But these are not the only fossils of this period; it is here we meet, and that for the first time, with the highest form of animal life with which the researches of geology have made us acquainted. We have traced life in various forms in the different rocks that have passed under our rapid survey, and in all we have seen a wondrous and most orderly gradation. We began with the coral zoophytes, and from them proceeded to the mollusks and crustacea of the hypogene rocks; ascending, we discovered “fish with glittering scales,” associated with the crinoids and cryptogamous plants of the secondary series of rocks; and then we arrive where we are now, among the true dicotyledonous and exogenous plants and trees, with the strange birds and gigantic quadrupeds of the tertiary period. But the student must not imagine that even the fossils of this epoch bring him up to the modern era, or the _reign of man_; for even in the tertiary system numberless species lived and flourished, which in their turn became extinct, to be succeeded by others long before man, the chief of animals and something more, made his appearance, to hold dominion over these manifold productions of creative skill and power. But amidst these creations, “God was everywhere, the God who framed Mankind to be one mighty human family, Himself their Father, and the world their home.” It would be altogether beside the purpose of this preliminary treatise to enter into any details respecting the animals that have been found in such abundance in the Norwich Crag, that it has been called the “Mammaliferous Crag.” Those who desire full and deeply interesting information on this question should consult Owen’s noble work, entitled “British Fossil Mammals and Birds,” where, under the respective divisions of Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, he will see a complete chart of our riches in the possessions of a past creation. For the discovery of the Siberian Mammoth so often quoted, we shall refer to the same work, page 217, &c.; from which we shall only quote one brief extract, illustrative of the abundance of these remains in our own coasts in the ages past.