turbulent 

 and less turbid current. Yet it must flow on ; all opposition bas proved 

 in vain, for eacb re-enforcement of the mole has also re-enforced the 

 pressure of the waters. 



Shall we persist in a hopeless endeavor? The dam-builders are 

 still at work, but the rising stream surges with ominous eddies, con- 

 stantly threatening to burst through all obstructions and cover the 

 valley with wreck and ruin. There is only one remedy : We must 

 reopen the natural channel. We must repair and improve its ancient 

 banks remove the dam that obstructs the stream, and build a dike 

 along the shore. 



The religion of the ancients exalted vice as well as Nature. Our 

 present religion suppresses Nature as well as vice. The religion of 

 the future will teach us to distinguish between vice and Nature. 



-*- 



THE ETSE AND PROGEESS OF PALEONTOLOGY * 



Bt Professor T. H. HUXLEY, F. E. S. 



THAT application of the sciences of biology and geology which is 

 commonly known as paleontology took its origin in the mind of 

 the first person who, finding something like a shell or a bone naturally 

 imbedded in gravel or in rock, indulged in speculations upon the nat- 

 ure of this thing which he had dug out this " fossil " and upon the 

 causes which had brought it into such a position. In this rudimentary 

 form, a high antiquity may safely be ascribed to paleontology, inas- 

 much as we know that, five hundred years before the Christian era, the 

 philosophic doctrines of Xenophanes were influenced by his obser- 

 vations upon the fossil remains exposed in the quarries of Syracuse. 

 From this time forth, not only the philosophers, but the poets, the his- 

 torians, the geographers of antiquity occasionally refer to fossils ; and 

 after the revival of learning lively controversies arose respecting their 

 real nature. But hardly more than two centuries have elapsed since 

 this fundamental problem was first exhaustively treated ; it was only 

 in the last century that the archaeological value of fossils their im- 

 portance, I mean, as records of the history of the earth was fully 

 recognized ; the first adequate investigation of the fossil remains of 

 any large group of vertebrated animals is to be found in Cuvier's " Re- 

 cherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles," completed in 1822 ; and so mod- 

 ern is stratigraphical paleontology, that its founder, William Smith, 



* Discourse given at the York meeting of the British Association. Revised by the 

 author. 



