328 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. 



appears not to have been able to accept such an ex- 

 planation ; but fearing that the occurrence of fossil fishes 

 on the Alps would support the Mosaic account of the 

 deluge, he did not hesitate to attribute them to the 

 remains of fishes accidentally brought there by travellers 

 or pilgrims. In archaeological investigations the greatest 

 caution is requisite in allowing for secondary burials in 

 ancient tombs and tumuli, for imitations, casual coin- 

 cidences, disturbance by subsequent races, or even by 

 other archaeologists, in fact, for a multitude of interfering 

 circumstances. In common life extraordinary events 

 must happen from time to time, as when a shepherdess 

 in France was astonished at an iron chain falling out of 

 the sky near to her feet, the fact being that Guy-Lussac 

 had thrown it out of his balloon, which was passing over 

 her head unseen at the time. 



To this class of accidental exceptions I would refer the 

 innumerable breaches of the rules of inflexion in grammar. 

 These rules would be invariable were it not that the 

 forms derived from distinct roots sometimes get mixed 

 together, that mistaken analogies sometimes occasion con- 

 fusion, and a variety of such disturbing causes produce 

 irregularity. Philology already presents beautiful in- 

 stances of the manner in which a comprehensive law may 

 be traced out in a thoroughly scientific manner, in spite of 

 apparently inexplicable exceptions. 



Novel and Unexplained Exceptions. 



When a law of nature appears to fail because some 



other law has interfered with its action, two cases may 



i/ 



obviously present themselves ; the interfering law may 

 be a known and familiar one, or it may have been pre- 

 viously undetected. In the first case, which we have 

 sufficiently considered in the preceding section, we have 



