584 PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF PALAEONTOLOGY. 



We turn to tlie exauiiuation of the collection of fossil remains, then, 

 bearing this truth clearly in our minds, that at best it contains only an 

 imperfect record of the past ; that it is a history, some of whose leaves 

 are certainly torn out — we know not how many or how few — though, 

 judging by the present condition of things, we surmise that their teach- 

 ings would not contradict any duly limited deduction from the informa 

 lion we derive from other sources. 



III. — ApPLIOATION of natural HISTORY TO TlIE ELUCIDATION OF 

 FOSSILS, OR "PALAEONTOLOGY." 



1. An iiDportant question meets us on the threshold, as it met those 

 who first directed their attention to fossils: How do we know that these 

 curiously-formed bodies, often to all appearance of one substance with 

 the rock in which they are imbedded, really are the remains of creatures 

 Avhich have lived ? How do we know that they are not what the ancients 

 supposed them to be, Zj/sws nahira', sports and freaks of inorganic nature, 

 produced in blind imitation of living bodies, just as the hoarfrost on the 

 Avindow i)anes simulates the foliage of a tree! 



We know that fossils are the remains of animals and plants by pre- 

 cisely the same common-sense reasoning as that which led Eobinson 

 Crusoe, seeing the impression of a human foot on the sand, to conclude 

 that a man had been there. The foot mark might by possibility have 

 been an accident, a liisns riaturw, but pending the iiroof that it was so 

 the precautions of the shipwrecked mariner exhibited the soundness of 

 his judgment. We cannot experimentally prove that fossils are truly the 

 remains of dead animals and plants any more than we can expenmentally 

 demonstrate that the utensils recently brought home from the arctic re- 

 gions really belonged to the crew of the "Erebus" and "Terror;" but all the 

 facts, the condition in which the things were found, the marks upon them, 

 agree with this hypothesis, and none oppose it. On like grounds, our be- 

 lief that fossils are the remains of beings which once lived has acquired 

 tirm hold and remains unshaken; the conditions under which they are 

 found, and all their marks, agree with the hypothesis; while increasing 

 knowledge, so far from shaking, is incessantly, and in very wonderful 

 ways, strengthening the foundations of this as of every truth. 



2. The extent to which it enables us to reason to the unknown is com- 

 monly, and in a great measure justly, regarded as one of the best tests of 

 the truth or falsehood of a scientific theory, and none has evermore bril- 

 liantly stood the application of this test than that now referred to. For 

 if fossils really are the remains of living beings we may reasonably ex- 

 pect, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that the animals and 

 plants of which they are the exuvia came under the operation of the same 

 great law of the invariable correlation of organic i^eculiarities, which has 

 been shown above to be manifested in the present creation, and it might 

 be fairly anticipated that the same logical process which enables us to 

 reason from the structure of the hair of a recent animal to its whole li-ame, 

 or from the peculiarities of the wood of an existing plant to its fruit, and 

 the minor particulars of its embryology would be equally available when 

 applied to the extinct inhabitants of the world. 



The magnificent researches of Cuvier first practically demonstrated 

 the justice of these surmises, and showed that the laws of correlation of 

 parts deduced from the observation of living animals hold good to a won- 

 derful extent among the extinct forms; so that to one as thoroughly 

 acquainted as he was with the details of animal organization, an isolated 

 fragment of a fossil bone, or an odd tooth, was, frequently, sufficient to 



