The past and present life of the globe. Being a sketch in outline of the world's life-system

THE WORLD'S LIFE-SYSTEM

"The investigation of nature teaches us to recognise the omnipotence, the
perfection, and the inscrutable wisdom of an infinitely higher Being, in his works
and actions. So long as we are ignorant of these things, the perfect development
of the human mind cannot be hoped for, or even conceived. Without this know-
ledge the immortal spirit of man cannot attain to a consciousness of its own
dignity, or of the rank which it occupies in creation."— LIEBIG'S Familiar Letters
on Chemistry.

THE

PAST AND PRESENT LIFE

OP,

THE GLOBE

BEING A SKETCH IN OUTLINE

THE WOBLD'S LIFE-SYSTEM

BY

DAVID PAGE, F.G.S.

AUTHOR OF " INTRODUCTORY AND ADVANCED TEST-BOOKS OF GEOLOGY'
" HANDBOOK OF GEOLOGICAL TERMS," ETC.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBUKGH AND LONDON

MDCCCLXI

TO

WILLIAM MILLEB, ESQ.

IN PLEASANT REMEMBRANCE
HOURS AND EVENINGS OF DISCUSSION

OUR THEME

THE THEME OF THE FOLLOWING PAGES.

856261

PREFACE.

THE object of the following Chapters is to present a
sketch in outline of the World's Life-System — tracing
from the earliest organisms in the stratified crust to
the forms that now adorn and people its surface. The
aim has been to link the remote to the recent — the
living to the extinct — that the general reader may be
enabled to form some intelligible conception of the
whole as a great and continuously-evolving scheme of
vegetable and animal existences. There is no attempt
whatever to teach anatomical details or point out spe-
cific distinctions — the volume being intended not as a
Handbook of Palaeontology, but simply as a readable
sketch for the information of those who have neither
the time nor the preliminary training to avail them-
selves of works of higher scientific pretensions. And
yet the reader will find in these pages a reliable resumtf
of the science, as founded 011 the most recent discov-
eries, and a treatment of its bearings from a higher
stand-point than can be conveniently taken by the
mere text-books and manuals of Geology. At a time

O PREFACE.

when the question of Life is receiving a wider audience,
such a resumd may also be of utility in indicating the
line that separates the assumed and hypothetical from
the known and ascertainable ; and so prevent the un-
professional inquirer from ascribing to Geology what
it does not affirm, or from expecting from its teachings
what they cannot reveal.

Designed for the general reader, and delivered in
part to popular audiences, the style is, perhaps, some-
what more rhetorical than befits the exactitudes of
science ; but even on this point the Author could not
well have done otherwise. His object was to excite
rather than satisfy the curiosity of his hearers — to
impress them with the universality and uniformity of
natural law — believing there can be no true notion
of Nature or of Nature's requirements while her facts
are viewed through the medium of the miraculous.
Nor let it be thought that, by recognising in every
instance the fixity and unerring operation of Law, we
place a wider distance between the Creator and his
works, or that any knowledge of this kind has a tend-
ency to self-sufficiency or irreverence. On the con-
trary, he who knows most of creational law, and that
the most intimately, stands generally the least in need
of the injunction — " Put off thy shoes from off thy
feet, for the place whereon thou treadest is holy/'

In treating such a theme as Life — its apparent origin
and progress — the writer has necessarily had occasion

PEEFACE. 9

to allude to subjects on which there is much diversity
of opinion ; to some that are usually approached with
uneasy tenderness, as coming in conflict with prevalent
beliefs ; and to others on which the united labours of
Geologists, during the last fifty years, have thrown but
little reliable light or information. In either case he
has expressed his opinions freely, but without dogma-
tism ; firmly, but solely under the warrant of Geology ;
and always with a frank admission of the many defi-
ciencies and imperfections of that science. As there
is nothing to be gained by offending a prejudice where
we cannot establish a conviction, he has contented
himself by stating what Geology affirms, without allud-
ing to what it appears to contradict ; and as the estab-
lishment of truth does not always follow the overturn-
ing of error, the expounder of science may surely be
permitted to attempt the one without hazarding an
endeavour to accomplish the other. In approaching
our subject, therefore, — a subject too often treated as
if it lay beyond the pale of natural law, — let it be
clearly understood that we are dealing with Life solely
in its geological aspects. We appeal unto Caesar ;
let us be judged by Ctesar's laws.

GILMORE PLACE, EDINBURGH,
February 1861.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTORY.

PA OK

Interest attached to the study of the PAST in natural as in human
history. — Fossils, or petrified remains of plants and animals,
the medals and records of Creation.— The unerring certainty of
the record. — Palaeontology, or the Science of Extinct Life. — Its
scope and bearings, as founded on a knowledge of the present
life of the globe. — Its importance, abstract and practical. —
The task it has yet to accomplish, . . . .17

THE PRESENT.

Characteristics and classification of living plants and animals as
established by the Botanist and Zoologist : 1. Plant- Life.— Its
governing conditions in space. — Its typical forms and charac-
ters.— Its primal plan and patterns.— Systematic arrangement
of its forms. — Their apparent functions. — Persistency of plan
in time past. 2. Animal Life.— Its distribution or governing
conditions in space.— Its typical forms and their functions. —
Its primal plan and patterns. — Higher and lower. — Systematic
arrangement of its forms. — Identity of plan and design in
time past. 3. Co-adaptation of plants and animals in one great
Life-Scheme, 27

THE RECORD.

Chronology of geology, or the arrangement of the world's past into
Rock-formations and Life-periods. — Principles and methods of
this arrangement. — Continuity of natural law. — Provisional
and negative state of geological knowledge as influencing our
comprehension of the successional order of organic being. —
Palaeontology so based. — The problems it has to solve. — Its
progress and prospects, . . . . .69

CONTENTS.

THE FAR PAST.

PACK

Characteristics and gradations of the PALAEOZOIC or " Ancient Life"
period: 1. The Cambrian age — so-called "Dawn of Life." 2.
The Silurian age. — Erroneous notions respecting its physical
geography and life-relations.- — Its vegetation, graptolites, corals,
star-fishes, shell-fish, and crustaceans. — Their specialties and
place in the scale of being. 3. The Devonian or Old Red Sand-
stone age. — Physical features of the epoch. — Its plants, crus-
taceans, shell-fish, and fishes. 4. The Carboniferous age. — The
physical geography and climatal conditions of the period. — Its
forest - growths, coral-reefs, shell -beds, crustaceans, insects,
fishes, and reptiles. 5. The Permian or Lower New Red Sand-
stone age — so-called "close" of the Paleozoic cycle. — Imper-
fect interpretation and provisional nature of the Life-phases
and Life-periods of the geologist, . . . .79

THE MIDDLE PAST.

Characteristics and gradations of the MESOZOIC or "Middle Life"
period: 6. The Triassic or Upper New Red .Sandstone age.-
Its foot-tracks, birds, and reptiles. 7. The Oolitic age.— Sea
and land of the epoch. — Its vegetation, lower marine life, shell-
fish, Crustacea, insects, reptiles, and terrestrial mammals. 8.
The Cretaceous or Chalk age. — Physical geography of its seas
and shores. — Its lower marine life, foraminiferse, sponges, star-
fishes, sea-urchins, shell-fish, fishes, reptiles, birds, and mam-
mals.— Generalisations resulting from a review of the Mesozoic
cycle, . . . . . . .

THE RECENT.

Characteristics and gradations of the CAINOZOIC or " Recent Life"
period: 9. The Tertiary age.— Geography of the epoch. — Its
huge terrestrial mammals and recent forms of life. — Interme-
diate forms, and their relation to the fauna of existing areas.-
Extinctions during the so-called " Glacial" or " Drifts" period.
10. The Post-Tertiary or Current age.— General existing ar-
rangements of sea and land. —Existing forms and distribution
of life. — General and local extinctions. — Man, pre-historic and
historic.— Mutations of the human race, . . . 151

CONTENTS. 1 3

THE LAW.

PAGE

General deductions arising from the discoveries of Palaeontology. —
Origin and advent of life unknown to science. — Universality of
life in time and space.— Uniformity of type and plan through
all the geological life-periods. — Similarity of functions and life-
relations. — Distribution in space. — External conditions never
uniform. — Representatives of the great life-types in every
epoch. — Gradation and progress. — The course and apparent
order of this progress. — Introduction of new forms. — Extinction
and creation of species. — Theories of variation and development.
— Geological epoch of man. — Time and progress. — Apparent
course of creation. — Life-phases of the Current epoch. — Causes
of local and general extinction. — Man as a sub-creative centre
and modifying agent.— Duration of species. — Time and term of
the human race. — Life aspects of the future. — Progression or
succession? — Onward and upward, .... 177

CONCLUSION.

What has been aimed at. — The known and the unknown.— The field
in which we may all become fellow-workers. — The spirit in which
we should inquire, ...... 241

IXTEODUCTOKY

PALEONTOLOGY ITS SCOPE AND BEARINGS

fPHESE fragments of rock on the table before us, chips

which the road-maker woiild consider sorry material for

his purpose, and the feet of the ignorant might spurn from

their path, are in the eye of Science invested with as high

18 INTRODUCTORY.

an interest as the obelisks of Egypt, or the sculptures of
Nineveh. The antiquarian pores with enthusiasm over the
lines and letters of the one, and endeavours to decipher the
unconnected history of a few thousand years ; the geolo-
gist bends with equal delight over the forms and impres-
sions on the other, and tries to gather therefrom some intel-
ligible glimpses of a PAST, compared with whose duration
the chronology of man is but as the moments of yesterday.
The one as connected with the Humanity to which we be-
long— chequered and humiliating as it has been in many of
its phases — must ever excite a lively and immediate inter-
est ; the other appertaining to the history of the globe we
inherit, and of whose plan our race forms so important a
feature, can never cease to attract the attention of enlight-
ened intelligence. In his inciting research the archaeolo-
gist exhumes buried cities and catacombs, collects the
mutilated fragments of human art, deciphers monumental
inscriptions, and notes every vestige of the various races
that may have peopled any given locality; so in geology
the earnest inquirer examines every accessible stratum, col-
lects the fossil fragments he exhumes, and, comparing them
with the plants and animals now peopling the earth, endea-
vours to arrive at a knowledge of the various races that
have Successively a£orn;ed its surface. As a stone-hatchet,
a flint arrow-head, a if ee canoe, or fragment of pottery, will
often; riiitfW, a 3pod ci' ligl).t on the researches of the his-
torian ; so in geology, the impression of a leaf, a petrified
shell, a tooth, a fragment of bone, or a single fish-scale,
will often suffice to unriddle the most puzzling problem.
The one kind of evidence speaks of the hand that fabri-
cated, the degree of intelligence that directed the fabrica-
tion, and the purpose it was meant to subserve ; the other
tells of the nature of the plant or animal to which it be-
longed, the climate and conditions under which it grew

PALAEONTOLOGY ITS OBJECTS. 19

and flourished, the place it held, and the function it per-
formed in the world's economy, and, higher than all, the
omniscience and skill that pre-ordained and directed with
unerring precision its numerous and complicated co-adapta-
tions.

Eough and mutilated as these fragments may appear —
obscure as are the forms impressed on their surfaces, they
embody a tale of the world's PAST as legible to the eye of
Science — and often far more connected — than these sculp-
tures on this slab, or those hieroglyphics graven on that
sarcophagus. These forked lobes, little more than a mere
discoloration on the stone, once floated as sea- weed in the
waters ; that reed-like stem converted into stone, as it now
is, luxuriated in some primeval marsh ; that rock-impressed
fern-frond once waved its feathery leaflets in the sunshine of
a genial climate ; and that tiny spikelet, now the merest
film of carbonaceous matter, has sparkled with the night-
dews of heaven as certainly as the dews now cherish the
tender herb, or the sunlight gives colour to existing
verdure. Worthless as these chips may seem, the eye of
the zoologist detects in this the pore-work of a coral, in
that the valves of a shell-fish ; on this the scales of a fish,
on that the plates of a reptile ; in this the bone of a bird,
in that the bone of a mammal ; in this the grinder that
milled the leafy twigs of the forest, in that the trenchant
tooth that preyed on the flesh of other creatures. Every
trace becomes a letter, every fragment a word, and every
perfect fossil a chapter in the world's history, which tells of
waters that were thronged and of lands that were tenanted
by life — of races that lived and multiplied and perished —
of others that took their places — and this (as we shall after-
wards see) so often repeated, over and over and over again,
that the mind, at first excited by the marvels it unfolds,
begins at last to grow weary of the review, and the finite

B

20 INTRODUCTORY.

creature loses itself in the contemplation of the works of
the Infinite Creator.

The objects through which we arrive at a knowledge of
this extinct life are what are familiarly termed "Fossils" —
the remains of plants and animals that were entombed in
the silt and sediment of former lakes and estuaries and seas,
and became petrified, or converted into stone, as these sedi-
ments solidified into rocky strata. As the autumnal leaf
drops into the stream and becomes imbedded in its mud —
as the trees of the forest are borne down by the flooded
river and are ultimately entangled in the silt of its estuary
— as the coral-reef and shell-bed are gradually increasing and
growing, as it were, into limestone before our eyes — as the
skeletons of animals are drifted by the tide and fall to the
sea-bottom, or sink into rivers and marshes, and are thus
preserved from further decay — so in all time past have
similar agencies been at wrork : here preserving the broken
twig and the fallen forest, there the coral-reef and the
littoral shell-bed, and anon the remains of animals that
were borne by rivers from the land, or drifted by the waves
on the muddy sea-shore. These organisms so preserved
and petrified constitute the "fossils" of the geologist, who,
treating them apart from the rocks in which they are im-
bedded, has erected their study into a new science, under
the title of PALAEONTOLOGY, or the Study of Ancient Life.
Originally differing in nature, being in various degrees of
completeness at the time they were imbedded, and, above
all, being preserved in different kinds of rock-matter, as
shale, and coal, and limestone, and flint, and sandstone,
they are now found in different degrees of perfection and
distinctness. In some we find the original form and all the
parts entire, of others we have a mere hollow cast or mould,
of some a simple impression of the external surface, of
others we have but scattered traces, and these so obscure

PALEONTOLOGY ITS OBJECTS. 21

that they can be read only by the higher powers of the
microscope ; while of many we have no other relic save the
passing footprint or the slimy trail that was left on the
yielding sands of a former sea-shore. In whatever state
they may be found, they are taken up by the palaeontolo-
gist, compared with existing plants and animals, and ar-
ranged, as far as their nature will permit, according to the
classifications of the botanist and zoologist. To the palae-
ontologist, therefore, we commit these relics of primeval
life, and ask of him to tell — Whether they are the same in
kind as those that now adorn our fields and people the
land and waters; whether they were of a simpler and
lowlier kind that gradually rose, as time rolled on, to their
present forms ; whether they were of tinier or of more
gigantic dimensions ; or whether they varied according
to external conditions — here dwarfing and dying out, and
there some newer creations increasing and spreading under
conditions that were favourable to their existence ] In fine,
we ask of him the history of these extinct forms, as we
demand from the botanist and zoologist the history of the
plants and animals that now nourish around us ; and, com-
bining the living with the extinct, and the recent with the
remote, the highest aim of our science is to discover the
Creative Plan which binds the whole into one unbroken
and harmonious life-system.

It is true that many of these fossils are so fragmentary
and obscure that they cannot yet be deciphered, and others
are so different from anything now existing in the vegetable
or animal world that no definite place can be assigned them.
It is also true that the science of Palaeontology has little
more than passed its infancy, and that of the innumerable
relics entombed in the rocky strata of different regions only
a small proportion can have yet been discovered. Not-
withstanding all this, so enthusiastic has been the research,

22 INTRODUCTORY.

and so attractive the study, that much satisfactory work has
been done, and, by the aid of some of the highest minds in
Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and America, paleontology
has already taken a permanent place on the roll of human
knowledge. Under the hand of a Brongniart, a Goeppert,
or a Lindley, these stony stems have started anew into life
and verdure, and tangled the swampy jungle or waved in the
upland forest ; under the reconstructing skill of a Cuvier,
an Agassiz, or an Owen, these scattered bones have been
reunited in intelligible symmetry, and once more repeopled
the earth, the air, and the ocean; while under the magic
lenses of an Ehrenberg these muds, and marls, and chalks,
have become instinct with life, and ancient waters swarm
with innumerable forms.

" The dust we tread upon was once alive."

Much as these and many others have done, year after year
is still adding largely to our knowledge of the PAST LIFE
of the Globe ; and the time, it is hoped, is not far distant
when Geology shall be enabled to read, through these fossil
chips and fragments, the Life-History of the World, with
as much, if not with greater, certainty than we can now read
the phases of human history itself, as displayed in the suc-
cessive developments of Mnevites and Egyptians, of Greeks
and Eomans, of medieval Goths and modern Anglo-Saxons.
Exciting, however, as this history of the world's Past
must be, even to minds the most illiterate, it may be fairly
questioned at the outset — To whom, and for what purpose,
is all this research and ingenuity expended? Is Palason-
tology a theme merely for the gratification of idle curiosity
and ignorant wonder; or has it, like every true science,
qualities of sterling value that appeal at once to the intel-
lectual and physical exigencies of Man ? Does it bear in
any way on the industrial purposes of life ; does it present

PALAEONTOLOGY ITS USES. 23

itself in the light of an exalting intellectual exercise ; or,
combining both these qualities, does it lead to sounder and
more ennobling views of our relationship to God and Crea-
tion ? If it does neither, it is no true science, and stands
unworthy to be ranked with the legitimate subjects of
intellectual research. Luckily, however, it does all, and
recommends itself, as it were, instinctively to the inquiring
and reflective mind. Guided by its deductions, the identi-
fication of rock formations, which was formerly in a great
measure a matter of hap-hazard, is now a certainty. Fifty
years ago the miner and engineer had little to direct them
in their researches, save the very variable tints of colour, the
structure, or other external aspects of rock-masses. ISTow,
however, a fossil branch, a tooth, or a few scattered fish-
scales, will enable them to identify with certainty strata in
distant localities, and so save years of unnecessary toil and
thousands of useless expenditure. There is, for instance,
in Britain a red sandstone beneath, and a red sandstone
above, our most valuable coal-fields — so like in many re-
spects, that which is which mere mineral characteristics
cannot always determine. Shall we ignorantly dig through
the one for that mineral fuel which never lies beneath it ;
or shall we, mistaking the other, maintain that it is folly to
pierce through its strata ? Where the mere mineralogist
stands perplexed, the palaeontologist proceeds in the con-
fidence of certainty, from the detection of a HoloptycMan
fish-scale which stamps the existence of the Old Red, or
the discovery of a tiny Palceonwcus which is equally decisive
of the New. Exalted as may be the task of solving the
physical and vital problems of the globe, the duty of turn-
ing to account its mineral and metallic treasures is not less
worthy or important. Science acquires fresh power and
position when combined with practice ; Philosophy new
dignity when ministering to Humanity.

24 INTRODUCTORY.

Again, a science that opens up so muc]i of the Past, that
reveals so many new forms of life and organisation, cannot
fail to have an exalting effect as a purely intellectual exer-
cise. The anatomical reasonings — the skill required to re-
construct such scattered fragments — the detection of means
to an end — all this, and much more that must readily suggest
itself to the thinking mind, cannot fail to stamp Palaeon-
tology as one of the highest themes that can engage en-
lightened intelligence. Nor is the neAV light which its
deductions have thrown on other branches of natural science
among the least of its claims to general attention. The re-
vivifying, as it were, of so many extinct forms of existence
has given a new significance to the science of Life ; and
henceforth no view of the vegetable or animal kingdoms
can lay claim to a truly scientific character that does not
embody the discoveries of the palaeontologist. In fact, so
inseparably woven into ONE GREAT SYSTEM are all fossil
forms with those now existing, that we cannot treat of the
one without considering the other ; and can never hope to
arrive at a knowledge of Creative Law by any method
which, however accurate as regards the one, is not equally
careful and accurate as regards the other. Furthermore,
connected as the whole phases of external nature are into
one beautiful COSMOS, the mind that remains in ignorance
of their history can form but a very imperfect, if not an
altogether erroneous, notion of its own relationship and
connection therewith. For, while the scope of human
duty is circumscribed by our relations to external nature,
by our relations to our fellow-men, and by our relations to
God, a knowledge of these relations as manifested in the
great scheme of Creation is altogether indispensable. In
the eloquent language of our motto — " So long as we are
ignorant of these things, the perfect development of the
human mind cannot be hoped for or even conceived. "With-

PALEONTOLOGY ITS USES. 25

out this knowledge, the immortal spirit of man cannot
attain to a consciousness of its own dignity, or of the rank
which it occupies in Creation." Still more: if existing
nature furnishes the theologian with irrefragable proofs of
unity of plan and design throughout Creation — if his con-
ceptions of Deity are enlarged and his reverence increased
by the study of these adaptations — much more must they
be exalted when he finds the same harmonies of design and
the same unity of plan running through untold ages, and
spreading and ramifying through forms so numerous and
varied that, varied and rife as existing Life may be, it
constitutes but the merest fraction of the Life that has been,
and of the forms that have passed away.

Such is the nature and scope of Palaeontology — a science
whose function is to extract from the sandstones, and lime-
stones, and clays of the stratified crust, the petrified remains
of plants and animals, and from these remains to recon-
struct the forms to which they belonged, so as to arrive
at some intelligible conception of the Life that formerly
tenanted the land and peopled the waters. These sand-
stones, and limestones, and clays, in all their various repe-
titions, are but the sediments of pre-existing lakes and
estuaries and seas ; and the fossils they imbed will be more
or less perfectly preserved, just as they were deposited in
the areas where they lived and grew, or were drifted from
a distance in detached and scattered fragments — accord-
ing as they were rapidly enveloped from further decay,
or exposed to the wasting influences of the air and water —
and, above all, according to the preservative character of
the stratum that contains them. Their imperfection, and
the difficulty of reading aright their characters, is greatly
increased by the fact that they are for the most part the
chance findings of the quarryman and miner, and extracted

26 INTRODUCTORY.

in chips and fragments even more fragmentary than when
originally imbedded. Notwithstanding these obstructions,
and the hopelessness of ever obtaining in a fossil state the
colours and softer parts that give beauty and outline to
animal forms — in spite of the fact that the corresponding
portions of structures found to-day may not be turned up
even for years to come — and in face of the toil and expense
which the study unavoidably entails — substantial progress has
been made in Palaeontology, and these fragmentary remains
of Past Life been reconstructed so as to take intelligible
rank and position in the great categories of existing Vitality.
Founding on the uniformity of natural law and persistency
in the main structural characteristics of plants and animals
throughout all time, the Palaeontologist, strong in his faith
and hopeful of the result, proceeds to his arduous task,
and resuscitates as it were the Life of former epochs —
clothing the land with verdure and beauty, and peopling
the waters with their varied and appropriate forms. Lifting
the veil from the Past, he displays the terraqueous aspects
of the globe at the successive stages of its history ; even as
now, through the combined labours of the geographer, the
botanist, and the zoologist, we are enabled to present a
panorama of existing lands and seas with all their exube-
rant and varied vitality.

THE PKESENT.

ITS FLORA, FAUNA, AND THEIR CO-ADAPTATIONS.

BEFORE we can rightly compare the Past Life, of which
these relics give evidence, with that which now peoples the
globe, we must glance at the conditions under which plants
and animals at present exist, and know something of their
nature and the functions they have to perform. We can
only reason respecting the Past from our knowledge of the
the Present ; and the more intimate our acquaintance with
the various phases of existing nature, the sounder our
deductions relating to those that have long since passed
away. We say the various phases of existing nature, for
the plants and animals that people the surface of any given
latitude may differ altogether in character from those en-
tombed in the strata beneath, and the organisms in the
several formations below may now find their nearest ana-
logues in the flora and fauna of distant and diversified
regions. If we are familiar, however, with the general con-
ditions under which plants and animals now live and
flourish, and if we can establish a relationship between
those existing and those long since extinct, then we can
recall the conditions under which the latter grew and
flourished, and map out the geography and climate of the
primeval world, as the geographer now maps out the areas
of sea and land, and depicts the various races of life — the
belts of sterility and exuberance — and the creative centres

28 THE PRESENT.

from which peculiar families have emanated to perform their
functions in the great economy of nature.

I. —ITS FLORA OR PLANT-LIFE.

Glancing first at the VEGETABLE WORLD, we perceive that
the great regulators of plant-life are heat, light, and mois-
ture. Such is the order of nature now, and such, we are
bound to believe, have been the ordainings of creation from
the earliest moment that the vegetable cell was evoked into
existence. Under the tropics, both individual exuberance
and specific variety attain their maximum intensity ; in the
temperate zones this intensity gradually declines ; while in
the arctic regions vegetable life dwarfs and diminishes till
it ultimately disappears and gives place to utter sterility.
As we start from the equator, each great belt — equatorial,
tropical, subtropical, warm-temperate, cold-temperate, sub-
arctic, arctic, and polar* — presents its own distinctive fea-
tures ; and though the zones of the southern hemisphere
may differ in genera and species from those of the northern,
there is still in the respective stages a sufficient resemblance
of growth, colouring, and inflorescence, to prove that, lati-
tude for latitude, the prime governing influence is essenti-
ally solar. As with latitude, which is influenced in the
main by light and heat, so with height above the level of
the ocean — an advance upwards into the rarer regions of
the atmosphere being equivalent, in some measure, to an
advance northwards or southwards into the colder latitudes

* The equatorial zone extends on both sides of the equator to about
15° of latitude ; the tropical from 15° to the tropics ; the subtropical
from the tropics to 34" ; the warmer temperate from 34° to 45° ; the
colder temperate from 45° to 58° ; the subarctic from 58° to the polar
circle ; the arctic from the polar circle to latitude 72° ; and the polar
zone from 72° to the poles.

ITS FLORA. 29

of either pole.* The mountain that has its base waving
with the palms and tree-ferns of India, may have its sides
clothed with the oaks and pines of Europe, its higher cliffs
with the dwarf- willows and mosses of Nova Zembla, while
its snowy peaks are as void of life as the ice-bound shores
of the arctic circle. Besides these conditions, there are
others of site, or locality, or habitat — conditions which re-
quire that the weeds of the ocean should differ from the
plants of the marsh, the plants of the marsh from the
herbage of the open plain, and the verdure. of the plain
distinct from that of the mountain forest. Nay more :
there are some tribes that will nourish only in rich organic
mould, others that prefer the shingly surface of the arid
desert ; some that exist only on calcareous soils, and others
unknown beyond the limits of the salt marsh. Wherever
the prime conditions of heat, light, and moisture are present,
there the vegetable germ manifests itself — here incrusting
the naked rock, there mantling the surface of the stagnant
pool — now rooting itself in the decay of its own kind, and
at times finding a habitat even in the tissues of the animal
structure. More than this : every climatic influence, how-
ever faint, leaves its impress on vegetable life. A thicker
layer is added to the concentric growth of the timber-tree
during a genial than during an ungenial summer ; the
southern slopes of a hill are more verdant and flowery than
those of its northern side ; some plants luxuriate in the
sea-breeze which would be death to others ; and the leafiest
side of a tree is ever that which is most accessible to the
open sunshine. Again : plants that grow in localities
marked by sudden extremes of heat and cold are always
more variable in stature, habit, and foliage, than those
which flourish under the steadier influences of a genial

* The capacity of the atmosphere for heat decreases with its density,
and this density decreases from the level of the ocean upwards.

30 THE PRESENT.

climate ; and thus we can judge of the climate of a newly-
discovered country, as well as of the conditions that pre-
vailed and affected plant-life during the deposition of a
rock- formation, which took place thousands of ages ago.
Still further, and apparently altogether independent of
climate : certain families are restricted to certain regions,
beyond which, and under the present arrangements of sea
and land, they naturally never pass ; and thus it is that
the Cape of Good Hope rejoices in its pelargoniums and
geraniums ; China in its teas and camelias ; Australia in
its eucalypti and casuarina3 ; the Spanish peninsula in its
ever -green oaks; and the pampas of South America in
their gigantic thistles and clover, to the almost total exclu-
sion of other species. Descending from family regions to
the narrower provinces of genera and species, we find some
limited to a single valley, to a solitary island, or, it may be,
to some particular mountain-slope which, as far as science
can perceive, enjoys no external influence that is not equally
shared by the other slopes that surround it.

Beyond all these distinctions there is the difference of
KIND — a difference for which science can assign no reason,
save that it has pleased the Creator so to create them.
Why, for instance, does the moss differ from the rush, the
rush from the reed, the reed from the willow, the willow
from the birch, the birch from the pine, or the pine from
the palm 1 The oak and the ash grow side by side in the
same forest, and yet they are, in the language of naturalists,
specifically and generically distinct ; the daisy and wild
clover spring from the same soil, and interweave their root-
lets to form the same turf, and yet they have no feature or
quality in common. That these are facts, the eye of the
passing observer may readily perceive ; the reason why,
man may never know. It is of little avail to talk of the
plasticity of the vegetable organism under the force of

ITS FLORA. 31

external conditions, or to tell us that under these influences
the one form is but a modification and development of the
other. Even could we establish this fact, and determine
the order of its occurrence, it would be no solution of the
great primal question of diversity, seeing that plant-life is
altogether passive, and that external conditions are of them-
selves utterly impotent without a higher power to sustain,
and an intellect to direct and control, the course of their
operations. And, after all, it is less the mere matter of
diversity than the plan which connects this diversity into
one harmonious system ; less the apparent order which
may be learned than the reason thereof, to which human
knowledge may never attain. God has thought fit so to
evoke the vegetable kingdom — to invest His works with
variety and complexity ; and to unravel this complexity,
to arrange these various plants according to their kind and
character, to classify them, in accordance with the divine
design, into species and genera and orders, and to learn
their functions and relations, is the task of the student of
Nature. Proceeding upon this plan, the botanist arranges
plants according to the complexity of their organs, attempt-
ing to separate the simpler from the more highly organised,
and these again one from another according to certain dis-
similarities and differences of form and function. His aim
is to discover the creative idea that pervades the vegetable
kingdom ; and the nearer he approaches that conception,
the more intelligible and permanent his so-called "systems"
of arrangement.

In attempting this arrangement — numerous, varied, and
complex as vegetable life may at first sight appear — the
botanist has happily a few great fixed principles in nature
to guide him. Type and Order run unswervingly through-
out the whole ; and though the Creator might easily have
constructed each species after its own type, and rendered

32 THE PRESENT.

plants as varied in their individual forms as they are nume-
rically abundant, yet He has thought fit to restrict Himself,
as it were, to a few types and models, and, humanly speak-
ing, like a skilful inventor, to produce an almost endless
variety from the co-adaptation of a few simple elements,
and complexity of design by the elimination of a few primal
patterns. As innumerable hues can be produced from a
few primitive colours, as endless strains of music flow from
the touches of a few simple chords, or as the ideas of all
times and nations can be expressed by the combinations of
some twenty or thirty letter-sounds ; so in the structure
of plants and animals every variety of form, every conceiv-
able adaptation of structure, proceeds from the modification
of a few elementary forms and types in nature. Without
this uniformity of plan and design, the study of nature by
man's limited faculties would have been impossible. Be-
wildered with variety without design, and lost in complex-
ity without order, the human intellect could never have
arrived at any true conception of Nature or of Nature's
laws ; could never have woven those chains of reason
wherewith it may be said to have linked earth to heaven,
and affiliated the created to the uncreated Creator. But
inasmuch as God is a God of law and of order, and clearly
me'ant those laws and orders to be intelligible to our limited
comprehensions, so He has considerately narrowed the bounds
of creative design, and made creation a theme at once fitted
to exercise our reason, and to draw forth our reverence
and love. In studying the vegetable world, therefore, the
botanist finds that every diversity of form and structure
proceeds from the elimination of a simple CELL, and that
this cell-growth lies at the basis of all vegetable develop-
ment. He also finds that the primary structural form into
which it is developed is a LEAF or leaf-like organ ; and that
this leaf -like organ manifests itself variously — rising from a

ITS FLORA. 33

simple aggregation of cells, as in the sea-weeds and lichens, to
the more complex fronds of the ferns and clu~b-mosses ; from
these to the parallel-nerved leaves of the grasses and palms ;
and from these again to the reticulated and more highly
organised venation of the leaves of the flowering shrubs
and true timber-trees. He further finds that, while the
leaf is produced by the development of the cell, all the
other organs of the plant are but modifications of the leaf
— that the stem and branches are elaborated from the suc-
cessive growths of leaves, that the petals of the flower are
but modifications of the same organ for a special purpose,
that the fruit is but a specialised combination of leaves, and
that the seed itself consists of a leaf or leaves folded up
and protected for the return of those conditions of heat and
moisture necessary to its starting again into life and verdure,
to perform the same round of development and reproduc-
tion. How this cell, or globule of matter, should become
vivified — how it should be capable, under certain conditions
of heat, light, and moisture, of being reproduced indefin-
itely into some determinate form as a leaf, and how these
leaves or leaf-like organs should be persistently maintained,
each in its own distinctive type throughout the great
categories of the vegetable kingdom — are problems which
science cannot solve. We know, however, the facts and
the order of their occurrence. We perceive the expres-
sion of a prescient plan ; that plan we endeavour to inter-
pret. Everywhere purpose and design are manifest ; into
the motives of the Designer we may not inquire. The
secondary we may discover : to the primary we can only
appeal.

Founding on this great principle of cell and leaf develop-
ment, the botanist traces its elaboration in the different
races of plants, and regards those which manifest little more
than a repetition of the same parts as of lower organisation

34 THE PRESENT.

than those in which the leaf is metamorphosed into various
organs, each organ having a special function to perform in
the plant's growth and perfection. The higher, therefore,
that a plant is in the scale of being, the more specialised its
organisation ; that is, instead of all the functions or several
of its functions being performed by the same organ, each
function is performed by an organ specially devoted to it.
It is thus that the fern is regarded higher than the sea-
weed ; the palm higher than the fern ; and the oak than
the palm. In ranking plants as " higher" and "lower,"
the botanist by no means asserts that the one is less fitted
than the other for its purpose in creation. All that he
affirms — and common-sense homologates the affirmation —
is, that the lichen, composed of a mere congeries of cells,
and increasing by a mere homogeneous development of
these cells, is a less highly organised structure than the
timber- tree, in which is elaborated a variety of tissues, which
is increased by leaf-growth, and whose reproduction is pro-
vided for by a complicated process of flowering and fructifi-
cation. Aware of these distinctions, and knowing the per-
sistency of nature in her modes of operation, we can
determine the relative positions not merely of the plants
that now adorn the various regions of the earth, but of
those that existed during the successive epochs of her by-
gone history. As a region of shrubs and timber-trees is
said to enjoy a higher flora than a region of ferns and club-
mosses, so do the reticulated leaves and concentric woody
layers, found fossil in a recent rock- system, give indication
of a higher physiological value than the parallel-veined
leaves and vascular-bundled steins of some • earlier forma-
tion. It is thus that we arrive, in general terms, at the
great truths of vital progress — a leaf, a stem, the disposi-
tion of a branch, or the structure of a fruit, affording such
evidence to the palaeontologist as the flint arrow-head, the

ITS FLORA. 35

"bronze spear, and the primitive matchlock, afford to the
archaeologist and historian.

Proceeding upon such principles as those indicated in the
preceding paragraphs, the botanist arranges all vegetables
into two grand divisions — the CELLULA-R and the VASCU-
LAR : the former embracing those which, like the mush-
rooms and lichens and sea-weeds, possess no regular vessels,
but are composed of a mere congeries of cells or cellular
tissue ; the latter comprising those that are composed of
various tissues and furnished with various organs of nutri-
tion and reproduction. Again, he subdivides the vascular
into the FLOWERLESS, as the mosses, equisetunis, and ferns ;
and the FLOWERING, which embraces the palms, and lilies,
and grasses, the pines and cycads, and all herbs and shrubs,
and true timber-trees. In the Flowerless division (Crypto-
gams or Sporocarps, as they are sometimes termed) the
organs of reproduction are not essentially different from the
other parts ; that is, they are not apparent — similar cells
forming alike the organs of growth and the organs of re-
production. On the other hand, in the Flowering (Phane-
rogams or Spermocarps) the organs' of reproduction are
apparent — the seed being enclosed in an embryo in which
the rudiments of the future plant are distinguishable. Still
subdividing and arranging, he speaks of Dicotyledons, or
those whose seeds, like the bean and acorn, are furnished
with two lobes ; of Monocotyledons, or those like the palms
and grasses, which have only one seed-lobe ; of Acoty-
ledons, or those like the ferns and fungi, which have no lobes,
but are propagated by spores, and so termed Sporocarps in
contradistinction to the Spermocarps, or those bearing true
seed-fruits. Again, looking at their modes of development,
the botanist speaks of Exogens, or plants whose stems in-
crease by external layers of annual growth around a central
pith — hence the concentric rings of the ash and beech ;

36 THE PRESENT.

of Endogens, whose increase takes place from within by a
coalescence of the footstalks of the old leaves, as in the
palm ; of Acrogens, or those that increase by shooting from
the top, as the ferns and horsetails, and whose stems are
thus generally thicker above than below ; and of Amphigens,
or those which grow by additions to the external margin,
and spread, as it were, on every side, as in the sea-weeds
and lichens. Founding in this way — first, on the different
modes of reproduction ; second, on the aspect of the repro-
ducing organs; thirdly, on the primary development; and
fourthly, on the ultimate development of the plant — the
botanist arrives at a scheme of classification which may be
briefly expressed as in the annexed tabulation.

