530 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY, 



Again, we may notice another common circum- 

 stance in the studies which we are grouping toge- 

 ther as palaetiological, diverse as they are in their 

 subjects. In all of them we have the same kind of 

 manifestations of a number of successive changes, 

 each springing out of a preceding state ; and in all, 

 the phenomena at each step become more and more 

 complicated, by involving the results of all that has 

 preceded, modified by supervening agencies. The 

 general aspect of all these trains of change is 

 similar, and offers the same features for description. 

 The relics and ruins of the earlier states are pre- 

 served, mutilated and dead, in the products of later 

 times. The analogical figures by which we are 

 tempted to express this relation are philosophically 

 true. It is more than a mere fanciful description, 

 to say that in languages, customs, forms of society, 

 political institutions, we see a number of formations 

 superimposed upon one another, each of which is, 

 for the most part, an assemblage of fragments and 

 results of the preceding condition. Though our 

 comparison might be bold, it would be just, if we 

 were to assert, that the English language is a con- 

 glomerate of Latin words, bound together in a Saxon 

 cement ; the fragments of the Latin being partly 

 portions introduced directly from the parent quarry, 

 with all their sharp edges, and partly pebbles of the 

 same material, obscured and shaped by long rolling 

 in a Norman or some other channel. Thus the 

 study of pahetiology in the materials of the earth, is 



