2 PALAEONTOLOGY 



brata and the teeth of the Mammalia, has been advanced 



by the more frequent and closer adherence to such type dis- 

 covered in extinct animals, and thus the highest aim of the 

 zoologist has been greatly promoted by palaeontology. 



But no collateral science has profited so much by pake- 

 ontology as that which teaches the structure and mode of 

 formation of the earth's crust, with the relative position, 

 time, order, and mode of formation of its constituent stratified 

 and unstratified parts. Geology, indeed, seems to have left her 

 old handmaiden mineralogy, to rest almost wholly upon 

 her young and vigorous offspring, the science of organic 

 remains. 



By this science the law of the geographical distribution 

 of animals, as deduced from existing species, is shown to have 

 been in force during periods of time long antecedent to human 

 history, or to any evidence of human existence ; and yet, in 

 relation to the whole known period of life-phenomena upon 

 this planet, to have been a comparatively recent result of 

 geological forces determining the present configuration and 

 position of continents. Hereby palaeontology throws light 

 upon a most interesting branch of geographical science, that, 

 viz., which relates to former configurations of the earth's sur- 

 face, and to other dispositions of land and sea than prevail 

 at the present day. 



Finally, palaeontology has yielded the most important facts 

 to the highest range of knowledge to which the human intel- 

 lect aspires. It teaches that the globe allotted to man has 

 revolved in its orbit through a period of time so vast, that the 

 mind, in the endeavour to realize it, is strained by an effort 

 like that by which it strives to conceive the space dividing 

 the solar system from the most distant nebulae. 



Palaeontology has shown that, from the inconceivably 

 remote period of the deposition of the Cambrian rocks, the 



earth has been vivified by !hc mi's lighl and heat, has been 