It is true, the palaeontologist cannot always avail himself
of the terms and classification of the botanist, as there occur
in the geological formations a number of forms that stand
intermediate between existing orders and families, and of
which we have now no living representatives. Still, these
forms never diverge so widely from any of the existing
families but that their affinities can be determined with
some degree of certainty ; and at all events, even where
family alliance fails, they can be readily ranked under the
wider categories of orders and sections. It is thus that the
subjoined scheme embraces alike the extant and extinct —
the latter supplying the links that unite the whole into a
still more homogeneous and consistent system : —

ITS FLORA.

VASCULAR.

CELLULAR.

T3 «J f->
2 ^ §

& 5 £
o o o

sag

5 fci

» H

s s

^ o

a PS

Pi Et]

O H

8 S

r-

38 THE PRESENT.

Or, adopting a simpler and more explanatory arrangement,
the several grand divisions of the vegetable kingdom may
be exhibited as under :— •

I. CELLULAR — Without regular vessels, but composed of fibres which
sometimes cross and interlace each other. The Confervce (green
scum-like aquatic growths), the Lichens (which incrust stones and
decaying trees), the Fungi (or mushroom tribe), and the A lyce (or
sea-weeds), belong to this division. In some of these families there
are no apparent seed-organs. From their mode of growth — viz.,
sprout-like increase of the same organ— they are known as THALLO-
GENS or AMPHIGENS.

II. VASCULAR — With vessels which form organs of nutrition and re-
production. According to the arrangement of these organs, vascular
plants have heen grouped into two great divisions — CRYPTOGAMIC
(no visible seed-organs), and PHANEROGAMIC (apparent flowers or
seed-organs). These have been further subdivided into the follow-

1. CRYPTOGAMS — Without perfect flowers, and with no visible

seed-organs. To this class belong the mosses, eqidsetums,
ferns, and lycopodiums. It embraces many fossil forms
allied to these families. From their mode of growth — viz.,
increase at the top or growing point only — they are known as

ACROGENS.

2. PHANEROGAMIC MONOCOTYLEDONS — Flowering plants with one

cotyledon or seed-lobe. This class comprises the water-lilies,
lilies, aloes, rushes, grasses, canes, and palms. In allusion to
their growth, by increase within, they are termed ENDOGENS.

3. PHANEROGAMIC GYMNOSPERMS — This class, as the name in-

dicates, is furnished with flowers, but has naked seeds. It
embraces the cycadece or pine-apple tribe, and the coniferce or
firs. In allusion to their naked seeds, these plants are also
known as GYMNOGENS.

4. PHANEROGAMIC DICOTYLEDONS — Flowering plants with two

cotyledons or seed-lobes. This class embraces all forest trees
and shrubs — the composites, leguminosce, iwnhelliferce, cruciferce,
and other similar orders. None of the other families of plants
have the true woody structure, except the coniferce or firs,
which seem to hold an intermediate place between monocoty-
ledons and dicotyledons ; but the wood of these is readily
distinguished from true dicotyledonous wood. From their
mode of growth— increase by external rings or layers — the
dicotyledons are termed EXOGEN.S.

ITS FLORA. 39

NOTE EXPLANATORY.

SPERMOCARPS (Gr. spernia, seed, and karpos, fruit). — Literally, "fruit-
seeded ; " plants whose seeds contain an embryo, in which the rudiments
of the future plant are distinguishable.

SPOROCARPS (Gr. spora, a germ, and karpos). — Literally, "produced
by germs ; " plants which have no seed-fruits, but which are reproduced
by a development of certain germs or parts of their cellular tissues,
called spores.

PHANEROGAMS (Gr. phaneros, apparent, audgamia, marriage). — Plants
having apparent flowers or seed-organs.

CRYPTOGAMS (Gr. kryptos, concealed, and gainia). — Plants having no
apparent seed-organs, or whose organs of reproduction are not essentially
different from the other parts.

ANGIOSPERMS (Gr. angeion, a vessel, and sperma, seed). — Plants having
their ovules contained in ovaries.

GYMNOSPERMS (Gr. gynmos, naked, and sperma). — Plants having their
ovules in open carpels ; literally, "naked or unenclosed seeds."

ANGIOSPORES (Gr. a-ngeion and spora).— Plants having spores formed
in cases which are not open till ripe.

GYMNOSPORES (Gr. gymnos and spora). — Plants having their spores
superficial, and not enclosed in cases.

EXOGENS (Gr. ex, out, and getinao, I produce). — Plants whose stems
increase by external layers of annual growth, as the beech and oak.

ENDOGEN (Gr. endon, within, and gennao). — Plants whose stems in-
crease from within, by a coalescence of the footstalks of the leaves, which
always encircle the growing point, as the palms and canes.

ACROGEN (Gr. akros, the summit). — Plants which increase by growth
of the top or growing point, as the ferns, &c.

AMPHIGENS (Gr. amphi, around). — Plants which increase by the growth
or development of their cellular tissue on all sides, as the lichens.

DICOTYLEDONS (Gr. dis, two, cotyledon, seed-lobe). — Plants whose seeds
have two lobes, as the bean.

MONOCOTYLEDON (Gr. monos, one, and cotyledon). — Plants whose seeds
have only one lobe, as the grasses.

THALLOGENS (Gr. thallos, a sprout). — Plants whose spores are attached
to the frond or leaf, as the ferns.

AXOGAMS (Gr.) — Plants having their spores on a stem or axis, as the
mosses and liverworts.

HYDROPHYTES (Gr. hydor, water, phyton, a shoot).— Water-plants,
like the sea-weeds and confervas.

AEROPHYTES (Gr. aer, the air). — Growing in the air, as the lichens,
in contradistinction to the hydrophytes.

HYSTEROPHYTES (Gr. hysteros, the last). — The lowest or last of the
plant-race, as the fungi or mushrooms.

40

THE PRESENT.

Throwing these various groups into diagrammatic form,
we have first the Amphigens — the fungi, lichens, and sea-
weeds— whose homogeneous structure and simple modes of

Amphigenous Aspect of Vegetation.

growth are readily recognisable, even by the unscientific
observer. Lowly alike in their aspect and functions, they
cluster, as fungus-growths, over the decomposition and
decay of organised tissues ; mantle, as lichens, the surface1
of the weathering rock and the mouldering trunk ; clothe,
as sea- weeds, the shelves and ledges of the shallower ocean,
or spread scum-like over the surface of the stagnant pool.
Decay and putrescence seem to be their appointed elements;
arid wherever the organic cell is on the verge of dissolution
into inorganic matter, there they are ready to appropriate
and reconvert it once more into the circle of vitality. The
pioneers of the higher orders, they elaborate a soil for their
growth ; cosmopolitan in habit, they are found where other
plants are unknown. Such are the Amphigens IIOAV ; does

ITS FLORA.

41

the palaeontologist exceed his warrant when he presumes
that such they ever have been from the moment they first

Arro^euous Aspect of Vegetation.

clustered over the rocks or spread their leathery lohes in

4'2 THE PRESENT.

the waters? Next in order come the Acrogens — the mosses,
equisetums, and ferns — -the lovers of the swamp and shade,
and the colonists of emerging and new-formed lands. Of
rapid and widespread growth, they have ever contributed
to the consolidation of alluvial soils, and their remains
mingle largely with the coals and shales of the past, as they

Gymnoftenous Aspect of Vegetation

do now with the peat-bogs and mud-silts of the present
day. Less cosmopolitan than the amphigens, they still have

ITS FLORA. 43

an extensive range ; but, like them, their function is largely
physical, and comparatively few of the animal races find
subsistence on their stems or foliage. As the peaty marsh,
the silty lake, and the shady river-swamp are now their
established headquarters, so the increment and consolida-
tion of these by their annual growth and decay has ever
been their geological function. Higher than these, and of
more varied aspect, come the Gymnogens — the cycads, and
yews, and pines — the gregarious forest growths of the pre-
sent, as of former ages. Lovers of the temperate and coldly
temperate zones — inhabitants alike of the swamp, the arid
plain, and the mountain — they exhibit an enlarged diversity
of habit, and form, and function. Like the acrogens, many
of them are swamp and coal formers ; and, as will be after-
wards seen, it is to the acrogens and gymnogens, and espe-
cially to extinct intermediate forms, that we are chiefly in -
debted for the coal-beds of the earlier formations. As food-
suppliers, their function is comparatively limited — their dry
rigid foliage, their scaly seeds and fleshless berries, being
little fitted for the miscellaneous requirements of the higher
animals. And it is a curious coincidence that so few of
the higher animals appear in the geological periods where
these acrogenous and gyninogenous groups so universally
prevail. The Endogens — the grasses, lilies, and palms —
follow next in order, and present a still increasing variety,
both in form, habitat, and function. Tropical and tempe-
rate, but unfitted for the extremes of climate, they assume
more diversified areas of localisation, and become more and
more fitted for the sustenance of a varied terrestrial fauna.
While radiates, molluscs, and Crustacea may feed on the
thallogens, and insects, and it may be a few birds and rep-
tiles, find their food and shelter among the acrogens and
gymnogens, it is certainly to the endogens and exogens that
the higher terrestrial animals turn for their main depend-

44

THE PRESENT.

ence. The formative or geological function so prominent
in the lower groups, now gives place to the alimentative ;

Aspect of Vegetation.

and though the grassy carpet may conserve the soil from
waste, and the palm-grove may induce the accumulation of
vegetable matter, still the relations of the endogens are
mainly and obviously zoological. Highest and last come

ITS FLORA.

45

the Exogens — the herbs, and shrubs, and timber-trees —
which, in their beauty and variety and dignity of aspect,

Exogenous Aspect of Vegetation.

crown the long line of vegetable existences. Slower of
growth, but of greater longevity, the beauty of their flowers,
the utility of their seeds and fruits, the durability of their
structure, and the diversity of their habits and forms, all
point to them as the culminating orders of the vegetable

40) THE PRESENT.

kingdom. And it is curious to learn that, unknown in the
earlier eras, and just beginning to make their appearance
in the secondary epochs, they come into full force and
vigour in the tertiary and post-tertiary — the periods at
which the higher animals and man are present to reap the
advantages of their more varied utilities.

Such are the leading features of the great groups of the
vegetable kingdom — groups to which we shall have frequent
occasion to allude when we come to treat the successive
stages of the fossil flora, and which are here displayed in
pictorial outline with a view to facilitate the comprehension
of these allusions. Though thus arranged in physiological
groups, the whole, from the simple cell that floats on the
putrid pool to the noblest tree of the forest, forms but one
orderly and co-adjusted system ; and could we combine
the extinct with the living, the same order and co-adjust-
ments would be found to run as unswervingly through the
wider combination. The conception is one, though its
expression through time and space must necessarily assume
the character of infinite diversity.

Subdividing still further, according to their most marked
characteristics, whether external or internal, the botanist
arranges all the forms of vegetable life into some 60 or
70 orders, about 300 genera, and upwards of 100,000
. species. As most of these distinctions, however, are founded
on the form and connection of the flower, fruit, and leaf —
organs which rarely or never occur in intelligible union and
preservation in a fossil state — the palaeontologist is guided
in the main by the great structural distinctions already
adverted to, and not unfrequently by the simple but un-
satisfactory test of "general resemblance." On the whole,
Fossil Botany, or Palseophytology, as it is sometimes termed,
is by no means in a satisfactory state, and the science
languishes for the advent of some master minds to do for

ITS FAUNA. 47

it what Cuvier and Agassiz and Owen have done for the
sister science of Fossil Zoology.

Notwithstanding the fragmentary state of the plants that
turn up to the geologist, the greatly altered conditions of
the parts that are found, and the hopelessness of ever dis-
covering the legible dispositions of such evanescent portions
as the floral organs, on which so much of existing botany is
founded: notwithstanding all these obstructions, there is
still so much remaining — the structure of the roots, stems,
barks, leaves, fronds, and fruits — the characteristic markings
of their different surfaces — and the scars which their parts
leave on separation — that the competent botanist, armed with
his microscope and ample means of comparison, should have
little difficulty in arriving at many definite and important
conclusions. The anastomosing disposition of a sea- weed
is surely sufficiently distinct from the branching aspect of a
terrestrial plant — the reticulate venation of a dicotyledon-
ous leaf from the parallel arrangement of a monocotyledon
— the scalariforni tissue of a fern from the punctated tissue
of a conifer — and the bundled mass of an endogenous stem
from the concentric layers of an exogen. These and many
other characteristics are sufficiently preserved in the strata
of every formation ; and though we may not be enabled to
say, on the principles of existing botany, that this fragment
is that of a cruciferous plant, and that of a leguminous one,
we have, at all events, enough to fix in the mean time the
great progressional order of plant-life from the predominance
of Acrogenous orders in primary formations to the higher
Gymnosperms of the secondary, and from these again to
the still higher Anglos-perms of the tertiary and current
epochs. And Geology, strong in the faith of Nature's unity
and persistency of plan, rests assured, that under right
methods of research the key to that Plan will yet be dis-

48 THE PRESENT.

covered, enabling the palaeontologist to unfold the relations
of fossil plant-life, its distribution in space, and its progress
in time, even as the botanist now determines its existing
relationships, and maps out its centres and areas of geo-
graphical arrangement.

2.— ITS FAUNA OR ANIMAL LIFE.

As with plants, so with animals. While Ave find them
everywhere — on the earth, in the air, and in the waters —
on the substances of plants, and even in the living tissues
of other animals — they are as imperatively governed by the
influences of climate, food, and other external conditions as
the Vegetable world, though possessed for the most part of
a locomotion which at first sight might seem to confer on
them an ubiquity of habitat. Thus, the FAUNA of the
tropics is essentially different from that of the temperate
zone, and the animals which people the temperate zone
have but little in common with those of the arctic regions.
It is true that some, like Man and his companions, the
dog, horse, and other domesticated animals, have a range all
but universal ; but generally speaking, the zones of Animal
Life — horizontally and vertically — are about as sharply
defined as those of vegetation. The elephant and rhinoceros
that luxuriate in the low tropical jungle would fare but in-
differently on the lofty slopes of the Himalayas ; while the
buffalo and bison which herd at these heights would cease
to exist were they raised but a few thousand feet higher.
As with altitude on land, so with depth in the ocean ; and
thus the sea- weeds and shells that grow and live within the
influence of the tides constitute a Littoral zone very different
from the Laminarian or broad sea-tangle zone which extends,
in British seas, from 40 to 90 feet in depth ; this again is

ITS FAUNA. 49

essentially distinct from the Coralline zone, which ranges
from 90 to 300 feet, and is the great theatre of marine life;
while beyond this lies the Coral zone, the region of the
strong calcareous corals extending from 300 to 600 feet in
depth from the shore line. But it is not alone to climate
and external conditions that we must look for the variety
and distribution of animal life. There is an aboriginal
diffusion of different tribes and families from certain centres
and over certain areas, for which science can as yet offer no
satisfactory reason. Thus, why should the giraffe, or ostrich,
or hippopotamus, be restricted to the continent of Africa,
while the forests, and plains, and river-swamps of South
America enjoy the same tropical sun, and seem every way
equally adapted to identity of vitality ? The pampas of
America, as has been proved by experience, are as well
fitted for the increase of the horse as the plains of Europe
or the steppes of Tartary; and yet, till man carried him
thither a few hundred years ago, no horse of the current
epoch existed there. The ornithorliynchus burrows only
in the river banks of Australia ; the apteryx is unknown
beyond the limits of New Zealand ; the sloth is confined
to the tropical forests of America • the armadillo to the
same region ; and not one of the Old World monkeys is
identical with any of those of the New. Nor is it alone
the terrestrial tribes that are thus limited and restricted ;
the aerial and aquatic, though possessing superior facilities
for dispersion, are equally circumscribed, each within its
own geographical habitat. The humming-birds nutter only
over the flowers of the New World ; the pheasants are
unknown beyond the coverts of the Old ; the shark-like
cestraciont frequents alone the waters of the Southern
Pacific ; and the trigonia never carries its shell beyond the
shores of Australasia. Such restrictions w7e cannot explain
unless by ascribing them to independent centres of creation,

50 THE PRESENT.

or to means of distribution that prevailed during former
geological epochs, but which ceased to exist when sea and
land received their present relations. And this brings us
to remark 011 what are termed by zoologists the law of
identity and the law of representation ; that is, that different
regions, though not peopled by identical species, may be
peopled by animals which perform analogous functions, and
represent them, as it were, in the great plan of vital eco-
nomy. Thus, the ostrich of Africa is represented in South
America by its congener the rhea ; the jaguar and puma of
the New World represent the tiger and lion of the Old;
the camel of Arabia finds its analogue in the llama of Peru ;
and similar functions are at once discharged by the gavial
of the Ganges, the crocodile of the Nile, and the alligator of
the Amazon. Over and above these physical relationships
there is also that which has reference to the size of the
animal, and the element in which it is destined to live.
As a general rule, and each within its own order or family,
the aquatic members are larger than the terrestrial; the
amphibious bulkier than those that are strictly terrestrial;
the marine superior in size to those of fresh- water habitat ;
and the terrestrial more massive than the arboreal. Ad-
mitting these relations, and reasoning from the present to
the past, the comparative bulk of organic remains may often
become an index to external conditions of life, and throw
light over the investigations of the palaeontologist, when
other indications are uncertain and obscure.

Besides these distinctions and restrictions imposed on
vitality by external conditions, there are those connected
with the functions they have to perform in the economy of
nature. Some, for instance, are fitted to live on a purely
vegetable diet, others to prey on the flesh of other creatures ;
gome are constructed so as to feed only on seeds and grains,
others to prey solely on insects ; many earn their subsist-

ITS FAUNA. 51

ence by a life of ceaseless activity and toil, others are formed
for parasitic attachment to the living tissues of larger
animals, and there find life and enjoyment without a single
effort or care of their own. And as these varied functions
necessarily require for their performance a special adapta-
tion of organs — a tooth to cut or a tooth to grind, a foot to
seize or a foot to dig, a limb to run or a limb to fly — so
will similar modifications afford to the palaeontologist an
evidence of functions performed in bygone ages, and enable
him, not only to reconstruct forms of harmonious organs,
but to assign to these organs the part they had to play in
the great drama of vitality. In the performance of these
varied functions many animals have to make long periodic
migrations, either for the immediate purpose of procuring
food and shelter for themselves, or prospectively for their
future young. From colder to warmer regions, and from
warmer to colder — from land to water, and from water to
land — from sea to river, and from river to sea — there is
ever, among certain animals, an incessant interchange; and
though palaeontology has yet been unable to detect such
migrations in the past, we may rely on their occurrence,
and be prepared to admit the fact into our inferences and
reasonings.

Coexistent with and beyond all this, there are those in-
numerable differences of species and kind and family and
class, which we can only resolve into the eternal will of the
Creator. Why, for instance, should the polype differ from
the star-fish, the star-fish from the crab, the crab from the
turtle, the turtle from the fish, the fish from the bird, or
the bird from the quadruped 1 It is in vain to tell us that
the one is but a progressive or developmental form of the
other — that the reptile is but a transmutation, in time and
under new external conditions, from the fish, and that the
fish is but the lineal descendant o£ the shell-fish. Adniit-

D

52 THE PRESENT.

ting that such was the true genetic origin of the various
grades of vitality, there still lies "behind and unaccounted
for the orderly plan in which such development shall occur,
and the reason for the definite specific forms which the
descendants invariably assume. Grant, we again repeat,
that all vitality were indissolubly interwoven into one great
genetic mesh, still that mesh presents, at determinate
times and over determinate areas, definite variety and spe-
ciality of pattern. "Whence this orderly variety 1 Where-
fore these special and distinctive patterns 1 At the most,
Science can only note the distinctions, it can never hope to
assign the reason. To do so would be to place the intelli-
gence of the finite creature on the same level with the
prescience of the infinite Creator. It is our high privilege,
however, to observe and reason ; and, reasoning, to arrange
and classify the animal kingdom according to their different
grades and affinities, and so arrive at some intelligible com-
prehension of the great scheme of vitality.

As in Botany, so in Zoology this arrangement is greatly
facilitated by the fact that, numerous as animal forms are,
they are all constructed after a few primal types and pat-
terns. Some are furnished with a bony skeleton, the lead-
ing feature of which is the vertebral coluinn or backbone —
these are the VERTEBRATES; others have no such osseous
framework — these constitute the INVERTEBRATES. As the
Zea/was the primary organ in the plant's development, so
the vertebra seems to be the primal organ in the vertebrate
skeleton ; and by its modifications and adaptations for spe-
cial ends, the Creator has produced every form of terrestrial,
aerial, and aquatic existence. According to the modern
doctrines of anatomy, the skull, or brain-case, is composed
of vertebral bones, modified and adapted for a special pur-
pose : so are the liinbs, whether for running, flying, or
swimming ; so also the ribs, whatever their form or mini-

ITS FAUNA. 53

her • and in like manner all the other appurtenances of the
vertebrate skeleton. This is the great doctrine of HOM-
OLOGY, or science of similar parts, as it is termed, through
which we arrive at the conclusion that the arm and hand of
man, the fore-limb and foot of the quadruped, the wing of
the bird, and the fore-fin of the fish, are one and the same
primal organ, composed of the same or homologous parts,
and merely modified or altered for the performance of cer-
tain special functions. As the stationary engine that turns
the spindles of the factory, the locomotive that drags the
railway cars, and the marine engine that propels the steam-
ship, are but modifications of the same primal machine ; so
the mammal that runs, the mammal that flies, and the
mammal that swims, are but specialised expressions of the
same primal plan, the creation of a new type being unne-
cessary where a modification of an existing one would suffice.
Knowing these modifications in the limbs, jaws, teeth, and
other organs, and the ends they were meant to subserve in
living races, we can predicate of forms long since extinct,
and can associate with co-relation of structure the functions
that creatures were meant to perform in the economy of
former ages. It is by this " law of the co-relation of parts,"
and faith in the uniformity of nature's method, that Cuvier
and Owen, and other great anatomists, have been enabled
to accomplish their wonderful restorations of extinct life,
and from a few sorely mutilated and scattered fragments to
present us with forms of harmonious entirety. "Every
organised being," says the great French anatomist, " forms a
whole, a single circumscribed system, the parts of which
mutually correspond and concur to the same definite action
by a reciprocal reaction. None of these parts can change
without the others also changing, and consequently each
part, taken separately, indicates and gives all the others."
As with the vertebrate type, so with the niolluscan, the

54 THE PRESENT.

articulate, and the radiate. There is a plan and primal
pattern to each, and that plan, modified and specialised,
can be traced through every species and individual of the
division, no matter how varied and numerous they may be.
And what has been done to homologise the external frame-
work will shortly be done for the muscular, respiratory,
and vascular systems — for the organs of digestion, secretion,
and reproduction — so that we may no longer combine things
that are merely analogous with those that are homologous,
and thus confound, in our interpretations of nature, beings
that were from the first constructed on an essentially dif-
ferent basis.

Proceeding on grounds such as these, the zoologist sepa-
rates the vertebrate from the invertebrate, the mammals
from the birds, the birds from the reptiles, and the rep-
tiles from the fishes. He also separates the invertebrate
shell-fish from the invertebrate crab, the crabs from the
sea-urchins, the sea-urchins from the star-fishes, the star-
fishes from the corals, and these again from the lower
sponges' that can scarcely be distinguished from the sea-
weeds that surround them. Looking at the manner in
which the functions of nutrition, reproduction, and sensa-
tion are performed in each of these classes, wre speak of
"higher" and "lower" forms, of creatures of more simple
and of more complex organisation ; but we do not say — and
reason and experience alike shrink from endorsing the alle-
gation— that one form or family is less perfect than another,
either in its nature or in the functions it was designed to
perform.

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul ;
That changed in all, and yet in all the same ;
Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame ;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees ;

ITS FAUNA.

Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect in a hair as heart ;
As full, as perfect in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns ;
To him no high, no low, no great, no small,
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all."

While thus disclaiming the idea of "imperfection" as
applicable to any grade of vitality, it would be erring
against all reason and instinct to discard the terms " high-
er" and "lower" in treating of organised existences. The
creature consisting of a uniform mass must appear, even
to the most untutored observer, to stand on a humbler
platform than that composed of a variety of parts and tis-
sues. The protozoan, that envelops its food in its gelatin-
ous sac, assimilates the nutritive juices, and then rejects
the remainder, and this without mouth, stomach, or open-
ing of any kind, is certainly lower (or less highly organised,
if you will) than the mollusc, which is furnished with
mouth, stomach, and alimentary canal ; and the mollusc,
furnished only with external gill-tufts and the merest
heart-like cavity, can never be placed on the same level
with the quadruped provided with masticating and saliva-
tory apparatus, its stomach, its organs of chylification and
chymification and intestinal canal — its respiratory and cir-
culating system of lungs, heart, veins, and arteries. Again,
the protozoan that reproduces itself by a mere cellular ex-
pansion of its own mass — a mass, any portion of which is
equally vital, and capable of becoming a separate creature —
is surely lower in the scale than the shell-fish that repro-
duces by spawn, and would perish under subdivision of its
tissues ; while the reptile, reproducing by eggs, which it
drops in the stagnant pool and never cherishes, can never,
without the abuse of everything like discrimination, be

56 THE PRESENT.

ranked so high as the mammal that brings forth its young
alive, and even then, by a special organisation, suckles
them during months with assiduous care. But on such
distinctions we need not dwell. They were made long be-
fore observation had shaped itself into systems of science,
and are patent alike to the learned and the unlearned.
This dictum, therefore, the zoologist lays down, that the
loiver a creature is in the scale of being, the more its indi-
vidual parts resemble each other (vegetative repetition) ; and
the higher it is, when, instead of several functions being per-
formed by the same organ, each function, be it of nutrition,
reproduction, or sensation, is performed by an organ speci-
ally devoted to it.

This brings us to the classification of the zoologist ; and
in comparing the Past with the Present Life of the Globe,
the paleontologist requires to invent no new system or
scheme of arrangement. One plan and design runs through
the whole of animated nature ; and though species and
genera, and even whole families, have died out, and others
have taken their places — and this has been repeated again
and again — still have all the successive incomers been con-
structed upon the same plan, and designed to perform ana-
logous functions. The classification of the palaeontologist
is therefore the same as that of the zoologist, with the
exception of such extinctions as fill up the gaps that exist
between conterminous genera, and render more compact
and harmonious, if we may so speak, the grand scheme of
terrestrial vitality. The following outline of the animal
kingdom will render more intelligible the comparisons we
have to institute betAveen the past and the present — be-
tween the forms that now live and act, and those that
have become extinct and been converted into stone thou-
sands of ages ago : —

ITS FAUNA. 57

VERTEBRATA,

Or animals with back-bone and bony skeleton, and comprehending

MAMMALIA, AVES, REPTILIA, and PISCES.
I. MAMMALIA, or Sucklers, subdivided into Placental and Aplacental.

1. PLACENTAL, bringing forth mature young.
BIMANA (Two-handed)— Man.

QUADRUMANA (Fow-lianded) — Monkeys, Apes, Lemurs.
CHEIROPTERA (Hand-winged) — Bats, Vampyre-bats, Fox-bats.
INSECTIVORA (Insect-eaters) — Mole, Shrew, Hedgehog, Banxring.
CARNIVOBA (Flesh-eaters) — Dog, Wolf, Tiger, Lion, Badger, Bear.
PINNIPEDIA (Fin-footed)- Seals, Walrus.

RODENTIA (Gnawers) — Hare, Beaver, Rat, Squirrel, Porcupine.
EDENTATA (Toothless)— Ant-eater, Armadillo, Pangolin, Sloth.
RUMINANTIA (Cud-ckewers) — Camel, Llama, Deer, Goat, Sheep, Ox.
SOLIDUNGULA (Solid-hoofs)— Horse, Ass, Zebra, Quagga.
PACHYDERMATA (Thick-skins) — Elephant, Hippopotamus, Rhinoceros.
CETACEA ( Whales) — Whale, Porpoise, Dolphin, Lamantin.

2. APLACENTAL, bringing forth immature young.
MARSUPIALIA pouched) — Kangaroo, Opossum, Pouched Wolf, &c.
MONOTREMATA (One-vented) — Ornithorhynchus, Porcupine- ant-eaters.

II. AVES, or BIRDS.

RAPTORES (Seizers) — Eagles, Falcons, Hawks, Owls, Vultures.
INSESSORES (Perchers) — Jays, Crows, Finches, Sparrows, Thrushes, &c.
SCANSORES (Climbers) — Woodpeckers, Parrots, Cockatoos, &c.
COLUMB.E (Pigeons) — Common Dove, Turtle Dove, Ground Dove.
RASORES (Scrapers) — Barnfowl, Partridge, Grouse, Pheasant.
CURSORED (Runners) — Ostrich, Emeu, Apteryx.
GRALLATORES ( Waders) — Rails, Storks, Cranes, Herons.
NATATORES (Swimmers) — Divers, Gulls, Ducks, &c.

III. REPTILIA, subdivided into Reptiles Proper and Batrachians.
1. REPTILES PROPER.

CHELONIA ( Tortoises)— Turtles, Tortoises.

LORICATA (Covered with Scutes) — Crocodile, Gavial, Alligator.

SAURIA (Lizards) — Lizard, Iguana, Chameleon.

OPHIDIA (Serpents) — Vipers, Snakes, Boas, &c.

2. BATRACHIANS, or FROGS.

ANOURA (Tail-lets)— Toad, Frog, Tree-frog.
URODELA (Tailed) — Siren, Triton, Salamander.
A POD A (Footless) — Lepidosiren, Blind worm.

58 THE PRESENT.

IV. PISCES, or FISHES.

SELACHIA (Cartilaginous) — Chimaera, Sharks, Sawfish, Rays.
GANOIDEA (Enamel-scales) — Amia, Bony-pike, Sturgeon.
TELEOSTIA (Perfect-bones) — Eels, Salmon, Herring, Cod, Pike, &c.
C YCLOSTOMATA ( Circle-mouths) — Lamprey.
LEPTOCARDIA (Slender-hearts) — Amphioxus.

INYERTEBRATA,

Or animals void of back-bone and bony skeleton, and comprehending
ARTICULATA, MOLLUSCA, RADIATA, and PROTOZOA.

I. ARTICULATA, subdivided into Articulates and Vermes.

1. ARTICULATA, or Jointed Animals Proper.

IXSECTA (Insects)— Beetles, Butterflies, Flies, Bees.
MYRIAPODA (Many-feet) — Scolopendra, Centipedes.
ARACHNIDA (Spiders) — Spiders, Scorpions, Mites.
CRUSTACEA (Crust-clad)— Crayfish, Crabs, Shrimps, Woodlice.
CIRRHOPODA (Curl-feet)— Acorn-shells, Barnacles.

2. VERMES, or Worms Proper.

AXNELIDA (Small-rings)— Lobworm, and almost all the marine worms.

ROTIFER A ( Wheel-bearers) — Rotifers, Hydatina.

GEPHYRIA (Intermediates— urchin-like] — Sipunculus, Echinurus.

LUMBRICINA (Earth-worms) — Earth-worms, Nais.

HIRUDINEI (Leeches)— Leeches, Branchellion.

TURBELLARIA (T urbellaries)— Planaria, Ribbon-worms.

HELMINTHES (Giit-v:orms)— Intestinal worms.

II. MOLLUSCA, subdivided into Mollusca and Molluscoida.

1. MOLLUSCA, or Shell-fish Proper.

CEPHALOPODA (Head-footed) — Cuttle-fish, Octopus, Calamary, Nautilus.
PTEROPODA ( Wing-footed)— C lio, Hyalsea.
GASTEROPODA (Belly -fooled)— Snails, Slugs, Whelks, Cowries.
ACEPHALA (Headless) — Oysters, Mussels, Cockles, Shipworms.
BRACHIOPODA (Arm-footed)- Terebratula, Lingula.

2. MOLLUSCOIDA, or Mollusc-like Animals.

)hora, Simj
Ascidians.

TUNICATA (Coated, but Shell-less)- { Biphora, Simple and Compound

POLYZOA (Compound animals) \ .

or J, Flustra, Eschara, Plumatella. &c.

BRYOZOA (Moss-like animals) )

ITS FAUNA. 59

III. RADIATA, or ZOOPHYTES— Ray-like Animals.
ECHIXODERMATA ( Urchin-shinned) — Sea-urchins, Star-fishes.
ACALEPH^ (Sea-nettles)— Jelly-fish, Beroes.
POLYPI (Many-feet}— Coral animals, Sea-anemones, Hydras.

IV. PROTOZOA, or LOWEST- LIFE— Globular Animals.
INFUSORIA (Infusories) — Monads, Volvoces, Vorticella.
PORIFERA (Pore-bearers) — Sponges, Fresh-water Sponges.
RHIZOPODA (Root-footed) — Amoeba, Polythalamia (Foraminiferae).

Throwing, as in the case of the vegetable world, these
great groups into diagrammatic form, we have first the

Protozoan Aspect of Animal Lite.

Protozoa — the sponges, foraminiferse, and infusorial animal-

60

THE PRESENT.

cules — which, half-plant half-animal, stand, as it were, on
the verge of organised existence. Restricted to the waters,
rooted as sponges to the sea-bed, appearing as infusoria (we
cannot tell how) in stagnant and putrid waters, or throng-
ing in inconceivable numbers as foraminiferae alike the
shallow estuary and the profoundest ocean-depth, their
office seems to be the reconversion of organic matter from
ultimate decay, and the reconstruction of mineral matter
from a state of solution and diffusion. Mere gelatinous
specks or glairy films, encased in or encasing some horny,
flinty, or limy framework, they constitute the food of many
of the lower orders, though their function, on the whole, is

Radiate Aspect of Animal Life.

mainly formative or geological. As the calcareous muds of

ITS FAUNA. 61

existing seas and estuaries are in great part composed of the
shelly coverings of the minute foraminiferse, and the sili-
ceous muds composed of the still minuter shields of in-
fusoria, so we shall afterwards find that extensive strata in
the earth's crust owe their formation to similar agencies.
Next above these lowest forms of life stand the Kadiata —
the corals, sea-anemones, jelly-fish, star-fishes, and urchins
— all, too, inhabitants of the ocean, and in one or other of
their orders appearing in every depth and in every latitude
of space. Elaborating from microscopic organisms, the
material of their pulpy fabrics, which in turn become the
food of the higher orders, their function, though more
largely biological than the protozoans, is still in a great
measure formative. To coral-zoophytes we owe our exist-
ing coral reefs, and from the same source, or from their
allies the encrinites, have sprung many*of the massive lime-
stones that give character to the crust of the globe. The
office of the radiata is thus comparatively humble, as their
organisation, though beautifully symmetrical, is simple and
lowly. Next we approach the Molluscoida, or mollusc-
like organisms of modern naturalists — the sea-mats and
dead-men's fingers of the fisherman and common observer.
Fixed in their habitats, and elaborating, like the corals
and sponges, their structures from the waters of the
ocean, their functions are humble and their characters
obscure. From them we ascend in the zoological scale
to the true Mollusca — the oysters, mussels, cockles, whelks,
snails, slugs, nautili, and cuttle-fishes — the " shell-fish" of
everyday language, though many of them are naked and
altogether shell-less. Of more diversified organisation than
any of the preceding groups, they are, in one or other of
their orders, inhabitants of the ocean, the lake, the river,
the marsh, and the dry land. Having also a more cosmo-
politan range — feeding, some on plants and others on ani-

THE PRESENT.

mals — being in turn preyed upon by other races, aquatic,
aerial, and terrestrial, and creating extensive calcareous
masses with their shelly coverings — the niollusca fulfil im-

Molluscan Aspect of Animal Lite.

portant vital as well as physical functions. From the
enduring nature of their testaceous coverings, they become
import ant indices to the palaeontologist, and the interpreta-
tions of geology have largely profited by the persistency of
their remains. Next in order come the Articulata — the
worms, insects, spiders, and crabs — known at once by their
many-ringed, segmented, or jointed bodies. Inhabitants of

ITS FAUNA.

63

every element — earth, air, and ocean — and even finding
their abodes as parasites on other animals, the articulata
have a function as diversified as their organisation. They

Articulate Aspect of Animal Life

are vegetable as well as animal feeders, and occur in every
region, though culminating in numbers, size, and specific
variety under the genial influences of equatorial and tropi-
cal latitudes. Their world-office is mainly biological ; and
while preying alike on plants and animals, they become in
turn the principal food of other creatures — fishes, birds,
reptiles, and mammals. Lastly, and highest and most diver-

64

THE PRESENT.

sified in structure, come the Vertebrata — the fishes, reptiles,
birds, and mammals — the inhabitants of every element,
and the tenants of every region, though culminating chiefly
in numbers and rank within temperate and warm parallels.

Vertebrate Aspect of Animal Life.

In general terms, the ascent in the zoological scale is from
the aquatic to the terrestrial, from the cold-blooded water-
breathers to the cold-blooded air-breathers, and from these
to the still higher warm-blooded air-breathers. The great
majority of invertebrate forms are confined to the wraters :
a large proportion of the vertebrates are strictly terrestrial,
or own an amphibious existence. Between them and the
higher forms of terrestrial vegetation, the interdependence
is complete ; the existence of the higher flora being unin-
telligible in the absence of a higher fauna. The grasses,

ITS FAUNA. 65

foliage, seeds, fruits, and roots of the one kingdom become
the indispensable sustenance of the vegetable-feeders of the
other; while the vegetable-feeders in turn become the food
of the carnivora. Among the vertebrata the actions and
reactions of life are more immediate and apparent, and in
them alone are manifested all the higher offices of vitality.
Sense, instinct, volition, reason, and moral perception, mark
the line of ascent. The vital predominates over the mate-
rial, and in the- culminating order (Bimana) the psycholo-
gical rise superior to the physiological functions.

