RELATIONS OF THE ORGANIC FOSSILS. 407 



and the activity of collectors, whether it be in natural 

 history or books. 



The true business of a Geologist, here, is of a far 

 higher character. It is to determine the antiquity of 

 these objects and that of the earths in which they 

 lived, the waters which they inhabited, and the former 

 places of those ; to explain why they are now im- 

 bedded in rocks when once free, why elevated on the 

 land when once beneath the sea, why they are par- 

 tially distributed, and far more ; as it is also his office 

 to see how these things explain the history of the 

 earth. If found in alluvial soils, other inquiries of 

 an analogous nature arise, relating especially to the 

 later history of the globe. And in the study of the 

 objects themselves, if he undertakes the office of the 

 zoologist and botanist, it is his business to compare 

 the dead with the existing races ; through which it 

 is his own proper office to draw inferences as to the 

 history of the living creations of the Earth, as to that 

 of the Earth itself. 



The limits and nature of an elementary work on 

 Geology, do not permit an examination of this sub- 

 ject as it belongs to Zoology and Botany : a treatise 

 would be demanded for it, and that would also be a 

 large one. I have already published a skeleton for 

 such a work, or a basis on which those details might 

 be engrafted : as it is now time that they should be 

 collected and embodied. For the objects themselves, 

 I must refer to that and other well-known books ; 

 especially to local records, and to professed arrange- 

 ments of fossil organic bodies ; here, I must confine 

 myself to purely geological science, as much as pos- 

 sible. And that will also be more useful ; for while 

 books abound on the fossil bodies themselves, their 

 geological bearings and connexions have been almost 



