I ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG 17 



fully into the details of its internal organisation, 

 and yet could declare that neither he, nor any one 

 else, had ever seen one. And as the queen's 

 spaniel was found, so happily has the animal of 

 the Belemnite ; a few exceptionally preserved 

 specimens having been discovered, which com- 

 pletely verify the retrospective prophecy of 

 those who interpreted the facts of the case by due 

 application of the method of Zadig. 



These Belemnites flourished in prodigious abun- 

 dance in the seas of the mesozoic, or secondary, 

 age of the world's geological history ; but no trace 

 of them has been found in any of the tertiary 

 deposits, and they appear to have died out to- 

 wards the close of the mesozoic epoch. The 

 method of Zadig, therefore, applies in full force to 

 the events of a period which is immeasurably 

 remote, which long preceded the origin of the 

 most conspicuous mountain masses of the present 

 world, and the deposition, at the bottom of the 

 ocean, of the rocks which form the greater part of 

 the soil of our present continents. The Euphrates 

 itself, at the mouth of which Cannes landed, is a 

 thing of yesterday compared with a Belemnite ; 

 and even the liberal chronology of magian cos- 

 mogony fixes the beginning of the world only at a 

 time when other applications of Zadig's method 

 afford convincing evidence that, could we have 

 been there to see, things would have looked very 

 much as they do now. Truly the magi were wise 



VOL. iv c 