Such are the leading divisions of the animal kingdom,
which are again divided and subdivided into families, and
genera, and species — each minor group presenting a distinct
and determinate pattern on the great web of created exist-
ence. By a study of these patterns, and a knowledge of
their manifold relations, the zoologist is enabled to arrive
at some intelligible idea of the scheme of existing vitality ;
and so, possessed of similar knowledge, the palaeontologist
strives to reunite his scattered fragments, and to assign to
them their proximate place in the still greater scheme
which combines the present with the past, and the forms
that have become extinct with those that still flourish
around us. In the study of Fossil Zoology, or Palseo-
Zoology, as it is termed, much more satisfactory progress
has been made than in the sister department of Fossil
Botany, the harder structures of animals (corals, shells,
crusts, scales, scutes, teeth, and bones) being better preserved
than the softer and more perishable tissues of vegetation.
It is true that many of these fragments are widely scattered
and sorely mutilated, that marine forms are relatively
more abundantly retained than those of terrestrial origin,
that only the merest specks of the fossiliferous strata have
yet been examined, and that the sea now rolls over strati-

66 THE PRESENT.

fied areas vastly more extended than those that lie patent
to geological research. Still, in face of all these obstruc-
tions and imperfections, paleontology has wonderfully en-
larged our conceptions of vitality, has opened up to the
present age a theme altogether unknown to our ancestors,
and, guided by a true knowledge of the present, is destined
yet to unfold a fuller and fairer vision of the life that has
gone before us. As the zoologist pushes his discoveries
into space, so the palaeontologist pushes his discoveries into
time. As the former turns to unexplored regions in the
hope of finding new forms, so the latter turns to unexplored
formations — formations whose areas are as varied as their
dates, and whose strata give promise of other and other
life-revelations for centuries yet to come.

3.-CO-ADAPTATIONS OF FLOKA AND FAUNA.

Perfect as the existing flora and fauna may appear, each
in its own proper line, they are only constituent portions
of a greater life-system, bound together by numerous co-
adaptations and adjustments. As each is adapted to, as
well as dependent on, external conditions, so both are de-
pendent on one another, and, as ' presently constituted,
neither could possibly enjoy a separate existence. Both,
for example, are incessantly dependent on the atmosphere,
yet the oxygen which the plant exhales is inhaled by the
animal, and the carbonic acid expired by the animal is ab-
sorbed and assimilated by the plant. The plant rooted in
the soil and casting abroad its leaves and branches in the
atmosphere, though seemingly deriving the main elements
of its growth from inorganic sources, is nevertheless stimu-
lated into life and exuberance by the presence of organic
decay ; wrhile the animal, being herbivorous, subsists im-

ITS FLOEA AND FAUNA. 67

mediately upon plants, or, if carnivorous, preys upon the
plant-feeders, and is thus also ultimately dependent on the
vegetable world for its subsistence. The law of circulation
and interdependence is complete ; and no portion of the
circle could be removed without a corresponding change in
the characters of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Again,
many plants are dependent on the locomotive powers of
animals for their wider dispersion and increase ; while other
animals acquire a wider range through this new and in-
creased source of subsistence. Further, as many animals,
in their habits and organisation, are altogether fitted for an
arboreal existence,the destruction of the tree would involve
the destruction or non-existence of this peculiar organisa-
tion ; and as other creatures are specially fitted to live on
certain fruits, leaves, and roots, the disappearance of these
specific supplies would necessarily involve the annihilation
of the consumers. As in existing nature these and many
other similar adaptations are fixed and certain, and we may
safely reason from cause to effect and from effect to caus-
ation, so, in the ancient world, we may rely on similar ad-
justments— reasoning from certain phases of plant and ani-
mal life to the conditions under which they must have ex-
isted, and from the presence of certain races of plants and
animals to the existence of other plants and animals to
which they were necessarily co-adapted. It is thus that
the study of the Past becomes hopeful, and Palaeontology
assumes the character of an inductive and reliable science.
The Present is ever the safest guide to the Past ; the Ex-
tinct is ever most clearly illuminated by the light reflected
from the Existing.

THE EECOED.

ROCK-FORMATIONS AND LIFE-PERIODS OF GEOLOGY.

IN the preceding chapter we have endeavoured to lay be-
fore the reader a brief sketch of the PRESENT LIFE OF THE
GLOBE — its plants and animals ; the causes which seem to
affect their growth ; the conditions that govern their geo-
graphical distribution ; their ordinal characters, as known
to the botanist and zoologist ; and the functions they are
apparently destined to perform in the economy of creation.
We now turn to that which is extinct — to that which
geology exhumes from the rocky crust, and palaeontology
reinvests with verdure and vitality, as it clothed the forests
and peopled the fields and waters thousands of ages before
the human eye was created to be gladdened by its beauties
or startled by its marvels. Before we can institute a satis-
factory comparison, however — before we can decide be-
tween the older and the newer, and trace tjhe order of their
incomings and their outgoings in the scheme of nature — we
must first appeal to the geologist for the order, in point of
time, that prevails among the stratified formations.

In the " crust" or accessible portion of the globe, we dis-
cover two great sets of rocks— the one massive and unstrati-
fied, like the solidified lavas of Hecla and Vesuvius, and
evidently the products of igneous eruption ; the other

70 THE RECORD.

stratified, or occurring in layers, like the silt of lakes and
seas, and undoubtedly the results of sedimentary or aqueous
operations. Between these two great forces — the aqueous
and igneous — the crust of the earth is ever held in habit-
able equipoise and never-ending variety of superficial aspect.
As the former tends to waste and wear down, and carry the
eroded material to the bottoms of lakes and estuaries, there
to be spread out in layers of varied consistency, so the
latter as incessantly strives to elevate and reconstruct —
here throwing up the sea-bed into new islands, there dis-
rupting and undulating the solid crust, and anon casting
forth from volcanic craters new rocks and rocky compounds.
These forces being incessantly active, such transpositions of
sea and land must have frequently taken place — piling the
newer deposits over those of earlier dates, varying it every
turn the relative distribution of sea and land, and offering
different conditions of life to plants and animals at each
successive mutation. And as the sediments of existing
lakes and seas envelop the remains of plants and animals
that have lived in their waters, or been borne thither by
floods and rivers, so also must there have been entombed in
the sediments of former epochs the plants and animals of
the period — the deepest being the oldest or first-formed,
and the others occurring above them in order of time or
superposition. This is the great key to geological sequence :
the deeper, the older, and the older, the wider the dif-
ference between fossil plants and animals and those now
existing. To the paleontologist this physiological differ-
ence becomes, as it were, the measure of chronological pro-
gress ; stratigraphical sequence and vital gradation are but
convertible terms ; and either were resolvable into TIME
could we only determine the ratio of its increment and ad-
vancement.

Presuming on the uniformity of nature's operations — and

ITS UNIFOKMITY. 71

without this presumption the history of the Past would
be an uncertainty and delusion — the geologist proceeds to
unfold the history of the stratified deposits, tracing back
from the silt of yesterday's tide to the first-formed strata ;
and this through the lapse of ages for which chronology has
no name save "cycles" and "systems" of indefinite dura-
tion. Geology is not entitled — it dare not, in the spirit of
true philosophy, appeal to " abnormal conditions," to "cata-
clysms," or to " revolutionary forces," for a solution of its
problems. Certain agents may act over certain areas with
greater intensity at one period than at another, or may ex-
ert themselves, in the varying distributions of sea and land,
over wider areas ; still the results are homologous though
differing in magnitude, and cannot be ascribed to convul-
sion or disorder. Where geology cannot explain, it can at
least observe and describe, and this its legitimate culti-
vators will ever do, rather than take shelter under the
assumption of abnormal conditions in primeval nature.
There is ever much more philosophy in honest doubt than
in the utmost ingenuity of unsupported assumption.

" The agencies," we have elsewhere* observed, "that now
operate on and modify the surface of the globe ; that scoop
out valleys and wear down hills ; that fill up lakes, and
estuaries, and seas ; that submerge the dry land, and ele-
vate the sea-bottom into new islands ; that rend the rocky
crust, and throw up new mountain-chains ; and that influ-
ence the character and distribution of plants and animals, —
are the same in kind — though differing, it may be, in de-
gree— as those that have operated in all time past. The
layers of mud, and sand, and gravel, now deposited in our
lakes and estuaries, and along the sea-bottom, and gradually
solidifying into stone before our eyes, are the same in kind
with the shales and sandstones and conglomerates that
* A dvanced Text- Book of Geology.

72 THE RECORD.

compose the rocky strata of the globe; the marls of onr
lakes, the shell-beds of our estuaries, and the coral-reefs of
existing seas, year after year increasing and hardening, be-
long to the same series of materials, and in process of time
will be indistinguishable from the chalks, and limestones,
and marbles we quarry ; the peat mosses and jungle growth,
and the vegetable drift that have grown and collected within
the history of man, are but continuations of the same forma-
tive power that gave rise to the lignites and coals of the
miner ; the molten lavas of ./Etna and Vesuvius, and the
cinders and ashes of Hecla, are but repetitions of the same
materials which now compose the basalts and greenstones
and trap-tuffs of the hills around us ; the corals, and shells,
and fishes, the fragments of plants, and the skeletons of
quadrupeds, now imbedded in the mud of our lakes and
estuaries and seas, will one day or other be converted into
stone, and tell as marvellous a tale as the fossils we now
exhume with such interest and admiration." Without this
uniformity in the great operations of nature, our reasonings
would be baseless, our conclusions a dream. We can only
read the Past as connected with the Present, and premise
of the Future from what is now taking place around us.

Destroy this belief in the continuous operation of natural
law* and appeal to "revolutions" and "cataclysms," and
you present a world of disorder, a Creator without a plan,
and the human reason striving in vain to elaborate a system
from phenomena over which no system prevails. Establish
this belief, and the geologist feels he is dealing with a pre-
scient plan whose past ever bears certain appreciable rela-
tions to its present ; and in tracing the development of that
plan, he is animated by the high hope of ultimately attain-
ing to some conception, however faint, of the divine idea of
its Creator. And it is in this spirit of procedure that he
has subdivided the strata of the earth's crust into "sys-

ITS ORDER. 73

terns," and " groups," and " series" — each system being
but the sediments of the lakes and seas of a certain period,
and characterised, of course, by its own peculiar fossils, as
evidence of the life that prevailed during the time of its
formation. And the reason is obvious : as land and sea
have often changed places — the former at one time more
insular, at another more continental ; now sitting low and
moist in the water, now elevated into lofty and arid re-
gions ; subjected at each change to diversity of colder or
warmer ocean-currents, to new sets of winds, rains, and
other cliniatal conditions — each period must necessarily
have stamped its own impress on vegetable and animal life ;
and so it happens that the great rock-formations (the only
records of the world's history) are each characterised by its
own peculiar fossils, or facies of animated existence. Thus,
when tabulated, these systems and groups present the fol-
lowing chronological arrangement : —

BOCK-SYSTEMS. LIFE-PEKIODS.

POST-TERTIARY,

TERTIARY, )

ICAINOZOIC (Recent Life),

CRETACEOUS,
OOLITIC, .

TRIASSIC (Upper New Red),
PERMIAN (Lower New Red),

CARBONIFEROUS,

DEVONIAN (Old Red), .

SILURIAN,

MESOZOIC (Middle Life),

CAM

BRIAN,

PALAEOZOIC (Ancient Life),

METAMORPHIC, HYPOZOIC ( Under Life), ...

Such are the main stages into which geologists have ar-

74 THE RECORD.

ranged the stratified crust of the globe — the great chapters,
as it were, of world-history, whose strata, like the leaves of
a mighty volume, are indelibly stamped with the forms and
characters of extinct vitality. As in human history we
speak of the times of Ninevites, Egyptians, Greeks, and
Romans, so in geology we refer to Silurian, Devonian, Car-
boniferous, and other systems ; and as Ninevites and Egyp-
tians present a certain similarity or fades of civilisation,
and Greeks and Romans another, so we unite certain sys-
tems, having features in common, into Palaeozoic, Mesozoic,
and Cainozoic epochs. As to the Time represented by these
groups and systems, we have at present no means of deter-
mining ; but, gauging the past by the present rate of geolo-
gical change, the amount must be immense, and we could
no more form, an idea of its aggregate — even could we ex-
press it in years and centuries — than we can form a con-
ception of the distances that separate our globe from the
remoter stars of the universe. Enough for us, in the
mean time, to be convinced of the vastness of its relative
portions, and to fix with certainty the order of their occur-
rence. As in human history it is ever more important to
determine the true sequence and connection of events than
to be curious about the minutiae of dates, so in geology it
is far more satisfactory to discover the order in time than
to indulge in surmises about the expression of its duration
in years and centuries. It is surely of higher value to be
able to determine the relative ages of two contiguous depo-
sits, the contemporaneity of others widely apart, and the
kind and character of life they respectively imbed, than to
perplex ourselves with vague hypotheses as to the number
of years that have passed since the date of their deposit.
And yet even for this, too, the time will undoubtedly ar-
rive ! Geological events are the orderly results of natural
laws ; laws are as fixed in their times as in their modes of

ITS DATES. 75

action; and while the Creator has permitted the human
intellect to investigate and determine the one, we may rest
assured that the same intellect is yet destined to discover
the amount and duration of the other. In the mean time,
all that geology attempts is to arrange the formation of
the earth's crust into so many provisional stages — each
stage representing an indefinite amount of time, but em-
bracing such stratified deposits as indicate a contempor-
aneity of origin, and are characterised by a general simi-
larity of organic remains. In this case, each .stage repre-
sents the sediments of a certain period, and is necessarily
characterised by its own peculiar fossils — every change of
sea and land not only giving rise to new sediments, but to
altered conditions of vital existence, that are inevitably fol-
lowed by a modification of the flora and fauna. And sum-
ming up the whole, we are presented with the outline, at
least, of a grand and continuous evolution of vitality. Here
there may be local imperfections in the record — there the
characters may be fragmentary and obscure ; but in the
main the broad features of world -history are sufficiently
obvious, and these systems and formations (provisional as
they may be) enable the geologist to give intelligible ex-
pression to the line and order of occurrence.

Proceeding upon the basis of this arrangement, let us
now inquire into the nature of the Plants and Animals
preserved in these successive formations. Were they con-
structed on the same plan, and destined to perform analo-
gous functions in the economy of nature, with those that
now live and flourish around us 1 Or if differing in type,
what the amount of that difference, and the presumable
function which that difference implies] If race after race
has come and departed, what the conditions that accom-
panied their advent, and what the causes which apparently

76 THE RECORD.

lead to their extinction ] Do the simpler and lowlier forms
always precede the higher and more complex ; and does
the introduction of any family in point of time harmonise
with its place in the scale of organisation1? Does the ex-
tinction of species appear to be, in every case, the result of
a change in external conditions ; or may not species, like
individuals, have a term assigned to their existence from
the beginning1? If race after race follow each other in
order of organisation, what countenance does this give to
the theory of self-development 1 Is there, as far as palae-
ontology can discover, any foundation whatever for the be-
lief in a progressive transmutation of species, by which the
lower gives birth to the higher ; or does geology not rather
establish the conviction of independent creations as time
rolled on and new conditions were prepared for their re-
ception 1 Seeing that physical phenomena invariably take
place under the orderly operations of natural laws, are we,
in the spirit of sound philosophy, entitled to assume for
vital phenomena any other mode of occurrence1? In all
other reasonings are we to adopt the inductive method, and
in the solitary instance of LIFE — its incomings and outgo-
ings— are we to forsake this course as impotent and una-
vailing, and appeal to the direct and miraculous interference
of Creative Power ? These, and numerous analogous ques-
tions, present themselves to the palaeontologist ; and if in
human history chronologers are often disagreed as to times
and incidents so recent as those that come within the range
of a few thousand years, if ethnologists have failed to trace
with certainty the relationship of the few varieties of our
own race, and antiquarians be only beginning to decipher
the phases of certain extinct civilisations, what marvel need
it be that geologists are not yet as one as to events for
which time has no dates, save "cycles" and " systems," or
that they should be occasionally unable to discover the

ITS INTERPRETATION. 77

nature and functions of creatures whose remains are so
fragmentary, and to whom existing nature offers not a
single specific identity? And yet, as we shall afterwards
see, geological belief is much more uniform than is gene-
rally supposed j and, founding on this belief, palaeontology
has been enabled, within the brief space of half a century,
to establish a history of the world's Past Life, more marvel-
lous by far than the fabled creatures of romance, and yet
so true that he who remains in ignorance of its facts can
never hope to attain to a satisfactory knowledge of the
scheme of life that at present surrounds us.

THE FAR PAST.

PALAEOZOIC SYSTEMS THE CAMBRIAN, SILURIAN, DEVONIAN,

CARBONIFEROUS, AND PERMIAN.

ON glancing over the existing forms of the vegetable and
animal kingdoms, struck as we may be at first by their
wondrous variety and complexity, we gradually begin to
detect innumerable affinities that link one family to an-
other, and at length perceive that one plan and purpose
runs throughout the whole. In like manner, when we
turn to the still stranger and more complicated forms of the
Past, and blend them with those of the Present — varied
and endless as the details may appear — they gradually coa-
lesce into one unbroken sequence of design, from the morn-
ing that first dawned on infant life, to the sunset that closed
around us but a few hours ago. Without this uniformity
in purpose and design, the study of nature would be im-
possible : we can only reason respecting the past from our
knowledge of the present, and predict of the future from
what is now taking place around us. And here at the out-
set we must specially guard against the misconception that
in the Past Life of the globe we are to meet with anything
that is monstrous or abnormal. As in the physical world
we have no evidence of the operation of " aberrant" or
" cataclysmal" or "revolutionary" forces, so in the vital
world philosophy cannot point its finger to a single instance

80 THE FAR PAST.

of the abnormal. The " Antediluvian" and " Pre- Adamite
monsters," of which, we occasionally hear, are the mere
creations of the platform orator, who would rather excite
the marvellous for the chance of a little applause, than
appeal to the reason of his audience hy a simple statement
of the truth as it occurs in nature. And yet, after all, the
works of God are in themselves sufficiently wondrous to
arrest the attention, and never more so than when arranged
in that simplicity and perfection of design which it is the
aim of legitimate science to detect, and the pride of the
philosopher to explain.

In treating, then, of the Extinct Life of the globe, it shall
be our aim to assimilate its forms, as far as the facts will
permit, with those still living around us ; to assign to them
their places in the scale of being; to note their incomings
and outgoings in point of time; and, above all, to discover
their functions in the great economy of nature. Important
as facts and specific distinctions are to the botanist and
zoologist, the discovery of the functions and ultimate de-
sign of being is, to our apprehension, a more exalted pur-
suit ; — so true is it (in the impressive words of Coleridge)
that " a man may be a chaos of facts, and yet lack the
knowledge that God is a God of order." As the establish-
ment of Law appears to be the highest effort of creative
energy, so the expression of that law must ever constitute
the noblest attainment of created intelligence. And this
law is operating everywhere. The force that directs the
drifting of a grain of sand is as fixed as that which guides
the revolution of a planet ; the tiniest blade of grass that
turns itself to the sun is but obeying the same law that
regiilates the growth of the lordliest oak ; and the monad,
invisible to the naked eye, is the creature of instincts and
appetites as imperative as those that impel the actions of
man. Nay, not a shower that falls, nor a breeze that blows

HYPOZOIC ERA. 81

— fickle and uncertain as these may seem — but is the re-
sult, immediate and remote, of Law, could we only grasp
the multifarious conditions that are connected with its
production. In tracing, then, the Flora and Fauna of suc-
cessive epochs, as far as the limits of a popular sketch will
permit, we can only indicate a few of their more prominent
features and the laws that seem to bear on their develop-
ment ; and yet, restricted as these limits are, enough, we
trust, will be indicated to arrest the attention and to arouse
the interest in the further prosecution of a subject that
stands second to none on the roll of human acquirements.
And, after all, it is better to be imbued with the right
spirit of research, and to be impressed with the conviction
of the universality and uniformity of natural law, than to
have the mind bewildered with details which it cannot
connect, and for whose occurrence in nature it is altogether
unable to render a reason.

And, first, we enter on what has been termed the PALEO-
ZOIC or " Ancient-Life" period of the world — a period em-
bracing the Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Per-
mian formations, and characterised, as far as geological
evidence goes, by the almost total absence of a dicotyledon-
ous flora, by a preponderance of invertebrate life, and by
the general absence of the higher vertebrata, as reptiles,
birds, and mammals. The lowest in rank seem the earli-
est in time ; and so in this primeval epoch, cryptogams
and cold-blooded water -breathers become the leading
manifestations of vitality. The strata lying beneath the
PaLeozoic (as will be seen by a reference to the Geological
Eecord) have been termed the Azoic or " void of life ; "
but, more correctly and philosophically, the HYPOZOIC, which
merely indicates their position "beneath" the fossiliferous
strata, and that without asserting them to be wholly desti-

82 THE FAR PAST.

tute of organic remains. So far as our present purpose is
concerned, it matters little which term is adopted, so long
as we bear in mind that up to the present day they have
yielded no traces of life, and are to all intents and purposes
truly Azoic. That the Crystalline or Metamorphic strata^
termed clay-slate, mica-schist, and gneiss, were at one time
the clayey, sandy, and limy deposits of seas and estuaries,
is at once admitted by every competent geologist ; and that
if these seas contained life, those strata must have imbedded
its remains. But then, these deposits have, since their soli-
dification into rock, been subjected to thermal, chemical,
electrical, and other agencies, to such a degree that they
have been converted, or metamorphosed, into crystalline
masses, and every trace of life has been obliterated from
their structure. No doubt it has been ingeniously sug-
gested that the occurrence in metamorphic rocks of sulphuret
of iron, of phosphate of lime, bituminous springs, and other
similar products, gives evidence of the presence of organic
bodies, through the medium of whose decay such com-
pounds were eliminated. On the other hand, experimental-
ists equally ingenious have assigned to these products a
purely chemical origin ; and, even if they could not, the
geologist would be little aided by a contrary hypothesis, so
long as he had no trace of organic form or texture to guide
him in his deductions.

To the palaeontologist, therefore, the CAMBRIAN period,
with its obscure and scattered zoophytes, trilobites, and
shells, becomes the so-called " Dawn of Life." He knows
of nothing beyond this primordial zone, and the spirit of
true philosophy forbids him to substitute conjecture for
fact, or hypothesis for reality. It may gratify the cos-
mogonist to fashion a glowing globe by the condensation
of nebular masses, to cool by radiation a solid crust on the
glowing orb, and, after ages of chaotic confusion, to plant

SILURIAN ERA. 83

the germ of life on some sunny and serene spot ; — it may
charm the materialist to claim for Life the eternity he does
for Matter, by referring to a metaniorphism which is con-
tinuously obliterating the fossils in the deepest seated rocks ;
but the palaeontologist is debarred from such reveries, and
is bound down by a rigid chain of facts as they occur in
nature. He has traced life so early as the Cambrian slates j
should it be detected still lower, he is ready to accept it.
To him, in the mean time, the Metamorphic schists are a
tabula rasa; the Cambrian slates form his furthest verge
and boundary ; and the spirit of induction restrains him
within its limits. And, after all, fossil evidence itself is
greatly in favour of the view, that we have here attained,
or all but attained, the furthest limit of life. "We see it
increasing and spreading into higher and higher forms as
we ascend in the geological scale, and decreasing and nar-
rowing into lowlier forms as we descend : numerically the
forms are fewer, physiologically they become less important ;
and it is but fair induction to believe that in the few scat-
tered forms of Cambria we have all but reached the zero of
organic existence/*

From the Cambrian the palaeontologist passes into the
Silurian age — a period characterised by its lowly sea- weeds
and doubtful traces of land plants — by genera and species
of protozoan, radiate, molluscoid, molluscan, and articu-
late types, but by few, if any, even of the lowest verte-
brate order. Its strata consist of shales, sandstones, con-
glomerates, and limestones — the solidified muds, sands,

* It is right to mention, however, that the tendency of recent dis-
covery is to carry the traces of life further and further back among
these slaty and semi-crystalline strata. The detection of new grapto-
lites and trilobites in the schists of Bray Head, Skiddaw, Bohemia, and
North America, is a fact too significant to be overlooked in geological
speculation.

F

84

THE FAR PAST.

pebbles, and coral-growths of seas and estuaries. It is
customary for a certain class of geologists to talk of
" the deep, turbid, and shoreless seas" of the Silurian
epoch, as if the globe was then enveloped by one dreary
monotony of ocean. Do such generalisers ever for a mo-
ment think that such a vast thickness of sediments could
never have been produced without the existence of broad
lands from which they were transported by rivers, or of
sea-shores from which they were abraded by waves and
tidal currents 1 Could conglomerates be formed without
wave-exposed beaches, sands without open sea-shores, or
could shells that are truly littoral, and corals that nourish
only from twenty to sixty fathoms, have existed without
water of limited depth for their development ? The eye of
the trilobite would have been useless in a turbid ocean ; a
turbid ocean wrould have been death to the growth of corals ;
worm-burrowed, ripple-marked, and rain-pitted sandstones
could have been formed only on shores exposed to the
alternate ebb and flow of the tide ; and conglomerates are
merely the broken-down and water- worn fragments of an
older rocky shore. In fine, there is not a single feature in
the rocks of the Silurian period which might not take place
in the ocean of our own day. The existence of deeper and
shallower seas — of waves, currents, tides — of lands, shores,
and rivers — of sunlight, and rains, and winds — are as clearly
impressed on its strata as they are upon those of every
other geological epoch. It differs alone in the geographical
distribution of its sea and land — the greater insularity,
perhaps, of the land-masses — their consequent climatology —
and the specific characters of its plants and animals ; though,
knowing the wide extent of its deposits (and they occur
alike in the continents of the Old and New World, in the
northern and in the southern hemisphere), geology is not
yet in a position to map with accuracy the geography of the

SILURIAN ERA.

85

period, nor to define with certainty the external conditions
to which its flora and fauna would be necessarily sub-
jected.

When we turn to its biological aspects, the outline,
though far from complete, is at least, as far as it goes,
homogeneous and intelligible. Fucoids or fucus-like sea-
weeds, some carbonaceous fragments of unknown stems,
spore-like organisms, apparently from land plants, and a
few lepidodendroid twigs that may have belonged to some
ancient form of club-moss, are nearly all we know of the
silurian Flora ; though, judging from the extent of an-
thracite deposits in various regions, vegetation (aquatic and
terrestrial) must in certain centres have existed in some

1. ;, FucoicU— Ci-aziana and Choudrites >,?) ; 3, 4, Lyccpodites— Lepidodendroid twigs from.
the Upper Silurians of Lanarkshire .

exuberance. On the whole, the silurian Flora is of a very
lowly character, and its scanty fragments find their nearest
affinities in the sea-weeds, liver-worts, and club-mosses of
existing nature. Of course, the imperfection of the geolo-
gical record is fully and frankly admitted, for it cannot be

86

THE FAR PAST.

supposed that in strata so eminently marine, we are likely
to discover more than the merest indication of a terres-
trial vegetation. Still we can only reason from what we
know, and shape our inferences by the results of our ob-
servation.

When we turn to the Fauna of the system, we find the
record much more complete and legible. We are presented
with infusorial organisms from its shales ; graptolites or ser-
tularian-like zoophytes in inconceivable numbers ; corals of

SILURIAN HYDROZOA AND BRTOZOA.

1. Oldhamia ; 2, Protcvtr£uiaria ; 3, Graptolites ; 4, 5, Diplograpsus • 6, Didymograpsus ;
7, Rastriocs.

many genera and species ; encrinites of various forms ;
star-fishes, independent and free-floating ; and sea-urchin-
like cystidece, attached to the sea-bottom by their jointed
foot-stalks. In molluscan life we have representatives of
every order — brachiopods, acephalaiis, gasteropods, ptero-
pods, and cephalopods — vegetable-feeders thronging the
shores, carnivorous orders in the open sea, and infusorial-
feeders in the deeper waters. The great preponderance of
brachiopods over acephalans and gasteropods is one of the
most noticeable features in the molluscan life of the period
— a feature now reversed, seeing that acephalans and gas-

SILURIAN ERA.

87

teropods are the predominating forms in existing waters.*
In the articulate division we have numerous annelid mark-
ings— the trails and burrows of sea- worms; the calcareous
crusts and shell-like cases of serpulcv and spirorbes; and
a vast and characteristic display of tnlobites (three-lobed),
a form of crustacean almost restricted to the period ; toge-
ther with the larger and higher forms of eurypterites (broad-
fins — in allusion to their paddle-like swimming limbs). These

SILURIAN CORALS AND ECHINODERM3.

1, Heliolites; 2, Catenipora ; 3, CyathophyUum ; 4, Taxocrinus ; 5, Cystidea ; 6, Palaeaster

trilobites, along with some smaller bivalved forms of crus-
tacea, have been long and familiarly known ; but the euryp-

* We abstain, in this as in other instances of comparison, from nume-
rical tabulations, as every year of further discovery and nicer discrimi-
nation of species disturbs, if not destroys, the value of such statistics.
Not many years ago the Brachiopoda were supposed to be on the very
verge of extinction, and yet the application of the dredge to deeper
waters has revealed the existence of nearly a dozen genera in modern
seas. Every year, too, discovery adds some new form to our lists of
fossils, while former lists of so-called species — Continental, British, and
American — are being examined with more rigorous care, and reduced to
their proper value.

88 THE FAR PAST.

terites are a comparatively recent discovery in the higher

1. Lingula : 2, Rbynconella : 3, Pentarnerus; 4, Strophomeua ; 5, Spirifer : 6, Murchisouia
7, Orthoceras ; 8, Lituites ; 9, JVIaclurea.

beds of the system, and two of the most abundant genera

1, Fhacops; 2, Trinucleus ; 3, Ampyx ; 4, Ogygia; 5, Ilaenus ; 6, Calyrnene ;
7. Calymene coiled up.

SILURIAN ERA.

are here for the first time restored with something like
accuracy and life-like proportions. As already hinted, the
remains of fishes are but sparingly found in the uppermost
beds of the system j and it is still an open question with

1, Pterygotus Acurrrinatus ; 2, P. Bilobus ; 3, Ceratiocaris (bivalved Crustacean).
From tlie Upper Silurian or Passage Beds of Lanarkshire.

geologists, whether these are to be viewed as marking the
close of the silurian or the dawn of the devonian epoch.
For our own part, we accept them as part and parcel of the
silurian fauna; and though negative evidence forbids us in
the meanwhile to enter on our lists the remains of insects,
reptiles, birds, and mammals, there is nothing that militates
against the likelihood of their occurrence. On the contrary,
all analogy favours the supposition that the great types of
life — radiate, molluscan, articulate, and vertebrate — were
from the beginning contemporaneous on our globe, and that
it is to the minor modifications of the type, and not to the
type itself, we are to look for that gradation and progress

90 THE FAR PAST.

which marks the geological periods. In this opinion we are
further fortified by the decidedly expressed conviction of one
of the ablest investigators of the present age. " However
much naturalists may still differ in their views regarding the
origin, the gradation, and the affinities of animals," says Pro-
fessor Agassiz in his Essay on Classification, " they now all
know that neither radiata, nor molluscs, nor articulata have
any priority one over the other as to the time of their first
appearance upon earth j and that, though some still main-
tain that vertebrata originated somewhat later, it is univer-
sally conceded that they were already in existence towards
the end of the first great epoch in the history of our globe.
I think it would not be difficult to show, upon physiologi-
cal grounds, that their presence upon earth dates from as
early a period as any of the three other great types of the
animal kingdom, since fishes exist wherever radiata, mol-
luscs, and articulata are found together, and the plan of
structure of these four great types constitutes a system
intimately connected in its very essence. Moreover, for the
last twenty years every extensive investigation among the
oldest fossiliferous rocks has carried the origin of vertebrata
step by step farther back j so that, whatever may be the
final solution of this vexed question, so much is already
established by innumerable facts, that the idea of a gradual
succession of radiata, molluscs, articulata, and vertebrata, is
for ever out of the question."

Here, then, in the silurian system we find nothing ab-
normal or marvellous ! Its sediments tell of seas whose
shores, in favourable localities, were clad with weeds, and
whose waters were thronged with zoophytes, star-fishes,
sea-urchins, shell-fish, and Crustacea. Plant-feeder and
animal-feeder start simultaneously in the race of life ; and
it requires no great stretch of fancy to repeople silurian
waters, busy and joyous on a summer's eve as the tribes

DEVONIAN ERA. 91

that throng the existing ocean. The life-forms of the pe-
riod are, in their kind, neither larger nor smaller, neither
less perfect nor less complex, than those of the current era.
From the beginning, and simultaneously, species and genera
and orders assume their distinctive characters ; there are
no transitional forms (in the ordinary sense of the term)
through which we can trace the development of the higher
from the lower ; each species takes its place from the be-
ginning, and varies only within a certain defined limit ;
while the whole, obeying the impulses and instincts of life,
subserve with unerring certainty the creational functions
they were destined to perform.

We now pass from the Silurian to the Old Red sandstone,
or, as it is now more frequently termed, the Devonian
epoch. And here, in its sandy and pebbly deposits, we find
more decided evidence of frequent alternations of sea and
land, of broad shallow bays, and long reaches of shingle-
covered shores. Much of the silurian deep sea had been
upheaved into dry land ; the former islands and continents
had received new configurations and altitudes ; and the
seas so changed must have been subject to the influences
of other tides and currents. We have also clearer evidence
of estuarine and lake areas ; and were this the place to
enter on questions of physical geology, testimony is not
wanting to prove the existence in certain regions of a cold
or glacial climate.'"" All this implies numerous modifications

* Whoever has examined the bouldery conglomerates of the Scottish
Old Red, with their large irregular blocks, their peculiar unassorted
aggregation, the nature of the cementing matrix, and the frequent
" nestings" or interlaminated patches of fine argillaceous sandstone,
must have had suggested to his mind the idea of ice-action. And this
notion must have been strengthened when he turned to the sandstones,
and found them imbedding angular fragments of rock, shale, and even
clay, which could scarcely have suffered transport unless enclosed in
drifting ice-floes. The paucity of life in certain areas seems also a further

92

THE FAR PAST.

of external conditions, under the influences of which many
of the silurian genera and species became extinct, and other
races were introduced specially adapted to the physical cir-
cumstances by which they were surrounded.

In the Vegetable World we have now a greater exuber-
ance and variety of fucoids or sea-weeds ; marsh plants,
apparently related to the equisetums, reeds, and rushes ;

1, Fucoid (Roxburghshire) ; 2, Zosteritea (Forfarshire) ; 3, Psilophyton (Canada), Dawson

and unmistakable evidence of a terrestrial flora of no feeble
growth. Ferns of rare beauty (adiantites), club- moss-
like stems of gigantic growth (lepidodendra), and fruit
cones (lepidostrolms\ are by no means uncommon, and
every year is adding some new feature to a flora which a
dozen years ago was set down as having no existence.

corroboration of the idea of glacial influences — an hypothesis which seems
at first sight extremely probable, though requiring for its final demon-
stration a much more protracted and careful examination than the several
phenomena have yet received from geologists.

DEVONIAN ERA.

93

Even in some more favoured spots, like Point Gaspe, in
Canada, thin seams of bituminous coal are interlaminated
with the plant-yielding shales and sandstones, thus giving
further proof that the old red period had its areas of fer-
tility and areas of dwarfish sterility — regions where climatic
influences were mild and genial, and others where they
were rigorous and destructive of vegetation.

Adianates -L±ibernicus

SandsLOue Series of Ireland.

In the Animal World we have still the same numerical
abundance of zoophytes, of brachiopod, gasteropod, and cepha-
lopod molluscs; but the yraptolites, which flourished in such
profusion in the muddy bottoms of the silurian seas, have be-
come extinct ; the trilobites, whose species were then num-
bered by hundreds, are reduced to a dozen or two ; while
the larger crustacean forms of eurypterus, pterygotun, and
stylonurus, then merely appearing, now flourish in great
force; and fishes of various families swarm in vast profu-

94

THE FAR PAST.

sion. Gigantic annelids,* large as a man's arm, throng the
sandy shore, leaving, like the lobworm, their frequent casts

1, Suingocephalus ; 2, Spirifera : 3, Calceola: 4, IvTegalcdon; 5, Hurchisouia ;
6, Pleurotomaria ; 7, Clymenia.

and burrows, while smaller species and wandering Crustacea
thickly track the rippled, and rain-pitted, and sun-cracked
surface with their devious courses. Reptiles also, for the
first time, come into notice — there being no great order in
existing nature unrepresented, save insects, birds, and
mammals.

The most noticeable feature in the fauna is, perhaps,
the large Crustacea, the curiously encased fishes, and the

* These so-called annelid burrows, which occur alike in the lowest
Old Red of Forfar, and in the upper beds of Roxburgh, are deserving of
a closer examination than they have yet i-eceived from the paleontolo-
gist. Some of them are so large and of such curious internal configur-
ation, that one is tempted to inquire whether pterygotus and his allies
did not occasionally burrow their abdominal segments in the sandy
mud, and there, pincers at rest, watch for their passing prey.

DEVONIAN ERA.

