the larger Palæozoic ganoids, and of the enaliosaurs of the Secondary period, by the screw-like markings of a spiral intestine, similar in form to that now exemplified by the sharks and rays. And in maintaining his hypothesis that most fossils are mere archetypes--mere plans or models--of existences to be, the archetypal dung proves rather a stumbling-block, and the English clergyman waxes exceedingly wroth against the geologists. "We cannot," he says, "believe in such things as coprolites. They are only a curious form of matter commanded by Him who has made the flower to assume all shapes as well as all hues. He who would not allow so much as a tool to be lifted up on the stones that composed his altar, would certainly not allow the _work_ of animals to compose his creation, much less, then, their dung. The geological assertion that the Creator of this world formed it in some parts of coprolites savors very much of Satan or Beelzebub, the god of dung. Geologists could scarcely have made a more unfortunate self-refuting assertion than this." I question, however, whether the clergyman does well to be angry with the geologists here. That fossils are mere models and archetypes, is _his_ hypothesis, not theirs; and so it is he himself who is answerable, not they, for what he deems the impiety of the archetypal dung. His next statement is of a kind suited somewhat to astonish the practical geologist. "_It is the constant language of geologists_," he says, in giving the result of their discoveries, "_that no young have been found!!!_ while the larger fossils have been detected isolated, or in the company of others, all differing in kind." "Archetypal resemblances of ova have been found, and such things as _moths_; but these are distinct and perfect in their kind. The occurrence of the young, which are imperfect, is a fact which has not been, and never can be, established; _therefore it never can be proved that this world has had a longer existence than six thousand years_." It is "the constant language of geologists" that "no young have been found" in the fossil state. Amazing assertion! "Therefore it never can be proved that this world has had a longer existence than six thousand years." Astonishing inference! There is not a tyro in geology who ever looked over a set of fossils, or ever spent an hour in exploring a fossiliferous deposit, who does not know that the remains of organisms in every stage of growth may be found lying side by side in the same bed,--that almost every museum contains its series of molluscs, crustaceans, fishes, and corals, formed to illustrate species in their various stages of growth,--that, in especial, among the ammonites of the Secondary ages, and the trilobites of the Palæozoic ones, these series have been made with great care, in order to prevent the erroneous multiplication of species,--and that, in short, every richly fossiliferous stratum in the earth's crust repeats the lesson so often