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scientific attainments, and whose enlarged views coincided with 

 your own the department of Palaeontology was ridiculous from 

 its unmeaning name. What possible branch of science could be in- 

 dicated by such an outlandish word as Palaeontology ? Even Sec- 

 retary Dickerson is said to have committed several witticisms on the 

 term ! That the whole concern was a humbug, who can doubt ? 

 for neither you nor your commander knew anything about it. 

 " Away with this worthless department, which we never heard of 

 before," was your wise and learned decision. 



And what, sir, is Palaeontology 1 Have you to be informed 

 that it is that branch of science which treats of fossil organic re- 

 mains, both animal and vegetable ? " The secrets of Nature," 

 says the learned Buckland, " that are revealed to us from the his- 

 tory of fossil organic remains, form perhaps the most striking re- 

 sults at which we arrive from the study of Geology. It must ap- 

 pear almost incredible to those who have not attended to natural 

 phenomena, that the microscopic examination of a mass of rude 

 and lifeless limestone should often disclose the curious fact that 

 large portions of its substance have once formed parts of living 

 bodies. It is surprising to consider that the walls of our houses 

 are sometimes composed of little else than comminuted shells, 

 that were once the domicils of other animals at the bottom of an- 

 cient seas and lakes. 



" It is marvellous that mankind should have gone on for so many 

 centuries in ignorance of the fact which is now so fully demonstra- 

 ted, that no small part of the present surface of the earth is de- 

 rived from the remains of animals that constituted the population 

 of ancient seas. Many extensive plains and massive mountains 

 form, as it were, the great charnel-house of preceding generations, 

 in which the- petrified exuviaB of extinct races of animals and vege- 

 tables are piled into stupendous monuments of the operations of 

 life and death, during almost immeasurable periods of past time." 

 " At the sight of a spectacle so imposing, so terrible" to use the 

 words of Cuvier, " as that of the wreck of animal life, forming al- 

 most the entire soil on which we tread" you turn away with vacant 

 indifference, and treat the branch of science which has contributed 

 so much to unfold and analyze the composition of the globe we in- 

 habit as unworthy a moment's consideration. Was it modest to come 

 thus in collision with such an authority in science as the great Cu- 



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