The interpretation of Fossil Remains is, then, an important department of Geology. Of late years it has been admitted to the rank of a special science, under the name of Palæontology, which means, as the word denotes--παλαιῶν ὄντων λόγος--the science which is concerned about the organic remains of ancient life. The honor of having been the first to place this science on a solid basis, in fact we may say the honor of having brought it into existence, is justly accorded to the distinguished Cuvier, whose name shed a lustre upon France during the early years of the present century. It is therefore still in its infancy; but it has already rewarded the zeal of its students by many wonderful and unexpected revelations. We purpose in the first place to examine the principles on which it is founded, and then to take a rapid glance at the conclusions to which it has led. At the outset it is worthy of notice that the very existence of Fossil Remains, buried deep in the Crust of the Earth, forcibly confirms the Geological theory of Stratified Rocks. These rocks, as the reader will remember, are said to have been slowly spread out, one above another, during the lapse of many ages, by the operation of natural causes; and we have seen how this doctrine is supported by arguments founded on an examination of the rocks themselves,--of the materials that compose them, and of the way in which these materials are piled together. Now let us observe how clearly the testimony of Fossil Remains seems to point in the same direction. First, the bones and shells which we now find in such profusion, far down beneath the superficial covering of the Earth, must have belonged to animals which, when living, flourished on what was then the surface. Yet now they are buried in the bosom of the hard rock, and covered over with beds of solid limestone, and sandstone, and conglomerate, hundreds and thousands of feet in thickness. How can we explain this fact, unless we suppose that these animals, when they perished, were embedded in some soft materials, which afterward became consolidated, and above which, in the course of ages, more and more matter was deposited, until at length that lofty pile of strata was produced, beneath which the remains are now found buried?