95

occurrence of reptiles — the earliest of their class positively
known to geology, if British observers be not mistaken
as to the relations of the strata in which their remains
have been detected. Of these crustaceans, found chiefly as
yet in Forfarshire and Hereford, we know too little to
assign to them their exact place in existing classification ;
but if concentration and specialisation of organs are to be
tests of higher and lower, then we are compelled to place
them rather low in the class to which they belong. Like
many extinct forms, the eurypterites partake of the char-
acters of several adjacent orders, and thus, like the dis-

1, Styionurus Powriei; 2, Pterygotus Anglicus (ventral aspect). SVorn the Lower
Old Redof Forfajsh:re.

covered portions of some ancient mosaic work, they fill
up the gaps, and bring out more clearly the continuity of
the design that runs throughout the whole. King-crab-
like in their carapace and organs of mastication, lobster
like in their prolonged and segmented bodies, furnished
with broad paddle -like swimming limbs, and frequently

96 THE FAR PAST.

with huge prehensile claws, they present the zoologist
with an entirely distinct family (Eurypteridae), if not with
the elements of a new and separate legion. Some of
the species are of great size — three, four, and six feet in
length — and seem to have been the scavengers of their
period, living on the lower forms and garbage of the sea-
shore ; and so it happens that wherever they are found
entire fishes are rare, though their heads, fin-spines, and
other unmanageable portions occur in abundance. Another
curious feature in connection with these Crustacea, and oc-
curring in the same beds, is an immense number of dark-
coloured patches of spawn-like organisms, which are now
pretty generally regarded as the egg-packets of eurypterus and
pterygotus. Compressed and flattened, the ova appear less

Parka Decipiens — Supposed Spawn or F.gg-packets of Crustacea.

or more in concentric arrangement, and every appearance
favours the idea of their crustacean origin, unless, perhaps,
their great abundance, which has suggested to some the
possibility of their being the berries or carpels of some un-
known plant. The egg-packet theory is now the most
prevalent, and, admitting its truth, the widespread abun-
dance of these remains increases beyond expression our
notions of the exuberance of crustacean life within certain
areas of the old red sandstone.

The Fishes of the period are also peculiar, inasmuch as
many of them are encased in bony plates, or covered with

DEVONIAN ERA.

07

hard enamelled scales ; are frequently furnished with fin-
spines or external defences ; and are, many of them, of
forms so widely differing from those of existing seas, that
they have not unfrequently been mistaken for reptiles, for
crustaceans, or even for huge water -beetles ! And yet,
when closely examined, and their affinities made out, there
is nothing about them either abnormal or nondescript.
The more familiar forms are the ceplialaspis, or " buckler-
head," so called from the shield -like shape of the bony
head-plate, which consists of a single piece ; the ptericli-
tkys, or "wing-fish," having the body encased in a box-
like covering of bony plates, and furnished with two wTing-
like appendages for swimming ; the coccosteus, or " berry -

1, Cocccsteus; 2, Pierichthys ; 3, Cephalaspis.

bone," similarly encased, and having the surface of the plates
covered with minute berry-like tubercles ; the ucantlwdians
(diplacanth, cheiracanth, &c.), having for the most part their
fins armed and supported by bony spines ; the dipterus, or

98

THE FAR PAST.

" double-fin ;" the osteolepis, or "bony-scale;" the asterolepis,
or "star-scale;" and the Iwloptycldus, or "all-wrinkle," so

1, Acanthodes : 2, Clirnatius ; 3, Diplacanthus. — Forfarshire.

called from the wrinkle-like sculpturing that adorns its large
enamelled scales. The majority of these fishes are small, or
of moderate size ; and even the largest of them, the holop-
tychius and asterolepis, do not greatly, if at all, exceed
the dimensions of a full-grown cod-fish. Nor would
they startle by their forms, were they recalled to take their
place among existing fishes. The little armed bull-head of
our own shores is encased in as marvellous, and even more
highly ornamented armour than the cephalaspis ; the ostra-
cion, or trunk-fish of the Indian ocean, is encased in a
bony box, as curiously fabricated as that of the pterichthys
or coccosteus ; the spines of the balistes and sea-snipe are
as formidable weapons as the ichthyodorulites of the dipla-
canth; and the scales of the bony-pike of South America,
or the polypterus of the Nile, glitter with enamel, and are
as quaintly sculptured as those of the osteolepis or holop-

DEVONIAN ERA. 99

tychius of the old red sandstone. Wonderful they are, as
all God's works are wonderful! but to dwell, as is too often
the case, on these ancient denizens of the deep as something
unusually strange and marvellous, is neither the way to
forward the interests of science, nor to teach the popular
mind a just appreciation of the world that surrounds it.

Turning next to the higher order of reptiles, we have
as yet no undoubted instance of their existence, though
footprints, bones, teeth, and scutes, unquestionably rep-
tilian, have been detected in the sandstones of Elgin —
sandstones till recently regarded as Devonian, but whose
relations have lately been questioned ; first, on account
of the obscurity of their stratigraphical relations to the
surrounding old red sandstone of the district ; and, second,
on account of the affinity of their reptilian remains to those
occurring in true triassic strata. Partaking in the doubt,
both on lithological and paleontological grounds, that the
place of these Elgin sandstones may yet be found to belong
to the dawn of the triassic, and not to the close of the Devon-
ian, epoch, we have transferred the small lizard-like teler-
peton, and the large " drop-scaled" crocodilian stayanolepis,
to the newer era — a transposition already approved by some
of our leading palaeontologists. It is thus that paleonto-
logy often corrects the first impressions of physical geology,
and in this instance conformably so with all that we know
of the reptilian life of the carboniferous era, where forms
more lowly and fish-like in their character alone make their
appearance. In the mean time, therefore, the existence of
reptiles during the old red sandstone epoch must be held
as problematical, and paleontology constrained to date
their advent with the commencement of the carboniferous
era. If it shall be ultimately found that these Elgin sand-
stones are of true Devonian age, the occurrence of reptiles
having such high affinities as lizards and crocodiles, will

100 THE FAR PAST.

once more correct the hasty generalisations of limited ob-
servation, and teach us how vain it is to dogmatise on the
rise and order of life from the imperfect data which geo-
logy has yet at her command.

Such is the hurried glance at the life of the Devonian
epoch. As yet we are almost in total ignorance of its ter-
restrial flora and fauna. We are like voyagers to whom
some unknown land looms in the distance through the sea-
fogs and grey of the morning. Here and there a few gleams
of light fall on hill-sides green with ferns and club-mosses ;
and as the mists roll away we catch a passing glimpse of
some river-mouth fringed with reeds and rushes. This,
however, is all — the interior is obscured from our vision,
and no drift of fruit or forest-growth tells of a higher flora.
As we coast along, we almost think we catch the reflection
of glacier and icebergs, which would indicate in some re-
gions a sterility and dearth of vegetation; but this may be
a delusion, and only the sparkle of the quartzy cliffs that are
broken into fragments by the surf that dashes against them.
When we turn to the ocean, the view is somewhat nearer and
clearer. In the warmer seas, corals of various form and beauty
are rearing their reefs ; shell-fish of every grade, though not
of great numerical abundance, are busy along shore and in
mid-water ; fishes of widely different forms swarm in shoals
— generically few, but individually most numerous ; whilst
crustaceans of uncouth shape and gigantic growth feed on
the tide-borne garbage of the muddy creeks and shallow
lagoons. This is all : and much as has been made of it, all
reason forbids us to accept it as more than the merest con-
tribution to the biology of the period.

Succeeding the old red sandstone, and much more sharply
defined — physically and vitally — comes the great CARBO-
NIFEROUS FORMATION. We have now extensive alterations

CARBONIFEROUS ERA. 101

in the distribution of land and water — shallower seas — larger
rivers and estuaries — wide, far- stretching swampy lands ; and
with these, new ocean-currents, a more genial and equable
climate, and, as a concomitant, a more exuberant exhibi-
tion, and over wider areas, of vegetable and animal life.
In some regions, but by no means over the whole world.'
the transition from the one period to tlte -otXai" seems to
have taken place through convulsive • -energy ; -aikl hence
in these regions comparatively few of 'ihe'fOrms b* the1 eld
red sandstone survive, or pass into the carboniferous era.
As in every other period, the new forms come slowly and
gradually on the stage, attain their " culminating point," or
period of greatest variety, size, and numbers, and then
gradually or quickly decline, according to the continuity of
the conditions by which they are surrounded. In the
vegetable world we have now a most exuberant Mora — so
exuberant that it is but faintly paralleled by the rankest
growth of the tropical jungle. To account for this extra-
ordinary development of plant-life, over such wide and
diversely situated regions of the globe, various hypotheses
have been offered, such as a larger percentage of carbonic
acid gas in the atmosphere — the greater effect of the earth's
central heat — change in the earth's axis of rotation, so as to
bring the coal-bearing areas within the tropics — and greater
eccentricity of the earth's orbit, so as to have brought the
globe periodically nearer to the sun's influence ; but as we
have not in the mean time* a shadow of proof for such
abnormal causes, and much evidence to the contrary, we are
bound by sound induction to seek for the explanation in

* We say in the mean time; for the recurrence of colder and warmer
cycles over the northern hemisphere, as evinced by the geological record,
is clearly the result of some great cosmical law, depending either on
telluric or on solar influences, and, as such, must sooner or later be
satisfactorily determined.— See Concluding Chapter — "The Law," Sec-
tion 6.

102 THE FAR PAST.

the then peculiar distribution of sea and land, in the alti-
tude of its shores, in the arrangement of warmer aerial and
oceanic currents, and generally in a concentration of these
conditions, such as would produce the necessary climate.
And, after all — as in the case of the great tertiary elephants
and rhinoceroses of Northern Europe, whose representatives
rfre now' foun'd 'oriy in the tropics — we know too little of
^tb.c nature of the plants to say under what conditions of
' climate t^y would attain their greatest exuberance, though
we clearly perceive from their foliage and mode of growth
that it was at once equable and continuous.* Generally
speaking, we find them resembling equisetums, marsh-
grasses, reeds, club-mosses, tree-ferns, and coniferous trees ;
and these in existing nature attain their maximum de-
velopment in warm-temperate and subtropical, rather than
in equatorial regions. The "Wellingtonias of California,
and the pines of Norfolk Island, are more gigantic than the
largest coniferous tree yet discovered in the coal-measures ;
the tree-ferns of New Zealand luxuriate in humid and shady
spots ; the tussack of Falkland Island, and the phormium
of New Zealand, show leaves as broad and long as the
poacites of the carboniferous period ; while accumulations
of peat-growth are the products of coldly-temperate, rather
than of equatorial latitudes. Besides all this, we have
coal-beds in other formations — the oolite, the Wealden, and
tertiary ; and if we are to go in search of abnormal condi-
tions for the production of the one, we must admit the
existence of similar causes for the production of the other —
an admission, as we shall afterwards see, that would lead to

* It is more than likely, as suggested by the late Robert Brown, that
many of the Coal-plants were inhabitants of the swamp and shallow
waters — estuarine and marine ; and that, rooted in mud, rich in organic
matters, and surrounded by water of an equable and genial tempera-
ture, they enjoyed the conditions at once of a rapid and of a gigantic
growth.

CARBONIFEROUS ERA. 103

irreconcilable absurdities. The fact is, coal is a necessary
product of every period, and is merely the mineralised re-
sult of vegetable accumulation — pointing rather to im-
mensity of time than to rapidity of growth as the cause of
that accumulation. It is to time, therefore, and to genial
equability of climate, rather than to excessive tempera-
ture, that we are to look for an explanation of the vegetable
masses of the coal period • and he who would cut short the
difficulty by appeals to abnormal conditions, instead of ex-
hausting the possibilities within the scope of natural law,
at once does violence to Nature, and retards the progress of
legitimate induction.

The vegetation to which we allude consists offucoids and
confervites, or sea-weeds and confervas ; of equisetites, hip-
purites, and asterophyUites, gigantic plants resembling the
horse-tails of our swamps and ditches ; of innumerable tree-
ferns distinguished by the forms and venation of their
leaves, as neuropteris (nerve-fern), cydopteris (circle-fern),
ylossopteris (tongue-fern), pecopteris (comb-fern), sphenop-
teris (wTedge-fern), and the like ; of fern stems, caulopteris;
of reed-like plants, calamites; of palms,* palmacites and
Noeggerathia ; of a vast variety of trees of unknown relation-
ship, as sigillaria (fluted bark), stigmaria (dotted bark),
now known to be the roots of sigillaria, &c., lepidodendron
(scaly stem), bothrodendron (pitted stem), favularia (honey-
combed bark), and the like ; and of true coniferous trunks

* It has been recently questioned, and apparently on good grounds,
whether we have certain evidence of the existence of palms during the
Carboniferous epoch? The three-cornered fruits (trigonocarpum), for-
merly supposed to be those of palms, are now regarded as those of coni-
ferous plants, which, like the berry of the juniper, was enclosed in a
fleshy envelope ; while the broad flabelliform or fan - shaped leaves
(Noeygerathia) are also considered coniferous and akin to the existing
subtropical Salisburia. The so-called palm-stems have always been held
as doubtful.

104

THE FAR PAST.

resembling the pine, araucaria, pence, yew, &c., and hence
known as pinites, arauearites, peucites, and to.xites. As

Calamite ; Bothrodendron : Equis^tites ; Asterophyllit.es; Tepidodendron : C;mlupU:r!s. or
Tree-fern ; Sigillaria, with Stigmaria roots ; J.ycopoaues : Peroptcris, xc.

yet, we have only two or three doubtful instances of a dicoty-

CARBONIFEROUS ERA. 105

ledonous flora — the majority of the preceding forms being
monocotyledons and conifers. Occurring as they do in
stony and carbonised fragments, their relations are but ill
understood ; and botanists have as yet contented themselves
by pointing out resemblances rather than in establishing
true affinities. Whatever their nature, they must have
grown in vast luxuriance and variety, clothing every river-
side and plain, and spreading over every swamp in one im-
penetrable jungle, — and this, season after season, and age
after age, till their accumulated growth completed the coal-
beds now so indispensable to the progress of civilisation.
It is customary for a certain class of writers to descant on
the " dreary and flowerless monotony" of the vegetation of
the Coal period. This, however, is an error. Though all
the equisetunis and club-mosses and ferns were undoubted-
ly flowerless, the higher gynmogens and endogens were
not so, as we have evidence in the fossil flowers and fruits
(antholites and carpolites), which thickly stud many of the
shales; and we have often thought that what was wanting
in blossom was more than compensated for by the profu-
sion of light symmetrical, feathery fronds, and by the tall
pillar-like steins Avhich rose, each one boldly carved with
its own peculiar pattern. The trunks of a modern forest
are rough and gnarled; those of the period now under
review sprang up like the sculptured shafts of a medieval
temple, graceful in proportion, and rich in ornament through
the endless repetition of flutings, spirals, zigzags, lozenges,
ovals, and other geometrical designs — these designs being
the persistent leaf-scars of a vegetation simpler in structure
and more primitive in plan.

When we turn to the Animal Life of the period, which
belongs almost exclusively to the waters, we find it equally
exuberant in numbers and in variety. Life abounds near
shore and in the shallow waters — life is rife in the deeper

106

THE FAR PAST.

ocean — and over all there is a fades or general resemblance
that stamps the period as distinct from the old red sand-
stone that precedes, as from the new red that follows.
The seas swarm with zoophytes of various families, and
reef-building corals (astrwopora, cyathophyllum, clisioplnjl-
lum, and lithostrotiori) pile up the masses of the mountain

1, Syringopera ; 2, Lithostrotion ; 3, Aulopora ; 4, Amplexus ;
o, ClisiophyUum ; 6, Ptilopora ; 7, Arcliimedopora.

limestone. Star-fishes (pentremites), sea-urchins (palcechinus
and arcliceocidaris), and encrinites of numerous genera and
species abound — the latter in such profusion that ihey
now outweigh the zoophytes, and whole strata are com-
posed of their calcareous remains. Serpulce and spirorbes
attach their sheaths to every available object ; sea- worms,
like the arenicola, leave their tracks and burrows in the
sands ; and these are also pattered with footprints, pitted

CARBONIFEROUS ERA.

with rain-drops, and crested with ripple-marks. In the
stagnant lagoons, minute crustaceans, like cypris and cy fli-
p/re, swarm in myriads ; a few species of trilobite still

1, Woodocrinus ; 2, Cyathocrinus . 3, Palaechinus ; 4, Plates and Spine
of Archseocidaris.

linger in the muddy creeks ; eurypterites are on the wane,
and forms like the limulus or king-crab of the Indian Ocean
now make their appearance. For the first time, too, we
discover the crusts and wing-cases of beetle-like insects,
showing that the vegetation of the period afforded them
abundance of food ; and that garbage, perhaps of an ani-
mal nature, was there also, though we have not been enabled
to trace the connection. Every order of molluscan life is
busy in the waters — bryozoa, like the flustra and retepora
of our own seas, spread their cells in symmetrical network
on dead shells and broken encrinites ; brachiopods, like

108

THE FAK PAST.

spirifer and productus, are in deep water ; huge nautilus-
like cephalopods, nautilus, goniatite, and orthoceratite, in

L, Sec.

1, Ditliyrocaris ; 2, Limuloides (Bellinurus) ; 3, Cypris — magnified ; 4, Spirorbis

(Annelid) — magnified; 5, Phillipsia (Trilobite) ; 6, Earypterus (Ldothea)

Scouleri, from Linlithgowshire.

the open sea ; gasteropods, like euomphalus and pleurotom-
aria, on shore ; acephalans, like unio and anodon, in fresh-
water and tidal estuaries ; and others, like aviculopecten,
mytilus, and mactra, in its shallower bays. The bone-
encased fishes of the old red sandstone have now disap-
peared, and their place is taken by the more fish-like forms
(if we may so express it) of megalichthys, paloeoniscus, am-
Uypterus, eurynotus, and platysomus; by gigantic shark-like
cestracionts, whose teeth (helodus, poecilodw, psammodus,
&c.) and fin-spines (yyracantltus, ctenacanthus, oracanthm,
&c.) are alone preserved to us ; and huge sauroid genera
(rhizodus, &c.), whose dentition marks an affinity to the

CARBONIFEROUS ERA.

109

higher class of reptiles. In many localities these fishes
seemed to have swarmed in shoals, preying on shell-fish and

1, Tarebratula ; 3» Productus ; 3, Spirifera; 4, Aviculopecten ; 5, Bellcrophon ; 6. Loxoneraa ;

7, Murchisonia ; 6, Pleurotomaria ; 9, Euomphalus ; 10, Conularia ;

11, Goniatites , 12, Orthoceratite.

young coral-growth, and also on one another, as is amply
testified by their fossil droppings or coprolites, which crowd
the shales or muds of the carboniferous sea-bed. In rep-
tilian life, the forms are, on the whole, of loAvly organisation,
indicating, as it were, the recent advent of the order, — an

110

THE FAR PAST.

order whose remains have not been discovered with cer-
tainty in any preceding formation. From the European and

CARBONIFEROUS FISHES.

1 , Palaeoniscus ; 2, Amblypterus.

lSrova Scotian coal-fields, however, we have five or six genera
of frog-like and lizard-like forms — some evidently aquatic,
others amphibious, and some fitted for an arboreal habitat.
They are known by such names as archoeogosaurus (ancient
land-lizard), parabatraclius (frog-like reptile), and dendrer-
peton (tree-lizard), and carry the imagination back to stag-
nant pools, to sludgy river-shores, and to ancient forest-
growths, whose hollow trunks furnished at once their insect-
food and a place of security and shelter. In these early
reptiles — in the persistence of their dorsal chord, their gill-
arches, their large median and lateral throat-plates, and
other piscine characters — Professor Owen traces a " linking
and blending" of the two cold-blooded vertebrate groups ;
arcliffiogosaurus conducting, as it were, the inarch of life

CARBONIFEROUS ERA.

Ill

from the fish proper to these labyrinthodont reptiles that
come boldly into force in the Permian and triassic eras.

Fin Spines: 1, Pleuracanthus ; 2, Gyracanthus . 3, Ctenacanthus. Palatal Teeth:

4, Ctenoptychius ; 5, Psammodus ; 6, Poecilodus. 7, Jaw of Rhizodus,

showing Reptilian Teeth.

The course of vitality is thus for ever onward and upward
— onward in the introduction of forms having more varied
geographical adaptations, and upward in the manifestation
of higher physiological and functional performance.

Such is the panorama of carboniferous life — an unparal-
leled exuberance of endogenous flora ; a wonderful profusion
of estuarine and marine life in all its aspects : but as yet
few insects, none of the higher reptiles, no birds, no mam-
mals ! And yet, looking at mere external conditions, it is

112 THE FAR PAST.

difficult to conceive how, in some of their specific forms,
they should not be there. There was abundant food for
insects — why not insectivorous reptiles and mammals to prey
upon them] Besides insects, there were also fruits and
seeds — why not birds to feed upon them ; and why not the
larger herbivorous reptiles and quadrupeds to browse upon
the excess of vegetation that then clothed so large a portion
of the earth's surface 1 True, such plants as equisetums,
club-mosses, ferns, and coniferous trees, are, from the pecu-
liar principles they contain, the least fitted for the susten-
ance of known animals ; but then there were the succulent
shoots and roots of palms, of calamites, poacites, and other
leafy herbage — the fruits of palms and other allied trees,
and these we know are the favourite food of many mammals
at the present day. Nay more ; as we know that certain
savage tribes exist on palm fruits, or farinaceous roots, and
on the fish of the ocean, we might carry this sort of reason-
ing still further, and ask whether the human race, in some
of its lowlier phases, might not also have been participators
in the life of the carboniferous era 1 To questions such as
these the palaeontologist has no other answer to offer than
that he has hitherto failed to detect the remains of birds
and mammals ; that as the food to be consumed and the
consumer are generally concomitants, so he more than ex-
pects the discovery of higher life during the coal-period ;
but that this higher life, though discovered to-morrow,
would necessarily take its stand lower in the scale of organ-
isation than the reptiles, and birds, and mammals which
are found in the immediately succeeding formations of the
new red sandstone and oolite. If there is one truth that
geology has established more clearly than another, it is that
of the progressive evolution of life on this globe ; not pro-
gress from imperfection to perfection, for all are alike fitted
to the end for which they were created, but progress from

CARBONIFEROUS ERA. 113

simpler to more specialised forms. All the discoveries that
have been made, and are daily making, never controvert in
the least this great order of life ; nor do the ablest geolo-
gists, though anticipating many new forms, ever expect to
find it otherwise with creation than onward and still up-
ward. In this respect the coal-formation takes its place
orderly and in perfect harmony with what is known of other
formations : — more prolific and more specialised in its forms
than the old red sandstone beneath, and less so than the
new red and other secondary strata that follow.

Looking, in the mean time, at the whole aspects of the
carboniferous period, we are reminded (as we have else-
where* indicated) of geographical conditions never before
nor since exhibited on our globe. The frequent alterna-
tions of strata, and the great extent of our coal-fields, indi-
cate the existence of vast estuaries and inland seas — of
gigantic rivers and periodical inundations • the numerous
coal-seams and bituminous shales clearly bespeak conditions
of soil, moisture, and warmth favourable to an exuberant
vegetation, and point partly to vegetable drift, and partly
to submerged forests, to peat-swamps and jungle-growth ;
the mountain limestone, with its marine remains, reminds
us of low islands fringed with encrinite-banks and coral-
reefs, and lagoons thronged with shell-fish and fishes • the
existence of reptiles and insects tells us of air, and sunlight,
and river-banks ; the vast geographical extent of the system
bears evidence of an equable and continuous climate over a
large portion of the earth's surface ; while the interstratified
trap-tuffs, the basaltic outbursts, and the numerous faults
and fissures, testify to a period of intense igneous activity
within the same areas, to repeated upheavals of sea-bottom
and submergences of dry land. All this is so clearly indi-
cated to the investigator of the carboniferous system, that

* Advanced Text-Book of Geology.

114 THE FAR PAST.

he feels as convinced of their occurrence as if he had stood
on the river-bank of the period, and seen the muddy cur-
rent roll down its burden of vegetable drift ; threaded the
channels of the estuary, gloomy with the gigantic growth
of swamp and jungle ; or sailed over the shallow waters of
its archipelago, studded with reef-fringed volcanic islands,
and dipped his oar into the forests of encrinites that waved
below.

The Permian period, to which we now turn, presents
itself more in the light of a new rock-formation than a
distinct life-period. Many of its forms are identical with
those of the coal period, and we may, without doing great
violence to fact, regard it as the continuation and close of
the carboniferous era — specialised by local disturbances
in the areas of deposit, and the consequent dying out of
many genera and species. Perhaps the most remarkable
feature is the rapid disappearance of the coal flora, and its
restriction to a few higher forms of tree-ferns and conifer-
ous trees, as if the low swampy jungle had been upheaved
into higher and drier lands unfavourable to the growth of

1, Palseoniscus Frieslebeni 2, Platysomus striatus

sigillaria, calamites, equisetums, and lepidodendra. The
gigantic sauroid fishes have also disappeared with the

PERMIAN ERA. 115

estuaries in which they held supreme sway, though less
localised forms, as palcBoniscus andplatysomus, still occur in
abundance ; reptiles of larger growth and curious configura-
tion (labyrinthodon) come into view; reptilian and bird-like
footsteps (ichnites) can also be traced on the sandstones ; and
if American geologists be not mistaken, mammalian life in
its lowly marsupial form (dromathermm) now comes for the
first time on the stage of being. On the whole, however,

Jaw of Dromatheriutn silvestre, from the Red Sandstones
of North. Carolina (Emmons).

there seems a paucity of life during the Permian period, when
compared with that which preceded it ; and this we may, in
the mean time, ascribe partly to geographical changes in the
distribution of sea and land, partly to the altered composi-
tion of the sea-water in certain areas where we have now
magnesian limestones and red ferruginous sandstones, and
partly to that change of climate which is indicated by the
symptoms of glacial action in the formation of its con-
glomerates and bouldery breccias. *

* Professor Ramsay, who was the first to advocate, in a decided man-
ner, the glacial origin of these breccias, founds his belief on the following
evidences : — 1. The great size of many of the fragments — the largest
observed weighing (by a rough estimate) from a half to three-quarters
of a ton. 2. Their forms. Rounded pebbles are exceedingly rare.
They are angular or sub-angular, and have those flattened sides so
peculiarly characteristic of many glacier- fragments in existing moraines,
and also of many of the stones of the pleistocene drifts, and the moraine
matter of the Welsh, Highland, Irish, and Yosges glaciers. 3. Many
of them are highly polished, and others are grooved and finely striated,
like the stones of existing Alpine glaciers, and like those of the ancient

116 THE FAR PAST.

We now close the long record of Ancient Life, during
which whole races and families departed, and others took
their place — the march of vitality being ever forward to
higher and higher orders. We have seen that all the great
types of life — radiate, molluscan, articulate, and verte-
brate— had their beginning simultaneously and indepen-
dently on the globe, and that all subsequent progress has
been restricted to the modification and elimination of these
primal patterns. We have seen the graptolites of Siluria
rise, culminate, and depart with that period ; seen also its
curious encrinites and foot-stalked sea-urchins, or cystidecp.,
flourish and die within the same limits ; and witnessed its
wonderful flush of trilobite life, which waned in the old red,
and finally disappeared about the middle of the carbonifer-
ous era. So also have we witnessed the larger crustacean
forms of eurypterus and pterygotus come strongly and
forcibly on the Devonian stage, and somewhat speedily
wane and die out with the coal period, during which other
forms, prefigurative as it were of the existing limulm, take
their places. In like manner the curious bone-clad fishes
of the old red (the " palichthyan" aspect of fish life) rise
and depart with that system — only a few of the genera, but
none of the species, living into the carboniferous epoch.
And when we come to the coal period itself, there also all
the wonderful and exuberant forms of its vegetation — its
stigmaria, sigillaria, lepidodendra, bothrodendra, catamites,
and tree-ferns — start into being, nourish in profusion, and
depart with those physical peculiarities which stamped

glaciers of the Vosges, Wales, Ireland, and the Highlands of Scotland ;
or like many stones in the pleistocene drifts. 4. A hardened cementing
mass of red marl, in which the stones are very thickly scattered, and
which in some respects may be compared to a red boulder-clay, in so far
that both contain angular, flat-sided, and striated stones, such as form the
breccias wherever they occur. — Journal of Geological Society, vol. xi.

ITS CLOSE. 117

their impress on the life of that era. So also with its
sauroid fishes ; and so also with many genera and species
of its shell-fish and corals and encrinites, which though
more lowly are nevertheless peculiarly distinctive of car-
boniferous seas, and are never found in the waters of sub-
sequent ages.

From the first to the last — from the Silurian to the Per-
mian— all has been growth and decay, and in that death a
progress which ever goes forward without halt or hesitation.
No indecision ; no trial-work ; no error to be corrected ;
no blunder to be revised. And yet amid all this incoming
and outgoing, as we shall see in the following chapter,
there has been no break in vitality, no change of the
great primal patterns, but merely such modifications as
best harmonise with the new conditions of each succeeding
era. Nor must we regard this harmony between geographi-
cal condition and organic manifestation in any other light
than that of a mere co-adaptation ; for over and above it there
is clearly a prescient design, having respect to development
in time from more general to more specialised types, and from
physiological simplicity to physiological complexity of func-
tions. From the obscure and simple forms of the lowest
stratified systems we rise stage after stage to higher and
higher manifestations of life ; onwards and, still upwards is
the orderly course of creation ; and yet in this vast and
varied progression every member is bound to that which
preceded it, as well as to that which accompanies it, by the
ties and relationship of one great cosmical plan. This is
surely more than mere " physical development" — some-
thing higher than the " transmutation of specific forms
under the force of external conditions" — something more
precise and definite than " natural selection in the struggle
for existence," or any other of the materialistic hypotheses

H

118 THE FAR PAST.

that have been recently advanced to account for the great
chronological elimination of vitality. It is (if anything
man shall ever comprehend) the gradual unfolding of a
predestined scheme — a divine conception, to the realisation
of which the various forces of nature, co-related and co-
adapted, are in ever-active co-operation.

THE MIDDLE PAST.

MESOZOIC SYSTEMS — THE TRIAS, OOLITE, AND CHALK.

WE now take leave of the palaeozoic aspects of the world,
and pass on to those of the Mesozoic or "middle life"
period — characterised by forms and species which hold an
intermediate place between those of the more ancient and
those of the more modern epochs. The grand primeval
types and patterns are still the same — radiate, niolluscan,
articulate, and vertebrate — but the modifications of the types
are new, and the consequent organisation higher and more
complex. The " differentiation" of the vital functions (as
zoologists express it) now becomes more marked and ap-
parent— that is, instead of organisations in which several
functions are performed by the same organ, each function
has an organ specially devoted to its purpose. The expres-
sion of Creative thought has become more specialised, and
the plants and animals of the newer epochs bear the im-
press of that specialisation, and find in new external condi-
tions a fitting habitat for their growth and elimination.

We noAV take farewell of the graptolites, cystideans, tri-
lobites, and eurypterites of Silurian seas — of the gigantic
crustaceans and bone-cased fishes of the old red sandstone
— of the sigillarire, stigmariae, lepidodendra, and other endo-
genous forms of the coal period — of the cup-in-cup, honey-

120 THE MIDDLE PAST.

comb, chain-pore, spider-web, and other corals of the De-
vonian and mountain limestones — of the huge reptile-like
fishes that swarmed in carboniferous waters ; and are intro-
duced to other species and newer forms of vitality. The
vegetation that adorns the lands of the mesozoic period
bears a closer resemblance and affinity to the tree-ferns,
cycads, zamias, palms, and subtropical pines of the present
day ; and the botanist feels he can now institute compari-
sons with some prospect of success, and attempt restorations
with greater confidence and certainty. So also in the ani-
mal world the approximations are becoming closer and
closer ; the divergence from existing families is less percep-
tible even to the unscientific observer ; and the zoologist
now meets with all the great divisions of vertebrate life —
fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals. A vast progress has
been made in the great onward evolution of vitality —
whole families of lower life have died out, and higher ones
have taken their places — and orders only beginning to come
into existence in the primeval world are now approaching
their culmination, or point of greatest numbers, variety,
and development.

Besides these gradational advances from lower to higher
forms, which are common to every geological epoch, there
are also some curious external characteristics which must
arrest the notice even of the least scientific and the least
geological of observers. So noticeable are these features,
that if the fossils of the palaeozoic cycle were arranged on
one side of a museum, and those of the neozoic on another,
the difference would strike the casual observer as strongly
as would the difference between the brute-man sculptures
of the* ^rinevites and Egyptians on the one hand, and the
man-god sculptures of the Greeks and Eomans on the other.
It is like passing from the Assyrian and Egyptian chambers
of the British Museum to those devoted to the Greeks and

ITS GENERAL FEATURES. 121

Romans. The expression of human thought is not more
clearly indicated by the remains of these ancient civilisa-
tions, than the expression of creative thought is indicated
by the fossil forms of the palaeozoic and mesozoic Earth-
periods. Thus, in the palaeozoic endogens the ultimate
development of the leaf is, for the most part, stamped in
permanent beauty on the tall sculptured stems, whereas in
the neozoic exogens it ascends to the more exquisite but
evanescent beauties of the flower and fruit. Again, the
palaeozoic leaf, being endogenous, has a venation wholly
parallel, whereas the neozoic leaf adds the reticulated vena-
tion of the exogen to that of the endogen. Further, as the
floral arrangement of the endogen is formed by three, and
that of the exogen by Jive, all the palaeozoic flowers and
fruits are stamped by the normal number three, whereas
Jives and threes are equally normal in the neozoic flora. So
also in the animal kingdom : the corals of the palaeozoic
cycle had their septa or ray-like partitions arranged in fours,
while those of the neozoic are arranged in sixes. In -the
palaeozoic cephalopods the arms are for the most part void
of sucking discs, while those of the neozoic seas are, on the
other hand, generally furnished with them ; and in the
chambered shells of the same order, the palaeozoic species
have their sutural junctions plain and simple, while those
of the neozoic are often foliated and of most intricate pat-
tern. The palaeozoic Crustacea, even in the highest forms
yet discovered, are more larval-like or abdominal in their
segmentation than the neozoic, in which head, thorax, and
abdomen become distinct and definite. Again, the palaeo-
zoic fishes had all the heterocercal or unequally-lobed tail
(which marks the embryonic condition of fish-life in gene-
ral), while in the neozoic order, the heterocerque is subor-
dinated, and the homocerque, or equally-lobed, and the un-
divided tails become the general and normal forms.

122 THE MIDDLE PAST.

These and other distinctions, upon which our limits will
not permit us to dwell, stamp the palaeozoic as a life-period
widely different from that of the mesozoic, and yet there
was no break, no discontinuity in the great evolution of
vitality. As the life of one system runs imperceptibly into
that of another, and the two have always some forms in
common ; so the palaeozoic runs into the mesozoic, and it
is only when viewed as a whole, and at a sufficient distance,
that its distinctive characters stand out in bold and peculiar
relief. So in like manner we shall find it with the meso-
zoic life-period, when we have reviewed the forms of its
triassic, oolitic, and cretaceous systems. It has a facies
peculiar to itself, and though approaching in some of its
features, yet as a whole unmistakably different from the
facies of the cainozoic period, which is now running its
course, and bearing us along with it.

And first, we turn to the Trias or upper new red sand-
stone, with its " triple" series of various coloured sandstones,
shelly limestones, and saliferous and gypseous shales. These
party-coloured deposits, in which ferruginous tints predo-
minate, are clearly the sediments of circumscribed oceanic
areas — areas which, in the northern hemisphere at least,
were of no great depth, and subjected to repeated elevatory
and depressing movements. This new arrangement of sea
and land, accompanied by no gigantic rivers or estuaries,
and apparently by a somewhat arid climate, is characterised
by a numerical as well as specific paucity of life — a paucity
which is greatly aggravated by the unsuitable nature of
the sandstones and marls for the preservation of organic
remains. Physiologically, however, the forms are still on
the advance ; cycads and conifers are more decided in their
characters ; brachiopods diminish, and true bivalves in-
crease ; cold-blooded air-breathers become more numerous,

TRIASSIC ERA.

123

and warm-blooded races (birds and marsupials) for the first
time make their unmistakable appearance. Vitality, in
obedience to some great law of progress, is ever pressing
forward to higher and higher forms, even though restricted
to unstable seas, and subjected to the stunting influences of
riverless plains and thirsty uplands.

Of the marine flora of the trias we know little or nothing.
Fucus-\\ke impressions are occasionally retained on the sand-
stones, but so fragmentary and obscure that a " general re-

1, Walchia ; 2. Pterozamites or Ptercphyllum from North America (Smmous).

semblance" is all the paleontologist can affirm. When we
turn to the land -plants, equisetums, calamites, ferns, cy-
cads, and conifers are the predominating forms ; — the equi-
setum and calaniite pointing to the marshy pools of the
summer-dried river-course, the fern and cycad to the scrubby
plain, and the coniferous trees to the open upland. The
triassic equisetums, calamites, and tree-ferns (sphenopteris,

124 THE MIDDLE PAST.

pecopteriti, neuropteris, &c.), though bearing the stamp of
generic resemblance to paleozoic forms, and evidently ful-
filling the same functions, are all of different species ; while
the cycadaceous pteropliyllum and Mantellia, and the coni-
ferous Voltzia and Wcdchia are altogether new and unknown
to former floras. On the whole, the aspect of the triassic
flora is more akin to that of the oolite, which succeeds, than
to that of the carboniferous that went before ; and though
scantily exhibited in the areas of Britain and Germany,
many have had a fuller and more connected development
in other regions. At all events, Ave are not entitled to
generalise from these limited localities, but rather to believe
that the apparent severance between palaeozoic and meso-
zoic was bridged over by intermediate forms that now lie
entombed in areas still unknown or covered by the existing
ocean.

