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General Considerations on the Organic Bemains, and in parti- 

 cular on the Insects^ which have been found in Amber. By 

 Professor F. J. Pictet. 



The history of the animals and vegetables which have lived 

 in epochs anterior to our own, presents a connected series of 

 remarkable facts, from which palaeontologists endeavour to 

 derive a knowledge of the laws which have regulated the de- 

 velopment of life, and the succession of organized beings in 

 the series of geological eras. The greater part of these laws 

 have, as yet, been established merely from the study of a 

 small number of classes ; and we may, therefore, entertain 

 some doubts as to their generality, the more so, as each of 

 these divisions exhibits numerous special features in its pa- 

 laDontological history. Animals are better known, in this 

 respect, than vegetables ; at the same time, the laws which 

 refer to this kingdom cannot be sufficiently established until 

 all the groups which compose it shall have been better studied 

 in their successive faunas, and more accurately compared. 

 Until then, we run the risk of deducing general rules from 

 special facts, and of transferring to animals in general, results 

 which are true only in reference to a portion of them. 



Unfortunately, it is still required that the fossil remains of 

 all the classes should be equally well observed, and that we 

 could dare to expect for all that we should be able to com- 

 plete their history, which is often long and complicated. 

 "While some animals have transmitted to us, as a proof of 

 their existence, solid and well characterized remains, others, 

 on the contrary, softer and more delicate, have passed away, 

 without leaving any traces, because they had no parts suffi- 

 ciently hard to admit of preservation in a fossil state. The 

 vertebrates by their bones, the mollusca by their shells, and 

 a great number of polypes by their polypiers, furnish to the 

 palaeontologist the means of reconstructing, in his own mind, 

 the population of the remote periods, because these hard bo- 

 dies have been buried in the successive deposits left by the 



