144 THE IMPERFECTION OF 



but, unfortunately, they carry on their work by night 

 as well as day, on desolate coasts, in places where the 

 Palseontographical Society has no missionaries, or when 

 the missionary, if there be one, is in-doors writing 

 a book; so that a very small percentage of all that 

 might be discovered is ever actually found. 



In the artificial denudation of mining and quarrying, 

 though the rude forces of Nature are dispensed with, 

 the enlightened hammer of the geologist can do very 

 little by itself. In most cases it can but follow where 

 commercial enterprise leads the way, and be grateful for 

 permission to rummage among the debris, when pickaxe 

 and blasting have done their work. 



The chances against a fossil's being found to any 

 useful purpose in quarrying are very numerous. The 

 rock must chance to split so as to disclose it ; the work- 

 man must chance to notice it ; he must chance to have 

 knowledge enough to think it worth notice ; have time 

 enough to stop from his work and take it ; have sense 

 enough to keep it safe ; have memory enough to recol- 

 lect where he hides it ; and, lastly, have the luck to 

 meet with a customer who knows its scientific value. 



Numbers of rare specimens must continually be con- 

 signed to the furnace and the limekiln, or buried under 

 mounds and hills of refuse. Sometimes the character 

 of the matrix, by its hardness or its softness, makes it 

 impossible to disengage the fossil without complete dis- 

 figurement ; sometimes the fossil itself is so fragmentary 

 as rather to confuse than to teach. Dr. Hooker gives 

 an instance, in which a geologist assigned three pieces 



