FIRST PERIOD OF THE ANCIENT WORLD. 13 
animals of a more complicated structure, the Mammifera and Birds, in 
the fourth period. M. BroNGNIART’s reasonings upon this subject are so 
well epitomized by Professor JAMESON in the Philosophical Journal for 
March 1829, that I find it unnecessary here to enter into more minute de- 
tails. 
The study of this occult science truly opens to view a field of the most 
interesting nature. It exhibits a world little looked into, or thought of, 
owing to the obscurity in which it is enveloped. It displays the early, the 
successive, the magnificent works of the Great CREATOR, which before 
were all supposed to have been drowned and scattered about by the mighty 
gushing of a universal deluge. It recalls in some measure those primeval 
forests, never seen by human eyes, which decorated the surface of the an- 
cient world ; and in leading us to the contemplation of the stupendous ope- 
rations of which it exhibits the traces, carries us into the true philosophy of 
the science of geology. 
