498 Embedded Reptiles. By the President. 



dormant state. There is the consideration which claims not to 

 be overlooked, that the evidence of the discoveries in many 

 crucial cases, though unsupported by experts, has never been 

 disproved. There are all those points to which due weight must 

 be allowed ; and then having made ourselves aware, if we were 

 not already aware, of the vast number of years which have 

 elasped since the formation of even one of the most "recent" of 

 the Tertiary strata, and how much is involved in the supposition 

 that an incarcerated living being can be contemporaneous with 

 any of them, and how much more with any of the ancient strata, 

 we had better, should doubt remain, invoke the arbitration of 

 Common Sense. Will not Common Sense rebel at being asked 

 to believe that a creature thus situated could retain vitality, and 

 not suffer decay, or atrophy of the organs, or become fossilized, 

 or mummified, during the millions of years which have rolled on 

 since the Carboniferous deposits, the formation of which, alone, 

 it is estimated took more than half a million years, and in which, 

 or in adjacent systems, most of these cases occur : — that such a 

 creature could, by any possibility, be a direct living Hnk with 

 times so remote that human ken is incapable of forming any 

 distinct idea of the hiatus of ages which separates us from them ; 

 of times so remote, that compared with that interval, the 6000 

 years or so of the life of Adamite man on the earth, are, so to 

 speak, but a tick of the geological clock ? 



It certainly will rebel, and entirely refuse ; and on that account 

 alone, without much pausing to consider other salient obstacles 

 to the survival of living organisms thus situated, which easily 

 present themselves ; and undeterred by a possible accusation of 

 "begging the question" (which in this instance can have no 

 real force) will decide without hesitation, as a moral certainty, 

 that no genuine instance of a really embedded reptile has ever occurred 

 in any of the stratified rocks. 



In spite of all that, however, some persons may not be fully 

 convinced ; there may with some remain a lingering disposition 

 to trust too much to deceptive appearances. To such I would 

 say " nimium ne credo colori." 



To such I would quote a story recently told in the paper " The 

 Workman and Engineer," of the breaking up of a casting, and 

 the leaping out from it of a full grown frog. There was in the 

 casting a small hole, but in this case at least " would anyone be 

 60 foolish as to fancy that the frog had been introduced with the 

 molten metal?" 



