124 FIELD GEOLOGY. 



Now obviously before we can apply this highly useful 

 doctrine to any particular series of beds, and before we 

 consider any further the ultimate use of such investiga- 

 tions, we must become thoroughly conversant with the 

 nature and mode of occurrence of fossils, and with the 

 ways and means of collecting them. The following ob- 

 servations therefore are offered for the purpose of giving 

 some information on these several points, and of shewing 

 how, by a regular and systematic method of procedure, 

 the field-geologist may furnish properly-collected ma- 

 terials for subsequent study, whether he works out such 

 results for himself, or leaves them to be dealt with by a 

 professed palaeontologist. But we must here remark, 

 that palaeontological results, however carefully and 

 thoroughly worked out, should never be taken as con- 

 clusive by themselves, and without being confirmed by 

 the facts or probabilities of stratigraphical evidence, as 

 far as these can be ascertained ; it is only in such cases 

 as those of outlying deposits that, in the absence of any 

 such confirmatory evidence, the character of the fauna 

 may be held sufficient to decide the questions of relative 

 age or contemporaneity with other distant formations. 

 The geologist therefore should be careful as far as 

 possible to make his palasontological enquiries proceed 

 hand in hand with those regarding the relations of the 

 strata which contain the fossil relics. 



Again, he must not only collect the fossils from 

 localities and beds where they happen to exist in an 

 exceptionally good state of preservation, but take care 

 to secure all the specimens he can from every bed in the 

 series, even where these are in an obscure or fragmentary 

 condition. In this way he will obtain knowledge which 



