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be viewed without profound emotion. In exhuming from their earthy beds, or spar-bespangled vaults, the relics of that primeval world, we seem to evoke spirits of darkness, crime, and perdition; we feel transported along with them to the judgment-seat of the Eternal, and hear the voice of many waters coming to execute the sentence of just condemnation, on an "earth corrupt and filled with violence." The powers of prophecy overshadow us. The bony fossil starts to life, and conjures us in mysterious mutterings, to flee from the wrath to come.

How

solemn, to walk through this valley of death! Methinks the very stones cry out, "The Lord reigneth; righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne."

Such a dismal ruin of all organic beings, such a derangement of the fair frame of nature seem to be irreconcilable difficulties in Natural Theism. For is not the wisdom of God impeached in constructing a world on foundations so infirm; his prescience in peopling so precarious an abode, with countless myriads of exquisite mechanisms; and his goodness in plunging indiscriminately every tribe and family of his sentient offspring in mortal agony and death? A creation replete with beauty and enjoyment, suddenly transformed by its Creator's mandate or permission into a waste of waters, is a moral phenomenon which certes no system of ethics can explain. Here, metaphysics, the boasted mistress of mind, with all her train of categories, stands at fault. But here, if reason will deign to forego its pride, and implore the aid of a superior light, the Hebrew prophet will lift up the dark veil from the primeval

scene. In revealing the disobedience of Adam, the atrocious guilt of Cain, and the pestilence of sin, almost universally spread among their progeny, he shows, alas! too clearly, how justice outraged, and mercy spurned, inevitably called forth the final lustration of the deluge. This conclusion, no philosopher can reasonably gainsay, who considers man as a responsible agent, and this earth with all its apparatus of organic life, as mainly subservient to his moral and intellectual education.

Before entering on our description of these ancient animals, we shall explain the principles by which their scattered bones may be recognised and rejoined. There is in organic beings a correlation of forms appropriate to each, whereby the individual can be determined from every one of its fragments. Each animal constitutes a whole, one systematic cycle, whose parts are in mutual correspondence, and concur to the same definite action, by a reciprocal reaction. None of the parts can change, without a symmetrical change in the others; and hence, each taken by itself, indicates and gives all the rest.

Thus, if the intestines of an animal are organised so as to digest only raw flesh, its jaws must be constructed for devouring its prey; its claws for seizing and tearing it asunder; its teeth for cutting and dividing it; the entire system of its organs of motion for pursuing and overtaking it, its organs of sense for descrying it at a distance; and even its brain must be qualified for exercising the instinct of self-concealment, and the art to ensnare its vic

Cuvier, Ossemens Fossiles, Discours Preliminaire, p. xlv.

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tims. Such are the general conditions of the carnivorous temperament; every animal endowed with which, must combine them all, for otherwise its race could not subsist. Under the general conditions, however, there are peculiarities, relative to the size, species, abode of the prey which the animal prefers; and from each of these peculiar conditions, result modifications of detail, in the forms emanating from the general conditions. Hence, not only the class, and order, but the genus, and even the species, are found to be expressed in the form of every part.

In fact, the jaws could not seize the prey, without a certain form of condyle; without a certain ratio between the point of resistance of the object, point of application of the power, and the fulcrum; without a certain bulk of temporal muscle, corresponding to a certain extent of bony cavity to receive it, and a certain convexity of zygomatic arch to let it pass through; and this arch must have a certain strength to give a bearing to the masseter muscle.

For the animal to carry off its prey, it must possess a certain strength in the muscles which lift its head, whence results a determinate form in the vertebræ to which the muscles are attached, and in the occiput where they are inserted.

But the teeth cannot cut the flesh, without being sharp edged or pointed, and that in a greater or less degree according as they are more or less exclusively confined to the cutting of flesh. Their base must be solid in proportion to the number and size of the bones which they have to break. All

these circumstances, moreover, have an influence on the development of every part subservient to the movements of the jaws.

In order that the claws may be able to seize that prey, they must have a certain mobility in the toes, a certain strength of nails, whence will result determinate forms in all the phalanges (joints), and necessary distributions of muscles and tendons. The foreleg must have a certain facility of turning about, which implies appropriate forms in its component bones; and as the bones of the foreleg are articulated with the humerus, they cannot be changed, without inducing changes in it. The shoulder bone must have a certain degree of firmness in the animals that employ their forelegs in seizing bodies, whence peculiar forms arise. The play of these several parts will require certain proportions in the whole of their muscles: and the impressions of muscles thus proportioned will determine also more especially the forms of the bones.

We can easily see that similar conclusions may be formed as to the posterior extremities, which contribute to the rapidity of the general motions; as to the composition of the trunk, and the forms of the vertebræ, which involve the facility, and flexibility of these motions; and as to the forms of the bones of the nose, of the orbit, of the ear, on account of their obvious relations to the perfection of the senses of smelling, seeing, and hearing.

In short, the form of the tooth entails the form of the condyle; and that of the shoulder blade, the form of the nails, just as the equation of a curve includes all its properties; and, as by assuming

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each property separately as the base of a particular equation, we should reproduce, both the ordinary equation, and all its properties whatsoever, so the nail, the shoulder blade, the condyle, the thigh bone, and all the other bones taken separately, give the tooth, or are given by it in their turn. In starting, therefore, from any one of them, the naturalist who possesses a thorough knowledge of the laws of the organic economy, could reconstruct the entire animal.

This principle in its general acceptation, is sufficiently evident, without any further demonstration; but in attempting to apply it, a great many cases occur where our theoretic knowledge of the relations of the forms, would be insufficient, without the aid of observation.

We perceive, for example, that hoofed animals must be all herbivorous, since they have no means of laying hold of prey; we see also, that having no other use of their fore-feet than to support the weight of their bodies, they have no need of a shoulder so powerfully constructed. Hence their want of the clavicle and acromion, and the narrowness of their shoulder blade. Having besides no occasion to twist their foreleg, their radius will be soldered to their ulna, or at least articulated by the hinge, and not the socket joint with the humerus; their herbivorous diet will require flat crowned teeth for bruising seeds and plants; the crown must also be unequal, from the alternation of the enamel and osseous portions; this kind of crown demanding horizontal movements in trituration, the