GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 197 
frorn all periods of recorded time, and with Cuvier have sought 
to explore 
** The seerets of the hoary deep, a dark 
Illimitable ocean, without bound. 
Without dimension; where length, breadth and height. 
And time and place, are lost; where eldest Night 
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold 
Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise 
Of endless wars, and by confusion stand.” 
The deeper, w^e are told, that we descend into the strata of the 
earth, the higher do we ascend into the archteblogical history of 
past ages of creation. We find successive stages marked by 
varying forms of animal and vegetable life, and these generally 
difter more and more widely from existing species, as we go further 
downwards into the receptacles of the wreck of more ancient 
creations. And when to this is added, that there have been 
discovered a constant and regular assemblage of organic remains, 
commencing with otie series of strata and ending with another, 
which contains a different assemblage, we have herein the surest 
grounds whereon to establish those divisions which are called 
geological formations ; and we find many such divisions succeed¬ 
ing one another, when we investigate the mineral deposits on the 
surface of the earth. 
The study of those remains. Dr. Buckland insists, presents 
to the zoologist a large amount of extinct species and genera, 
bearing important relations to existing forms of animals and 
vegetables, and often supplying links that had hitherto appeared 
deficient in the great chain, whereby all animated beings are 
held together in a series of near and gradual connexions.” 
Animals and vegetables of the lower class seem to have pre¬ 
vailed chiefly at the commencement of organic life, so that the 
more perfect animals became gradually more abundant as we 
advance from the older into the new series of depositions. Cuvier 
states that the result of the researches respecting the fossil bones 
of quadrupeds have been to establish and classify the fossil 
remains of seventy-eight different quadrupeds in the viviparous 
and oviparous classes. Of these, forty-nine are distinct species, 
hitherto entirely unknown to naturalists. 
Many of these species are discovered in what are called dilu¬ 
vial beds, particularly those of the large kind. The Tartars sup¬ 
pose the diluvian bones they find to be the bones of genii: our 
ancestors called the large ones those of giants. We now ascer¬ 
tain with precision, not only the component parts of elephants, 
horses, oxen, deer, but we speak with confident familiarity of 
the “teeth of water-rats,” the “ left ulna of a lark,” “ the cora- 