In the animal kingdom (the forms being chiefly marine)
the connection is more continuous and intelligible, even
though the bulk of triassic sediments are highly unfavour-
able to the preservation of organic structure. The lower
Radiate forms are yet little known, few corals occurring in
any investigated area, and only two or three species of
encrinite and pentaerinite. The higher radiates are equally
rare, there being no well-authenticated instance of a sea-
urchin, and only two or three genera of star-fish, as opliiura,
aspidura, and asterias. The Articulata are even still more
scantily represented in the triassic seas of Europe, only a
few insignificant serpulob and a single crustacean (palinu-
rus) being all that have yet turned up to the palaeontolo-
gist ; thus leaving an almost unbridged gulf between the
higher annelids, Crustacea, and insects of the coal, and
those that are known to succeed in the oolite. This, how-
ever, is obviously a local imperfection in the Record, and
geologists look forward with interest to the discovery of the

TRIASSIC ERA. 125

connecting forms in the strata of other triassic regions. When
we turn to the Mollusca, the record becomes much more
satisfactory and connective, though many of the old genera
are evidently on the wane, and several have wholly de-
parted. The brachiopods, diminishing alike in generic and
numerical force, are still represented by lingula, terebratula,
and spirifer; the conchifera, or true bivalves, are vastly on
the increase, and such forms as trigonia, my a, plagiostoma,
avicula, and ostrea, throng the waters; the gasteropods
present buccinum, turbo, turiteUa, and other characteristic
genera ; while the predaceous cephalopods, rising in com-
plexity of structure, are represented by orthoceras, nautilus,
cemtite, belemnite, and rhyncholite. The Fishes of the pe-

Bestored form of Labyrinthodon, with footprints the same as Cheirotherium.

riod present as yet few well-determined forms, being known
chiefly by their detached teeth and fin-spines. These or-
ganisms, scattered as they are, clearly point to shark-like
genera (ceratodus, hybodus, &c.), whose mouths, like that of
the Australian cestracion, were paved with broad-crowned
corrugated teeth for the crushing of shell-fish, \vhile their
serrated fin-spines supplied them with a sure and ready
means of defence. Besides these, there are other forms
(saurichthys, &c.) which still carry forward, though on a

126

THE MIDDLE PAST.

diminished scale, the line of sauroid fishes that had its
culmination in the estuaries of the carboniferous era. But
if sauroid fishes are on the wane, true reptiles — marine and
amphibious — are strikingly on the increase, their teeth, bones,
and footprints foreshadowing that enormous development
and variety that found its meridian during the oolite epoch.
Of these the gigantic frog-like labyrinthodon, the plesio-
saur, pliytosaur, and thecodo?itosaur, the small lizard-like
telerpeton of the Elgin sandstones, the larger liyperodape-

Telerpeton Eljinense

don, and the crocodile-like staganolepis of the same for-
mation, are perhaps the most noticeable forms ; while
innumerable foot-tracks (chelichnm, cheirotherium, batrich-
nis, &c.) point partly to turtle -like, partly to frog -like,
and partly to crocodilian-like genera.

Still higher in the scale of life rank the foot- tracks of
gigantic birds, and the teeth and jaws of small insectivorous
mammals. These fossil foot-prints (ichnites) form one of the
most curious features of the period, and their study (iehno-
logy) constitutes one of the most interesting chapters in
geology.* In the successive stages of the earth's history

* The valley of the Connecticut in America, Corncockle Muir in Dum-
friesshire, Storeton in Cheshire, and Hildberghausen in Germany, have
been, as yet, the chief repositories of these fossil footprints. So abundant
are they in the Connecticut sandstones, which are mainly triassic (the
upper being of the age of the lias, and the lower perhaps permian), that

TRIASSIC ERA. 127

worms must have tracked and burrowed in the open sands,
shell-fish and Crustacea crawled and pattered on the muddy
beach, and reptiles, birds, and mammals footed the tidal
silt of bays and estuaries. Wherever these materials were
of sufficient consistence, and exposed during a long tidal
ebb to the desiccating effects of the sun, there the impres-
sions would be retained, and act as a mould for the recep-
tion of the next influx of mud. The mould and its cast,
covered over by repeated sediments, are thus preserved
for ever, bearing every outline of form and minutiae of
structural surface, according to the nature of the deposit
that received the living impression. Over these old trias-
sic shores numerous birds and reptiles waded and wandered,
now wheeling in sport, now fleeing in fear, and anon steal-
ing stealthily on their devoted victims. JSrot a bird-bone
has yet been discovered in the sediments that bear these
fossil footprints,""" and yet so characteristic is the foot of
the bird (the number and disposition of its joints, and the
corrugations of its skin), that palaeontology rests satisfied
in their existence as fully as though their skeletons were
there to indicate their habits and dimensions. In the case
of mammalian life the evidence, though scantier, is much

Dr Hitchcock has already enumerated 123 species — viz., marsupialoid
animals, 5 ; birds, 31 ; ornithoid reptiles, or reptiles walking on their
hind feet, 12; lizards, 17; batrachians or frog-like reptiles, 16; chelo-
nians or turtles, 8 ; fishes, 4 ; crustaceans, myriapods, and insects, 17 ;
and annelids, 10.

* In 1860, a block of red sandstone, containing the impressions of
bones, apparently of ornithic character, was discovered in America, and
described by Professor W. B. Rogers to the Natural History Society of
Boston. This block was not, however, found in situ, but among other
building stones which were said to have been brought from Portland
Quarry, in the valley of the Connecticut. The evidence is thus some-
what invalidated, though Professor Rogers seems confident as to its
mesozoic or new red sandstone origin. This specimen, unique in the
mean time, gives hope of the speedy discovery of other and more legible
fragments.

128 THE MIDDLE PAST.

more conclusive — teeth, jaws, and other fragments pointing
unmistakably to small marsupial quadrupeds (microlestes,
dromatherium, &c.), which find their nearest analogues in
the wombats and kangaroo-rats of Australia.

Such is the scanty and imperfect record of triassic life,
as preserved in the variegated sandstones, the muschelkalk,
and saliferous marls of Europe and North America. This
imperfection may arise, partly from the circumscribed and
varying seas of deposit, partly from the saline peculiarities
of their waters, and partly from the unsuitable nature of
their sediments for the preservation of organic structure ;
but from whatever cause, we are clearly not entitled to
generalise from these limited areas to the universal distri-
bution of triassic vitality. On the contrary, the steady
creational advance to higher and higher facies of life, pre-
suppose not only an extensive series of graclational species,
but a numerical exuberance through which the law of spe-
cific advancement could operate. And even now, in the
St Cassian beds of the Austrian Alps, we are not without
evidence of many new and connecting forms — genera which
unite the palaeozoic and niesozoic into one continuous life-
stream, and forbid the unphilosophical idea of creational
breaks in the evolution of vitality. As the facts stand
(and we know little beyond a few unconnected belts of de-
posit in the northern hemisphere), the triassic flora points
to insular rather than to continental conditions, and to an
arid rather than to a genial climate ; its marine fauna, in
harmony with these conditions, points rather to circum-
scribed seas than to gigantic estuaries ; whilst its terrestrial
animals indicate the thirsty desert rather than the fertile
plain, and sun-baked muddy creeks rather than the ex-
posed shores of the open ocean.

The Oolitic era, to which we next turn, presents geograph-

OOLITIC ERA. 129

ical conditions extremely different from those of the trias,
and apparently more favourable to an exuberant exhibition
of vitality. In its ascending series of Lias, Oolite, and
Wealden, we have a succession of deep-sea, littoral, and
estuarine deposits, which, in the old world at least, spread
over wider areas, and are in their calcareous muds, clays, and
limestones, much more conservative of organic structure.
Xot only do the seas show broader and more southerly ex-
panses, but they are more connected, and seem to have been
less liable to sudden variation either in their depth or con-
figuration. Their waters were likewise more normal in
their composition, and we get quit of those super-saline
and ferruginous constituents which, in the trias, appear to
have been as unfavourable to the development as to the
preservation of organic nature. The land also assumes a
more continental aspect, and, under a genial climate, gigan-
tic rivers and estuaries bespeak conditions conducive alike
to numerical abundance and specific variety. In conjunc-
tion with these new conditions of area and climate, vitality
puts on newer aspects. The palaeozoic forms that lingered
in the trias altogether disappear, and mesozoic life, in a
prolific flora and fauna, attains its meridian of development.
In vegetation, palms, lilies, and other allied monocotyledons
are on the increase ; tree-ferns, cycads, and conifers, are the
dominant orders; while dicotyledonous types make their
appearance in fragments of wood, leaves, and inflorescence.
In the animal kingdom the advance is still more marked
and decisive. Zoophytes and other lowly orders are more
abundantly and beautifully preserved; sea-urchins, star-
fish, and crustaceans assume generic aspects more akin to
existing races ; bivalves and gasteropods are still largely on
the increase, and cephalopods attain their specific and num-
erical meridian ; the fishes more closely approximate the
existing ichthyic type ; and though indications of mammalian

130 THE MIDDLE PAST.

life become more abundant, reptiles — aquatic, terrestrial, and
aerial — herbivorous, carnivorous, and omnivorous — are now
the dominant forms, and discharge in their every function
the part now assigned to the several grades of the higher
mammalia.

The marine plants of the oolite, like the marine flora of all
other geological formations, are indistinct and fragmentary.
Their bifurcating impressions are not unfrequent in some
of the oolitic sandstones, but such names as halymenites
indicate a resemblance rather than a determinable affinity
to any living form. Aquatic plants, resembling the pond-
weeds (chara, naiadites, and the like), occur in considerable
abundance, but little has been done to fix their true rela-
tions to existing orders, and in the mean time we can do
little more than note the fact of their presence, and indi-
cate the conditions that must have favoured their develop-
ment. Among the lower or cryptogamic orders of land-
plants, equisetums (equisetites), and club-mosses (lycopod-
ites), though not so frequent as in earlier formations, are by
no means uncommon ; while tree-ferns (pecopteris, splien-
opteris, tceniopteris, otopteris, &c.) appear in vast profusion,
and many of them peculiar to and restricted to the period.
Stems and leaves of unknown endogens (endogenites), palms
(palmacites), and lily-like plants occur throughout the for-
mation, while cycadaceous stems, leaves, and fruits (cycade-
oidea, palceozamia, zamites, pterophyllum, zamiostrobus,
&c.) constitute one of the most noticeable botanical peculi-
arities of the period. Coniferous trees are also in the
ascendant, and so similar in many respects to the cypresses,
araucarias, thujas, yews, and pines of southern latitudes, that
their affinities are at once expressed by such terms as cupres-
sites, araucarites, thuyites, taxites, and pinites. Altogether,
the vegetation of the oolite presents a high specific as well

OOLITIC ERA.

131

as numerical abundance, and indicates genial and continu-
ous geographical conditions — so genial as to give rise in

Palm, Screw-pine, Araucaria, Cycas, Tree-fern, &c.

many areas (Europe, India, the Indian Islands, and North
America) to repeated and valuable deposits of coal. Indeed,
many coal-fields at one time attributed to the carboniferous

132 THE MIDDLE PAST.

epoch have been proved to be of oolitic age,* and, as inves-
tigation is pushed still further, other areas, in both hemi-
spheres, will be found to belong to the same geological
system.

When we direct our attention to the fauna we find the
lower marine animals abundantly represented, showing that
in the oolitic seas there were those varied conditions of
warmth, depth, sea-bottom, and shore-line essential to their
dissemination and development. Sponges (spongid) are
by no means rare ; foraminiferous organisms (lituola, rota-
linci, spirolina, &c.) are scattered throughout the forma-
tion ; and corals (thamnastrcea, montlivaltia, isastrcea,
&c.) of varied and elegant forms occur in vast profusion,
and point to a time when the oolitic areas of Europe and
Asia were instinct with coral-life, and dotted and barred
with reefs like the existing seas of the southern hemisphere.
Encrinites, though now on the wane, still star the sea- bed
with their elegant forms (pejitacrinus, apiocrinus, &c.);
sea-urchins (cidaris, hemicidaris, diadema, echinus, &c.)
throng the marine strata in increasing numbers ; and free-
floating star-fishes (astropectcn, amphiura, and ophioderma),
apparently replacing the encrinites, now approximate in gen-
eric aspects to those of the present ocean. Annelids, like
the living serpulce, cement their tortuous tubes to stones and
dead-shells ; barnacles (potticipes) attach their many-valved
mansions to rocks and floating timber ; minute crustaceans
(cypris, cypridea, and estheria) moult their bivalved crusts
in myriads in the muddy creeks and estuaries ; while the
higher Crustacea (glyphcea, enjon, and megaclieirus) approxi-

* The coals of Southern India, of Borneo, Labuan, Zebu in the Philip-
pine Islands, &c., are now ascertained to be of oolitic age; to which
epoch also it is suspected that most of those of China and Japan belong ;
as well as that of Virginia in America, and other localities. The oolitic
coal-fields of Eastern Yorkshire and Brora in Sutherlandshire have been
long known to British geologists.

OOLITIC ERA.

133

mate in form and function to the crayfish and lobsters of
Insects, destructible as their remains may

existing waters.

1. Eryon ; 2, Megacheirus ; 3, Archaeoniscus ; 4, 5, Cyprides — natural size, and magnified.

seem, now assume an important place in the lists of the
palaeontologist — burrowers among the decaying timber of
the pine-forests ; leapers among the leaves and herbage of
the cycas grove; hunters along the river-bank and across
its sunny waters ; and gaudy flutterers over the flowers of
the lily and palm-tree. All the great orders of insect-life
— beetles, cockroaches, dragon-flies, grasshoppers, and ants
— are abundantly represented, and their resemblances (if
not affinities) are indicated at once by such generic appella-
tions as buprestium, blattidium, libellelium, cicadeUium,
and formicium.

The waters are now thronged with molluscan life. The
minute polyzoans or sea-mats weave their delicate network
(diastopora, ceriopora, lieteropora, &c.) over shells, encrin-
ites, and every available ground-work — varying slightly in

i

134

THE MIDDLE PAST.

pattern, but still preserving that similarity of design which
has ever characterised their beautiful structures. The deep-
sea, infusorial-feeding brachiopods, though specifically fewer
than in the palaeozoic periods, are still abundantly repre-
sented— terebratula, rhynchonella, spirifera, discina, and
the like, being the dominant forms in the marine beds of

1, Spirifer ; 2, Avicula ; 3, Terebratula ; 4, Pholadomya ; 5, Modiola ; 6, Gryphaea ;
7, Trigonia ; 8, Plagiostoma ; 9, Pleurotomaria.

the lias and oolite. The true bivalves, now so greatly in
the ascendant, present themselves in vast profusion, throng-

OOLITIC ERA.

135

ing every condition of sea-shore, and leaving their remains
in every degree of beauty and perfection. Gryphcea, ger-
villia, avicula, lima, ostrea, and pecten ; trigonia, modiola,
plioladomya, cardium, astarte, and scores of other genera,
occur in numerous specific forms in the marine beds of the
lias and oolite ; while fresh-water mussels (unionidce) are
equally characteristic of the estuarine sediments of the

oorAric CEPHA.LOPODS.

1, Ammonites Jason. ; 2, A. communis ; 3, A. Bucklandi ; 4, Belemnitea Puzcsianus
5, 6, Belemnites ; 7. Belemnoteuthis.

Wealden. The gasteropods, too, in many generic aspects,
crowd the sea-shores — turbo, trochus, pleurotomaria, nerincea,

136 THE MIDDLE PAST.

patella, ceritliium, and the like, being the more common
forms in the marine strata ; while planorbis, paludina, and
their congeners occur in the fresh-water limestones of the
Weald thick as their modern species do on the marls of our
lakes and marshes. The cephalopods now attain their
meridian, and in variety of form, size, and numbers, stamp
the period with one of its most peculiar aspects. Shell-
clad genera, like nautilus and ammonite, leave their cham-
bered habitations in myriads ; and naked genera, like the
cuttle-fishes, are evidenced by thousands of those internal
organisms (belemnites) which survive the decay of the softer
structures. It is indeed the "reign of ammonites" — these
beautiful shells occurring in hundreds of specific forms, in
every stage of growth, and in the most diversified styles of
external ornamentation. Along the exposed shore, in the
land-locked bay, and out in the open waters of the old
oolitic seas, these predaceous shell-clad cephalopods reign
the lords of niolluscan life, and mark the culmination of an
order which now finds its only representative in the plain-
looking nautilus of the Southern Ocean.

The fishes to which we next ascend belong exclusively
to the great placoid and ganoid divisions — the soft-scaled
orders (the ctenoids and cycloids) of the newer epoch being
as yet unrepresented in oolitic waters. The placoids are
chiefly rays and sharks, whose teeth (liybodus, acrodus,
ganodm, &c.) and fin-spines (aster acanthus, nemacanthus,
and myriacanthus) were the only preservable portions of
their uncalcified skeletons. Many of these, like the cestra-
cion of the Australian seas, were evidently fitted for the
crushing of crustaceous and testaceous animals, others for
the prehension of fishes, while some, more slenderly armed,
gorged themselves, like their modern congeners, on the
squids and cuttle-fishes that then thronged the ocean. The
ganoids, now more ichthyic in their aspect, appear in nu-

OOLITIC ERA.

137

merous generic forms (pachytormus, pycnodus, echmodus,
lepidotus, &c.), the majority of which, are peculiar to the
mesozoic period, and many of them even restricted to the
time of the lias and oolite. It is now, too, the high noon
of reptilian development — " the Age of Eeptiles" — when
marine genera (ichthyosaurus and irtesiosaurus) were the

IcliLhyubaurus ; Loug-uecked Plesiosaurus ; aud Pterodactyle.

whale-like monarchs of the ocean ; when crocodilians (teleo-
saurus and cetiosaurus) thronged the rivers and estuaries ;
turtles (chclone and platemys) traversed the muddy shores ;
gigantic land-saurians (meyalosaurus, hylffiosaurus, and igu-
anodon) roamed, elephant -like, over the river -plains, or

138 THE MIDDLE PAST.

browsed in the virgin forest ; lizards (lacerta and macellodus}
basked on the sunny cliffs ; and bird-like genera (pterodady-

Eestored forms of Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus — HA.WKINS.

lus) winged the upper firmament. Every adaptation of form
and function finds its exemplar in these ancient saurians,
and the part now played by birds and mammals was then
in a great measure discharged by reptiles. They were the
representatives in time of the higher orders of vitality —
occupying every habitat, aquatic, terrestrial, and aerial, and
fulfilling every function, herbivorous, carnivorous, and om-
nivorous. Everywhere they are the dominant forms, and
though birds and mammals are coming more clearly on the
stage, the great vital phase of creation was, for the time
being, unmistakably reptilian.

This "Reign of Reptiles," as it is sometimes termed,
has suggested to minds, more imaginative than logical, the
idea of an epoch of incessant warfare and murder; and
nothing is more common than pictorial delineations and
high-wrought descriptions of reptilian carnage and cruelty.

OOLITIC ERA. 139

i

Transferring the attributes of the infuriated human mind
to the unreasoning brute, they picture every species lying
in wait for his neighbour — writhing in savage combat for
supremacy, and mangling with their horrid fangs even
where prey does not become a necessity. Alas ! for man's
mistaken notion of creation's life-scheme ; as if, even in a
world of reptiles, there were not a thousand checks and
compensations ever actively at work to secure the greatest
happiness of the greatest numbers. No doubt the flesh-
eater preyed on the plant-eater, and the weak succumbed
where the strong exulted ; but death comes unconsciously
quick where the pre}Ter strikes from necessity, and the
fall of the sickly gives wider verge to the enjoyment of
the healthy survivor. The wants of nature supplied, and
then, as now, the gigantic herbivora rolled sportively
among the over- topping herbage, or stood drowsily dream-
ing under the shade of the noonday forest ; while the
carnivora gambolled in the open waters, or lazily sunned
themselves on the ebbing sea-shore. Wherever life prevails,
there also is meted out to it its measure of enjoyment, and
man only errs when, describing the lower animals, he in-
vests them with passions and feelings unfortunately too
frequently his own. But cold-blooded air-breathers, how-
ever varied in size, form, and function, were not destined to
be the culminating orders in the world's life-scheme. The
divine creational idea, fixed from the beginning, was steadily
evolving itself into higher and higher types ; and along
with this overwhelming exuberance of reptiles, the line of
triassic birds was continued in such forms as palceornis
(ancient -bird), while in certain areas there appeared the
higher manifestations of mammalian development. Small
insectivorous quadrupeds — amphitlierium (doubtful-beast),
pliascolotherium (pouched-beast), stereognathus (thick-jaw),
placjiaulax (oblique-grooved tooth), &c. — have been detected

140

THE MIDDLE PAST.

in the upper oolite, apparently marsupial in their structure,
and pointing to the wombats, bandicoots, and phalangers of
Australia as their nearest living analogues. From the num-
ber of these imbedded in a few square yards of a stratum
near Swanage in Dorsetshire, we may confidently look for-
ward to the discovery of many other mammalian forms —
every condition of the period being favourable to the de-
velopment of such a fauna.

Oolitic Mammals, natural size — 1, Lower Jaw and Teeth of Phascolotherium ;
2, Of Triconodon ; 3, Of Plagiaulax.

Such are the phases of oolitic life, and such the conditions
of sea and land, which its miscellaneous sediments seem to
imply. Continuous lands of ample area for the growth of
a varied flora, open free-flowing seas for an exuberant marine
fauna, gigantic estuaries and river plains for the amphibious
reptiles of the Weald, and over all a genial but periodically
interrupted climate. We have as yet no means of deter-
mining the universal climatology of the period, but over
the oolitic areas of the northern hemisphere the varying
rings of coniferous growth would seem to indicate seasonal
variations, while the prevailing aspect of the flora, the
abundance of land reptiles, and the presence of small mar-
supials, point to conditions of general warmth and periodic
drought, such as now obtain over the riverless plains of

OOLITIC ERA. 141

Australia, As in its external, so in its vital conditions the
oolitic epoch finds its newest analogue in the flora and
fauna of the Australasian continent, thus indicating once
more the connection that invariably subsists between the
manifestations of life, and the conditions by which they are
surrounded. "The close approximation," remarks Profes-
sor Owen, "of the amphitherium and phascolotherium to
marsupial genera, now confined to New South Wales and
Van Die man's Land, leads us to reflect upon the interesting
correspondence between other organic remains of the British
oolite and other existing forms now confined to the Aus-
tralian continent and adjoining seas. Here, for example,
swims the cestracion which has given the key to the nature
of the palates from our oolite, now recognised as the teeth of
congeneric gigantic forms of cartilaginous fishes. Not only
trigoniw, but living terebratulce exist, and the latter abun-
dantly, in Australian seas, yielding food to the cestracion,
as their extinct analogues doubtless did to the allied cartila-
ginous fishes called acrodi, psammodi, &c. Araucarise and
cycadaceous plants likewise flourish on the Australian con-
tinent, where marsupial quadrupeds abound, and thus ap-
pear to complete a picture of an ancient condition of the
earth's surface, which has been superseded in our hemi-
sphere by other strata, and a higher type of mammalian
organisation." This picture, however, must be received as
nothing more than the merest analogy. Nature never re-
peats herself in time any more than in space, and forms
once. gone disappear for ever. To speak, as some have done,
of Australia being " a belated portion of the earth's surface,"
is altogether to misinterpret the scheme of creational pro-
gress. The species of the oolite are not the species of
Australia, while fossil evidence already shows that the pre-
sent races of the Austral islands have had their gigantic
tertiary predecessors, just as other regions have had theirs,

142 THE MIDDLE PAST.

and this in a genetic line backwards through the prior
epochs of the chalk and oolite. In some of its minor
features the oolite may find an analogue in existing nature,
but in its entirety it stands alone — a great life-epoch, whose
forms are not to be confounded either with what has gone
before, or with what has yet to follow.

The Cretaceous or Chalk period, to which we next turn,
brings to a close the long and exuberant line of niesozoic
life. Great changes in the relative distribution of sea and
land in the northern hemisphere have been gradually
brought about ; much of the oolitic sea-bed has become
dry land ; and the areas of deposit have assumed a less
southerly aspect. Stretching more in an easterly and
westerly direction, they present less variety of climate, and,
opening up to the north, they become recipients of currents
which tend to deteriorate the more genial conditions of the
oolitic era. Greensands, clays, clay-marls, and chalk of vary-
ing consistence form the prevailing sediments, which, being
eminently marine, are replete with the remains of oceanic life.
Little of the terrestrial surface of the period is indicated by
the fossil flora or fauna, and much of the marine area in
Asia and in America has been but imperfectly explored.
Notwithstanding this imperfection of the record, we find
enough to corroborate the ever -onward progression of
vitality, and to show that oolitic forms, though by no
means rare, are gradually being replaced by others peculiar
to the chalk and greensand.

The Flora, though scantily preserved, has still somewhat
of an oolitic aspect, looking more like the remnants of that
age than the peculiar products of a newer epoch. Sea-weeds
(confervitcs and chondrites) resembling the living confervas
and Irish-moss, ferns (lonchopteris\ lily-like leaves (dra-
cwna), cycads (zamiostrobus and dathraria), and coni-

CRETACEOUS ERA. 143

ferous trees (aUetites and strobolites), in drifted fragments,
are all or nearly all we can read intelligibly of the cretaceous
vegetation. And yet we know, from certain lignitic beds,
that considerable areas must have been clad with swamp
and forest-growth, and this during long periods of alternate
reproduction and decay."" On the whole, however, the cre-
taceous flora appears to have been by no means an exuberant
one — less varied in its form than that of the oolite wrhich
preceded, and less southern in its aspect than that of the
early tertiary that followed. And the cause of this we find
in the colder currents of the northward opening seas — seas
which occasionally brought drifting-ice even to the latitudes
of the British Islands — if we are to seek in ice-floes, as Mr
Godwin- Austen has done, an explanation of the isolated
blocks of granite and lignite that have been recently found
imbedded in the chalk of the south of England.

The marine fauna presents an exuberant display of sponge-
growth (spongia, ventriculites, siphonia, scyphia, &c.), all
less or more converted into flints j and leading to the in-
genious speculation of Dr Bowerbank, that their function
in nature is to induce the deposit of siliceous matter from
the waters of the ocean just as the corals assist in the con-
solidation of its calcareous constituents. Foraininiferous
organisms (textularia, rotalina, dentalina, lulima, &c.) in
countless myriads throng the waters, and drop their cal-
careous cases in such abundance, that more than the half of
some chalk strata is composed of their exuviae. It is now,
and during the dawn of the tertiary period, that foramini-
ferous life attains its meridian — physiologically in hundreds
of generic forms, and numerically in such abundance that

* Besides the cretaceous lignites of Europe, it is now known that the
coal of Vancouver's Island and other American localities "belongs to the
same epoch. It is also more than likely that some coal-fields, now sup-
posed to be oolitic, and several lignites now reputed of lower tertiary
age, will yet be found to belong to the chalk formation.

144:

THE MIDDLE PAST.

thousands of miles of rock-matter (as the nummulitic lime-
stone) owe their origin to the shell-like coverings of these

1, Siphonia ; 2, Ventriculites ; 3 Manon ; 4, Scypliia ; 5, Textularia ; 0, Lituola:
7, Orbitoides ; 8, Rotalia.

the lowest of animated existences. Corals, though occur-
ring in many genera (parasmilia, trocJiocyathus, &c.), are
by no means so abundant as in the oolite ; but star-fishes
(goniaster and oriaster) and sea-urchins (cidaris, diadema,
salenia, galerites, &c.) are obviously on the increase, and
the beautiful preservation of the latter constitutes one of
the most characteristic features of the chalk formation.
Encrinite life is now drawing to a close, and in a few species
of pentacrinus, Bourgueticrinm, and marsupites, carries
down the descent to the solitary pentacrinite of the existing
ocean. Annelids, like serpula and vermicular la, construct
their tortuous tubes in profusion, and in such a marine me-
dium barnacles (pollicipes and scalpellum) appear in greater
force than during any former epoch. In crustacean life,
the bivalved entomostraca are extensively represented by

CRETACEOUS ERA.

145

Bairdia, cy there, cy thereto, cytheretta, &c., while the larger
malacostracans ahound in numerous generic forms, myeria,

1, Uarsupites ; 2, Goniaster ; 3, Hamipneustes ; 4, Ananchytes ; 5, Galerites.

pagurus, notopocorystes, &c., all more nearly approaching
in aspect and function the crabs and lobsters of existing
waters. And now the minute polyzoans or sea-mats weave
their delicate tracery of network in a thousand forms (flus-
tra, eschara, diastopora, actinopora, idmonea, &c.), spread-
ing it over corals, dead shells, and crustaceans, as if their
function had been to shroud in beauty the worthless and
decaying wreck of the cretaceous sea-shore. The higher
mollusca also appear in vast profusion — many of the oolitic
genera having departed or being on the wane, while other
forms peculiar to the chalk begin to make their appearance.
The deep-sea brachiopods are represented by species of
terebratula, terebratella, and rhynconella ; the true bivalves
by inoceramus, lima, ostrea, pecten, astarte, cardiitm, tri-

146

THE MIDDLE PAST.

gonia, Venus, and many others whose specific forms are new
and peculiar to the period ; while gasteropods, like natica,

1, Pecten ; '2, Terebratula ; 3, Gervillia ; 4, Ostrea ; 5, Plagiostcma ; 6, Inoceramus ;
7, Radiolites ; 8, Eippurites ; 9, Cinulia.

llttorina, cerithium, rostellaria, solarium, pleurotomaria,
and others, mark a busy sea-shore of herbivorous and car-
nivorous activity. The cephalopods, though numerically
fewer than in the lias and oolite, now appear in strange and
fantastic forms. Hitherto the chambers of the shell-clad
genera were either simply straight, like the orthoceras, or
coiled on the same plane, like the nautilus and ammonite.
Now, along with the nautilus and ammonite we have them
bent like a hook (hamites), curved like the prow of a skiff
(scaphites), incurved like a crosier (ancyloceras), curled
like a ram's horn (crioceras\ twisted round a straight axis,

CRETACEOUS ERA.

147

and tapering tower -like (turrilites), or in some other
grotesque and simulative forms. This flush of generic

.1, Ancyloceras ; 2, Scaphites ; 3, Crioceras; 4, Hamites; 5, Turrilites.

type, and that on the eve of their decline, has given
rise to many hypotheses ; and by those who associate mo-
dification of form with the influence of physical conditions,
obnoxious changes in the waters of deposit are supposed
to have been the proximate causes of these curious and
sportive shapes. It is true that an influx of fresh water
into a marine area, or vice versa, is often attended by ciiri-
ous changes in the indwelling mollusca, and that new con-
ditions of cultivation produce strange sports among the
varieties of the gardener • but the forms of these cretaceous
shells is too decisive and persistent to be otherwise ex-
plained than by the introduction of new genera, in obedi-
ence to some great but unknown law of creation. The
fish life of the chalk period presents us with many of the
old placoids and ganoids (the sharks, rays, and sauroids) of

148

THE MIDDLE PAST.

the oolite, but with new and peculiar genera of the same
great divisions; while for the first time the ctenoids and
cycloids, which are now the prevailing orders of ichthyic
life, make their first appearance. Among the placoids, as
indicating their fossil teeth, ptychodits, hybodus, acrodus, and
lamna are the dominant genera ; among the ganoids, gyro-
das, pycnodw, and macropoma; while the cycloids show
osmeroides, hypsodus, saurocephalus, and the like ; and the
ctenoids, the perch-like forms of beryx and berycopsis.

CRETACEOUS FISHES.

1, Baryx Lewesiensis ; 2, Osmeroides Mantelli — MANTELL.

When we turn to the reptiles, a few species of plesiosaurus
and ichthyosaurus still linger in the ocean j a solitary
iyuanodon represents the gigantic land-tribes ; and ptero-
dactyles, in lessening flocks, wing the sea-cliffs or skim the
surface of the creeks and river-mouths. The crocodiles,

CRETACEOUS ERA. 149

lizards, and turtles are represented by several genera ; but
on the whole the meridian of reptilian life is past, and the
huge and varied forms of the oolite are now extinct, or
rapidly disappearing. Of birds and mammals the highly
marine beds of the chalk have yielded little more than
the merest indications (cimoliornis, bird-of-the-chalk-marl,
&c. ), but as these seem to point to the higher types of the
rapacious birds and true mammals, we may rest assured of
the existence of intervening orders, and look forward with
hope to the discovery of their remains.

"With the Chalk, which closes the long and prolific line
of mesozoic life, we lose sight of many tribes, and families,
and genera, but not, as is sometimes sweepingly asserted,
of every species that up to that time had given character
to the onward phases of vitality. The passage from the
mesozoic to the cainozoic was as gradual as that from the
palaeozoic to the mesozoic, and if a break shall appear to
exist in some districts, we cannot accept this as more than
a mere local and limited phenomenon. The submergence
of old lands, and the elevation of the sea-bed into new
islands and continents, is a slow and gradual process ; it
is never cataclysmal save over the most partial and isolated
tracts ; and only in such tracts is there a chance of any
genus or species being suddenly extinguished. As the
gift of life is handed from generation to generation within
certain limits of variety, so epoch passes it on to epoch
within the wider limit of specific change, but this so im-
perceptibly that it is only after the lapse of ages the dif-
ference becomes apparent. Viewed at these wide intervals,
the palseozoic flora seems essentially exogenous ; endogens
and gymnogens prevail in the mesozoic ; and now the
cainozoic is about to be characterised by the newer and
higher manifestations of the exogens. In like manner

K

150 THE MIDDLE PAST.

with the fauna : we rise (speaking in general terms) from
a world of cold-blooded air-breathers in the palaeozoic to
cold-blooded air-breathers in the mesozoic, and from these
again to the warm-blooded air-breathers of the cainozoic
era. If fishes were the dominant vertebrates in paleozoic
times, reptiles were undoubtedly so during the mesozoic ;
and now, in the cainozoic, the mammals (so feebly repre-
sented in the past) are about to assume the chief import-
ance. The great march of life is not only ever forward, but
ever upward. It is not merely that creation is concomi-
tant with extinction, but the new creations are ever as-
suming more exalted ordinal forms of the same primal
patterns.

THE EECENT.

CAIXOZOIC SYSTEMS. THE TERTIARY AND POST -TERTIARY.

HAVIXG passed the middle ages of the earth's history,
whose life-species have all, or nearly all, disappeared, we
enter upon an epoch whose forms insensibly graduate into
those that are now our fellow-participators in the great pro-
gressional scheme of vitality. In other words, we approach
the Cainozoic, or " recent-life period," which, though but
as yesterday compared with the aeons of the paleozoic and
mesozoic, yet embraces a vast lapse of time, and is neces-
sarily characterised by higher and still advancing forms.
We say necessarily characterised, for though science can
prove no causal connection between the physical and vital
manifestations of the globe, the one set of changes so in-
variably accompany the other, that we are compelled to
regard them as necessary concomitants^. And yet, though
concomitants in time, they may stand in no relation to each
other as cause and effect, but be each an independent phase
of that divine creational plan that is still evolving itself
around us. "We, who but dimly perceive the broken out-
line of the scheme, can only note the coincidence ; those
in after ages of higher intelligence may succeed in tracing
the connection. But whatever that connection, it is now
more marked and appreciable, and geologists can associate
with almost every fluctuation of condition, a change in the
accompanying aspects of cairiozoic life.

152 THE RECENT.

It is now that the more complex forms of an exogenous
flora are superadded to the endogens and gymnogens of the
mesozoic, and in their more varied forms and higher utili-
ties hecome not only a fitter ornament for a more varied
surface, but a necessary sustenance for a higher and more
diversified fauna. The herbs, and shrubs, and trees — the
flowers, and fruits, and grains — all that can gladden the
senses or satisfy the wants of man and his existing life-
comrades, appear with the current epoch, and by their ap-
pearance again confirm that fitness that ever reigns be-
tween the organic and inorganic aspects of creation. In
the animal world the advance is equally apparent, and in
orders where no advance appears a thousand modifications
present themselves. Among the protozoans the calcareous
sponges for the most part disappear, their place being
taken by those of a horny nature, while the foraminifera
are culminating in size and complexity of configuration.
The encrinites, with one or two solitary exceptions, have
vanished from the waters ; and the sea-urchins, so exqui-
sitely preserved in the chalk, are reduced by several of
their most beautiful and numerous families. Among the
shell-fish the brachiopods dwindle to a few families, the true
bivalves are still on the increase, the gasteropod univalves
become dominant in genera and species, while the shell-
clad cephalopods that thronged the mesozoic ocean in myr-
iads, perish to a solitary genus. The crustaceans become
less natatory and more ambulatory in their character, while
the insects, so imperfectly preserved in the past, now throng
every element — air, earth, and water — in apparently still
increasing numbers. The placoids and ganoids, so long the
only representatives of ichthyic life, are now on the wane,
and the cycloids and ctenoids appear as the prevailing or-
ders. Of the ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs that whale-like
ruled the ocean, of the megalosaurs and hylseosaurs that

ITS CHARACTERISTICS. 153

tenanted the plain and roamed the forest, and of the ptero-
saurs that winged the air, not a living trace remains. They
are utterly extinguished, and their place is now filled by
the crocodiles, lizards, turtles, and serpents of existing na-
ture. The birds so scantily preserved (though largely indi-
cated) in mesozoic strata, and the mammals represented
only by a few insignificant marsupials, now assume the
chief importance in the great vital scheme ; and last, and
highest of all, man himself enters on the stage of being as
the crowning form of the current epoch.

