COLOLTTES. 201 
It is probable that to many persons inexperi- 
enced in anatomy, any kind of information on a 
subject so remote, and apparently so inaccessible, 
as the intestinal structure of an extinct reptile or 
a fossil fish, may at first appear devoid of the 
smallest possible importance; but it assumes a 
character of high value, in the investigation of 
the proofs of creative wisdom and design, that 
are unfolded by the researches of Geology ; and 
supplies a new link to that important chain, 
which connects the lost races that formerly in- 
habited our planet, with species that are actually 
living and moving around ourselves.* The sys- 
tematic recurrence, in animals of such distant 
eras, of the same contrivances, similarly dis- 
posed to effect similar purposes, with analogous 
adaptations to peculiar conditions of existence, 
shows that they all originated in the same Intel- 
ligence. 
When we see the body of an Ichthyosaurus, 
still containing the food it had eaten just before 
its death, and its ribs still surrounding the 
remains of fishes, that were swallowed ten thou- 
* Le temps qui repand de la dignite sur tout ce qui echappe k 
son pouvoir destructeur, fait voir ici un exemple singulier de son 
influence : ces substances si viles dans leur origine, etant ren- 
dues a la lumiere apres tant de siecles, deviennent d'une grande 
importance puis qu'elles servent a remplir un nouveau chapitre 
dansl'histoirenaturelledu globe. — Bulletin Soc. Imp. de Moscow, 
No. VI. 1833, p. 23, 
