rcETIEW. 
435 
'many thousand centuries,' wliicli brings us almost to the yogues of the 
Hindoos. jN'ow, although I have no quarrel with any opinions relating to 
the antiquitj' of the globe, yet there are a description of persons very nu- 
merous and very respectable in every point but their pardonable supersti- 
tions, who will dislike any mention of a specific period that ascends beyond 
6000 years : I would, therefore, with submission, qualify the expression by 
many thousand years, instead of centuries.'' Hunter would not modify 
his statements, and he withdrew the paper." 
An edition of this paper was hurriedly printed by the Council of the 
Eoyal College of Surgeons in December, 1859 : the more important pas- 
sages are inserted in the work before us, in which Professor Owen says — 
" Some may wish that the world had never known that Hunter thought so 
differently on some subjects from hat they believed, and would have de- 
sired, him to think. But he has chosen to leave a record of his thoughts, 
and, under the circumstances in which that record has come iuto my hands, 
1 liave felt myself bound to add it to the common intellectual property of 
mankind." 
The great geological principle, the coevality of the fossils with the 
mineral strata in which the}" are found, which some geologists have de- 
nied, was formally asserted by Hunter. He said — 
"Finding upon land more parts of marine than terrestrial animals pre- 
served, and at considerable depth, it naturally leads to the idea of sea- 
animals at least having undergone this process at the bottom of the sea ; 
and if so, then as that [stratum] in which they are found is now land, and 
as we find parts of land-animals and vegetables preserved nearly in the 
same manner, it leads us into a more extensive investigation of the per- 
manency of the situation of the waters ; and in this inquiry we shall find 
tliat wherever an extraneous fossil is enclosed or imbedded, the surround- 
ing native matrix was accumulated, disposed, or formed into that mass at 
the same time." 
Professor Owen remarks on this — 
" I do not find this proposition so definitely laid down in geological 
writers prior to Hunter ; although it was evidently appreciated in a certain 
degree, and with reference to particular strata, by some of Hunter's pre- 
decessors. 
" The exceptions to the rule arise from the formation of one stratum out 
of the ruins of a preceding fossiliferous stratum, when the fossils of that 
older stratum become, together with their matrix, a part of the newer one, 
with which, however, those fossils are far from being coeval in respect of 
the period when they actually became fossil. Petrified bones of Plesio- 
saurus, e.g., have been transmitted to me, together with unpetrified bones 
of the beaver, from the comparatively recent ' till ' of Cambridgeshire, the 
pksiosaurian remains having been washed out of the subjacent gault, when 
the sea finally retired from the uprising land. Such ' derivative ' fossils 
were nevertheless actually enclosed or imbedded in the newer tertiary 
matrix when it ' was disposed or formed into the mass,' now called ' till.' 
The exceptions cf such derivative fossils are, however, comparatively rare, 
and do not affect the conclusions, as to the relative age of a stratum, afforded 
by its obviously and much more abundant proper organic remains." 
" We find," Hunter proceeds to say, " the remains of sea-animals in 
every kind of substance excepting granite. AVe find wood, bones of sea- 
animals, bones of land-animals, in freestone, gravel, clay, marl, loam, and 
peat." 
Professor Owen remarks — 
" AVith regard to the alterations of climate which Hunter deduced from 
