THEIR IMPORTANCE DULY APPRECIATED. 91 



Few facts are more remarkable in the history of the pro- 

 gress of human discovery, than that it should have been re- 

 served almost entirely for the researches of the present ge- 

 neration, to arrive at any certain knowledge of the existence 

 of the numerous extinct races of animals, which occupied 

 the surface of our planet in ages preceding the creation of 

 man. The rapid progress which, during the last half cen- 

 tuiy, has been made in the physical sciences, enables us 

 now to enter into the history of Fossil Organic Remains, in 

 a manner which till within a very few years, would have 

 been quite impracticable ; during these years the anatomy 

 of extinct species of Quadrupeds has been most extensively 

 investigated, and the greatest of comparative anatomists has 

 devoted much of his time and talent to iUustrate their orga- 

 nization. Similar inquiries have been carried on also by a 

 host of other enhghtened and laborious individuals, conduct- 

 ing independent researches in various countries since the 

 commencement of the present century ; hence our know- 

 ledge of the osteology of a large number of extinct genera 

 and species, now rests on nearly the same foundation, and 

 is established with scarcely less certainty, than the anatomi- 

 cal details of those creatures that present their Uving bodies 

 to our examination. 



We can hardly imagine any stronger proof of the Unity 

 of Design and Harmony of Organizations that have ever 

 pervaded all animated nature, than we find in the fact 

 established by Cuvier, that from the character of a single 

 limb, and even of a single tooth or bone, the form and pro- 

 portions of the other bones, and condition of the entire 

 Animal may be inferred. This law prevails, no less uni- 

 versally, throughout the existing kingdoms of animated 

 nature, than in those various races of extinct creatures that 

 have preceded the present tenants of our planet ; hence not 

 only the frame work of the fossil skeleton of an extinct 

 animal, but also the character of the muscles, by which 

 each bone was moved, the external form and figure of the 



