348 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION OF 



order of the Cetacese: ( 536 ) the crown of these teeth is 

 formed like those of seals. 



Lister, as early as 1678, made the important statement, 

 that each kind of rock is characterised by its own fossils, 

 and that "the species of Murex, Tellina and Trochus, which 

 are found in the quarries of Northamptonshire, do, indeed, 

 resemble those of the present sea, but when closely examined 

 are found to differ from them." " They are/' he said, 

 "specifically different." ( 537 ) In the then imperfect state of 

 descriptive morphology, strict proofs of the justness of these 

 grand anticipations or conjectures could not indeed be given. 

 We here point out an early dawning and soon extinguished 

 light, anterior to the great paleontological labours of Cuvier 

 and Alexander Brongniart which have given a T new form to 

 the geology of the sedimentary formations. ( 538 ) Lister, 

 attentive to the regular succession of strata in England, was 

 the first who felt the want of geological maps. Although 

 these .phenomena in their connexion with ancient inundatioris 

 (single or repeated) attracted interest and attention, and, 

 mingling together belief and knowledge, produced in 

 England the " systems" of Ray, Woodward, Burnet, an.d 

 Whiston, yet, from the entire want of mineralogical dis- 

 tinction of the constituent parts of compound rocks, all that 

 relates to the crystalline and massive eruptive rocks and 

 their transformations remained unstudied. Notwithstanding 

 the assumption of a central heat in the globe, earthquakes, 

 thermal springs, and volcanic eruptions, were not regarded 

 as the results of the reaction of the planet against its 

 external crust, but were ascribed to such small local causes, 

 as, for example, the spontaneous combustion of beds of 



