topographical records, but she has not the means of working them into a
universal history. Is such a universal history, then, to be regarded as
unattainable? Are all the grandest and most interesting problems which
offer themselves to the geological student essentially insoluble? Is
he in the position of a scientific Tantalus--doomed always to thirst
for a knowledge which he cannot obtain? The reverse is to be hoped;
nay, it may not be impossible to indicate the source whence help will
come.

In commencing these remarks, mention was made of the great obligations
under which the naturalist lies to the geologist and paleontologist.
Assuredly the time will come when these obligations will be repaid
tenfold, and when the maze of the world's past history, through which
the pure geologist and the pure paleontologist find no guidance, will be
securely threaded by the clue furnished by the naturalist.

All who are competent to express an opinion on the subject are, at
present, agreed that the manifold varieties of animal and vegetable
form have not either come into existence by chance, nor result from
capricious exertions of creative power; but that they have taken place
in a definite order, the statement of which order is what men of
science term a natural law. Whether such a law is to be regarded as an
expression of the mode of operation of natural forces, or whether it is
simply a statement of the manner in which a supernatural power has
thought fit to act, is a secondary question, so long as the existence of
the law and the possibility of its discovery by the human intellect are
granted. But he must be a half-hearted philosopher who, believing in
that possibility, and having watched the gigantic strides of the
biological sciences during the last twenty years, doubts that science
will sooner or later make this further step, so as to become possessed