To facilitate comparison, it is usual to subdivide the
Cainozoic into eocene, miocene, pliocene, and pleistocene —
that is, into its earliest, less recent, more recent, and most
recent life-stages j but enough for our review to treat it in
two great sections — the first, when land and sea had a
somewhat different distribution from the present ; and the
second, when they had assumed, within the limits of an
appreciable mutation, their existing arrangement. Adopt-
ing the familiar phraseology that designates the palae-
ozoic as primarily and the mesozoic as secondary, we may
regard the first section as tertiary, and the second as post-
tertiary — ever bearing in mind that such distinctions are
mere provisional aids to facilitate the comprehension of
geological progression. It has been customary, no doubt,
for certain geologists, generalising from limited tracts in
Europe, to draw a bold line of demarcation between the
chalk and tertiary — so bold that not a single species was
regarded as passing from the one epoch to the other. This,
like many of the early conclusions of the science, is alto-
gether erroneous ; and now, even in Europe, to say nothing
of America, abundant passage -beds have been detected,
showing in this instance, as in every other, that abrupt
transitions are at the most merely local and limited pheno-

154 THE RECENT.

mena. Assuming, then, that the life-forms of the Chalk
pass insensibly into those of the Tertiary, even though in
many European areas the cretaceous era was suddenly
brought to a close by the violent displacement of the then
land and sea, we yet discover a wide difference between
the vital aspects of these respective epochs. In the northern
hemisphere the tertiary seas still trend in an easterly and
westerly direction — stretching diagonally through what is
now Central Europe and Southern Asia, spreading over a
large tract of Northern Africa, and covering in North Ame-
rica wide belts of the Southern States. Shut up from the
northern currents that seem to have influenced the chalk
seas, and exposed to those which, like the Gulf Stream,
partake of a tropical temperature, the climate of the tertiary
areas becomes more genial, and is, in the progress of crea-
tion, accompanied by a more exuberant flora and fauna.
The seas, even in the latitudes of England, teem with
southern forms ; while the lands, clothed with a vegetation
that finds its nearest analogues in the plants of sub-tropical
regions, were tenanted by gigantic mammals which, like
the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, tapir, lion, and
tiger, now find their headquarters in the forests and plains
of the torrid zone. Extensive lacustrine areas also appear
in certain regions, as in Central France, and in their fresh-
water forms present, for the first time, a fauna but doubt-
fully and obscurely represented in former epochs.* In fine,

* With the exception of the estuarine beds of the Weald, and the
doubtfully estuarine portions of the Carboniferous system, we are al-
together ignorant of the fresh-water areas of the older epochs. Lake,
river, and marsh must have existed then as now, each peopled by its
own distinctive tenantry ; but of these forms we have not a single trace,
and it is only as we approach the Tertiary epoch that a fresh-water
fauna becomes known and appreciable. As we cannot believe in the
total obliteration of ancient fresh-water deposits, so we hopefully look
forward to important discoveries in this rich and varied section of
vitality.

EARLY TERTIARIES. 155

we have every type and feature of existing vitality; and
the character of the period will perhaps be better indicated
by a notice of the forms that have become extinct, than by
any description of the whole, which still constitutes in a
great measure the flora and fauna now flourishing around us.

Separating the early tertiaries — the eocene and miocene —
from the pliocene and pleistocene, when, under the chang-
ing conditions of sea and land, the climate of the northern
hemisphere began to assume a boreal character ; we shall
shortly glance at the more marked and peculiar aspects of
this early period. Wherever we turn — whether to the clays
and gravels of the London basin, or to the marls and gyp-
sums of Paris, whether we restrict our review to the south
of Europe, or carry it forward to the centre of Asia — we
everywhere find in these earlier tertiaries abundant evi-
dence of a warm - temperate, or even subtropical flora.
Palm-like leaves and fruits, such as now flourish on the
mud-islands of the Ganges (flabellaria, nipadites, tricarpel-
lites), leguminous seeds of arboreal growth (legumenosites),
twigs and leaves of mimosa, laurel, and other plants, whose
congeners now find a habitat in southern latitudes, are
thickly scattered through these strata. Nor are these the
mere twigs and fragments of tropical forests, drifted from
afar by gigantic rivers ; for associated with the formation
are beds of lignite or wood-coal, composed of kindred plants
that must have flourished for centuries on the spots where
their remains are now entombed.

And even if the flora gave no certain evidence of the
geniality of the climate that then pervaded the parallels of
London and Paris, the associated fauna would of itself
establish the belief. Gigantic sharks and rays (lamna,
carckarodoH, myliobatis\ such as now frequent the Southern
Ocean, crocodiles and turtles (crocodilus, clielone, emys) in
greater specific exuberance than is now known to the zoolo-

156 THE RECENT.

gist, tapir -like pachyderms (palcvotherium, anoplotherium\
akin to those of the Malayan peninsula and South America,

ss.

Restored Outlines — Xiphodon, Anoplotheiium, PalaeoUierium.

and river-hogs (hyopotamus, cliceropotamus), like those that
now wallow in the mire of African rivers, have left their
remains in thousands, testifying at once to the warmth of
the climate and to the long continuance of conditions fav-
ourable alike to individual growth and to numerical abun-
dance. An exuberance of pachydermatous quadrupeds,
foreshadowing in their varied forms the solidungulates and
ruminants of a subsequent era, is perhaps the most notable
feature of the period ; for, though the remains of whale,
opossum, mole, bat, and even monkey, have been detected
in the earlier tertiaries of Europe, the dominant impress of
mammalian life over a larger section of the northern hemi-
sphere was undoubtedly palasotheroid. In the forest, over
the plain, and by lake and river-swamp, these curious crea-
tures held supreme sway, simulating every form — sea-cow,
tapir, hog, rhinoceros, ass, camel, antelope — and apparently
performing every function now assigned to these later and
diverse families. During the prevalence of the genial cli-
mate that then prevailed, we find not only an unusual flush

EARLY TERTIARIES.

157

of terrestrial life, but discover that the fresh- water lakes,
the estuaries, and the seas, also teemed with many new and
ascending forms. It is now that we detect in these marls
the approximating species of our lymnece, paludinm, plau-
orbes, and other fresh-water shells ; the terrestrial snails,
helix, pupa, dausilia, &c., so slenderly represented in former
epochs ; and in the clays and limestones, increasing con-
geners of our marine gasteropods (spindle -shells, peri-
winkles, volutes, and cowries), fusus, cerithium, natica,
valuta, cyprcea — all assuming so recent an aspect, that the
conchologist begins to rank them with living species, and
to reckon the chronology of strata by the percentage of ex-
isting shells.* It is now, too, that the seas swarm with
these foraminiferous organisms that attain their meridian
in numbers, bulk, and variety, and give rise, by their
myriad calcareous cases, to masses of nummulitic limestone

, Section of do., showing its cells.

that rival in extent and thickness the limestones of former
epochs, or the coral-reefs of the present day. The nummu-
litic limestone of the Old World, extending for thousands
of miles, and many hundred feet in thickness, arid the

* The terms eocene, miocene, &c., have reference to the percentage
of existing shells contained in the different stages of tertiary strata,
thus : —

Pleistocene (most recent) from 90 to 98 of living species.
Pliocene (more recent) „ 60 to 88 „

Miocene (less recent) „ 20 to 30 ,,

Eocene (dawn of recent) ,, 1 to 5 „

158 THE RECENT.

rivalling orbitoidal masses of the New World, are almost
entirely the work of these many-celled foraminifera ; while
thick and extensive strata of tripoli, and other siliceous
earths, are wholly made up of the moulted shields of
the minuter diatoms and infusoria. There is nothing
more wonderful in nature than the magnitude of the
stony masses elaborated by the lowest of animated
creatures — the diatoms, foraminifers, corals, and other mi-
croscopic organisms. It seems as if an ordinance, that the
nearer the vital approaches the physical, the less the organic
is elevated above the inorganic, the more nearly they should
resemble each other in the bulk and character of their
lithological operations. And yet the elaboration of, lime-
stone from marine waters, by the merest vitalised speck of
gelatinous matter, is a result that can never be mistaken
for that of mechanical or chemical, agency. The two things
may approximate ; they can never be confounded.

Exuberant as the aspect of eocene life may appear, the
march of creation is still ever forward. The physical agen-
cies of nature are ever slowly but surely at work. Here
the eocene sea is being gradually elevated into shoals and
islands ; there the fresh- water lake is submerged, and its
sediments overlaid by those of marine origin ; and here
again volcanic energy gives birth to new mountain-chains,
which interrupt the former currents of the air and ocean,
and new external influences begin to prevail. The eocene
gradually merges into the miocene, and the miocene into the
pliocene. Old forms drop away, new ones begin to take
their places, and a flora and fauna indicative of a more tem-
perate climate begin to establish themselves over the lati-
tudes that now constitute the middle regions of Europe,
Asia, and North America. And just as we approach ex-
isting nature in time, so in space the flora and fauna begin

MIDDLE TERTIARIES. 159

to assume those distributive features that continue to char-
acterise them more or less at the present day. The maples,
planes, elms, willows, and other dicotyledonous trees con-
tained in the middle tertiaries of Europe, bear the closest
resemblance to those that still adorn her forests ; and the
elephants, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, bears, lions, and tigers
of the Old World find their congeneric predecessors in the
tertiary mastodons, mammoths, hippopotami, rhinoceroses,
cave -bears, tiger -like niachairodi, and camel -like mery-
cotheres of the same hemisphere. In like manner the
sloths, ant-eaters, armadilloes, and llamas of South America
find their geographical prototypes in the megatheres, my-
lodons, glyptodons, and macrauchenes, so abundantly fossil
in the upper tertiaries of that continent ; while even in
Australasia the kangaroo is preceded by the gigantic dipro-
todon, the lace-lizard by the megalanea, and the apteryx
and emeu by the palapteryx and dinornis. As the miocene
and pliocene epochs advance, the more and more do their
fossil forms assimilate to those now peopling the same
geographical regions, till the fossil may be said to graduate
into the sub-fossil, and the sub-fossil into the species still
existing.

In European tertiaries, for instance, we ascend from the
eocene or palaeotheroid age to the elephantoid or middle
tertiary, and from this again to the later age of ruminants —
antelopes, deer, and oxen. Connected as Europe has been
with the rest of the Old World ever since the earliest ter-
tiary epoch, we might naturally expect to find many species
spreading indiscriminately over the other continents of Asia
and Africa ; but while this undoubtedly occurs, there are
camel-like, giraffe-like, and antelope forms — merycotherium,
sivatherium, Iramatherium, and the like — peculiar to the
tertiaries of Asia, W7hich point to distinctive geographical
distributions of life that obtained so early as the middle and

160 THE RECENT.

upper tertiary epochs. And these curious forms — the huge
camel-like merycothere and the elephant- antelope sivathere
— suggest a peculiarity that runs through many of these ter-
tiary mammals. Thus, while all the mammalian classes,
with the exception of man, are less or more represented in
the miocene and pliocene strata of the Old World, one
feature that stamps the fauna of the period, and renders it
noticeahle even to unprofessional inquirers, is the vast
amount of intermediate or inosculating forms. The horns
of a ruminant with the proboscis of a pachyderm ; the
prehensile lip and dentition of a pachyderm with the light
proportions of an antelope ; the blending of horse, camel,
and tapir; the inosculating of camel and giraffe — these and
many other converging characters, appreciable only by the
practised anatomist, are features that distinguish the ter-
tiary mammals as a strange and peculiar fauna. Nor is it
alone the more generalised physiological character, but their
bulk is also in many instances a marked peculiarity of the
period. The gigantic mammoths and mastodons, the huge
hippopotami and rhinoceroses, the great cave-bears and
cave-lions, the unwieldy megatheres and glyptodons com-
pared with the existing sloths and armadilloes, the mac-
rauchene compared with the llama, the trogontherium with
the beaver, the diprotodon with the kangaroo, or the dinor-
nis with the cassowary — all point to creational phases as
the tertiary that have ceased to manifest themselves in the
current era. The tusks of the mammoth have been found
from twelve to fourteen feet (measuring along their outer
curve), those of the existing elephant rarely exceed half
that length ; the fore-limb of the megathere would far out-
weigh the largest living sloth ; the cuirass of the glyptodon
would cover more than a score of armadilloes ; the full-
grown llama would make but a tiny calf to the macrauchene;
and the emeu could walk beneath the stride of the extinct

LATER TERTIAEIES. 161

dinornis. This preponderance of bulky frameworks, and
the number of intermediate forms that serve as connecting
links between species now widely separate, are perhaps the
most notable features of the tertiary fauna, and are highly
suggestive to the physiologist, who, rising above mere de-
scription, strives to attain to the higher knowledge of crea-
tional method and law.

The diversified latitudes over which tertiary deposits are
spread, and the difficulty of assigning a contemporaneity to
strata containing few or no species in common, compels the
palaeontologist often to deal with the details of the respec-
tive areas rather than attempt a generalised expression for
the whole. Enough for our outline, however, to remark
that as sea and land approach their present configuration,
the fossil flora and fauna begin in like manner to assume
that distinctive impress which now characterises existing
nature. As already stated, many of the Old World forms
are unknown in the New ; some of those that characterise
the tertiaries of India are unknown in the strata of Europe ;
and only a few, and these during the earlier stages of the
period, appear to have anything like a cosmopolitan exten-
sion. So also in the earliest or eocene stage the number
of existing species are few compared with the extinct ; this
proportion increases in the middle stages \ and as we rise
to the uppermost deposits, it is often difficult to draw any
specific distinction between the fossils they contain and
the plants and animals that now flourish on their super-
ficial areas. In. the earliest stages the fauna of Europe was
characterised by its palreotheres, anoplotheres, xiphodons,
river-hogs, alligators, crocodiles, gavials, and turtles ; in
the middle stages these decline or die out, and deinotheres,
mastodons, mammoths, camels, giraffes, cave-bears, lions,
and hyamas take their places ; while in the upper stages

162

THE RECENT.

many of these decline, and mammoths, hippopotami, rhino-
ceroses, deer, wild oxen, horse, "bears, and tigers become the
dominant features. In like manner, when we turn to Asia,
we can trace a similar ascent from the earlier stages, which
contain many forms in common with those of Europe, to
the middle stages, characterised by their numerous forms of
elephant, sivatheres, bramatheres, camels, giraffe, lion, tiger,

Mammoth (Elephas primiAemus). Mastodon.

monkey, crocodiles, and tortoises of enormous magnitude ;
and from these again to the upper stages, where the mam-
moth, rhinoceros, urus, horse, ass, and other creatures lead
insensibly to the existing forms of that gigantic continent.
In the same way it will be found with Africa, when geo-
logy has carried her researches further into that little
known region ; and so also it has been found in North

LATER TERTIARIES.

163

America, whose forms bear a wonderful parallelism to those
of Europe; while in South America a similar gradation
will yet be determined upward to those Pampean flats,
whose pliocene clays and gravels have yielded those won-
derful megatheres, mylodons, toxodons, glyptodons, mac-

Glyptodou, Megatherium (gigantic ground-sloth) — HAWKINS.

rauchenes, and other mammals, whose congeneric forms now
people, in diminutive scale, the plains and forests and up-
lands of that exuberant continent. As with the larger

164

THE RECENT.

continents, so with smaller and more detached areas. The
marsupials of Australia have their forerunner in the gigan-

Dodo, Dinoruis elcpbauiopus, and D. mger

tic diprotodon ; the wingless birds of New Zealand were

GLACIAL EPOCH. 1G5

preceded by palapteryx and dinornis ; and' the still more
gigantic aepyornis of Madagascar foreshadows the advent of
the ostrich of Africa.

In the elimination of these successive fauna long ages
must have passed away ; and during these ages vast physi-
cal changes were necessarily effected on the terraqueous
relations of the globe. In the northern hemisphere, some
of the principal mountain-chains — the Alps, Apennines,
Carpathians, and Himalayas — had been gradually assuming
their ultimate configuration ; and the large inland seas that
had occupied the central latitudes of Europe, of Northern
Africa, Middle India, and Eastern Siberia and China, had
been elevated successively into shoals, lake, and island,
swamp and dry land. Simultaneously with these terra-
queous changes, the genial temperature that ushered in the
eocene period of Europe and America began, stage by stage,
to decline ; the miocene was marked by more temperate
manifestations ; and ultimately the pliocene sank into a
condition incompatible with the existence of the former
flora and fauna. A cold, glacial, and barren period ensued,
and under its rigours pliocene life in the northern hemi-
sphere succumbed, and was succeeded by genera and species
akin to those that now people the boreal regions.

This ungenial period, generally known in geology as the
"Glacial," "Northern Drift," or "Boulder Clay" epoch, is
lithologically characterised by its superficial mounds and
masses of drift-sand and gravel, by thick tenacious clays,
interspersed indiscriminately with water- worn blocks of all
sizes, from mere .pebbles to boulders many tons in weight,
and by the polished, rounded, and striated surfaces of the
subjacent rocks, as if they had been subjected to the long-
continued friction of water or ice-borne material, and
scratched and furrowed by the passage of the harder and

166 THE RECENT.

heavier fragments. In Europe, Asia, and North America,
down to the 44th or 42d parallel of latitude, and up to the
altitude of 2000 feet, these appearances present themselves,
and are inexplicable, unless on the ground of the gradual
submergence of the northern hemisphere to that extent,
and its subjection to a boreal climate which engendered
glaciers on its hills, and drifted, during a brief summer,
icebergs laden with rocky debris over its waters. The
glaciers smoothing, rounding, and grooving the rocks of the
higher grounds — the icebergs grinding their way through
firth and strait, dropping their burden of mud, sand, and
gravel on the sea-bed, or stranding themselves on its shores
— complete the necessary arrangements for the production
of the geological phenomena of the period. For ages the
pliocene lands must have slowly subsided, each step gra-
dually narrowing the boundaries of vegetable and animal
life, and driving the surviving species, under the rigours of
a deteriorating climate, to higher and higher regions. Eace
after race would succumb : first the more limited and local,
next the more cosmopolitan, and ultimately few of the old
flora or fauna would survive, except the more elastic in
constitution, and those that had, step by step, retreated into
more southern latitudes.

How long these conditions continued we have no means
of determining in centuries, but, judging from the amount
of denudation, the extent and nature of the heterogeneous
deposits, as well as from the slow rate of elevation and sub-
mergence now going on in known regions, vast periods
must have elapsed during the manifestation of this glacial
epoch. At length the downward tendency of these north-
ern latitudes comes to a close ; submergence stops and
elevation begins. Slowly, and for long under a rigorous
climate, the lands of Europe, Asia, and North America
emerge from the waters. Glaciers still envelop the higher

GLACIAL EPOCH.

167

elevations ; icebergs, summer after summer, drift over the
waters ; and the sea, attacking the soft emerging shores, re-
assorts and re-deposits the sands, gravels, and clays of the
older glacial epoch. By-and-by the deposits become fossili-
ferous, showing that the ocean was tenanted by shell-fish,
seals, whales, and other creatures, whose habitats are now

Skeleton of Seal (Phoca vitulma '<). from the Brick-clay of Suatheden, Fifeshire ;
a, detentition of do.

the icy regions of the arctic circle. Upward, still upward,
the land emerges, evincing in its old water-lines and raised
beaches the successive steps of its uprise, till ultimately
the continents of the northern hemisphere assume, within
appreciable limits of current mutation, the configuration
and climatology they now present. As the continents

;i 4 «j

Boreal Shells in the Drift of the Clyde. — SMITH.

1, Astarte borealis ; 2, Leda oblonga ; 3, Saxicava rugosa; 4, Pecten islandicus ;
5, Natica clausa ; 6, Trophon clathratum,

emerge and the land surfaces augment, as new atmospheric
and oceanic currents are established, and as the post-ter-

L

168 THE RECENT.

tiary epoch advances, the boreal races retreat farther to the
north, some of the old pliocene families again return and
spread over European latitudes, and other and newer forms,
in the course of creation, begin to appear.

It is now the current era of geological history, whose
vital record is the silts and marls of filled-up lakes, the
alluvium of rivers and estuaries, the growth of peat-bogs
and morasses, the stalagmite of fissures and caverns, and
the tufa and ashes of volcanoes. In these superficial ac-
cumulations, which meet us at every turn, and are still in
course of formation, every imbedded organism is fresh and
familiar. With the exception of a few extinctions, the
species yet nourish in the same latitudes, and the lists of
the palaeontologist become identical with those of the
botanist and zoologist. The peat-bogs of Europe are re-
plete with the mosses, grasses, willows, hazels, birches, firs,
and oaks that still spread over our swamps, and adorn our
forests. The tundras of Siberia, the jungle-soil of India,
and the cypress-swamps of America, are in like manner
composed of the plants now peculiar to these regions; and
though in the course of geological change, local features
may have varied, the main aspects of the Current Flora
continue, zone for zone, and province for province, with
little alteration or disturbance.

When we turn to the Fauna, the case is much the same.
The most ancient lake-marls of Europe are thronged with
lymnea, paludina, cyclas, planor'bis, scarcely, if at all, dis-
tinguishable from those that now people our fresh- water
ponds ; and the marine shells of our estuarine silts and
raised beaches — the mussels, cockles, oysters, periwinkles,
whelks, silver-shells, and clams — with a few local variations,
are identical with those that inhabit the surrounding seas.
When we turn to the terrestrial fauna, the change, chiefly

CURRENT ERA. 169

through the instrumentality of men, becomes a little more
decided and apparent. The mammoth and mastodon, the
Irish deer and urus, the cave-bear and hyaena, that seem to
have roamed over Europe during the dawn of the post-

Megaceros Hiberuicus, or Gigantic Irisla De

tertiary period, become extinct, though their congeners still
flourish in Asia and Africa. As we ascend to later deposits,
species, or, it may be, merely varieties of horse, ass, ox, deer,
goat, sheep, bear, wild boar, wolf, and fox become the more
frequent forms ; and ultimately, in the more recent accumu-
lations, the bones, whether of mammals, birds, reptiles, or
fishes, become indistinguishable, even in variety, from those
that are now our associates in the scheme of vitalit}r.

And it is just in this palpable approach to existing nature
that we begin to detect the earliest traces of the human
species. First, and far back among the river-silts and
peat-bogs and cave-earths, we discover his rude stone-im-
plements and weapons, his tree- canoes, and the embers of
the fires which he alone of all animals can either kindle or
sustain. Side by side with these remains, occasionally lie

170 THE RECENT.

bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and Irish deer ; but whe-
ther these may not have been washed up, drifted, and re-as-
sorted from earlier deposits, is a question not always easily
determinable. However the question may be ultimately
answered, one thing is certain, that just as the mammoths
and mastodons drop away, and the horse, ox, goat, and
sheep begin to spread over Europe in increasing numbers,
so the traces of primeval man become more frequent and
unmistakable. In all likelihood — nay, it is all but certain
that over the plains and through the forests of the Old
World man hunted the Irish deer and speared the mam-
moth, just as at a later period, and in the same region, he
lassoed the wild horse and impounded the urns and buffalo.
With regard to this subject, however — viz., the first appear-
of man — much unnecessary discussion has taken place, and
a great deal of uneasy tenderness been displayed. Like
other events in geological history, we have at present no
means of assigning to it a definite date in years and cen-
turies. The time is merely relative, and all that science
can safely do is to ascribe it to an early, though not to the
very earliest, stages of the pleistocene epoch. Whether this
was six thousand or sixteen thousand years ago, we cannot
by any known data determine, though this much is evident,
that the amount of change since effected on the physical
and vital world, as well as the course of civilisation itself,
would, at the current rate of progress, require for their
elimination a much more extended period than is usually
allowed.

And here it may be remarked, that while in these
superficial accumulations we find frequent traces of prim-
eval man — his stone -implements, tree -canoes, &c. — we
rarely or ever discover the remains of man himself. Not
a human bone has been detected, even in the valley of
the Somme, where the flint-implements lie in thousands

HUMAN EPOCH.

171

— not a fragment where other fragments more slender and
fragile occur in abundance. It is true, the search has yet
been confined to a small portion of Europe ; but the fact is
somewhat significant, and forbids any attempt at generalisa-
tion till wider areas in Asia and America have been ex-
plored. Till this is done, and till bones and crania have
been found and examined, it will be impossible to decide
the ethnographic character of these early men, or to say
whether they appeared in Asiatic, European, and American
species, and consequently arose from various creative centres,
or were merely time-distributed varieties of a single and
one-created form. Geology, as far as the facts have been
collated, gives no countenance to the idea of a plurality of
creative centres. On the contrary, the sameness of the
stone-implements, wherever they have been found, evince

1, 2, From valley of Somme ; 3, 4, 5, England ; 6, 7, 8, Canada ; 9, 10, Scandinavia.

a similarity of idea — the same conception and the same
design. Those, therefore, who, disregarding the unity of

172 THE RECENT.

language, mental constitution, and religious sentiment of
the human race, will still contend for several creative
centres, must seek other corroboration of their hypothesis
than is yet afforded by the discoveries and indications of
geology.

-As the pre-glacial passed gradually into the glacial, and
the glacial into the post-glacial period ; so the pre-human
passes insensibly into the pre-historic, and the pre-historic
into the historical ages. And even when the historical
arrives, the record of our own race is often less certain in
the hands of the historian than in those of the geologist.
Geology by no means ceases where history begins. Vast
physical changes have occurred since man first peopled the
globe.* Some regions have been rising above the waters of
the ocean, others have been sinking. Rivers have changed
their courses ; lakes and estuaries have been converted
into alluvial tracts ; and volcanoes have given birth to new
mountain masses.

" There rolls the deep where grew the tree ;
Oh, Earth, what changes hast thou seen !
There, where the long street roars, has been
The stillness of the central sea."

Of such mutations, history is altogether silent ; and even
where she speaks, her utterance is frequently of less value
than her silence. The earth, however, pens and preserves
with fidelity her own record : geology becomes her inter-
preter. As in the physical world, so also in the vital, im-
portant mutations have been effected, even within historical
times. Many local removals of species and several general

* For an able and lucid exposition of the recent changes to which the
earth has been subjected, the reader is referred to Sir Charles Lyell's
Principles of Geology — a work which should be carefully studied by every
one who would lay a logical and solid foundation for his geological know-
ledge.

HISTORIC EPOCH. 173

extinctions have taken place, and this altogether apart from
the effects produced by man's cultivation and domestication.
The wild-boar, wild-ox, bear, wolf, and beaver have dis-
appeared from Britain ; and every century their tenure of
Europe becomes more slender and uncertain. The dodo has
become extinct in the Mauritius, the solitaire in Eodriguez,
the sepiornis in Madagascar, the dinornis in New Zealand,
the Phillip's Island parrot from Australia, and the rytina
from the rivers and estuaries of Kamtschatka, And as
with these, so it will shortly be with others whose circum-
scribed ranges are gradually being broken in upon by new
conditions, imposed either by natural change or by man's
progress and civilisation. The apteryx of New Zealand,
the ornithorhynchus, echidna, and kangaroo of Australia,
the mooruk of New Britain, the ostrich, elephant, and
giraffe of Africa, the anrochs of Europe, the beaver and
bison of America, the musk-ox of the arctic regions, and
many others, look more like the residuary forms of the ter-
tiary, than the advancing species of a newer era. And as
with animals, so it has been and will be with many plants
(the gigantic Wellingtonia, for instance, confined to a few
narrow valleys in California) ; only we have been less ob-
servant of their mutations, and are merely beginning to note
their specific restrictions.

As history has failed to note geological mutations and
vital extinctions, so we ask her in vain for any evidence of
new creations. No doubt, naturalists have now and then
announced the " discovery" of a new species of plant or
animal, but whether these were existing forms previously
unnoticed, or new forms only recently introduced, the im-
perfection of history leaves us no means of determining.
And yet, reasoning from our knowledge of the past, the
appearance of new species must take place as infallibly as
the disappearance of the old. So long as the energies of

174 THE RECENT.

nature continue unimpaired, the balance of vital activity
must be maintained. Even man's extirpations and modifi-
cations, extensive as they appear, are in a great measure
counterbalanced by his introduction and wider distribution
of the cultivated plants and domesticated animals in all
their endless varieties. The scheme of Life is as progres-
sive now as it ever was, and man himself is as subject to
its laws as the meanest form he modifies. The pre-historic
nomades of Asia, the stone-implement makers of Europe,
and the mound-builders of America, have passed away, and
are less known to us in their aspects, thoughts, and doings
than their contemporary mammoths, great deer, and wild
oxen. The temple-reariDg, idol-worshipping races of Baby-
lonia, Egypt, and Central America, have perished, and their
characters are merely beginning to be revealed to us ; while
our more immediate predecessors, the Greeks, Romans, Celts,
and early Saxons, have partaken of the same doom, and
much of their history remains in doubt and obscurity. Thus,
physical features, habits of life, modes of thought, social
systems, and religious beliefs — all that renders humanity dis-
tinctive, and confers on it its highest attributes — have ever
been as mutable and progressive as the phases of nature by
which they are surrounded ; nor do the realities of the pre-
sent exhibit the slightest symptom of persistence and
finality. As the pala3ozoic passed into the mesozoic, and
the mesozoic into the recent ; so the recent is pressing on
to a future, that will be stamped by features — physical and
vital, social and moral — peculiarly its own.

Supposing, then, that science could determine all the
physical and vital conditions of the earth — in other words,
could read her history up to the present moment — the
question naturally arises, How far we are entitled, in the
spirit of philosophy, to presume on what is yet to follow ?

THE FUTURE. 175

This brings us, in conclusion, to look at the earth's pro-
bable Future through her knowledge of her Past. As
students of nature, we can no more refrain from this in-
quiry than we can cease to take an interest in her bygone
history. The present is a mere evanishing point : yesterday
it was the future, to-morrow it will be the past. Past, pre-
sent, and future are but portions of one vast cycle of change ;
and could we determine with accuracy the rate of progress
in the past, the future would be rationally computable. In
the mean time our knowledge of world-history is far from
perfect, hence our estimate of the future can assume at
best little more than the character of speculation. Still,
we are fairly entitled to hold that as the rocky crust has,
under the operation of the physical forces, been the theatre
of incessant change in, the past, so it will continue to be
subjected to similar mutations in the future. As we see no
decline in the forces that operate, so reason refuses to admit
a cessation of their results. Volcanic energy will shift its
centres of activity ; continents will be submerged ; sea-
beds be uplifted into dry land ; climatic influences be altered ;
living races will succumb to obnoxious conditions; and new
ones will appear co-adapted to these newer phases. As in
the past the changes were always gradual and local, and the
newer phases ever bore a certain appreciable relation to
those that went before ; so in the future we may rely on a
similar gradation, and believe that the differences between
the phases yet to be will never exceed those geology has
discovered between two successive formations.

As with the physical, so with the vital forces. Age after
age has been characterised by its own peculiar phases of vital-
ity, and as we fail to detect any symptom of decline, so we
may fairly presume that the future aspects of life will differ
from that which now prevails, as that which exists differs
from that which preceded. As the course has ever been to

] 76 THE RECENT.

higher and higher forms, so the life of the future must
transcend that of the present, as the present excels the
past. Unless geology has altogether misinterpreted the
history of this earth, and her teachings be no better than a
fable and delusion, philosophy is chained to this conclusion.
Could we discover the terms of the law that has regulated
the evolutions of past vitality, we might approximate to
some idea of its future forms ; but, ignorant of these terms,
we can only rely on the upward progress of life, and believe
that its newer phases will retain the same appreciable rela-
tions to the present that the present does to the age that
immediately preceded. The great primal patterns — radiate,
articulate, molluscan, and vertebrate — will ever remain the
same : their modifications seem, endless, their adaptations
interminable.

THE LAW.

HAVING reviewed in detail the life-phases of the successive
epochs of geology, we now proceed to a few generalisations
respecting the advent and exit — the rise, progress, and de-
cay— of specific vitality. In so doing, we shall endeavour
to give expression to some of the leading laws which seem
to have influenced Life since its first appearance on the ter-
raqueous globe, believing that details are of themselves
comparatively worthless unless we can co-relate and con-
nect them into something like order and system. I am
fully aware, where so much of our evidence is merely nega-
tive, and where more, perhaps, is still fragmentary and im-
perfect, that any attempt of this kind may be thought
premature and perhaps presumptuous. But the law of our
nature, like the law of creation, is ORDER ; and the mind
instinctively groups and associates, and tries to connect ef-
fects with their causes, the moment it turns itself to any
new field of research. And so, in Paleontology, these
generalisations, however tentative and temporary, serve as
centres round which to marshal new facts, and help to
give consistency and interest to what might otherwise ap-
pear a mass of discordant and repulsive details. And grant-
ing that many of these generalisations may be set aside by
future discoveries, so long as they are received in the same
spirit in which they are submitted, they cannot retard the

178 THE LAW.

progress of research, by leading either to presumptuous
dogmatism on the one hand, or to ungenerous illiber-
ality on the other. They are submitted in the spirit of
honest earnestness, more anxious to arrive at the expression
of one plain truth than give currency to a thousand hypo-
theses, however brilliant and attractive. And yet, while
the main value must ever be ascribed to inductive reason-
ing from facts, hypothetical promptings cannot always be
ignored. They have their own value, and oftener than
once has the road to truth been indicated by the finger-
posts of hypothesis.

[Dawn of Life.]

As at present, so during all former life-epochs, the land
and waters were tenanted by various families of plants and
animals — these families exhibiting affinities and gradations
even as plants and animals do now. It is true, that as we
descend into the rocky crust we arrive at a stage (the meta-
m orphic strata) when plants and animals do not seem to
have existed ; but on this point the evidence is merely
negative, and Geology cannot say with certainty that Life
was not coeval with the globe itself, though the presump-
tion is, that organic being was not called into existence
till about the dawn of the Silurian era. Nothing is gained
by the assumption that it had a prior existence, and that
every organism has been obliterated by the metamorphism
to which the earlier strata have been subjected. We can
only reason from what we know ; and in the mean time
the lowest Silurian or Cambrian rocks stand as the farthest
verge to which Palaeontology has pushed her discoveries.

It has been argued, no doubt, that as the vertebrate ani-
mals seem to show an ascent through the geological periods
from fish to reptile, from reptile to bird, and from bird to
mammal, so the invertebrate may also obey a similar law of

DAWN OF LIFE. 179

development, from the simpler protozoa up through the
radiata, articulata, and mollusca. As every class, however,
of the invertebrata is represented in Silurian strata, we must,
according to this hypothesis, seek for the commencement
of the simpler forms, stage by stage, further back among
the Cambrian and metamorphic rocks. Such a belief would
carry the commencement of life immensely further back in
time — as far back, indeed, before the Silurian period for the
development of the invertebrates, as from the Silurian to the
tertiary for the vertebrates ; but as the same ratio cannot
possibly be applied to two sub-kingdoms so entirely dis-
similar, the idea of a long pre- Silurian cycle of invertebrate
life, however plausible, has really little in fact to recom-
mend it to our acceptance. We by no means argue for the
restriction of life to the Cambrian period, but we must have
something more certain than fanciful analogies to carry our
convictions any distance beyond these strata. And even
the evidence of Fossil life itself is greatly in favour of the
belief that at this stage we have reached, or all but reached,
the dawn of organised existence. As we ascend in the geo-
logical scale, we find life increasing and spreading, stage by
stage, into newer and higher forms ; and as we descend we
find it decreasing and narrowing to simpler and lowlier as-
pects ; and surely we are justified in the inference, that in
the few scattered organisms of Cambria, we have all but
attained the ultimate limit of vitality. Were matter and
life co-dependent we might reasonably argue for their co-
existence; but as matter can exist without the manifesta-
tion of vitality, and as life appears only in subordination to
the material forces, so the one may have existed for ages
without necessarily implying the presence of the other.

And, further, if untold epochs have been spent in the
evolution of life from its earliest to its present aspects, it
is equally conceivable that cycle after cycle may have rolled
by in the elimination of the purely material structure of

180 THE LAW.

the world before it seemed to the Divine mind a fitting
habitat for the plants and animals with which He had pre-
destined to adorn its surface. Life is a measured and re-
stricted gift ; it is adjusted to, as well as governed by, ex-
ternal conditions, and it is only in harmony with what we
know of Nature's progress to believe in a long Azoic period,
during which these external conditions were undergoing
the necessary preparation and arrangement for the advent
of Vitality. At present all our ideas of Life are associated
with a globe superficially composed of land and water, sur-
rounded by a breatheable atmosphere, lighted and warmed
by a genial sun, and subjected to ever- acting physical and
chemical forces ; and while we firmly believe that inde-
pendent of these great cosmical conditions Life could not
exist, we may surely be permitted to presume that it has
been their unfailing accompaniment from the earliest mo-
ment they were harmoniously established, and will con-
tinue to be so while that harmony remains undissolved.

[Origin of Life.]

