EDITORIAL REMARKS. 253 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



MAY, 1839. 



We have this month devoted a portion of the Magazine to the papers 

 read before the Geological Society, on the zoological characters of the 

 Stonesfield jaws ; and having previously given translations of the Me- 

 moirs upon the same subject by MM. de Blainville and Valencienues, 

 our columns will be found to embody all the reasoning that has been 

 advanced for and against the mammiferous nature of these fossil re- 

 mains. The whole subject is one of which the investigation is at- 

 tended with extraordinary interest, depending, however, not so much 

 upon the abstract importance attached to the solution of the problem 

 that has arisen from the " doutes" of M. de Blainville, as upon the 

 ultimate considerations involved in the issue of the controversy. Are 

 we mistaken in supposing that the comparative anatomist has obtain- 

 ed such an insight into those laws which regulate the development of 

 organic structure, — such a knowledge of the limits assigned to devi- 

 ation from uniformity in their operation, — that from a characteristic 

 fragment of a skeleton he shall be able to restore the entire fabric, 

 determine the element in which it was destined to exist, and the rank 

 which it held in the scale of creation ? 



This inquiry, arising out of the present discussion, naturally forces 

 itself upon our attention ; and its vital relation to the science of Ge- 

 ology is so obviously apparent, that the mere allusion to its impor- 

 tance is all the notice that, in this view, the subject requires. In 

 approaching the original question, it is hardly possible to shake off 

 the impression conveyed by negative geological evidence, and to re- 

 gard the matter as one in which the only legitimate data to guide 

 our decision, must be sought for in the inductive reasoning of the 

 comparative anatomist. 



The frequency and abundance in which we find terrestrial mam- 

 mals imbedded in tertiary rocks of marine origin, and the ample evi- 

 dence which exists of secondary strata having often been deposited by 

 the waters of bays, estuaries, or rivers, and under conditions which 



