MOULOT SOMK GUNEitAL VlliWS ON AltClMWLOGY. 
45 
Folkestone has been for tlic beautiful iridescent fossils of tbe Gault ; 
for by that pi'oviucial (Cambridgeshire) name is this blue 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 
their 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 be continued.) 
SOME GENERAL VIEWS ON ARCHJEOLOGT.* 
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 tliis immense pre-human era, this era 
has not failed to leave us a weE-aiTanged 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 history 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 gi'ateful admiration. 
* Tliis article is the introduction to a paper entitled " Geologico-Archseological 
Studies in Denmark and Switzerland," appealing in the "Bulletin de la Societe 
Vaudoise des Sciences ISTatui-elles" for 1859, and of which a separate edition, 
comprising the present pages, will be published. 
