hunter's posthumous paper ON EOSS1LS. 297 



Lecture III. 



March 10th, 1855. 

 Mr. President and Gentlemen, — In fulfilment of the intention ex- 

 pressed in my first Lecture, in reference to the Hunterian manuscript 

 which I read at our last meeting, I proceed to point out the principal 

 propositions in it, which, now generally accepted as true, had been, 

 though perhaps unknown to Hunter, enunciated more or less clearly 

 before his time : I propose to show what propositions of his were new at 

 the time when he penned them, and have been subsequently rediscovered. 

 I believe I may be able to indicate some views of Hunter that are now 

 novel, and being true, are direct additions to geological science : in a 

 few instances I shall have to point out his mistakes ; and more frequently 

 to endeavour to throw light upon his obscurities of expression. Finally, 

 I shall briefly allude to the guiding principles of geological and palseon- 

 tological science that have been established since Hunter's time. 



First, as to the title of Hunter's memoir " On Extraneous Fossils:" — 



In Hunter's time the term ' fossil,' as a noun, was used in the same 

 sense as that in which we now use the term ' mineral.' Thus Da Costa, 

 in his ' Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Fossils,' delivered in Loudon 

 in 1778, begins by stating that " Fossils are not organized bodies, nor 

 have they seeds ; " and twenty-one lectures are devoted to the various 

 classes of these fossils, such as earths, clays, metals and semi-metals, 

 which he terms ' Native Fossils ; ' the concluding six lectures are devoted 

 to 'Extraneous Fossils,' or 'Parts of Animals and Vegetables found 

 buried in the Earth.' These were called, before that time, ' Figured 

 Fossils,' — a term indicative of the still lingering notion that they were of 

 the same nature as ordinary minerals, but had assumed, by the operation 

 of a plastic force of nature, the figures of parts of plants and animals. 



" Extraneous Fossils," writes Hunter, " make one part of a class of 

 preserved parts of vegetables and animals ; and as most vegetables and 

 many parts of a great variety of animals can either be preserved them- 

 selves, or make such impressions as mark the originals to be either 

 vegetable or animal, which are lasting, we are at no loss to say what 

 had been either vegetable or animal : — but for the understanding of 

 which, it will be proper to take a general view of such preserved parts, 

 and to give some of the principal leading facts to establish a principle 

 respecting their preservation. 



" As vegetables are formed only on the land, and are stationary, and 

 as animals are formed both on the land and in the sea, also inhabiting 

 both ; and may be said to be stationary respecting the elements in which 

 they live ; and as they are all found in a fossil state now in the earth 

 which is not covered by water, as if all had been originally formed there, 



