The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology
Page: 2

multitude of workers have laboured in the same field. In many
groups of the animal kingdom the number of fossil forms already
known is as great as that of the existing species. In some cases
it is much greater; and there are entire orders of animals of
the existence of which we should know nothing except for the
evidence afforded by fossil remains. With all this it may be
safely assumed that, at the present moment, we are not
acquainted with a tittle of the fossils which will sooner or
later be discovered. If we may judge by the profusion yielded
within the last few years by the Tertiary formations of North
America, there seems to be no limit to the multitude of
mammalian remains to be expected from that continent;
and analogy leads us to expect similar riches in Eastern Asia,
whenever the Tertiary formations of that region are as carefully
explored. Again, we have, as yet, almost everything to learn
respecting the terrestrial population of the Mesozoic epoch;
and it seems as if the Western territories of the United States
were about to prove as instructive in regard to this point as
they have in respect of tertiary life. My friend Professor Marsh
informs me that, within two years, remains of more than 160
distinct individuals of mammals, belonging to twenty species and
nine genera, have been found in a space not larger than the
floor of a good-sized room; while beds of the same age have
yielded 300 reptiles, varying in size from a length of 60 feet
or 80 feet to the dimensions of a rabbit.

The task which I have set myself to-night is to endeavour to lay
before you, as briefly as possible, a sketch of the successive
steps by which our present knowledge of the facts of
palaeontology and of those conclusions from them which are
indisputable, has been attained; and I beg leave to remind you,
at the outset, that in attempting to sketch the progress of a
branch of knowledge to which innumerable labours have
contributed, my business is rather with generalisations than
with details. It is my object to mark the epochs of
palaeontology, not to recount all the events of its history.

That which I just now called the fundamental problem of