Like those creatures, they too were full of life in their time, and made a great deal of noise; but now they are stiff and fossilized, and an object of curiosity to the literary palaeontologist alone.

With respect to the first proposition, I may remark that whatever may be the case among the physical geologists, catastrophic palaeontologists are practically extinct.

Assuredly the time will come when these obligations will be repaid tenfold, and when the maze of the world's past history, through which the pure geologist and the pure palaeontologist find no guidance, will be securely threaded by the clue furnished by the naturalist.

If we allow, with Pictet, that Darwin's theory will very well serve for all that concerns the present epoch of the world's history,an epoch which this renowned palaeontologist regards as including the diluvial or quaternary period,then Darwin's first and foremost need in his onward course is a practicable road from this into and through the tertiary period, the intervening region between the comparatively near and the far remote past.