PALAEONTOLOGY ITS OBJECTS. 19 



and flourished, the place it held, and the function it per- 

 formed in the world's economy, and, higher than all, the 

 omniscience and skill that pre-ordained and directed with 

 unerring precision its numerous and complicated co-adapta- 

 tions. 



Eough and mutilated as these fragments may appear 

 obscure as are the forms impressed on their surfaces, they 

 embody a tale of the world's PAST as legible to the eye of 

 Science and often far more connected than these sculp- 

 tures on this slab, or those hieroglyphics graven on that 

 sarcophagus. These forked lobes, little more than a mere 

 discoloration on the stone, once floated as sea- weed in the 

 waters ; that reed-like stem converted into stone, as it now 

 is, luxuriated in some primeval marsh ; that rock-impressed 

 fern-frond once waved its feathery leaflets in the sunshine of 

 a genial climate ; and that tiny spikelet, now the merest 

 film of carbonaceous matter, has sparkled with the night- 

 dews of heaven as certainly as the dews now cherish the 

 tender herb, or the sunlight gives colour to existing 

 verdure. Worthless as these chips may seem, the eye of 

 the zoologist detects in this the pore-work of a coral, in 

 that the valves of a shell-fish ; on this the scales of a fish, 

 on that the plates of a reptile ; in this the bone of a bird, 

 in that the bone of a mammal ; in this the grinder that 

 milled the leafy twigs of the forest, in that the trenchant 

 tooth that preyed on the flesh of other creatures. Every 

 trace becomes a letter, every fragment a word, and every 

 perfect fossil a chapter in the world's history, which tells of 

 waters that were thronged and of lands that were tenanted 

 by life of races that lived and multiplied and perished 

 of others that took their places and this (as we shall after- 

 wards see) so often repeated, over and over and over again, 

 that the mind, at first excited by the marvels it unfolds, 

 begins at last to grow weary of the review, and the finite 



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