Starting from this point, we may fairly inquire, How
and by what means this earth became the "procreant cradle"
of organised existences 1 "Was it by some process of second-
ary causation, or directly and at once by the fiat of the
Creator 1 Alas for the impotence of science, and the scope
of our finite intelligence ! Science cannot even indicate
the line of inquiry — our highest philosophy is the humble re-
cognition of the fact. The chemist and the physiologist may
resolve the vital organism into cells, and granules, and nuclei,
but here their efforts stop : they cannot endow these cells and
germs with life, or cause them to assume the lowliest form
of vegetable or animal existence. The " slime that mantles

ORIGIN OF LIFE. 181

o'er the stagnant pool" — the simplest arrangement of cell-
growth that spreads over the surface of the decaying rock,
are results beyond the proudest achievements of science.
And even could we in any way connect these manifestations
of life — lowly as they are — with the subtle agencies of heat,
light, and electricity, this would be only bringing us a little
nearer, but not within the precincts of that mysterious
shrine which science may not unveil, and before which the
proudest philosophy can only humble itself and adore.

It may be a law of nature that inorganic matter, in cer-
tain conditions and under the influence of certain forces,
shall assume an organic form, but of the operations of such
a law, or of the forces which obey its behest, human know-
ledge stands in utter ignorance. It may be, as suggested
by Professor Owen, that " if it be ever permitted to man
to penetrate the mystery which enshrouds the origin of or-
ganic force, it will be, most probably, by experiment and
observation on the atoms that manifest the simplest condi-
tions of life," but in the mean time the lowly monad stands
as unrevealed as to its origin as the lordly man, or as the
still more subtle elimination of mental phenomena. "We
know something of the nature and functions of vitality — its
order, and operations, and increase — but of its origin we
know nothing. In vain have physicists experimented to
associate vital manifestation with electrical action : most
unsatisfactory the evidence for what naturalists, in ignor-
ance of the phenomena, have been pleased to designate
spontaneous generation ! This present ignorance, however,
can form no plea for the absence of future effort ; everything
unknown is not to be held as a miracle. On the contrary,
where natural science, under the direction of proper methods,
has already done so much towards the elucidation of Life
in all its aspects and operations, philosophy may surely be
permitted, humbly and reverently, to inquire into its cause

182 THE LAW.

and origin. The distance that separates the Uncreated
from the created is no doubt inconceivably great, but who
shall fix the " Hither shalt thou come but no farther" of
the legitimate efforts of the human intellect 1

[Uniformity of Type and Pattern.]

At whatever stage the first creation of plants and animals
took place, the same types and patterns have ever run
throughout the whole — analogous functions have had to be
performed ; and the various biological provinces of every
epoch have been peopled, even as they are now, partly by
identical and partly by representative species. The earliest
sea- weed that floated in Silurian waters spread its broad
leathery lobes, and grew and multiplied precisely like the
sea-weeds of existing seas ; the shell-fish were constructed
after the same types, and so similar in many respects, that
only the practised conchologist can detect their specific dis-
tinctions ; the fishes of the old red sandstone, strange as
they may appear, find their analogues, bone for bone, and
organ for organ, in existing fishes ; while the reptiles of the
Oolite and Weald present, in their gigantic skeletons,
nothing that the comparative anatomist cannot readily
identify with .the homologies of the vertebrate pattern.
And not only the structural plan, but the structural com-
position of each great type has been equally persistent and
normal. The mucilaginous sea-weed for ever leaves its
faint impress devoid of cortical integument, the terrestrial
stem has ever constructed its woody pillar of carbon, the
equisetum elaborated its varnish of silica, and the pine-
trees distilled their resins and amber. The corals of Siluria,
like those of the existing Pacific, consist of carbonate of
lime ; the fossil and the recent tooth have alike their den-

UNIFORMITY OF TYPE. 183

tine, osteo-dentine, and enamel ; and had the parts been
less evanescent, or were chemistry more subtle to detect,
bone, cartilage, and flesh — hair, wool, and horn — scale,
feather, and claw, would be found to have been ever built
up of the same elements, and, family for family, in the
same proportions.

So far as fossil evidence goes (and by that alone can
we be guided), the plants and animals of the ancient
world, though differing widely in genera and species, were
neither "abnormal" nor "monstrous," but both in point
of size, and form, and structural adaptations, were very
much alike to those of the present day. So much so,
indeed, that could we recall them to mingle in the busy
scene of life around us, they would neither startle us by
their appearance, nor alarm us by their habits, one whit
more than the existing Flora and Fauna of distant and
different regions. The great types remain the same through-
out all time and space ; and though the modifications have
been innumerable, these modifications, even in their aggre-
gate, have never amounted to an obliteration of any im-
portant primal distinction. Acrogenous, endogenous, and
exogenous — radiate, articulate, molluscan, and vertebrate,
range side by side as distinctly now, each within its own
typical idea, as when they first clothed the land and peo-
pled the waters. The relations of a mathematical line, or
the unions of a chemical element, are not more fixed and
certain than the relationships of structural organisation.
This organ or that organ may be modified for the perform-
ance of some special function, and this modification may
imply a certain amount of variation in all the co-related
parts ; still the prime typical conception remains distinct
and essential under every condition of space, and through
every progressional mutation of time.

" Nor is it only the plan of the great types," says Pro-

184 THE LAW.

fessor Agassiz, " which must have been adopted from the
beginning, but also the manner in which these plans were
to be executed : the systems of form under which these
structures were to be clothed, and even the ultimate details
of structure which, in different genera, bear definite rela-
tions to those of other genera ; the mode of differentiation
of species, and the nature of their relations to the surround-
ing media, must likewise have been determined ; for the
character of the classes is as well defined as that of the four
great branches of the animal kingdom, or that of the fami-
lies, the genera, and the species. Again, the first repre-
sentatives of each class stand in definite relations to their
successors in later periods ; and as their order of appearance
corresponds to the various degrees of complication of their
structure, and forms a natural series closely linked together,
this natural gradation must have been contemplated from
the beginning." In other words, the evolution of life in all
its successive phases is but the realisation of a pre-deter-
mined plan ; and whether primary or secondary means be
employed in its enactment, the harmonious unity of their
action implies alike omnipresence in space and omniscience
in time.

[Function.]

As to function ; earth, air. and water ever seem to have
had their varied tenantry. Burrowers, creepers, runners,
leapers, fliers, floaters, and swimmers, make their appear-
ance in every epoch. Simple and lowly they may be, yet
still in their respective grades perfect, and fitted by the
nicest organic adjustments at once for the functions they
had to discharge and the element they were destined to
inhabit. From these organs we also clearly perceive, that
some families were designed to feed on vegetables, others to

FUNCTION. 185

prey on flesh ; that some were formed to roam at large for
their food, others to find it by parasitic attachment ; while
many, like the Crustacea of the lower old red, the sauroid
fishes of the coal period, and the reptiles of the lias, became
the scavengers of their respective times, and lived on the
decaying garbage of the river -bank and the muddy sea-
shore. The functional performance of each great class, as
well as of the life of each great geological epoch, has ever
been, Avithin its own limits, a complete and independent
system. A world of shell-fish — littoral and deep-sea, se-
dentary and vagrant, phytophagous and carnivorous — ex-
isted in the earliest waters. The gigantic sauroid fishes of
the palaeozoic were the functional representatives of the
secondary reptiles ; the secondary reptiles, in their marine
ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, their estuarine teleosaurs
and steneosaurs, their terrestrial hylaeosaurs and megalo-
saurs, and their aerial pterosaurs, were respectively the
whales and dolphins, the crocodiles and gavials, the ele-
phants and tigers, the bats and the birds, of their period.
At every stage of time, and under every type of life, analo-
gous functions have been unerringly discharged. Herbi-
vorous, insectivorous, carnivorous, and omnivorous, are at-
tributes alike of the fish, the reptile, the bird, and the
mammal ; walkers, swimmers, and fliers, with powers more
or less restricted, have ever occurred within the same great
classes.

In the interdependencies of existence demand has ever
pressed on supply, decay trodden closely in the wake of
reproduction, and suffering been commensurate with enjoy-
ment. An ideal COSMOS of painless beatitude is a dream
and delusion. Pain and death are stamped on the earliest
records of life. From the beginning the flesh-eater has
preyed on the plant-eater, and the weak have ever suc-
cumbed to the strong, even as they do now. The struggle

186 THE LAW.

for existence commenced with its gift ; and the reign of
death was inaugurated by the enjoyment of life. Constructed
as ISTature is, this seems part and parcel of her plan, and
the means by which the equipoise and balance of vitality is
maintained. The larger and more abundant plant-feeders,
ever pressing on the means of subsistence, are held in check
by the comparatively smaller and scantier flesh-eaters ; and,
so far as man can comprehend, it is only by some such com-
pensatory system that the greatest happiness of the greatest
numbers can be maintained. Besides, subjected as life is
to the inevitable laws of a material world, it must, for its
own comfort, learn to accommodate itself to the circum
stances by which it is surrounded ; and so, under this view,
the accident and reminiscence of pain become an institu-
tion for the animal's own benefit and protection. What
pleases will be pursued, what pains will be avoided ; while
the excess of force which destroys is, for the most part, mer-
cifully accompanied by insensibility and unconsciousness.
Life, like the world it inhabits, is after all but a system of
re-agency and compensation ; and in all our reasonings on
the question of Pain and Death we should ever remember
that "He who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb" may
have so ordained, that to the various grades of organisation
suffering and the terror of death should be merely compara-
tive, and that their intensity should be felt only where pain
becomes the penalty of the infringement of the eternal law
of right and wrong.

[Distribution.]

With regard to distribution, we also perceive that from
the beginning different areas have been peopled partly by
identical and partly by representative species. In the Pal-
seozoic epochs, the marine areas being apparently wider

DISTRIBUTION. 187

and more conterminous, the same species had, perhaps, a
more extensive range ; but even then there was no uni-
versal uniformity of life — a thing as incompatible with the
habits of the creatures themselves, as uniformity of climate
is with the form and motions of the globe. Plant the first
germ of life on whatever spot you may, this act of creation
has always some relation of fitness to external conditions ;
and as universal uniformity of condition is a thing unknown
either in time present or in time past, so we may rest assured
that universal uniformity of Life was a feature that never
entered into the scheme of creation. Tropical and temper-
ate, low-lying and elevated, littoral and deep-sea, have ever
prevailed as distinctive areas, impressed by different physi-
cal conditions, and requiring for their tenancy orders and
families equally distinct in their habits and organisation.
No doubt certain animals, in consequence of their periodic
migrations, have a much wider range than others, but even
this is fixed and ascertainable, and these migratory races, at
the present day at least, are comparatively few. Applying
this rule to the past, we may believe in the migrations of
certain extinct races,* but these always within definite
limits, and, race for race, each over its own appointed area.
From the first to the last, variety and complexity are
unmistakably stamped on all created forms ; and this variety
manifests itself not only in the structure of the creatures
themselves, but in their general fades at successive epochs,
as well as over the different areas they were meant to in-

* The migrations of living animals are comparatively well known ; the
migration of extinct races is altogether wrapt in obscurity. And yet we
may believe that the mastodons and mammoths had a wide range from
south to north, that some of the tertiary birds dipped their wings alike in
temperate and arctic waters, and that many of the secondary fishes
were, like the salmon and sturgeon, anadromous — now frequenting the
sea, and now returning to the river under the periodic impulse of repr6-
duction.

188 THE LAW.

habit. Infinite variety of structure, infinite variety through
time, and infinite variety over space, seem leading charac-
teristics of the Creator's scheme ; and we err in our inter-
pretation when we try to establish for the .primeval world
a law that has ceased to operate in the new. It is true
that as we ascend in time, from higher to higher forms, the
areas of specific distribution seem to become more and more
circumscribed, and such a limitation would only accord with
the idea of increased diversity of species as dependent on
more localised varieties of food, climate, and other external
conditions ; but even on this point we must exercise great
care and discrimination. In the present continents we
trace, in some measure, the outline of former seas and
lands ; but more than two-thirds of the earth's crust are
covered by water, and hide from our research the continua-
tions of systems, a knowledge of whose extent is indispen-
sable to the solution of the problem. It is better, then, to
shape our inferences in accordance with what we know of
existing nature, and believe in variety and distribution of
species from the first, in various centres of creative mani-
festation, and in a process of local extinctions and crea-
tions which necessarily prevented universal uniformity of
Life during any of the geological epochs.

[External Conditions never Uniform.]

It has been argued, no doubt, that in the primeval epochs
our earth, in virtue of its internal heat, enjoyed a higher
and more uniform climate, and was consequently peopled
by a more uniform flora and fauna. This argument, like
many others of the earlier geologists, seems altogether with-
out foundation. Granting the existence of a higher internal
temperature in pre-vital times, and admitting its influence

CONDITIONS NEVER UNIFORM. 189

on the surface, we are still without a shadow of evidence
that this interior heat has exercised the least perceptible
effect on the climatology of the globe since the deposition
of the fossiliferous strata.* On the contrary, all that we
know of the nature and thickness of pre-Cambrian sedi-
ments, and all that we have learned of the Cambrian rocks
themselves, preclude the supposition of such an influence
beyond the most infinitesimal degree, and compel us to
believe that the physical conditions of life have been much
the same throughout every period of its existence. It is
true that during the Carboniferous period, the Oolite, and
the earlier Tertiaries, certain latitudes of the northern hemi-
sphere appear to have enjoyed a more genial climate than
they do now ; but the explanation of this we are to seek in
the varying distributions of sea and land, the existence of
warmer oceanic currents and other geographical conditions,
rather than in any perceptible influence derived from the
earth's interior, ^ay, as we have warmer and colder regions
•in space, in virtue of the earth's relations to the solar system,
so wre are inclined to believe we have had warmer and
colder periods in time, in virtue of some great but unknown
cosmical law. The existence of the Glacial or boulder epoch
over the greater portion of the northern hemisphere (say
up to the 40th or 42d parallel of latitude) is now ad-
mitted on all hands ; and as we cannot entertain the idea of

* According to Fourier, Hopkins, and other physicists, the internal
heat of the globe, which increases at the rate of 1 degree for every 60
feet of depth, does not at present affect the mean superficial tempera-
ture more than l-20th of a degree ; and to have had any sensible effect
on external climates — say to the exent of 10 degrees — this interior heat
must have been two hundred times its present amount. At that rate
the melting point of lavas would have been reached at a depth of 580
feet, instead of 116,000 feet as presently estimated, and all the deeper
seated strata must have been fused or rendered crystalline — a condition
in which they do not occur even to the depth of 30,000 feet, as many of
the Cambrian and Silurian slates are merely hardened and cleaved, but
in no degree metamorphie.

190 THE LAW.

cataclysmal irregularity in Creation, so we are led to infer
the prior occurrence of such glacial periods at determinate
times and over determinate areas. The existence of such
glacial recurrences has been surmised by several geologists
as characterising the periods of the old red sandstone and
Permian ; * and we may venture to extend them to other
systems as probable features of a great cosmical plan.

Thus, looking at the Cambrian strata of the northern
hemisphere — their angular grits and conglomerates, their
extreme paucity of fossil forms, and other features — we are
at once reminded of the action of ice and the presence of
ungenial conditions. This is followed over the same areas
by the more genial and exuberant period of Siluria ; which
is in turn succeeded by the old red sandstone, whose grits
and bouldery conglomerates, as well as paucity of vegetable
forms, once more suggest the recurrence of colder influences.
Following the old red we have the exuberant flora and
fauna of the coal period, again to be succeeded by the scanty
life-forms and grits and conglomerates of Permia. Again,
the trias and oolite of the northern hemisphere are charac-
terised by life-forms that betoken warm and genial condi-
tions; while the chalk that succeeds imbeds water-worn
blocks of granite and lignite, which would seem to imply
the presence of ice-drift and deposit in seas that were
open to boreal influences. Next the early tertiaries occur
over the same areas, marked by plants and animals that in-
dicate a warm and genial climate ; and this in turn gives
place to the well-known glacial or boulder-drift epoch ;
once more to be succeeded by the milder influences of the
post-tertiary or current era. Throwing these recurrences
into diagrammatic form, we appear to have had an alter-

* Mr Gumming, in History of the Isle of Man (1848) ; Mr Goodwin-
Austen, Geological Journal (1850); Professor Ramsay, Ibid. (1855);
and the author, in his Advanced Text- Book.

CONDITIONS NEVER UNIFORM. 191

nation of colder and warmer cycles over the northern hemi-
sphere, at least ; and if such has really ^
been the case, we must seek the ex- g /
planation not in revolutions and cata- J \
clysms, but in some fixed and contin- N>XN g
uously operating law.* Whether the %\5
phenomena may depend on causes j %
operating on and within the globe ,*'' %
itself, so as to change the axis of £ /
rotation, or whether it may not more 5 \

* This idea of colder and warmer cycles as N%

affecting the northern hemisphere was indicated x^ •

some years ago to the Literary and Philosophi- ' Is

cal Society of St Andrews. Since then the / o

author has endeavoured to establish the fact, +''

partly by the character and composition of the » 0- / aj

rocks of the colder periods, and partly by the j '£ '

nature of their fossil contents. Much, however. ^ /§ \ £

O ^ \ r~)

still remains to be done, and he would earnestly # XNX

solicit the attention of geologists to the subject, £ SN a 5

and this altogether apart from the cosmical ^ * "~ *""

causes to which the recurrences may be due. ^. J & O

On this latter aspect of the question some w fS

discussion took place in the A tkenceum of 1860, g f/'

on the suggestion of Colonel James of the Ord- £ /

nance Survey, that former changes of climute § \

may be due to changes in the inclination of the ^ \x

earth's axis, brought about by alterations in ^ XXN

the crust that gradually affect the centre of \ ^

gravity. Whatever the cause — whether it is to

be sought for on or within the globe itself, or /' g

in purely astronomical influences — this is not /"'

the place to discuss ; but most unmistakably § /

the gradual uprise of land that is now taking "| {

place in the arctic regions, the shifting of vol- 55 \

canic areas in the northern hemisphere since XXN

the tertiary period, and the approach and de- NSX J

parture of the boulder epoch over the same ' £

latitudes, all point to the operation of some J |

determinate law of secular succession. May it "'

not be, that in the periodicity of this law we may yet discover the key

to the expression of geological chronology in years and centuries ?

192 THE LAW.

likely depend on forces purely astronomical, are questions
that lie beyond the scope of the present Sketch. Enough
for our purpose to have indicated the probability of such
recurrences, and derive therefrom the conclusion that the
conditions of life have been very much the same through all
geological periods — successively varying in different areas,
but never presenting, any more than they do now, a uni-
versal similitude, and that least of all through the influ-
ence of the earth's internal temperature.

[Introduction of New Life-form?.]

As each geological epoch is characterised by its own pe-
culiar plants and animals, the question naturally arises,
Whether these are independent creations, or whether there
is in nature some law of development by which, during the
lapse of ages and under the change of physical conditions,
the lower may not be developed into the higher species,
and the simpler into the more complex? On this topic
much has been said and written, but after all, geology is
not in a position to solve the problem of vital gradation
and progress. It cannot tell, for instance, why trilobites
should have flourished so profusely during the silurian
epoch and died out before the deposition of the oolite ; why
chambered cephalopods, like the ammonite, should have
come to their meridian, as it were, during the liassic era;
reptilian life during the oolite and chalk ; or why mamma-
lian development should have been reserved to the tertiary
and current epochs. It cannot explain why the palaeo-
therium should not continue to inhabit the same forest
with the tapir of South America, or the ichthyosaurus
gambol in the same waters with the alligator of the Ama-
zon. It can discover no physical condition in the oolitic

INTRODUCTION OF NEW LIFE- FORMS. 193

seas to have prevented the continuance of trilobites ;
nothing in the geography or climate of the coal period to
have prevented the huge terrestrial reptiles of the Weald
from browsing on its vegetation, or marine species, like
those of the lias, from preying on its fishes. The appear-
ance and preponderance of certain races during certain
geological epochs is a problem which lies as yet beyond the
solution of science. That this succession occurs regularly
as regards time, space, and biological sequence, we clearly
perceive; but how, or by what means of causation, we are
altogether unable to determine. We can often trace the
extinction of races to a change of external condition ; and
as vitality is endowed with a certain amount of elasticity
and adaptability, we may account for modifications within
the limits of what naturalists term varieties; but we appeal
in vain to physical conditions for the first introduction or
creation of species.

In the PAST LIFE of the globe we only see dimly and
broadly the outline of a great scheme of gradation and pro-
gress— a progress on which we may rest as a matter of
FAITH, but the terms of whose LAW lie far, as yet, beyond
the grasp of exact scientific demonstration. In vain we
turn to "external conditions" and "unlimited time;" to
the doctrines of "embryology" and " morphology;" or to
''natural selection in the struggle for existence." These
are oracles to which theorists have often appealed, but they
fail, as yet, to utter an intelligible response. That each of
them has some portion of the mystery in keeping, all the
tendencies of modern science do, no doubt, appear to indi-
cate, but how much, and in what order of connection, our
highest determinations are little better than a train of inge-
nious guess-work. As far as geological evidence goes, all
the great types of life began simultaneously and inde-
pendently. All the subsequent introductions of new genera

194 THE LAW.

and species are but modifications of these types ; but how,
or by what process they were modified, science cannot tell,
any more than it can account for the creation of the type
itself. This much we know — if the geological record is to
be trusted — that age after age new forms of life have made
their appearance, differing in what naturalists would term
generic and specific aspects, but still bearing to the great
primal patterns, and to each other, certain definite and ap-
preciable affinities ; and as we are not entitled to place vital
phenomena any more than physical phenomena beyond the
pale of natural law, we are bound, in the spirit of philoso-
phy, to seek inductively for the causes of these successive
introductions. In the whole world around us we see
nothing but the activities of secondary causes ; and though
Reason has yet failed to detect the mode in which new
life-forms are produced, Faith may surely be allowed to be-
lieve in their genetic connection by some continuously oper-
ating law. To such a law science can give no satisfactory
expression ; and in the mean time the idea of NEW CREA-
TIONS is, if not the most philosophical, at least the most
prevalent belief, just as it is the most convenient term,
perhaps, whereby we can describe the phenomena in ques-
tion. Instead of the term " new creations," some palaeon-
tologists, with a view to avoid an opinion, make use of the
phrases, "the first appearance," and the "introduction" of
new races. Little, however, is gained by this evasion.
If new species do enter upon the stage of being, and we
cannot explain how or by what process they come, then
they are to us, to all intents and purposes, new creations.
It may not be a new creation in the sense of a direct and
miraculous interference on the part of Creative Power ; but
it is the equivalent of creation through the operation of
a law defined by the prescience of a Creator, and producing
its results at determinate times, over determinate areas,

EXTINCTION AND CEEATION. 195

and always with a determinate relation to pre-existing
vitality.

[Extinction and Creation of Species.]

In adopting the terms "extinction" and "creation,"
we must not fall into the common, but mistaken, notion,
that the Flora and Fauna of one period were utterly extin-
guished before the commencement of the next. There are
no such extinctions and re-creations in nature. Just as the
physical change from one formation to another was sudden
or gradual, so a less or greater number of genera and spe-
cies passed from the older to the newer epoch. In some
localities the change was sudden and entire, in others it
was gradual — so gradual that we can hardly trace the line
of demarcation. Take, for example, the old red sandstone
of the British Islands. What a vast difference between the
fauna of Siluria proper, and that of the old red sandstone
of Caithness ! The break seems decided and impassable,
and yet when we turn to Forfarshire and Lanark we find
silurian genera and species passing up into the old red
sandstone and completing the continuity, which, to a Caith-
ness geologist, would have seemed to be entirely rent
asunder. Again, what a marked difference between the
fauna of the Forfarshire and Caithness beds — between
that of the Hereford sandstones, and that of the limestones
of Devon ! and yet when we pass to the old red sandstone
region of Russia we find these different stages fused and
equalised into one homogeneous Life-system. What was
broken up into different stages by physical irregularities in
the area of Great Britain was left to evolve itself gradually
and continuously in the region of Russia. We must exa-
mine more and know more before we hasten to such sweep-
ing conclusions as general extinctions and creations ; and

196 THE LAW.

the more we examine and know, the more we become con-
vinced that geology cannot point its finger to a single
break in the great evolution of vitality, any more than it
can point to a moment's cessation in the physical operations
of nature. On the contrary, geologists now know that a
considerable number of species always pass from one for-
mation to another; and such terms as " passage -beds,"
" Cambro- Silurian," " Siluro-Devonian," &c., sufficiently
express their conviction that the outgoings and incomings
of life-forms are inseparably interwoven into one gradual
and continuous sequence.

The whole of our groups and formations are merely suc-
cessive stages in one great system or COSMOS — the minor
stages imperceptibly graduating into each other, and the
amount of progress becoming apparent only after the lapse
of ages. These progressive stages constitute, in fact, our
"systems" and "periods;" and if in one region there
should appear to be a sudden break between them, let it
ever be remembered that the deficiency is to be supplied
by some other district — in other words, let it be remem-
bered that the oscillations of sea and land, of elevation and
depression, and other physical changes, are sufficient to
account for local breaks in life — but that there is no found-
ation whatever for the belief in "general extinctions," and,
consequently, "new general creations." So far as the few
thousand years of man's experience extends, the current
era is as mutable as any of the epochs that preceded, and
yet so gradually have its extinctions and creations taken
place, that science can scarcely corroborate the one, and has
as yet failed to detect the other. The systems of the geo-
logist are, therefore, mere concatenations of events indica-
tive of certain periods ; and as nature never repeats herself
in time, each period, when taken at sufficiently distant in-
tervals, is characterised by some forms of vitality peculiar

DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESES. 197

to itself, the while that its general life merges imperceptibly
into that of the epoch that follows, just as it was impercep-
tibly interwoven with that which preceded.

[Development Hypotheses.]

This belief in a gradual and unbroken evolution of vitality
gives no encouragement to the doctrine of development from
lower to higher types, through some long-continued but
little-understood process of physical transmutation. We
say "physical" transmutation; for, whether we appeal, with
Lamarck, to the modifying influence of new external condi-
tions— with the author of the Vestiges, to the force of internal
volition on the embryotic organism — or with Mr Darwin,
to the gradual accumulation of minute beneficial changes,
which amount in the long-run to specific distinctions, we
adopt the same blind-chance process, and are merely phras-
ing in different terms the same materialistic* hypothesis.
Of such a process we have no direct evidence either in
existing nature or in that which has become extinct ; nor
by the assumption of such a process can the various grades
and affinities of vitality be logically reduced into one har-
monious and consistent scheme. If by any unknown ge-
iietic process the polype has given birth to the star-fish, the
star-fish to the mollusc, the mollusc to the fish, the fish to
the reptile, the reptile to the bird, and the bird to the
mammal, it must have been either through a graduated
succession of intermediate forms, or at once and directly.

* Should this assertion appear unwan*anted, we have only to refer to
Lamarck's own avowal, to the advertisement first announcing the publi-
cation of the Vestiges in 1844, and to the whole tone and tenor of the
Origin of Species, in which there seems to be a studied non-recognition
of any higher Influence than chance, external conditions, nature, law,
and other kindred activities.

198 THE LAW.

If by the former process, where is the finely graduated
scale of transitional forms, either living or fossil ? And if
by the latter, how comes it to pass that we have not a
universal uniformity of life-type at the successive stages of
geological time ? for we cannot conceive of any mere phy-
sical law acting with discrimination, and peopling one region
with one set of forms, and another region with other classes
and orders. If it shall be argued that the physical condi-
tions of one region differ from those of another, and must
necessarily be accompanied by a diversity of results, we
restrict our reasonings to any one area, and there we find as
great a complexity and variety characterising the part as the
advocates of this hypothesis can demand for the whole.
Some forms continue persistent and unchanged, others die
out and are succeeded by closely allied forms ; some remain
scanty and localised, while others increase and largely ex-
tend their boundaries; and this under precisely the same
conditions and in the self-same area — a fact altogether in-
explicable were the influence of external conditions the
only factor in the law of vital diversity.

As to " intermediate or gradational forms," let us
take care also that we do not mistake functional re-
semblance for genetic affinity, and simulative forms for
identities. That we have quadrupeds, like the orni-
thorhyncus, partaking of some of the characteristics of
birds ; mammals, like the whale, modified so as to as-
sume the aspect of fishes; fish-like reptiles, as the ichthy-
osaurus; and reptile-like fishes, as the rhizodus, no one
for a moment gainsays. These, however, are mere func-
tional resemblances, not genetic affinities ; the modification
of the great aboriginal types, so as to adapt them for every
element — air, earth, and ocean — and to fit them for the
performance of every function which the conditions of the
world, for the time being, might require. The whale,

DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESES. 199

though swimming in the ocean, is nevertheless a mammal
breathing by lungs, bringing forth its young alive, and
suckling them with true mammalian affection ; and the
young - bearing, young - suckling bat, though fluttering
through the air like a bird, has no essential feature in
common with the birds, save that which belongs to the
great vertebrate pattern. Such resemblances are simply
adaptive, not essential. Instead of indicating any genetic
affinity, they merely point to a law which ordains that
agreement of habit and economy, in widely differing groups,
shall be accompanied by similarity of form; and this, of
physical necessity, so long as the same element has to be
traversed, the same kind of food sought after, and the same
general functions to be performed.

Again, if at various stages the lower had given birth to
the higher, we should naturally have expected only the
lowliest and simplest at first, and an equable and uniform
diffusion of the higher races, step by step, in the successive
geological epochs. Instead of this, we find protozoans,
radiates, articulates, and molluscs, side by side, in the low-
est fossiliferous rocks ; and in every stage upwards a
variety and complexity of higher and lower, which seem to
obey anything but a regular arithmetical or geometrical pro-
gression, such as any mere physical law of development
must necessarily obey. The palaeozoic brachiopods were
higher and more varied than those of existing waters ; the
noblest cephalopods — shell-clad and shell-less — were those
of the secondary period ; the highest structural fishes were
the sauroids of the upper paleozoic ; and anatomists (Owen)
assure us that the thecodont reptiles of the new red sand-
stone, had they existed at the present day, would have
taken rank at the head of the Lacertian order. So far as
paleontology can prove, there is no known line of continu-
ous development from one primordial germ — no uniform

N

200 THE LAW.

genetic ascent in time for the various classes and orders of
vitality ; and the rise and progress which geology unfolds
has been clearly under the influence of a much more com-
plicated law than that which takes order from the force of
mere external conditions. Besides, in regarding external
conditions as the sole cause of vital diversity, we ascribe to
them a task to which they are unequal, and leave altogether
unexplained which family of the radiates, for example, and
why that family alone, was selected to be transformed into
the articulates ; which of the mollusca became the progeni-
tors of the fishes ; or which of the fishes, while the others
were left uninfluenced in their piscine state, were advanced
to the dignity of giving birth to the reptiles.

If there be any truth in the hypothesis, the highest forms
of the lower class must have always given birth to the
lowest forms of the next higher class — for we can scarcely
expect the lower forms to have been endowed with a power
which was not permitted to the higher. ISTow, so far from
this being geologically true, we find fishes making their
appearance in the Silurian rocks ages before molluscan life
had attained its culminating point in the oolitic era; so
also we find reptiles appearing almost simultaneously with
fishes in the old red sandstone, and long before the higher
fishes (their natural progenitors, according to this theory)
had appeared ; just as birds are found in the new red sand-
stone ages before the highest forms of reptiles had come on
the stage in the upper secondary series. Here then, the
offspring often precedes the parent ; and any line of uni-
form development is altogether disproved by the very facts
on which the advocates of the Law of Development are
attempting to found it. That during the long lapse of
geological time there has been rise within each great sub-
division of life from lower to higher forms, no one can deny;
but the law of this progress is other than that of mere

DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESES. 201

physical development, and lies, as yet, far beyond the grasp
of human philosophy. ]Sror, indeed, as has been fitly re-
marked by Professor Agassiz, " will there be any scientific
evidence of the method of God's working in nature, until
naturalists have shown that the whole creation is the ex-
pression of a thought, and not the product of physical
agents."

Further, as every creature has its own nature, and habits,
and functions, we must, under the transmutation hypothesis,
either make the plant and animal capable of changing their
own nature and habits, or ascribe the change to the force
of external conditions. In the vegetable kingdom we can
readily admit, within very wide limits, the operation of
external causes ; but even there the generic diversity oc-
curring under precisely the same conditions remains alto-
gether inexplicable by such a hypothesis ; while the nature
of plant-life for ever debars the idea of internal volition.
In the animal kingdom we have the same difficulty to con-
tend with. Admitting that physical conditions had the
power to modify the vital organism, the nature and limit of
these modifications must be predetermined and directed in
order to preserve the harmony that prevails throughout
living as well as throughout extinct forms ; and this har-
mony can never be other than the ordaining of a governing
mind. It is impossible to invest any mere physical law
with a discriminating power — absurdity to ascribe to in-
dividual volition any permanent change of organisation
while an intimate relationship continues to pervade the
whole. And even admitting the Creator had chosen to act
through such means, they can be placed in no higher light
than the unconscious machinery of a system requiring
superintendence at every turn, and whose every variation is
in effect the equivalent of a new creation. The conversion
of a mollusc into a fish, or of a fish into a reptile — even if

202 THE LA.W.

accomplished by a thousand imperceptible stages — is to our
apprehension as much a creative act as the aboriginal forma-
tion of the mollusc; and though nature acts largely through
the employment of secondary causes, science will ever most
safely appeal to the primal, till she has learned to determine
with precision the operations of the secondary — returning,
like Noah's dove, from an ocean of inquiry that offers as yet
to the sole of her foot no sure and abiding resting-place.
Xo doubt plants and animals are endowed with a certain
amount of elasticity so as to adapt themselves to minor
changes of external conditions ; and acting upon this elas-
ticity, man has been enabled to produce all the varieties of
cultivated fruits and grains, and domesticated animals.
This limit of variation, however, is soon reached : the species
is never affected, and the varieties can only be maintained
by a continuation of the artificial stimulus.* In this case
man presents himself as a sub-creative centre, deputed with
a power of prescient design otherwise unknown in creation ;
and to argue from his operations, as Mr Darwin has done,
to those occurring in mere physical nature, is altogether to
misinterpret the functions that intellect and reason were
destined to subserve. As we have no other power in nature
akin to the human intellect, so we are not entitled, in the
spirit of induction, to argue from the results produced by
that intellect to the operations of the unreasoning material
agencies of nature.

To appeal, in the next place, to embryology — to state
that, in their embryonic stage, the higher animals always
pass through the successive phases of those that are lower,

* That the individuals of a species should be capable of varying
within certain limits, so as to adapt themselves to minor variations in
their creative centres, seems part of a wise and beneficial arrangement ;
but that such variations partake of a progressive character is disproved
rather than supported by the well-known tendency of all artificial
varieties to revert to their original stocks.

DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESES. 203

and then to maintain that the fish-embryo, for example,
acted upon by extremely favourable conditions, might be
developed beyond itself into a reptile, or the reptile into a
bird, is assuming a doctrine of which we have no proof,
and merely stating, in perverted terms, the grand physiolo-
gical fact of animal gradation and affinity. Besides, it is
an argument that cuts both ways. If an embryo, under
favourable conditions, can be developed beyond its own
parent species, it may also, under unfavourable conditions,
be retarded and thrown back into the grade that lies be-
neath it ; and as external conditions varied during the
geological epochs — now genial and now obnoxious — we
ought to have degradation as well as development. The
great gradational progress taught by geology being always
steadily from higher to higher, is. however, against this ;
and when a species or family is subjected to obnoxious
conditions, it invariably dwarfs and dies out in its owTn
proper character — a trilobite as a trilobite, an ammonite as
an ammonite, an ichthyosaur as an ichthyosaurus — and never
under the guise of a lower order. All, too, that we know
of existing nature is against this doctrine of transmutation
— species and genera remaining (under the restricted limits
of variation) as fixed and permanent now as they were
known to the Ninevites and Egyptians four thousand
years ago.

It is argued, no doubt, that the transmutational advances
from species to species take place by slow and imperceptible
stages, which cumulatively become apparent only after the
lapse of ages. Admitting, however, this rate of progress,
there ought still to be transitional forms in various stages
of progress at every epoch — forms wThich we fail to perceive
in the living world, just as geology has failed to detect
them in that which has become extinct. Again, the modi-
fications for which the developist contends are those of a

204 THE LAW.

beneficial kind ; so that, in the great struggle for existence
and under the influence of altered conditions, every creature,
advantageously modified, will have a chance of surviving,
whilst those unaffected must go to the wall. He fails,
however, to show how the operation of a purely physical
law should not affect alike every member of a species, and
to perceive that his doctrine of " natural selection" is "but a
materialistic phraseology for an undefined law of progress,
which forms part of a predestined plan, and must clearly
obey an intelligent behest. Above all, he fails to prove
how or in what manner it could be more advantageous, in
a world where every adaptation is perfect, for a crustacean
to drop the mask of a trilobite and assume that of a euryp-
terite, or for a eurypterite to drop, step by step, its charac-
teristic organisation, and put on the ultimate guise of a lob-
ster. Still further, if there has really been such a perpetual
transmutation of form and function, we are driven backward
and backward in the abysm of time to simpler and simpler
forms, and compelled to seek for herbivorous and carnivor-
ous races a common paternity and origin. To transmute,
however, the graminivorous into the carnivorous — to change
entirely their every organ of prehension, mastication, and
digestion — their habits and instincts and functions — even
if it were conceivable, is utterly disproved by the geological
record, in which, from the earliest epochs, we find plant-
eater and flesh-eater arranged side by side in the great
drama of life, and as sharply defined in all their character-
istic organisation as they are at the present moment.

