272 COSMOS. 



iads of years ago might have served the animal to conceal it- 

 self from its enemies, still yields the color with which its image 

 may be drawn.* In other strata, again, nothing remains but 

 the faint impression of a muscle shell ; but even this, if it be- 

 long to a main division of mol]usca,t may serve to show th«a 

 traveler, in some distant land, the nature of the rock in which 

 it is found, and the organic remains with which it is associa- 

 ted. Its discovery gives the history of the country in which ii 

 occurs. 



The analytic study of primitive animal and vegetable lift 

 has taken a double direction : the one is purely morpholog- 

 ical, and embraces, especially, the natural history and phys- 

 iology of organisms, filling up the chasms in the series of stiU 

 living species by the fossil structures of the primitive world. 

 The second is more specially geognostic, considering fossil re- 

 mains in their relations to the superposition and relative age 

 of the sedimentary formations. The former has long predora 

 inated over the latter, and an imperfect and superficial com 

 parison of fossil remains with existing species has led to errors, 

 which may still be traced in the extraordinary names applied 

 to certain natural bodies. It was sought to identify all fossil 

 species with those still extant in the same manner as, in the 

 sixteenth century, men were led by false analogies to com- 

 pare the animals of the New Continent with those of the Old. 

 Peter Camper, Sommering, and Blumenbach had the merit 

 of being the first, by the scientific application of a more ac- 



* A discovery made by Miss Mary Anning, who was likewise the 

 discoverer of the coprolites of fish. These coprolites, and the excre- 

 ments of the Ichthyosauri, have been found in such abundance in En- 

 gland (as, for instance, near Lyme Regis),, that, according to Buckland's 

 expression, they lie like potatoes scattered in the ground. See Buck- 

 land, Geolo'^y considered with reference to Natural Theology, vol. i., p. 

 188-202 and 305. With respect to the hope expressed by Hooke " to 

 raise a chronology" from the mere study of broken and fossilized shells 

 " and to state the interval of time wherein such or such catastrophes 

 and mutations have happened," see his Posthumous Works, Lecture, 

 Feb. 29, 1G88. 



[Still more wonderful is the preservation of the substance of the an- 

 imal of certain Cephalopodes in the Oxford clay. In some specimens 

 recently .obtained, and described by Professor Owen, not only the ink 

 bag, but the muscular mantle, the head, ^nd its crown of arms, are all 

 preserved in connection with the belemnite shell, while one specimen 

 exhibits the large eyes and the funnel of the animal, and the remains of 

 two fins, in addition to the ehell and the ink bag. See Ansted's Ancient 

 World, p. 147.]— Tr. 



i Leop. von Buch, in the Abhandlungen der Akad. der Wiss. zu Ber 

 lin in dem Jahr 1837, s. 64. 



