MOELOT — SOME GENERxVL VIEWS ON ARCHEOLOGY. 



45 



Folkestone has been for the beautiful iridescent fossils of the Ganlt ; 

 for by that provincial (Cambridgeshire) name is this bine stratum 

 known to geologists. Not that these fossils are large or massive ; 

 not that they are parts and portions of the former monsters of the 

 earth or sea ; not that they have any economic value, or are capable 

 of any commercial use. Probably they were not even the finest of 

 theii' race while sporting yet with vital energy in their ancient sea ; 

 for only little shell-fish, or cuttle-fish were they — small, delicate, and 

 pearly. 



(To he continued.) 



SOME GENERAL VIEWS ON ARCHEOLOGY.* 

 By a. MORLOT, OF LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND. 



A CENTURY has scarcely elapsed since the time when it would have 

 been thought impossible to reconstruct the history of our globe 

 prior to the appearance of mankind ; but though contemporary his- 

 torians were wanting during this immense pre-human era, this era 

 has not failed to leave us a well-arranged series of most significant 

 vestiges. The animal and vegetable tribes which have successively 

 appeared and disappeared have left their fossil remains in the suc- 

 cessively deposited strata. Thus has been composed, gradually and 

 slowly, a liistory of creation written as it were by the Creator him- 

 self. It is a great book, the leaves of which are the stratified rocks 

 following each other in the strictest chronological order, the chapters 

 being the mountain- chains. This great book has long been closed to 

 man ; but science, constantly extending its realm and improving its 

 method of induction, has taught the geologist to study those marvel- 

 lous archives of creation, and we behold him now unfolding the past 

 ages of our world with a variety of details and a certainty of conclu- 

 sions well calculated to inspire us with grateful admiration. 



* This article is the introduction to a paper entitled " Geologico- Archaeological 

 Studies in Denmark and Switzerland," appearing in the "Bulletin de la Societe 

 Yaudoise des Sciences NatureUes" for 1859, and of which a separate edition, 

 comprising the present pages, will be published. 



