Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/109

 Rh enormous quantities of abraded matter from the lands; and accordingly we find, that strata of aqueous formation have become the common repository not only of the Remains of aquatic, but also of terrestrial animals and vegetables.

The study of these Remains will form our most interesting and instructive subject of inquiry, since it is in them that we shall find the great master-key whereby we may unlock the secret history of the earth. They are documents which contain the evidences of revolutions and catastrophes, long antecedent to the creation of the human race; they open the book of nature, and swell the volumes of science, with the Records of many successive series of animal and vegetable generations, of which the Creation and Extinction would have been equally unknown to us, but for recent discoveries in the science of Geology.

we proceed to consider the evidences of design, discoverable in the structure of the extinct carnivorous races, which inhabited our planet during former periods of its history; we may briefly examine the nature of that universal dispensation, whereby a system of perpetual destruction, followed by continual renovation, has at all times tended to increase the aggregate of animal enjoyment, over the entire surface of the terraqueous globe.

Some of the most important provisions which will be presented to us in the anatomy of these ancient animals, are found in the organs with which they were furnished for the