NATURAL HISTORY OF PETRIFACTIONS. 217 



northern ocean, is a matter of certainty; afterwards he ex- 

 amines merely which of these two causes, the subsidence 

 of the sea itself, or the elevation of the land around it, 

 agrees the best with the phenomena ; and he decides in 

 favour of the latter, pointing out its accordance with the 

 Huttonian Theory." 



NOTE L. (A.) 23, 



Werner's Views of the Natural History of Petrifactions. 



From the observation in section 22, Cuvier does not 

 appear to have known how much Werner has done for 

 the advancement of the natural history of fossil organic 

 remains. He did not rest satisfied with the developement 

 of the mere mineralogical branch of the theory of the 

 earth ; on the contrary, early in life he began to investi- 

 gate the relations of all the classes of fossil organic re- 

 mains, being well convinced, that without an accurate 

 and comprehensive knowledge of these interesting bodies, 

 geological speculation would have excited but compara- 

 tively little notice. Many years ago he embodied all 

 that was known of petrifactions into a regular system. 

 He insisted on the necessity of every geognostical cabinet 

 containing, besides complete series of rocks for illustra- 

 ting the mineralogical relations of the globe, an exten- 

 sive collection not only of shells, but also of the various 

 productions of the class zoophyta, of plants, particularly 

 of sea plants and ferns; and an examination of the re- 

 mains of quadrupeds in the great limestone caves and al- 

 luvial soils of Germany, soon pointed out to him the ne- 

 cessity of attaching to the geognostical cabinet also one 

 of comparative osteology. As his views in geognosy en- 

 larged, he saw more and more the value of a close and 

 deep study of petrifactions. He first made the highly im- 

 portant observation, that different formations can be dis- 

 criminated by the petrifactions they contain. It was 



28 



