It is time we should bring to a close our survey, meagre and imperfect as it is, of Fossil Remains. Those who desire to pursue the inquiry for themselves will easily find an opportunity of doing so. There are few, we should suppose, who may not, occasionally, have access to one or other of those splendid Museums of Geology, which have been set up in all the great towns of Europe. And the still more extensive cabinets of Nature’s Museum, spread out beneath our feet, are within the reach of all. But even the scanty facts which have been set forth faithfully, we trust, though perhaps feebly, in these pages, are sufficient to satisfy all reasonable minds that the bones, the skeletons, the trunks and branches of trees, which have been exhumed from the Stratified Rocks are really the remains of Organic Life that once flourished on the earth, or in the waters of the ancient seas. Obvious, however, as this fact must appear to all who have fully realized the character and appearance of Fossil Remains, it has been often vigorously assailed and vehemently denounced. In the early days of Geology phenomena of this kind were ascribed, not uncommonly, to the “plastic power of Nature,” or to the influence of the stars. Such notions, however, meet with little support among modern writers. They were nothing more than wild fancies, without any foundation either in the evidence of facts or in the analogy of Nature. The “plastic power of Nature” was a phrase that sounded well, perhaps, in the ears of unreflecting people; but no one ever undertook to show that Nature really possesses that “plastic power” which was so readily imputed to her. No one ever undertook to show that it is the way of Nature to make the stems, and branches, and leaves of trees, without the previous process of vegetation; or to make bones and skeletons which have never been invested with the ordinary appendages of flesh and blood. Yet surely this is a theory that requires proof; for all our experience of the laws of Nature points directly to the opposite conclusion. And as for the influence of the stars, we may be content to adopt the language of the celebrated painter Leonardo da Vinci:--“They tell us that these shells were formed in the hills by the influence of the stars; but I ask where in the hills are the stars now forming shells of distinct ages and species? and how can the stars explain the origin of gravel occurring at different heights and composed of pebbles rounded as if by the action of running water? or in what manner can such a cause account for the petrifaction in the same places of various leaves, sea-weeds, and marine crabs?”[81]