114 FOSSILS THEIR NATURE AND ARRANGEMENT. 



these fossil relics bear evidence. Every family of plants 

 has its own peculiar station the waters, the marsh, the 

 plain, the upland, or the shingly desert ; and every family 

 of animals its own special habitat the forest, the open 

 plain, the shallow lake, the sandy or muddy shore, or the 

 greater ocean-depths. As these families are regulated now, 

 so the palaeontologist presumes they were governed in former 

 epochs, and thus by a critical study of his fossils he arrives 

 at a more vivid picture of the past, and can associate with 

 each order and family the general features of their physical 

 surroundings. From his knowledge of the present he rises 

 to a true conception of the past, and from his acquaintance 

 with the existing he can indicate with something like 

 certainty the habitats and distribution of the extinct. It 

 is true there will be occasional comminglings of terrestrial 

 and aquatic remains, of fresh-water and marine, just as now 

 the spoils of the land may be mingled with those of the 

 estuary, and those of the river with those of the ocean; 

 but in general such commixtures are limited, and do not 

 obliterate the broader characteristics of the formations in 

 which they occur. Here and there the record may be com- 

 plicated ; it is never equivocal or disguised. 



]S r or is it mere habitat and distribution the palaeontologist 

 can thus arrive at ; but habit and function are also deter- 

 minable by the requisite anatomical skill. The forelimb to 

 swim, the forelimb to walk, the forelimb to run, the fore- 

 limb to seize, and the forelimb to fly, are each stamped by 

 its own essential characteristics, just as the herbivorous, the 

 carnivorous, and the insectivorous teeth are ; and thus the 

 competent palaeontologist is enabled to recall not only the 

 physical surroundings of his fossil flora and fauna, but their 

 forms and functions presenting a picture of the world's 

 past like that which the geographer presents of its existing 

 phenomena. There are few things, indeed, which science 



