When we are brought, for the first time, face to face with these countless relics of a former world, we are impressed with a sense of wonder and bewilderment. That the skeletons before us, though now dry and withered, were once animated with the breath of life; that the trees now lying shattered and prostrate, and shorn of their branches, once flourished on the earth, we cannot for a moment hesitate to believe. But beyond this one fact, all is darkness and mystery. These gaunt skeletons, these uncouth monsters, these petrified forests, are silent, lifeless, as the rocks within whose stony bosoms they have lain so long entombed. Had they speech and memory, they could tell us much, no doubt, of that ancient world in which they bore a part, of its continents, and seas, and rivers, and mountains; of the various tribes of animals and plants by which it was peopled; of their habits and domestic economy; how they lived, how they died, and how they were buried in those graves from which, after the lapse of we know not how many ages, they now come forth into the light of day. As it is, however, we can but gaze and wonder. We have nothing here but the relics of death and destruction: there is no feeling, no memory, no voice, in these dry bones; no living tenant in these hollow skulls, to recount to us the history of former times. So thinks and reasons the ordinary observer. But far different is the language of the Geologist. These dry and withered bones, he tells us, _are_ gifted with memory and speech; and, though the language they speak may seem at first unfamiliar and obscure, it is not, on that account, beyond our comprehension. Like the birds, reptiles, fish, and other symbols, inscribed on the obelisks of ancient Egypt, these bones and shells stored up in the Crust of the Earth, have a hidden meaning which it is the business of Science to search out and explain. They are Nature’s hieroglyphics, which she has impressed upon her works to carry down to remote ages the memory of the revolutions through which our Globe has passed; and when we come to understand them aright, they do unfold to us the story of that ancient world to which they belonged.