The Rise and Progress of Palaeontology
Page: 8

alteration of marine and terrestrial conditions upon the soil of
Tuscany in a manner worthy of a modern geologist.
The speculations of De Maillet in the beginning of the
eighteenth century turn upon fossils; and Buffon follows him
very closely in those two remarkable works, the "Theorie de la
Terre" and the "Epoques de la Nature" with which he commenced
and ended his career as a naturalist.

The opening sentences of the "Epoques de la Nature" show us how
fully Buffon recognised the analogy of geological with
archaeological inquiries. "As in civil history we consult deeds,
seek for coins, or decipher antique inscriptions in order to
determine the epochs of human revolutions and fix the date of
moral events; so, in natural history, we must search the
archives of the world, recover old monuments from the bowels of
the earth, collect their fragmentary remains, and gather into
one body of evidence all the signs of physical change which may
enable us to look back upon the different ages of nature. It is
our only means of fixing some points in the immensity of space,
and of setting a certain number of waymarks along the eternal
path of time."

Buffon enumerates five classes of these monuments of the past
history of the earth, and they are all facts of palaeontology.
In the first place, he says, shells and other marine productions
are found all over the surface and in the interior of the dry
land; and all calcareous rocks are made up of their remains.
Secondly, a great many of these shells which are found in Europe
are not now to be met with in the adjacent seas; and, in the
slates and other deep-seated deposits, there are remains of
fishes and of plants of which no species now exist in our
latitudes, and which are either extinct, or exist only in more
northern climates. Thirdly, in Siberia and in other northern
regions of Europe and of Asia, bones and teeth of elephants,
rhinoceroses, and hippopotamuses occur in such numbers that
these animals must once have lived and multiplied in those
regions, although at the present day they are confined to
southern climates. The deposits in which these remains are found