INTRODUCTION, 
5 
range was raised several feet or yards higher. All this we learn 
from the testimony of the rocks beneath our feet. It only 
requires the use of a little imagination to conjure up scenes of 
the past, and paint them as on a moving diorama. 
We shall not, however, dwell at any length on the scenery, or 
the vegetation that clothed the landscape at different periods ; 
for these features are sufficiently indicated in the beautiful 
drawings of extinct animals by our artist, Mr. J. Smit. 
The researches of the illustrious Baron Cuvier, at Paris, as 
embodied in his great work, Ossemens Fossiks, gave a great 
impetus to the study of organic remains. It was he who laid the 
foundations of the science of Palseontology,^ which, though much 
has already been accomplished, yet has a great future before it. 
Agassiz, Owen, Huxley, Marsh, Cope, and others, following in his 
footsteps, have greatly extended its boundaries j but he was the 
pioneer. 
Before his time fossil forms were very little known, and still 
less understood. His researches, especially among vertebrates, 
or back-boned animals, revealed an altogether undreamed-of 
wealth of entombed remains. It is true the old and absurd notion 
that fossils were mere “sports of Nature,” sometimes bearing 
more or less resemblance to living animals, but still only an 
accidental (!) resemblance, had been abandoned by Leibnitz, 
Buffon, and Pallas j and that Daubenton had actually compared 
the fossil bones of quadrupeds with those of living forms ; while 
Camper declared his opinion that some of these remains belonged 
to extinct species of quadrupeds. 
It is to Cuvier, however, that the world owes the first systematic 
application of the science of comparative anatomy, which he 
himself had done so much to place on a sound basis, to the 
study of the bones of fossil animals. He paid great attention to 
^ Paleontology is the science which treats of the living beings, whether 
animal or vegetable, which have inhabited this globe at past periods in its 
history. (Greek— ancient ; onta^ beings ; iogos^ discourse.) 
