forgetting for the time the importance of his own small winnings, to
re-examine the common stock in trade, so that he may make sure how far
the stock of bullion in the cellar--on the faith of whose existence so
much paper has been circulating--is really the solid gold of truth. 

The Anniversary Meeting of the Geological Society seems to be an
occasion well suited for an undertaking of this kind--for an inquiry,
in fact, into the nature and value of the present results of
paleontological investigation; and the more so, as all those who have
paid close attention to the late multitudinous discussions in which
paleontology is implicated, must have felt the urgent necessity of some
such scrutiny. 

First in order, as the most definite and unquestionable of all the
results of paleontology, must be mentioned the immense extension and
impulse given to botany, zoology, and comparative anatomy, by the
investigation of fossil remains.  Indeed, the mass of biological facts
has been so greatly increased, and the range of biological speculation
has been so vastly widened, by the researches of the geologist and
paleontologist, that it is to be feared there are naturalists in