I 4 Ol I ! II 1 P-GEOLOGY 



ohsen ;uh more likely, then tore, to begin by 



lighting upon some stratum full of shells, crinoids, corals 

 or even with bones of fishes, and perhaps of reptiles. 

 If he is not satisfied merely with forming a collection 

 of these remains and having them rightly named, hut 

 \vishes to learn what they have to tell him about ancient 

 types of life and old conditions of physical uio-raphy, 

 he addresses himself to the task by endvavouring to 

 find the i malogies in the living world to the 



fossil forms which he has disinterred from the rocks. 

 Patiently he tries to reconstruct the skeleton of whirh he- 

 has found the scattered bones. He learns to recognise 

 the fragment of a shell or other fossil, and can assign it 

 to its place in the complete organism. While the 

 structure and zoological relations of the fossils afford 

 him inexhaustible stores of employment, he cannot shut 

 his eyes to the circumstances in which these fossils occur, 

 and to the light which they cast on the history of the 

 rocks. Corals, crinoids, and marine types of molluscan 

 life bring before him an old sea-floor, and though the 

 locality where his leisure hours are thus sedulously spent 

 may now lie far in the heart of a country, with venerable 

 trees and hedgerows, old farmsteads and roads, all bear- 

 ing witness to the peaceful cultivation of centuries, the 

 sight of that rock with its crowded fossils is as sure 

 evidence of the former presence of the sea over the 

 whole landscape, as if he heard there even now the 

 murmur of the waves. 



But the observer's lot ma in a district where 



no fossils are to be found. There may be nothing in the 

 rocks themselves to attract notice, nothing likely to inspire 



