i OUR COMMON BRITISH FOSSILS. 



almost wholly composed of them — nay, the solid dry 

 land of the globe appears to have been mainly put 

 together by the agency or through the instrumentality 

 of life ! 



No sooner has the young beginner appreciated the 

 wealth of objects by which he is surrounded, or to 

 which he may obtain easy access, than the first fit of 

 collecting takes possession of him. His holidays are 

 spent in fossiliferous localities ; and his leisure time 

 in reading about them, or in arranging his cabinet. 

 At length he feels the need for more knowledge 

 than he possesses about the many strange forms he 

 comes across. He has at first an idea that they 

 are altogether different from anything now existing, 

 and perhaps a feeling of something like disappoint- 

 ment comes over him when he learns they are con- 

 structed on the same plan as living animals and 

 plants ; and that in many instances the same generic 

 and even specific forms are still in existence. This 

 state of mind, however, soon gives way to thorough 

 admiration, when he catches a glimpse of the life- 

 plan of the globe. He sees that, beginning with the 

 lowly and humble organisms, it has developed into 

 the present Fauna and Flora ; that the stream of life, 

 issuing like a rill from such obscure springs as are 

 hardly discernible in the distant Laurentian period, 

 has been gaining in volume and depth as it has passed 

 onward, in unbroken continuity, through all the suc- 

 ceeding ages, until it has opened out in the grand 



