PALEONTOLOGY ITS USES. 25 



out this knowledge, the immortal spirit of man cannot 

 attain to a consciousness of its own dignity, or of the rank 

 which it occupies in Creation." Still more: if existing 

 nature furnishes the theologian with irrefragable proofs of 

 unity of plan and design throughout Creation if his con- 

 ceptions of Deity are enlarged and his reverence increased 

 by the study of these adaptations much more must they 

 be exalted when he finds the same harmonies of design and 

 the same unity of plan running through untold ages, and 

 spreading and ramifying through forms so numerous and 

 varied that, varied and rife as existing Life may be, it 

 constitutes but the merest fraction of the Life that has been, 

 and of the forms that have passed away. 



Such is the nature and scope of Palaeontology a science 

 whose function is to extract from the sandstones, and lime- 

 stones, and clays of the stratified crust, the petrified remains 

 of plants and animals, and from these remains to recon- 

 struct the forms to which they belonged, so as to arrive 

 at some intelligible conception of the Life that formerly 

 tenanted the land and peopled the waters. These sand- 

 stones, and limestones, and clays, in all their various repe- 

 titions, are but the sediments of pre-existing lakes and 

 estuaries and seas ; and the fossils they imbed will be more 

 or less perfectly preserved, just as they were deposited in 

 the areas where they lived and grew, or were drifted from 

 a distance in detached and scattered fragments accord- 

 ing as they were rapidly enveloped from further decay, 

 or exposed to the wasting influences of the air and water 

 and, above all, according to the preservative character of 

 the stratum that contains them. Their imperfection, and 

 the difficulty of reading aright their characters, is greatly 

 increased by the fact that they are for the most part the 

 chance findings of the quarryman and miner, and extracted 



