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Palfeontological Collection.— This term (Paleontology) is 
applied to a collection of the fossil organic remains found im- 
bedded in the rocks, and means a study of, or discourse upon 
ancient life. The collection of these objects in the Hall is ar- 
ranged on the four lower shelves of the large cases, and in the 
table cases in the alcoves. It is the richest and most extensive 
collection of American invertebrate fossils in the world, and con- 
tains nearly seven thousand type and figured specimens. The 
most of these (the Hall Collection) are described and illustrated 
in the volumes of the New York Natural History ; the Annual 
Reports of the Regents of the University on the New York State 
Cabinet of Natural History ; the Iowa and Wisconsin Geological 
Reports ; the Fossils of South Carolina, by Tuomey & Holmes ; 
and some have been published in the Bulletins of this Museum. 
Fossils are the remains of plants or animals that once lived 
in the ocean, or were washed from the land into the ocean. As 
the animals died, their remains were buried in the mud at the 
bottom of the ocean, and are now found preserved in the 
rocks formed of that mud. Rocks formed under water, as above 
described, would necessarily contain any hard or solid body 
living and dying in the ocean or on its bottom ; we consequently 
find sea-shells, corals, bones of fishes, &c, imbedded in them, so 
that they are made to contain the record of the animal and plant 
life of the seas at the time and place where they were formed. 
Fossils formed in this manner, of dead material, often drifted by 
ocean waves and currents, must be necessarily much broken, and 
generally imperfect, as well as often obscured by adhering rock. 
As the succession of the beds of rock, from the lowest upward, is 
progressive in time, the record of life is also progressive, and 
shows the advance in structure through the successive stages. 
We also find that after a certain form has once appeared in the 
record, and has passed out of existence, it is never repeated. Con- 
sequently by understanding the life record of the various forma- 
tions, we are enabled to determine to what part of the geological 
record a particular bed belongs, by determining the character of 
its enclosed fossils. We also find that the different forms of animal 
and plant life come into the geological record nearly or quite in 
the same order as they stand in the scale of organization ; that 
is, that the first in the geological record are of low type, and as we 
