28 EXTINCT MONSTERS 
a home on the earth. To many minds this branch of geology, 
which is simply the natural history of the past, is the most 
fascinating, with which view we fully sympathise. Putting aside 
the study of fossil plants (which is a small branch of the subject), 
we may say of Paleontology, that it interprets to us the world’s 
“lost creations.” In this branch of geology the records are not 
so much the rocks themselves as the fossil skeletons they so 
often contain. 
In some cases, as we shall presently show, the rocks contain 
additional evidences of very considerable value, as throwing light 
on the habits of the creatures, or on their natural surroundings; 
but bones, shells, and other hard parts of animals, are the founda- 
tion on which the science of Paleontology is founded. And here, 
again, we find the same principle at work—viz. that the past must 
be read in the light of the present. However many ages ago it 
it was, whether millions or billions of years ago, that these 
primeval inhabitants of the world enjoyed their existence, the 
same unbroken laws of nature—the visible expressions of a 
Divine and All-powerful Will—were at work, fulfilling His pur- 
poses as now. Flesh and blood were then what they are now, 
and fulfilled the same functions. Bones grew then as they grow 
nowadays. ‘To those bones were attached muscles which ex- 
panded and contracted just as muscles do now. Wings were used 
for flying, fins and paddles for swimming, legs for walking, teeth 
for masticating food, just as they are now. In fact these primi- 
tive inhabitants of the antique world, however different in bodily 
shape from those we see around us now, lived under the same 
universal laws of Physiology as we ourselves do. 
Paleontology, then, is the science which, in the light of Com- 
parative Anatomy and Physiology, rehabilitates the world’s 
ancient inhabitants, clothing their dry bones with flesh, and 
