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Page 147 



By degrees, as the natural sciences advanced, it became 

 more and more clear that the true means of classifying the 

 rocks which form the earth's crust, and which are therefore 

 the only one accessible to our observation, was b}^ the study 

 of their imbedded organic remains. It is not within the 

 limits of this paper, devoted as it is solely to West Indian 

 geology and especially to that of our own island, to detail or 

 even glance at the various steps by which the progress of 

 geology was facilitated by the advance of paleontological 

 knowledge. I shall therefore pass on at once to the first 

 notices of fossils found in the West Indies. Moreau de 

 Jonnees* appears to have been one of the first to observe 

 such objects. Humboldt, as I have already mentioned, 

 had noticed the fossils of Cuba and Venezuela. Duchas- 

 saing, a medical practitioner in St. Thomas, collected and 

 determined the fossils of Guadeloupe, and with the assist- 

 ance of Michelin published the results in the "Bulletin" of 

 the Geological Society of France. Other collections were 

 made by Nugent and others ; but our first real knowledge 

 of the Caribean tertiary fauna is due to Colonel Heneken, 

 who was engaged in military operations in Haiti in the 

 year 1849. The collection of fossils made by him was 

 examined and described by Mr. Carrick Moore and the 

 results published in the Journal of the Geological Society. 

 Fortunately for West-Indian geology this series of remains 

 was in very fine preservation, and it was therefore easy to 

 compare them with the beautiful fossils of Bordeaux, Dax, 

 and Vienna, their European analogues. The fossil molluska 

 of the miocene beds of Haiti have consequently served as a 

 standard for ascertaining the relative age of the tertiaries 

 of the West-Indies. 



* Histoire Physique des Antilles frangaises. 



