OX THE METHOD OF ZADIG. 473 



nothing of table-turners and spirit-rappers, somebody has not per- 

 ceived the easy avenue to nonsensical notoriety open to any one 

 who will take up the good old doctrine that fossils are all lusus 

 naturae,. 



Tbe position would be impregnable, inasmuch as it is quite impos- 

 sible to prove the contrary. If a man choose to maintain that a fossil 

 oyster-shell, in spite of its correspondence, down to every minutest par- 

 ticular, with that of an oyster fresh taken out of the sea, was never 

 tenanted by a living oyster, but is a mineral concretion, there is no 

 demonstrating his error. All that can be done is to show him that, 

 by a parity of reasoning, he is bound to admit that a heap of oyster- 

 shells outside a fishmonger's door may also be ''sports of Nature," and 

 that a mutton-bone in a dust-bin may have had the like origin. And 

 when you can not prove that people are wrong, but only that they are 

 absurd, the best course is to let them alone. 



The whole fabric of paleontology, in fact, falls to the ground unless 

 we admit the validity of Zadig's great principle, that like effects imply 

 like causes ; and that the process of reasoning from a shell, or a tooth, 

 or a bone, to tbe nature of the animal to which it belonged, rests abso- 

 lutely on the assumption that the likeness of this shell, or tooth, or 

 bone to that of some animal with which we are already acquainted, is 

 such that we are justified in inferring a corresponding degree of like- 

 ness in the rest of the two organisms. It is on this very simple prin- 

 ciple, and not upon imaginary laws of physiological correlation, about 

 which, in most cases, we know nothing whatever, that the so-called 

 restorations of the paleontologist are based. 



Abundant illustrations of this truth will occur to every one who is 

 familiar with paleontology ; none is more suitable than the case of 

 the so-called Bdemnites. In the early days of the study of fossils, 

 this name was given to certain elongated stony bodies, ending at one 

 extremity in a conical point, and truncated at the other, which were 

 commonly reputed to be thunderbolts, and as such to have descended 

 from the sky. They are common enough in some parts of England ; 

 and, in the condition in which they are ordinarily found, it might be 

 difficult to give satisfactory reasons for denying them to be merely 

 mineral bodies. 



They appear, in fact, to consist of nothing but concentric layers of 

 carbonate of lime, disposed in subcrystalline fibers, or prisms, perpen- 

 dicular to the layers. Among a great number of specimens of these 

 Belemnites, however, it was soon observed that some showed a conical 

 cavity at the blunt end ; and, in still better preserved specimens, this 

 cavity appeared to be divided into chambers by delicate, saucer-shaped 

 partitions, situated at regular intervals one above the other. Now, 

 there is no mineral body which presents any structure comparable to 

 this, and the conclusion suggested itself that the Belemnites must be 

 the effects of causes other than those which are at work in inorganic 



