hunter's posthumous paper on fossils. 303 



The extent of this precise and enduring knowledge of the changes 

 of the earth and the succession of its inhabitants, has been in the ratio 

 of the investigations conducted on the philosophical principles of Hutton 

 and Hunter, which are, indeed, those of the Inductive Philosophy of 

 Bacon. Whether Hunter had perused the 'Theory of the Earth' in 

 the ' Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions ' of 1788, before he penned 

 the passages copied out fair in 1792, must remain matter of opinion : in 

 that MS. memoir, he quotes certain authors which he had consulted ; 

 and I incline, from every evidence of Hunter's habits of labour and 

 thought in the pursuit of truth, to believe the remarkable essay, now 

 under comparison, to have been, in regard to this fundamental principle 

 of the true aim of geological research, strictly original. 



At all events this is certain, that the success of geology and palaeon- 

 tology dates from the period when their cidtivators abandoned any at- 

 tempt to explain " the original formation of the earth itself," and 

 restricted themselves in their reasonings on " the changes that have 

 taken place on its surface," and to deductions from the present state 

 of the earth, as to the nature of those changes that had formerly 

 there taken place. The great diiference between Hutton and Hunter 

 is in the degree of importance they respectively assign to the evi- 

 dence of fossil organic remains in the advancement of geological know- 

 ledge. 



Sir Charles Lyell, than whom no modern geologist can entertain a 

 higher appreciation of Hutton, states that, although " Hutton's know- 

 ledge of mineralogy and chemistry was considerable, he possessed but 

 little information concerning organic remains ; they merely served him 

 as they did Werner, to characterize certain strata, and to prove their 

 marine origin." The theory of former revolutions in organic life was 

 not yet fully recognized. Hunter rises far above his contemporaries, 

 when he states that " we should be unable to consider the causes of the 

 operations affecting the surface of the earth if we had not the preserved 



parts of sea-animals Just as we would trace the remains of former 



actions in any country, by the monuments left ; judging of the past 

 from the present." 



The truth and beauty of this illustration of the use of fossils, has 

 been appreciated more and more as the value of the evidences from 

 organic remains has increased. Most probably (in my own mind, in- 

 deed, I have no doubt) the simile was original with Hunter. But it is so 

 natural an idea — so likely to occur to any one appreciating, like him, 

 the value of fossil remains, and their application to elucidate the 

 history of the strata in which they are imbedded — that one cannot be 

 surprised at its having occurred to others. 



