Feathers lonhaugh^s Geological Report, 89 



we have the first evidence of varieties of terrestrial mam- 

 malia, the bones of palceotherea, and other genera, imbedded 

 in gypseous matter, apparently derived from springs charged 

 with sulphate of lime. 



It was the admirable memoir of Cuvier and Brogniart, of 

 1811, unequalled in interest by any work except Buckland's 

 account of the Cave of Kirkdale, which announced the dis- 

 covery of these extinct quadrupeds in what has been called 

 the Basin of Paris, that first drew public attention to the im- 

 portance of zoological geology : nor could there be a more 

 happy coincidence for this science than that, whilst in the im- 

 mediate vicinity of one of the largest European capitals, some 

 of the rarest monuments of the ancient world were laid im- 

 bedded and unnoticed in the common quarries of the country, 

 two individuals should be residing there singularly fitted by 

 their attainments and genius to comprehend and explain the 

 true characters of these paloeotherea, and the geological 

 period of their existence. The Rev. W. D. Conybeare, 

 one of the soundest philosophers and most attractive writers 

 of the age, in his " Report on the progress, actual state, 

 and ulterior prospects of geological science," says that Smith's 

 original observations respecting the distribution of organic 

 remains were received with indifference, " until the high 

 scientific distinction of Cuvier, and the striking and interest- 

 ing nature of the facts developed in his brilliant memoir, 

 excited a marked sensation, and commanded the general at- 

 tention of men of science : for none such could peruse with 

 indifference those masterly descriptions, which exhibited the 

 environs of one of the great metropolitan cities of Europe as 

 having been successively occupied by oceanic inundations and 

 fresh-water lakes ; which restored from the scattered fragments 

 of their disjointed skeletons the forms of those animals, long 

 extinct, whose flocks once grazed on the margins of those 

 lakes ; and which presented to our notice the case of beds of 

 rock, only a few inches in thickness, extending continuously 



