M. Blainville on Ichthyolites. 107 
Such a work could not have been executed as it ought to have 
been, either in Paris or in the Paris Museum. It ought not to have 
been attempted, but by him at least, whose experience in geology 
rendered him competent, from other knowledge, acquired in other 
places, to verify the probable truth or detect the fallacy or imperfec= 
tion of the reports of places which he was unable to visit. That the 
attempt has consequently failed in its most essential part, is but too plain. 
We wish that, what we have said, (and we might say much more 
did our limits permit,) would impress, not only on our neighbours 
but on the geologists of our own country, the necessity of keeping a 
steady regard, in their investigations, on the ultimate purposes to 
which these ought to tend or be directed. Geology itself, the history 
of the globe of the earth, is a difficult, severe, abstruse and laborious 
study. It requires much personal labour, much time, much acute- 
ness, some reading, much freedom from system and prejudice, and 
an earnest desire for truth; with a cautious, rigid, severe, logic, and 
trained habits of a close and strict reasoning, which partakes often as 
much of moral and metaphysical, as of mathematical thinking and 
induction. It is not the collecting of specimens, or the forming of 
sections in the closet, and of coloured maps from the imagination, or 
from much conjecture and little observation, which constitute geolo- 
gy; and, this abstracted, there is little in it to satisfy the craving 
desire for ease and amusement united, and for some poor temporary 
fame to be acquired by papers in transactions and systems of Scot- 
land or Siberia, on which the dilettantes in science live. Hence the 
labour is shunned; and the study evaporates in the far easier task of 
collecting bones and shells, in marvelling at the crocodile and rhino- 
ceros which occupy the place since held by the two kings of Brent- 
ford, or at the kyena who proves the hardness of his jaws upon the 
bones of Yorkshire rats, and at the nature of A/bum Grecum. 
But we must reserve our general criticisms on the present state of 
this science for a fairer opportunity, and return to Monsieur Blainville. 
We have said that he was no geologist, and that he was incompe- 
tent to his subject, because deficient in that most essential part of it. 
But we have a serious objection also to make, to the other department 
of his work ; to the rigidly zoological or anatomical part of it. All 
the world has marvelled, and with some reason, at the ingenuity with 
which Cuvicr has contrived to erect new genera and species, and to 
produce entire animais which were never yet seen, and never will be, 
from fragments of rotten bones; constructing a Megzetherium from a 
maxilla, and a Hyena from an os hyoides, With this we have 
nothing at present to do; satisfied with the ingenuity of the Zadig of 
the day, and, as far as authority can avail, quite as willing to allow 
him the dictatorship in this matter as any other person. There is 
always a latent delight in surrendering ourselves to the marvellous, 
But even to this delight there are bounds ; and when these are ex- 
ceeded, we are aptto feel a twinge of the “ incredulus odi.”” Unquese 
