so many centuries in ignorance of the fact, which is now so fully demonstrated, that no small part of the present surface of the earth is derived from the remains of animals. that constituted the population of ancient seas. Many extensive plains and massive mountains form, as it were. the great charnel-houses bf preceding generations, in which the petrified exuviæ of extinct races of animals and vegetables are piled into stupendous monuments of the operations of life and death, during almost immeasurable periods of past time. "At the sight of a spectacle," says Cuvier,[1] "so imposing, so terrible as that of the wreck of animal life, forming almost the entire soil on which we tread, it is difficult to restrain the imagination from hazarding some conjectures as to the causes by which such great effects have been produced."
The deeper we descend into the strata of the Earth, the higher do we ascend into the archæological history of past ages of creation. We find successive stages marked by varying forms of animal and vegetable life, and these generally differ more and more widely from existing species, as we go further downwards into the receptacles of the wreck of more ancient creations.
When we discover a constant and regular assemblage of organic Remains, commencing with one 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 succeeding one another, when we investigate the mineral deposites on the surface of the Earth. The study of these Remains 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
- ↑ Cuvier rapport sur le progrès des sciences naturelles, p. 179.
