130 IwEPORT OF THE StATE GeOLOGIST. 



strata of France, Germany, England and Italy, materials for 

 the most interesting investigations. 



Palaeontology, the new comer in the group of natural sciences, 

 to day counts illustrious adepts, but it has had for a long time to 

 follow step by step the progress of the two sciences with which 

 it is most intimately connected. Comparative Anatomy and 

 Geology. It is due to the efforts of zoologists, botanists and 

 geologists that it has been enabled to reach an epoch where it is 

 accorded the unquestioned right to rank as a distinct science with 

 distinctive followers — palaeontologists. The interest of this 

 science is twofold; ibhe history of the creatures which lived in 

 past times is intimately connected with the knowledge of those 

 now living ; and oa the other side. Palaeontology is in close rela- 

 tion with the succession of phenomena which, at different geologic 

 epochs, have modified the configuration of lands and oceans. 



Palaeontology and Biology. — As a branch of Biology Palaeon- 

 tology, for various purposes, requires constant comparison 

 between fossil remains and living creatures. The former can 

 never be known with the precision which attends the anatomical 

 and histological analysis of living forms. With rare exceptions, 

 only the hard parts are preserved in f ossilization, and even where 

 the soft parts have left certain impressions, the inferences that 

 can be drawn from them are evidently much less exact than 

 those which are afforded by an animal or a plant whether living 

 or preserved in alcohol. In order to interpret the organization 

 of extinct creatures the palaeontologist must have constant 

 recourse to the inductive method. By carefully comparing the 

 material in his hands with the corresponding parts of living 

 creatures, he is often enabled to draw conclusions from the 

 known to the unknown, and to reconstruct the entire organism 

 with all its essential characteristics. It is thus that a palaeontolo- 

 gist, even moderately expert, is able, by examining a shell, to 

 decide whether the animal which inhabited it was, for example, 

 a Pulmonate or Prosobranchiate, terrestrial or aquatic ; a simple 

 tooth suffices to show to what group of mammals an animal 

 belongs ; a section of vegetable remains will enable him to deter- 

 mine whether the plant was a Cryptogam, a Gymnosperm or an 

 Angiosperm, and he can thus ascertain, without having seen 

 them, what were the characteristics of the reproductive appara- 



