HOW DECIPHERED. 115 



has greater cause to boast of than this determination and 

 restoration of fossil forms. From a few stray chips and 

 fragments to reveal the nature of the plant or animal to 

 which these fragments belong, or from, a few scattered bones 

 and teeth to reconstruct the form of the creature and in- 

 dicate its habits and functions, is, in truth, the triumph of 

 modern anatomy. " Every organised being" says the im- 

 mortal Cuvier, "forms a whole, a single circumscribed 

 system, the parts of which mutually correspond and concur 

 to the same definite, action by a reciprocal reaction. None 

 of these parts can change without the others also changing, 

 and consequently each part, taken separately, indicates and 

 gives all the others" In this truth lies the fundamental 

 law of the co-relation of parts, the discovery of which en- 

 abled the great French anatomist to effect his wonderful re- 

 storations of the mammals of the Paris Basin, and the enun- 

 ciation of which has ever since thrown the light of hope 

 and of certainty over the toilsome labours of the palaeonto- 

 logist. To him fossils became, as they have been eloquently 

 and appropriately termed, the MEDALS OF CREATION ; " for 

 as an accomplished numismatist, even when the inscription 

 of an ancient and unknown coin is illegible, can from the 

 half- obliterated effigy, and from the style of art, determine 

 with precision the people by whom and the period when it 

 was struck ; so in like manner the geologist can decipher 

 these natural memorials, interpret the hieroglyphics with 

 which they are inscribed, and, from apparently the most 

 insignificant relics, trace the history of beings of whom no 

 other records are extant, and ascertain the forms and habits 

 of unknown types of organisation, whose races were swept 

 from the face of the earth thousands of ages before the 

 creation of man and the creatures which are his contem- 

 poraries."* 



* MantelTs ' Medals of Creation,' vol. i. p. 17. 





