PALEONTOLOGY ITS OBJECTS. 21 



that they can be read only by the higher powers of the 

 microscope ; while of many we have no other relic save the 

 passing footprint or the slimy trail that was left on the 

 yielding sands of a former sea-shore. In whatever state 

 they may be found, they are taken up by the palaeontolo- 

 gist, compared with existing plants and animals, and ar- 

 ranged, as far as their nature will permit, according to the 

 classifications of the botanist and zoologist. To the palae- 

 ontologist, therefore, we commit these relics of primeval 

 life, and ask of him to tell Whether they are the same in 

 kind as those that now adorn our fields and people the 

 land and waters; whether they were of a simpler and 

 lowlier kind that gradually rose, as time rolled on, to their 

 present forms ; whether they were of tinier or of more 

 gigantic dimensions ; or whether they varied according 

 to external conditions here dwarfing and dying out, and 

 there some newer creations increasing and spreading under 

 conditions that were favourable to their existence ] In fine, 

 we ask of him the history of these extinct forms, as we 

 demand from the botanist and zoologist the history of the 

 plants and animals that now nourish around us ; and, com- 

 bining the living with the extinct, and the recent with the 

 remote, the highest aim of our science is to discover the 

 Creative Plan which binds the whole into one unbroken 

 and harmonious life-system. 



It is true that many of these fossils are so fragmentary 

 and obscure that they cannot yet be deciphered, and others 

 are so different from anything now existing in the vegetable 

 or animal world that no definite place can be assigned them. 

 It is also true that the science of Palaeontology has little 

 more than passed its infancy, and that of the innumerable 

 relics entombed in the rocky strata of different regions only 

 a small proportion can have yet been discovered. Not- 

 withstanding all this, so enthusiastic has been the research, 



