RELATIONS OF THE ORGANIC FOSSILS. 407 and the activity of collectors, whether it he in natural history or books. The true business of a Geologist, here, is of a far higher character. It is to determine the antiquity of these objects and that of the earths in which they lived, the waters which they inhabited, and the former places of those ; to explain why they are now im bedded in rocks when once free, why elevated on the land when once beneath the sea, why they are par tially distributed, and far more ; as it is also his office to see how these things explain the history of the earth. If found in alluvial soils, other inquiries of an analogous nature arise, relating especially to the later history of the globe. And in the study of the objects themselves, if he undertakes the office of the zoologist and botanist, it is his business to compare the dead with the existing races ; through which it is his own proper office to draw inferences as to the history of the living creations of the Earth, as to that of the Earth itself. The limits and nature of an elementary work on Geology, do not permit an examination of this sub ject as it belongs to Zoology and Botany : a treatise would be demanded for it, and that would also be a large one. I have already published a skeleton for such a work, or a basis on which those details might be engrafted: as it is now time that they should be collected and embodied. For the objects themselves, 1 must refer to that and other well-known books ; especially to local records, and to professed arrange ments of fossil organic bodies ; here, I must confine myself to purely geological science, as much as pos sible. And that will also be more useful ; for while books abound on the fossil bodies themselves, their geological bearings and connexions have been almost