THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. 141 



Scotia itself. Two delicate wings, one very large and 

 one small, have been found, each sealed, as it were, 

 with a fern-leaf ; each a frail but enduring record of life 

 that must once have been brilliant and abundant 1 . 



When the zeal of a collector adds a new species to 

 those already known, by finding the fragment of a 

 butterfly's wing that had been for millions of years in 

 a seam of coal, how many considerations are forced upon 

 the mind ! Our sensitive nerves are comparatively 

 seldom troubled by the perceived presence of dead crea- 

 tures. With the exception of our own food, such sights 

 are pretty well confined to the carcase of a dog floating 

 on a pool, the feathers of a torn bird, a parched mole, 

 and a sprinkling of blue-bottles in an unused room. Yet 

 countless millions of creatures are annually dying, ready 

 and willing to become fossils. Fossils, however, they do 

 not become, simply because other creatures eat them up. 

 For this reason alone, not one in ten thousand of any 

 particular terrestrial species is likely to become fossil, 

 because to some creature or another it is almost sure to 

 be good eating, and therefore in the living state or the 

 dead, sure to be ravenously seized upon and devoured. 



Some forms of marine life are indeed represented 

 by a wonderful number of specimens or fragments of 

 specimens. Silicious and calcareous exuviae of minute 

 creatures deposited in the still depths of the ocean may 

 be preserved by myriads, but neither these ' in number 

 numberless 5 nor the giant-bones of ancient Saurians 

 convey any adequate notion of the whole population of 



1 'Acadian Geology,' Dawson, p. 386. 



