394 
Extracts from British and Foreign Journals. 
ON RECENT AND EOSSIL MAMMALIA. 
Professor Owen, F.R.S., has been giving a series of 
lectures on the above subject at the Royal Institution of 
Great Britain. Admirably has he brought his master-mind 
to bear on the science of palaeontology, and at the conclusion 
of the twelfth lecture, as reported in the Medical Times and 
Gazette , there appears a summary of the succession in time 
and geographical distribution of recent and fossil mammalia, 
which closes with the following apposite observations : 
“ Turning from a retrospect into past time to the prospect of 
time to come—and I have received more than one inquiry 
into the amount of prophetic insight imparted by palaeon¬ 
tology—I may crave indulgence for a few words of more 
sound, perhaps, than significance. But the reflective mind 
cannot evade or resist the tendency to speculate on the future 
course and ultimate fate of vital phenomena on this planet. 
There seems to have been a time w T hen life was not; there 
may, therefore, be a period when it will cease to be. 
“ Our most soaring speculations still show a kinship to our 
nature: we see the element of finality in so much that we 
have cognisance of, that it must needs mingle with our 
thoughts, and bias our conclusions on many things. 
“The end of the world has been presented to man’s mind 
under divers aspects: as a general conflagration; as the 
same, preceded by a millennial exaltation of the world to a 
Paradisaical state—the abode of a higher and blessed race 
of intelligences. 
“ If the guide-post of palaeontology may seem to point to a 
course ascending to the condition of the latter speculation, it 
points but a very short way; and in leaving it we find our¬ 
selves in a wilderness of conjecture, where to try to advance 
is to find ourselves ‘in wandering mazes lost/ 
“ With much more satisfaction do I return to the legitimate 
deductions from the phenomena we have had under review. 
“ In the survey which I have taken in the present course of 
lectures of the genesis, succession, geographical distribution, 
affinities, and osteology of the mammalian class, if I have 
succeeded in demonstrating the perfect adaptation of each 
varying form to the exigencies, and habits, and well-being of 
the species, I have fulfilled one object which I had in view, 
