48 Dr Martius on Antediluvian Plajiis. 
petually bringing out others which are doubtful, and the more 
so in proportion as we direct our attention to the more remote 
periods of our planet, which have been occupied in the forma- 
tion and arrangement of the mere inorganic stamina of things. 
But, inasmuch as we find the first elements of organic life dis- 
seminated through this inanimate reign of the ancient world, 
bound in the fetters of elernal sleep, the investigation becomes 
more easy : We are already acquainted with the determinate 
limits of different periods, the recession of the ocean from the 
summits of the mountains, the limits of the lakes and sea ; we 
have a more extended and precise perception of the laws. which 
nature has followed, both in destroying the more ancient parts, 
and in renovating them after being much destroyed ; and from 
thence directing our minds toward higher objects of investiga- 
tion, we can form a judgment of the primitive nature of plants 
and animals, their original place, their mode of life, and the 
manner in which they have been propagated over the terra- 
queous globe. 
The present age is highly distinguished for the investigations 
made in regard to these subjects : in France, the illustrious 
Cuvier and Faujas de St Fond, and in Germany, Blumenbach, 
Count Sternberg, and Baron de Schlotheim, have observed the 
monuments of organic beings with the greatest attention, and 
by reducing them with wonderful sagacity to still existing 
genera of animals and plants, have nobly restored to the science 
its true dignity, which it had formerly lost, since, although 
far from being neglected, it had fallen into the hands of men 
more prone to contemplate the wonderful, than anxious to ac- 
quire materials for explaining the formation of the earth, and 
who represented those precious monuments as sportings of na- 
ture, and, as it were, the illicit progeny of the parent of things. 
They have shewn that the vegetable remains of the antedi- 
luvian world belong to very different genera, some of which are 
already well known to us ; while others, bn the contrary, have 
eluded the research of so many observers occupied in investi- 
gating them, and in attempting to refer them to forms still in 
existence. We, moreover, recognise the type of others in plants 
which inhabit the same places, where they lie overwhelmed, the 
