18 INTRODUCTORY. 



an interest as the obelisks of Egypt, or the sculptures of 

 Nineveh. The antiquarian pores with enthusiasm over the 

 lines and letters of the one, and endeavours to decipher the 

 unconnected history of a few thousand years ; the geolo- 

 gist bends with equal delight over the forms and impres- 

 sions on the other, and tries to gather therefrom some intel- 

 ligible glimpses of a PAST, compared with whose duration 

 the chronology of man is but as the moments of yesterday. 

 The one as connected with the Humanity to which we be- 

 long chequered and humiliating as it has been in many of 

 its phases must ever excite a lively and immediate inter- 

 est ; the other appertaining to the history of the globe we 

 inherit, and of whose plan our race forms so important a 

 feature, can never cease to attract the attention of enlight- 

 ened intelligence. In his inciting research the archaeolo- 

 gist exhumes buried cities and catacombs, collects the 

 mutilated fragments of human art, deciphers monumental 

 inscriptions, and notes every vestige of the various races 

 that may have peopled any given locality; so in geology 

 the earnest inquirer examines every accessible stratum, col- 

 lects the fossil fragments he exhumes, and, comparing them 

 with the plants and animals now peopling the earth, endea- 

 vours to arrive at a knowledge of the various races that 

 have Successively aorn;ed its surface. As a stone-hatchet, 

 a flint arrow-head, a if ee canoe, or fragment of pottery, will 

 often; riiitfW, a 3pod ci' ligl).t on the researches of the his- 

 torian ; so in geology, the impression of a leaf, a petrified 

 shell, a tooth, a fragment of bone, or a single fish-scale, 

 will often suffice to unriddle the most puzzling problem. 

 The one kind of evidence speaks of the hand that fabri- 

 cated, the degree of intelligence that directed the fabrica- 

 tion, and the purpose it was meant to subserve ; the other 

 tells of the nature of the plant or animal to which it be- 

 longed, the climate and conditions under which it grew 



