² If the name of natural history, now that it has once been adopted, is to continue to be used for the description of nature, we may give the name of archaeology of nature, as contrasted with art, to that which the former literally indicates, namely an account of the bygone or ancient state of the earth—a matter on which, though we dare not hope for any certainty, we have good ground for conjecture. Fossil remains would be objects for the archaeology of nature, just as rudely cut stones, and things of that kind, would be for the archaeology of art. For, as work is actually being done in this department, under the name of a theory of the earth, steadily though, as we might expect, slowly, this name would not be given to a purely imaginary study of nature, but to one to which nature itself invites and summons us.