Fossils. 
153 
solid rock, declares the existence, ages ago, of an 
animal form which human eyes never beheld — a form 
that passed totally out of being uncounted centuries 
before the first intelligent creature was placed upon our 
planet; and by laws as unerring and uniform as those 
of mathematics, proceeds to give us the length and 
breadth of the extinct form ; to tell us whether it lived 
upon dry land, in marshes, or in the sea ; whether a 
breather of air or water, and whether subsisting upon 
vegetable or animal food. It is this unity of the laws 
of animal life and organisation running through the 
whole chain of existence, whether past or present, 
whether extinct or recent, that constitutes the sublime 
philosophy of palaeontological studies, and assures us 
that one enduring and infinite intelligence has planned 
and executed every part of creation.” 
