336 PALEONTOLOGY. 



mena are of peculiar interest and importance, since by this action of 

 extreme cold, the soft-parts, integiunents, hair, bristles, and other epi- 

 dermal coverings have been preserved, to testify, in addition to the bones 

 and teeth, as to tbe specific characters and peculiar habits of those 

 extinct species. 



Perhaps the greatest and most fruitful principle in the sciences of 

 Geology and Palaeontology which has been established since Hunter's 

 time, is that of the limitation of particular organic fossils to particular 

 mineral strata, and the regular order of succession of such fossiliferous 

 strata. 



This great discovery "was made by an Englishman, and a contempo- 

 rary of Hunter, though a much younger man — Mr. William Smith, 

 justly entitled the Father of English Geology, whose personal acquaint- 

 ance I have been honoured and favoured to make, a circumstance 

 which I shall ever prize amongst my most cherished recollections. 



Whilst the tenets of the rival schools of Freyberg and Edinburgh were 

 being warmly espoused by devoted partisans, the labours tending to the 

 solution of the dispute of the young land-surveyor were as little known 

 as those of the great physiologist. But William Smith, fortunately for 

 science and his own repute, published, in 1790, his ' Tabular Yiew of 

 the British Strata,' and their ' Identification by their peculiar organized 

 Fossils.' This tract seems never to have fallen in Hunter's way. Smith 

 prosecuted his geological investigations uninterruptedly until, in 1815, 

 he had completed a Geological Map of all England. 



Contemporaneously with the labours of William Smith, were those of 

 Cuvier and Brongniart. The extensive, minute and exact knowledge 

 possessed by Cuvier of Comparative Anatomy — especially Osteology — 

 and of Natural History, enabled and emboldened him to speak decidedly 

 as to the specific distinction, and of the extinction, of the vertebrated 

 fossil remains submitted to his examination. Lamarck was able to enun- 

 ciate the same important conclusions as to the fossil shells. The com- 

 bined labours of the above great luminaries of the School of Paris, threw 

 the same clear light on the laws of superposition and the characteristic 

 fossil remains of the tertiary series of France, which William Smith's 

 single-handed labours had effected for the secondary formations of 

 England. 



These independent discoveries — these undesigned coincidences of 

 results of inductive research, — establish great natural truths on the 

 unassailable and eternal basis of truth. Cuvier's labours were more 

 particularly characterized by the rigid character of his demonstra- 

 tions of the distinction of the fossil remains from the known existing 

 species, and by the laws which he laid down for the guidance of his 

 successors in that field of inquiry. 