The hypothesis, untenable as it may appear, must be
carried still further. As man is inseparably connected with
the great scheme of vitality, any genetic doctrine of trans-
mutation must be equally applicable to him as to the rest
of creation, and he must stoop, however humiliating, to
trace his pedigree from the order that stands next beneath

DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESES. 205

him. Against this, however, all reason and moral instinct
recoils. To transmute the monkey into man, even though
the change were effected, step "by step, through a whole
wilderness of monkeys, could not invest the brutish nature
with the human intellect, or endow the progeny of the
irresponsible beast with the moral responsibility of man !
Admitting the similarity of physical organisation — admit-
ting the lowdy condition of the lowest varieties of the
human race — and granting that the difference between the
most highly endowed philosopher and most degraded
savage was even greater than that between the lowest
savage and the most exalted monkey — still we know of no
intermediate forms, living or extinct,* to bridge over the
gulf that lies between — no germ of moral perception in the
brute, whereon to graft the improving consciousness of
moral responsibility in the man. Here then (admitting
that men had been physically descended from monkeys)
there is something in the man unknown and unevidenced
in the brute ; and unless we can learn to regard this
superadded gift of reason and moral perception — to say
nothing of religious sentiment — in the light of a new
creation, the common ground of argument is removed from
between us, and conviction becomes impossible. Even
were wre to concede the point of mental relationship, and
to admit that science could trace the most intimate rela-
tions of organic life — that life which associates man with
the plants and animals around him ; still (as has been

* It has been hinted, no doubt, that as other mammalia have had
their gigantic tertiary precursors, so it is likely the gorilla and chim-
panzee were also preceded by larger and more man-like forms of monkey.
Of the existence of such forms we have not, at present, the slightest
indication ; but, admitting the ingenuity of the surmise, and supposing
such remains were to be discovered to-morrow, it will still remain to be
shown that larger and more erect aspects of ape must necessarily be
endowed with higher mental and more man-like qualities.

206 THE LAW.

aptly remarked) "no observation from the outside ever did,
or ever will, approach that most intense of all realities —
our relations as responsible agents to right and wrong."
This is the rock ahead on which all theories of mere
physical development must ever split ; and their abettors
are driven to this dilemma — either to maintain the identity
of man's nature (though differing in degree) with that of
the beasts that perish, or frankly to admit that the human
race sprang into being only when " God breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul."

We are aware that certain physiologists who adopt the
development hypothesis contend also for a unity of mental
constitution between man and the lower creatures — its
manifestations differing only in degree among the various
grades of organisation. Adhering to the one hypothesis,
they are prepared to accept the other and all its conse-
quences as a logical and sequential deduction. It is strange,
however, to find others who, like Professor Agassiz, re-
pudiate all theories of physical development, adopting a
similar conclusion ; and not only so, but arguing for the
community of an immaterial and immortal principle, as if
this were not a stronger argument for universal genetic
connection than any that can be drawn from mere similar-
ity of external organs. " For the most part," says'the Pro-
fessor, in his Essay on Classification, " the relations of in-
dividuals to individuals are unquestionably of an organic
nature, and, as such, have to be viewed in the same light
as any other structural feature; but there is much also in
these connections that partakes of a psychological character,
taking this expression in the widest sense of the word.
When animals fight with one another — when they associate
for a common purpose — when they warn one another in
danger — when they come to the rescue of one another —
when they display pain and joy — they manifest impulses of

DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESES. 207

the same kind as are considered among the moral attributes
of man. The range of their passions is even as extensive
as that of the human mind, and I am at a loss to perceive
a difference of kind between them, however much they
may differ in degree and in the manner in which they are
expressed. The gradations of the moral faculties among
the higher animals and man are moreover so imperceptible,
that to deny to the first a certain sense of responsibility
and consciousness, would certainly be an exaggeration of
the differences which distinguish animals and man. There
exists, besides, as much individuality, within their respec-
tive capabilities, among animals as among man, as every
sportsman, every keeper of manageries, and every farmer or
shepherd can testify, or any one who has had large experi-
ence with wild, tamed, or domesticated animals. This
argues strongly in favour of the existence in every animal
of an immaterial principle similar to that which, by its
excellence and superior endowments, places man so much
above animals. Yet the principle unquestionably exists,
and whether it be called soul, reason, or instinct, it pre-
sents in the whole range of organised beings a series of
phenomena closely linked together ; and upon it are based
not only the higher manifestations of the mind, but the
very permanence of the specific differences which characterise
every organism. Most of the arguments of philosophy in
favour of the immortality of man apply equally to the per-
manency of this principle in other living beings. May I
not add, that a future life, in which man would be deprived
of that great source of enjoyment and intellectual and
moral improvement which result from the contemplation
of the harmonies of an organic world, would involve a
lamentable loss? And may we not look to a spiritual con-
cert of the combined worlds and all their inhabitants in
presence of their Creator, as the highest conception of para-

208 THE LAW.

dise 1 " For hypotheses such as these, however curious or
startling they may appear, let it be clearly understood that
science is in no way responsible. Xo observation from the
external world — no analogy, however plausible — no analy-
sis, however minute — can ever solve the problem of an im-
material and immortal existence. They may be received as
possible or probable auxiliaries, but in the main our faith
on this point must rest, as it has hitherto rested, 011 an
altogether different foundation. Science has its own line
and limit of inquiry, and no satisfactory result can ever
arise from any attempt to carry it beyond the boundary of
the philosophically attainable. If the developists have
failed on physical grounds to prove a genetic unity for the
various grades of organisation, their opponents only compli-
cate the question by the unnecessary introduction of the
still more difficult problem of a spiritual community.

[Acceptance of Vital Hypotheses.]

While repudiating this doctrine of physical development,
we would treat its advocacy without that acrimony and in-
vective which has been too frequently displayed against it.
The progress and gradation of vitality is still in a great
measure a mystery to science ; and any honest and earnest
endeavour to unveil it should ever meet with a correspond-
ing regard. In the organic as in the inorganic world the
Creator often operates through secondary causes, and the
discovery of these causes, in the spirit of true philosophy, is
to human reason a duty as well as a privilege. Every re-
sult that meets the senses, every phenomenon that nature
presents to us, becomes the legitimate subject of scientific
research ; and subtle as the eliminations of Life may be,
mysterious as its ordainings may appear, there is clearly

ACCEPTANCE OF HYHOTHESES. 209

nothing in its character to put it beyond the pale of such
investigation. Where, then, so little is positively known,
and so much merely tentative and temporary, no one has a
right to dogmatise* — far less to treat the earnest opinion
of another otherwise than in the spirit of candour and re-
spect. Argument is weak if it cannot divest itself of acri-
mony • truth is half shorn of her lustre when surrounded
by a medium of angry invective. The development hy-
pothesis, when pursued in a right spirit — in the spirit of
inductive research and logical interpretation — is entitled to
a fair hearing, even should it startle our accustomed beliefs
and offend our prejudices. Science, confident in its strength,
grapples with the argument j prejudice, feeling her weak-
ness, avoids the combat, and, assassin-like, launches those
infernal missiles — " sceptic," " infidel," and " atheist." But
whatever the uneasy tenderness with which the theme of
Life is usually treated, its origin and progress, its incomings
and outgoings, are questions which meet us at every turn in
geology, and themes which no scientific naturalist can pos-
sibly ignore. Year after year they are being more forcibly
pressed upon our attention, and no geologist can afford to
stand by while the brunt of the battle must be met on the
ground of his own special science. Lamarck's well-known
hypothesis — the Vestiges of Creation, which stands bas-
tardised by the moral cowardice that shrinks from avow-
ing its paternity — and Mr Darwin's Origin of Species — have
each given a fresh impetus to the question ; and though
our limits debar any further discussion of the question, we
may be permitted to express our opinion, that be it " trans-

* " In respect to very many questions, a wise man's mind rests long
in a state neither of belief nor of unbelief. But your intellectually short-
sighted people are apt to be preternaturally clear-sighted, and to find
their way very plainly to positive conclusions upon one side or the other
of every mooted question." — Dr ASA GRAY, in his Review of the Dar-
winian Hypothesis.

210 THE LAW.

mutation under the influence of external conditions" — " de-
velopment through the force of maternal volition on the
embryotic organism" — or, "natural selection in the struggle
for existence," neither of them (even were they true to the
extent their advocates argue) ascends any higher than a
mere subordinate factor in the law of vital development.
We are far from denying the influence of such causes on the
diversity of life. On the contrary, unprejudiced inquiry is
constrained to rank them among the activities of the Crea-
tor's plan, but simply as secondary activities, limited alike
in their power and in the range of their applicability.
Thus, however, it ever is : we discover a cause where several
others are equally operative and potent, and our ignorance
or enthusiasm is but too prone to ascribe to the one what
is ascribable alike to the others that remain undetected and
undetermined.

Even Mr Darwin, wedded as he is to the theory of Na-
tural Selection, is constrained to admit the operation of
several activities in the law of vital diversity. " It is in-
teresting," he says, in one of the most genial passages in his
work, "to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with
many plants of many kinds, Avith birds singing on the
bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms
crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that those
elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other,
and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have
all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws,
taken in the largest sense, being growth by reproduction ;
inheritance, which is almost implied by reproduction ; va-
riability from the indirect and direct action of the external
conditions of life, and from use and disuse ; a ratio of in-
crease so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a con-
sequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of charac-
ter and the extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from'

ACCEPTANCE OF HYPOTHESES. 211

the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted
object we are capable of conceiving — namely, the production
of the higher animals — directly follows. There is grandeur
in this view of life, with its several powers having been
originally breathed into a few forms or into one ; and that,
whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed
law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms
most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being
evolved." Here then, according to his own showing, in-
heritance, external conditions, use and disuse, struggle for
life, and natural selection, are all fulfilling their parts as
co-factors in one great law, and it is strange that in the
face of this admission he should labour to ascribe to one
cause what would have been much more philosophically
and satisfactorily ascribed to the many. He admits, too, the
" original breathing of life into a few forms or into one form,"
and yet unaccountably appeals throughout his argument
to chance and nature for all subsequent development, as if
these blind deities were aught without the direction of the
same original life-breathing Impulse ! If science is con-
strained to admit a Divine origination of life, why should
she be ashamed to confess to an equally Divine sustaining
of its subsequent manifestations 1 If we are compelled to
invoke a creative act for a beginning we cannot compre-
hend, why should we shrink from appealing to the same
cause for subsequent diversities we cannot explain 1 But
for this weakness or vanity, the erroneous in these so-called
u theories of life" had met with a kindlier tolerance, and
the true with a readier acceptance.

If, as these theorists assert, the question be merely this :
Has or has not the Creator endowed inorganic matter with
the power of assuming, under the influence of certain forces,
an organic form 1 and has or has not the Creator further
ordained that under certain external phases of nature these

212 THE LAW.

forms shall be transmuted into other and altered forms of
organisation1? then the subject assumes a purely physical
aspect, and they are bound, like the mathematician and
chemist, to prove their case by the ordinary rules of physical
induction. Given the scales, fins, and gills of a fish — what
the conditions and what the amount of time necessary to
transmute them into the scutes, paddles, and lungs of a
marine reptile ] Given the scutes, membranous fore-arms,
and stomach of a flying reptile — what the phases of change
and what the amount of time required for their transforma-
tion into the feathers, wings, and gizzard of a bird ? Or,
given the four hands with partially opposable thumbs, the
low facial angle, and the jabbering half-reasoning instinct of
a monkey — what the force of conditions, and what the term
of time for their development into the two-handed dexter-
ity, the erect aspect, and the eloquent ratiocinations of a
philosopher of the nineteenth century? If the question
be one of purely physical import, such are the formulae the
developists are called upon to frame, and such are the prob-
lems that await their solution. This task they have hitherto
failed to accomplish ; and as yet the place of sterling proof
is usurped by plausible assumption. The evolution of life,
however, in all its multifarious forms and aspects — its
cosmical functions and relationships — its orderly appear-
ings and disappearings at certain geological periods — its
bearings on the intellectual and moral position of Man
— all this and much more that instinctively interweaves
itself with our innermost thoughts of time and destiny,
must surely rest on a broader and deeper foundation. It
is — if anything we shall ever comprehend — the gradual
unfolding of a predestined plan, the expression of a
Divine thought, which it is our high privilege as well as
duty to interpret ; but depend on it, we altogether err in
our method of interpretation if we attempt to associate life

ADVENT OF MAN. 213

with physical agency in any other way than the mere me-
dium through which creative power has chosen to manifest
itself to our observation. In vain does Mr Darwin taunt
that this is a mere "dignified way" of putting the ques-
tion : better surely to rest satisfied with a dignified belief
we are unable to prove, than seek unsatisfactory shelter
under a cold undignified materialistic assumption ! For
our own part, believing as we do that Life in all its rela-
tions— its incomings and outgoings in time — its modifica-
tions in form, and its distribution over space — are under
the incessant operation of fixed and determinable laws, we
are as free to entertain the question of vitality as we are to
entertain the formation of a stratum of sandstone or the
aggregation of a mineral crystal ; but this we cannot do
unless at every stage of our reasoning we associate a su-
perintending with a creative intellect. And. we have yet
to learn wherein the variation of a natural law, or the
variation of a well-known form of life — even to the ten-
thousandth degree — is less an act of creation than the
original establishment of that law, or the original calling of
that life-form into existence.

[Advent of Man.]

The study of life, palseontologically regarded, necessarily
involves the creation and first appearance of Man ; and on
this subject much discussion has taken place, unprofitable
alike to science and the cause of Christian theology. So
far as geological evidence goes, we have no traces of man or
of his works till we arrive at the Superficial Accumula-
tions— the coral-conglomerates, the bone-breccias, the cave-
deposits, and the peat-mosses of the current period. It is
true, that so far as the earlier formations are concerned, the

214 THE LAW.

evidence is purely negative ; but taking into account all
that palaeontology lias revealed touching the other families
of animated nature, the fair presumption is, that man was
not called into being till the commencement of the current
geological era, and about the time when, in the northern
hemisphere, the sea and land received their present con-
figuration, and were peopled by those genera and species
which (with a few local removals and still fewer extinctions)
yet adorn their forests and inhabit their lands and waters.

It has been often argued, that up till this time the world
was altogether unfit for the habitation and support of Man
— its physical conditions being so unstable, and its flora
and fauna being unsuited for his sustenance. Now, while
we at once admit a physical as well as a moral fitness in
all things created, and that no creature was brought on the
stage of being till external conditions were suited alike for
the maintenance and genial development of its existence,
we must guard against any hasty generalisation that is not
absolutely warranted by the facts of geology, and which, in
its ultimate bearings, is quite as materialistic and physical
as any other that has been advanced to account for the
phenomena of vital development. The idea of a generally
unstable and convulsed world during the earlier geological
epochs is altogether disproved by the facts we have over
and over again repeated, even if it were not abhorrent to
all philosophical notions of a law -regulated cosmos ; and
the alleged absence of plants and animals necessary for
man's sustenance scarcely rests on a surer foundation. It
is true, and a beautiful corroboration of the fitness of
physical conditions, that all the flowers, and fruits, and
cereals, all the domesticated animals — the horse, ox, and
sheep — on which man in temperate regions so much relies
for the comforts and necessaries of existence, are unknown
till the latest geological epochs — the means of support

ADVENT OF MAN. 215

occurring simultaneously with the object to be supported.
But while this holds true, and is fitly applicable to a beef-
cooking, bread-eating phase of human progress, it is not
strictly applicable to man in all his conditions ; and it is
quite conceivable (geologically speaking) that inferior races
of men may have existed in much earlier epochs. The
flora and fauna of the oolite are extremely similar to those
of Australia, where we know that an early aboriginal race
have for ages hunted in the bush and camped on its grassy
karoos. The inhabitants of the South Sea Islands live ex-
clusively on palm-fruits, on farinaceous roots, and the fish
of the surrounding ocean : now, palm-fruits and farinaceous
roots abound in the lower tertiary and in the oolite, and
we see nothing in the fishes of those periods that would
render them inedible or unnutritious. The Esquimaux, to
whom the very names of tree and wheat are unknown, and
who exist on fish, seal-oil, and wrhale-blubber, among the
extreme rigours of the north, attain even there a certain
amount of civilisation ; and such a lowly race would have
found precisely similar conditions in Middle Europe during
the glacial era, when icebergs floated in our seas, and
whales and seals were stranded in our estuaries.

We mention these things not from a conviction that
man existed during those early epochs, but simply as an
argument to show that his first appearance, at whatever
period, must have been in accordance with the general plan
of vital development, and not in obedience to any phase of
external conditions, and that we may fairly expect, in the
progress of geological discovery, a much higher antiquity to
be proved to the human race than is now usually assigned
it. And even now, proofs are not wanting in the lake-
deposits, the bone-caves, and peat-mosses of Southern
Europe, to connect man with the latest pliocene fauna, and
to render it possible that he contested the same cavern

o

216 THE LAW.

with the lion and hysena, hunted the gigantic Irish deer
on the plains, and speared the mammoth and mastodon
in its forests. Nor would such a discovery militate in
any way against the facts of history, so far as these are
known, with anything like demonstrable certainty. The
facts and their order remain the same ; it is only the chron-
ology, about which the ablest historians still differ so widely,
that could possibly be affected. Moreover, while reasoning
about the advent and progress of man, let it ever be re-
membered, that the higher the race the more rapid its cul-
mination ; and that we have no standard in the develop-
ment of the lower creatures impelled solely by instinct,
wherewith to measure the progress of man guided by reason,
and capable of making the elements of nature subservient
to his elevation and to his dispersion over every region of
the globe. On the whole, and as geological evidence now
stands, man, though the noblest, is one of the latest emana-
tions of creative wisdom — crowning, as it were, that long
line of gradational vitality which apparently began with
the Silurian epoch, but whose further progress and termina-
tion lies in the mysteries of the future.

And here it must be observed that Geology, though often
indiscreetly summoned to pronounce, can throw little or no
light on certain questions respecting the advent and early
condition of our race. The varieties of the human family,
distinguished and described by ethnographers, are alto-
gether unknown to Geology ; and, so far as the stone-im-
plements, the cave-fires, and the tree-canoes of the pleisto-
cene epoch are concerned, they are such as might readily
be formed by any of the savage tribes of the present day.
Whether, therefore, man originated in one centre or in
many centres — whether the several known races are separate
creations, or merely time-distributed varieties, of the same
one-created species — Geology can give no certain reply. Not

ADVENT OF MAN. 217

a skeleton or skull has yet accompanied these primeval im-
plements, to indicate the character of the race that fashioned
them ; and be it ever remembered that only the merest
specks in Western Europe have yet been examined — leav-
ing wholly untouched the wider areas of Asia, to which
history and tradition alike point as the earlier nursery of
the human family. In the mean time then, these ancient
implements, wherever they occur, indicate the same con-
ception and the same design, and would go to prove — so
far as the evidence is of value — a unity and community of
the heads and hands concerned in their fabrication. An-
other question occasionally mooted by theologians who
dabble in geology, is, that man came from the hand of his
Maker a higher and nobler being than those rude old im-
plements would seem to imply, and, therefore, they are of
no antiquity, but the mere yesterday fabrications of a savage
and curse-degenerated race. Geology, restricting herself to
her own proper province, declines to argue this question.
Those are the facts deep in the old alluvia and gravels ;
these are the evidences which science has to deal with ;
and sound induction will not permit her to travel beyond
her own tangible record. The question of moral debase-
ment lies altogether beyond the pale of natural science ; and
these disputants seem to forget that man's early condition,
as indicated by geology, is much the same as that depicted
in the Mosaic record. Our great progenitors sewed them-
selves aprons of fig-leaves, not of jacquarded silks or power-
loom calicoes ; were tillers of the ground and keepers of
flocks, ignorant alike of high farming, steam- ploughs, and
reaping-machines ; travelled and communicated by camel-
caravans and pack-horses, not by railroads and electric
telegraphs. The course of civilisation is ever slow and
gradual ; and history, tradition, and experience alike point
to the early condition of every race as hunters and herds-

218 THE LAW.

men — the conditions unmistakably indicated by those sim-
ple pleistocene implements.

[Time Geological.]

Whatever may have been the creational development of
plants and animals — whenever the advent or whatever the
first condition of the human race — the groups and systems
of geology afford irrefragable evidence of the lapse of vast
epochs of TIME. The idea of immense duration is at once
suggested by an examination of the stratified rocks. The
innumerable alternations of their shales, limestones, sand-
stones, and conglomerates — their vast thickness — their re-
peated laminations — the alternation of marine and fresh-
water beds — their upheaval into dry land and subsequent
submergence, again and again — the various races that have
lived and grown and been entombed in them, system after
system — all this, and much more that will readily suggest
itself to the reflecting mind, must clench beyond cavil the
conviction of the unconceivable duration of geological time.
In all our reasonings, then, we must never lose sight of the
element TIME. With unlimited duration at command, we
have a power equal to the mightiest results ; and forces
which in themselves appear puny and feeble, become giants
when backed by that spirit of unrest whose eye never
closes, whose wing never wearies, and whose foot never
tires. The hardest rock is hollowed by the ceaseless water-
drop ; the Nilotic plain has been borne, particle by particle,
from the mountains of Abyssinia ; and the massive coral-
reef of a thousand leagues owes its origin to an animated
speck all but invisible to the unassisted eye. The problems
of geology, like the problems of mechanics, are thus de-
pendent for their solution on the conjoint elements of force

TIME GEOLOGICAL. 219

and time. Where the exertion of force is great, the time
for performance may be short ; but where the force is
small, the time must be proportionally prolonged. The
two elements are ever in inverse ratio ; and thus agents
in themselves comparatively insignificant may, during the
lapse of ages, accomplish most important results. It is
generally, therefore, to the cumulative effects of this inex-
haustible resource of TIME that the developists make their
last appeal — contending that the progress of transmutation
is so gradual as not to be appreciable with the five or six
thousand years of man's observation. Admitting the
plausibility of the argument in existing nature, the geo-
logist appeals to the fossil world for evidence of these
insensible gradations, and he finds stratum after stratum
containing the same unchanged species, and then, in the
next stratum, at once and decidedly, the remains of a species
altogether new. This, if anything Ave can intelligibly de-
fine, is not genetic gradation, but pre-appointed creation ;
and as time is merely passive unless the law of specific pro-
gress obeys some active and controlling power, an eternity
of time will never affect it.

In the present state of our knowledge, any attempt to
calculate geological knowledge by years is altogether futile ;
we can only indicate its vastness by the use of indefinite
terms, as " eras," and "epochs," and "cycles." It is cus-
tomary, however, to speak of pre-geological, geological, and
historical time — meaning by pre-geological all that extends
backwards before the deposition of the fossiliferous rocks ;
by geological, all that is embraced between the earliest fos-
siliferous deposits and human history ; and by historical, all
to which a determinate chronological value can be assigned.
With regard to the first, it is an abysm which the human
intellect, even in its boldest flights, shrinks from exploring;
as to the last, important as it may seem to man, creationally

220 THE LAW.

it is but a thing of yesterday; while to time geological we
turn as entering into every problem of our science, and in-
vesting their consideration with strange and deeper interest.
The amount of this time we have as yet no means of
estimating — no power to give it expression in years and
centuries. Many ingenious calculations have, no doubt,
been made to approximate the dates of certain geological
events, but these, it must be confessed, are more amusing
than instructive. For example, so many lines of mud are
annually laid down by the inundation of the ISTile, frag-
ments of pottery have been found at the depth of thirty
feet. How many years have elapsed since the pottery was
first imbedded 1 Again, the ledges of Niagara are wrasting
at the rate of so many feet per century. How many years
must the river have taken to cut its way back from Queens-
town to the present Falls ? Again, lavas and melted basalts
cool, according to the size of the mass, at the rate of so
many degrees in a given time. How many millions of
years must have elapsed (supposing an original igneous con-
dition of the earth) before its crust had attained a state of
solidity1? or, farther, before its surface had cooled down to
the present mean temperature? For these and similar com-
putations it will at once be perceived that we want the neces-
sary uniformity of factor ; and until we can bring elements
of calculation as exact as those of astronomy to bear on
geological chronology, it will be better to regard our " eras/'
and " epochs," and " cycles " as so many terms, indefinite
in their duration, but sufficient for the magnitude of the
operations embraced within their limits. Eut even on this
point of expressible time, the earnest geologist is not with-
out hope and encouragement. He rests confident (confi-
dent as in the existence of his own being) that the whole
history of geological phenomena — the shifting of volcanic
energy from centre to centre, the elevation and depression

COURSE OF CREATION. 221

of certain areas of the earth's crust, the interchanges of sea
and land thereby occasioned, the recurrence of colder and
wanner climates over determinable latitudes, the necessary
re -arrangements of life attending these changes, and the
like — is but a chronological exposition of the influence of
natural law; and that as law is as obedient to times as to
modes, the periodicity of these occurrences will one day or
other be determined. This done, its expression in years
and centuries is a simple task ; but though accomplished
to-niorrow, and expressed in figures like the distances of
the astronomer, the mind would altogether fail to grasp the
conception of its immensity.

[Course of Creation.]

On the whole, then, the systems and cycles of the geolo-
gist— imperfectly interpreted, as they yet undoubtedly are —
present a long series of vital gradation and progress. Not
progress from imperfection to perfection of purpose, but
from humbler to more highly - organised orders, as if the
great design of Nature had been to ascend from the simpler
conception of materialism to the higher aims of mechanical
combination, from mechanism to the subtler elimination of
mind, and from mentalism to the still higher attribute of
moralism as developed alone in the heart and soul of man.
Thus, from a long azoic period, during which the material
elements of the world were being eliminated into mechani-
cal order under the influence of chemical and physical
forces, we rise, as it were, to the conception and first ex-
pression of vitality in the simple organisms of Cambria and
Siluria. Again, from the lowly sea- weeds of the silurian
strata and the marsh-plants of the old red sandstone, we rise
(speaking in general terms) to the prolific club-mosses,

222 THE LAW.

ferns, reeds, and gigantic endogens of the coal-measures ;
from these to the palms, cycads, and pines of the oolite ;
and from these, again, to the exogens and true timber-trees
of the tertiary and current eras. So also in the animal
kingdom : the graptolites and trilobites of the silurian seas
are succeeded by the eurypterites and bone-clad fishes of the
old red sandstone ; these by the sauroid fishes of the coal-
measures; the sauroid fishes by the saurians and birds of the
trias and oolite ; the reptiles and marsupials of the oolite by
the true mammals of the tertiary epoch : and these, in turn,
give place to existing species, with man as the crowning form
of created existence. And even as regards man, he, too, has
ever been in a state of gradation and progress. Many an-
cient races and forms of civilisation have passed away, and
others have taken their place. Nor has the line of develop-
ment in man's case been uniform and continuous, any more
than in the purely geological elimination of vitality. Here at
one time, and there at another, with greater intensity — now
torpid and slow, now fresh and vigorous, but ever and always
still forward — the human mind acquiring a cumulative force
from the experience of the past, and that race becoming
most powerful who can grasp the most of nature's laws, and
turn them with irresistible force to its own purposes. As
in the great design of Nature, so in the minor scheme of
Humanity that lies within it, the progress has ever been from
materialism to mechanism, from mechanism to mentalism,
and all that science indicates or history reveals points to mo-
ralism as the highest stage of man's terrestrial development.
Such is clearly the course of creation, however dimly we
may descry the law that governs its elimination. Matter
acted on by certain forces assumes the varied mechanism of
minerals, plants, and animals ; to this graduated mechanism
is gradually superadded the qualities of sensation and men-
talism ; and to mentalism in its highest phase is bequeathed

COURSE OF CREATION. 223

the godlike gift of moral perception. Much of the simi-
larity that runs through the great types of Life has evident
reference to those physical forces which act independently
alike on all matter, organic and inorganic ; but over and
above this, there is the homology of parts in the several
main divisions of plants and animals — the embryonic phases
of life which harmonise in a wonderful manner with the
successive geological phases — the ascent in time as well as
in organisation from acrogens to endogens, gyinnogens, and
exogens, from cold-blooded water-breathers to cold-blooded
air-breathers, warm-blooded water-breathers, and warm-
blooded air-breathers — the curious modifications in time on
the various families of the same great classes as already in-
dicated in the geological record — the occurrence of con-
temporary representative species in distant geographical
areas — the similarity of form accompanying the similarity
in function in widely separated classes, &c. — all of which
are undoubtedly the results of some great pre-appointed
and continuously operating law. It may not be the force
of external conditions, the power of hereditary impulse
affecting embryonic germs, the result of natural selection in
the struggle for existence, or any one of the causes acting
gradually through indefinite time, that have been advanced
to account for the phenomena. Yet each and all of them
may be factors in some great scheme of causation; and we
are bound in the spirit of true research not only to treat
fairly, but to honour, every earnest endeavour towards the
solution of the problem. It has been well and prettily
said, that " before common minds can know, men of genius
must guess ; and if in assaulting the citadel of the unknown
they should sometimes fall, their names ought at least to
be chronicled with honour." In this spirit, and as tentative
aims at Truth, suppositions cannot be debarred from our
science, and all the less in questions so intricate and ob-

224 THE LAW.

scure as the origin and progress of Life. It may "be that
the solution of the problem lies far, as yet, beyond the
efforts of inductive science, but assuredly the time will
come for its attainment, and all the more quickly the less
we attempt to dissociate from nature's operations the ever-
active presence of a Supreme Intelligence.

In the mean time, all that can be asserted under the
warrant of geology is, that in the Vegetable World the
course of creation has evidently been from the amphigens
of Siluria to the acrogens of Devonia and the coal-measures
— from the acrogens to the gymnogens of the coal and new
red sandstone — from the gymnogens to the endogens of the
oolite — and from these to the exogens of the tertiary and
current epochs. This ascent in time harmonises in the
main with advance in structural organisation ; and, were
the geological record perfect, it is more than likely that
intermediate forms — like the sigillarire and lepidodendra
of the coal-measures — might be found throughout, linking
these great sections more intimately into one continuous
series than inosculating species now connect and bind to-
gether existing genera. As we approach the present day,
the structural forms become higher and more complex ;
and as we descend in time, step by step the higher dis-
appear,— till ultimately, in the lowest fossiliferous rocks,
we meet only with the cellular amphigens, that take rank
at the bottom of the botanical scale. In the same way
with the Animal World, we clearly ascend from the radiates
and articulates of Cambria to the mollusca of Siluria — from
these to the fishes of upper Siluria and Devonia — from these
to the lowly reptiles of the carboniferous — from the reptiles
to the birds of the trias — from the birds to the marsupials
of the oolite — and from these to the true mammalia of the
tertiary and current eras. Here is the same chronological
and physiological harmony : and not only so, but within

COURSE OF CREATION. 225

each great section there has been a similar structural ascent,
an ascent (take the Crustacea for example) from trilobites to
eurypterites — from eurypterites to limuloid forms — from
these to the long-tailed lobsters and cray-fish (macrura) —
and from the macrura to the short-tailed crabs (brachyura)
of the chalk and tertiary — the ancient forms being charac-
terised in their mature state by certain features which now
only transitorily appear in the embryonic stages of their
existing congeners. In the main, the chronological and
physiological harmony is complete ; and were the record
entire, a thousand connecting forms would appear, linking
the whole into one continuous unity of design — a design to
whose perfection every part conspires, and yet maintains its
own essential arid distinctive character. Whatever, we
again repeat, may be the operating causes in this scheme of
vital evolution, it is clearly the predestined scheme of a
Governing Mind — a mind that from the beginning has co-
adapted and co-adjusted all the forces and progressive con-
ditions of the universe, and whose power, wisdom, and
goodness are the same, whether displayed in a succession
of creative acts which we cannot comprehend, or in a series
of secondary causations which we fail to explain. If the
course of creation be the result of a succession of creative
acts, these acts have always the most intimate relation to
one another, as well as to those that have preceded, and
their order and character are therefore hopefully deter-
in inable • if, on the other hand, the course of creation de-
pends on a series of secondary causations, these causes,
being patent to our investigation, must be inductively dis-
coverable. Either way, the constitution of our intellect
constrains us to inquire ; and though the problem may
never be fully solved, the effect of the inquiry must be to
elevate the creature who earnestly strives to attain to the
comprehension of the designs of its Creator.

226 THE LAW.

[Creation still in Progress.]

This idea of progression implies not only an onward change
among the rock-materials of the earth in obedience to the
physical laws of the universe, but also, as plants and ani-
mals are adapted to, as well as influenced by, external con-
ditions, the creation of new species and the dropping out
of others from the great scheme of animated nature. And
such, we have seen, was the fact even with respect to the
current era. The mastodon, mammoth, and other huge
pachyderms that lived from the tertiary into the modern
epoch, have long since become extinct, leaving their bones
in the silts and sands of our valleys. The Irish-deer, urus,
bear, wild-boar, wolf, and beaver, are now extinct in
Britain ; and what takes place in insular districts must also
occur, though more slowly, in continental regions. The
dodo of the Mauritius, the a3piornis of Madagascar, and the
dinornis of New Zealand, are now matters of history; and
the same causes that led to the extinction of these, are
hurrying forward to the obliteration of the beaver, apteryx,
ostrich, elephant, kangaroo, ornithorhynchus, and other
animals, whose circumscribed provinces are gradually being
broken in upon by new conditions. And here the question
naturally occurs, If we have now local removals and gene-
ral extinctions, what of New Creations'? The local re-
moval or the general extinction of any well-known creature
we readily perceive \ the introduction of new species (un-
less we assume with Mr Darwin that all varieties are but
incipient species) has as yet escaped detection, or resolved
itself into that more facile solution — l ' the discovery of a
new plant or animal." Unless, however, creative energy
be waxing faint, and the scheme of vitality be destined to
come ,to an end, new creations must take place as infallibly

CREATION IN PROGRESS. 227

as extinctions. We rest on this as a matter of faith,
though human observation has hitherto been so partial and
limited, that it is only of late it has been enabled to estab-
lish the one, and is just beginning (in the question of the
variation of species) to direct attention to the other.

There is, however, no error more common than to con-
sider creation as a thing accomplished — to regard it as an
act rather than a work still in progress. Go back to the
earliest condition imagination is able to picture — condense
this globe from nebulous masses floating in ether — cool and
consolidate its crust from igneous matter, or call it at once
into being by the fiat of a word, it is now as it was then a
scheme in the process of creation. All its rock-matter has
been and is continually changing, and assuming new forms
and distributions. The muds and sands of our present
shores will be the rocks of some future hills, and the rocks
of our hills the sediments of the ocean of some after epoch.
So in like manner with its Vitality. The genera and species
have been continually changing and pressing forward under
the operation of pre-appointed laws to new and different
forms. Call this by what name you will, it is in purpose
as it is in effect, Creation. Interpose a thousand secondary
causes — establish a law for every act, and try to remove by
the widest distance the worker from his work — still, these
"causes" and "laws" are of themselves utterly impotent,
unless sustained and directed as immediately now as they
were when first "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of
the waters." As we fail to detect any symptom of decay,
so we cannot admit the idea of cessation, but must believe
in the advent of new races as implicitly as we believe in
the physical changes which more directly and forcibly
appeal to our observation.

228 THE LAW.

[Duration of Species.]

In reasoning on the causes which have led to the ex-
tinction of races, we must not lose sight of the speculation,
that species, like individuals, may have had a limit of
duration assigned to them from the beginning, and that
this limit may be attained even when all extraneous causes
remain quiescent and stationary. " Attempts have been
made," says Professor Owen, "to account for the extinction
of the race of northern elephants (the mammoth of Siberia)
by alterations in the climate of their hemisphere, or by
violent geological catastrophes, and the like extraneous
physical causes. When we seek to apply the same hypo-
thesis to explain the apparently contemporaneous extinc-
tion of the gigantic leaf-eating megatherium of South
America, the geological phenomena of that continent ap-
pear to negative the occurrence of such destructive changes.
Our comparatively brief experience of the progress and
duration of species within the historical period is surely in-
sufficient to justify, in every case of extinction, the verdict
of violent death. With regard to many of the larger mam-
malia, especially those that have passed away from the
American and Australian continents, the absence of suffi-
cient signs of extrinsic extirpating change or convulsion
makes it almost as reasonable to speculate with Brocchi
on the possibility that species, like individuals, may have
had the cause of their death inherent in their original con-
stitution, independently of changes in the external world ;
and that the term of their existence, or the period of ex-
haustion of the prolific force, may have been ordained from
the commencement of each species." We can readily ac-
count for the annihilation of races by the submergence and
elevation of land, by alterations in the aerial and oceanic

DURATION OF SPECIES. 229

currents which affect the temperature of a region, or by the
destruction of their food through climatic changes; but
when races wTane and die out without any apparent change
in external conditions (just as individuals appear, grow up
to maturity, and then fade away), we are driven to some
such conclusion as the limited duration of specific force.
And if species thus depart without the operation of physical
causes, we are compelled to accept the converse, that they
may also make their appearance independently of the influ-
ences of those external conditions on which the Transmu-
tationists have based so much of their hypothesis.

Nor is it the narrow circle of species alone, but the larger
groups and families seem also to have had a similar limit
assigned to their duration. The graptolites of siluria, the
paleozoic trilobites and eurypterites, the carboniferous sigil-
larise and lepidodendra, the ammonites of the oolite, the
enaliosaurs and dinosaurs of the same epoch, and the palaBO-
theres of the tertiary, all have had their beginning, their
culmination, in individual bulk and specific variety, their
declension and decay ; and this, be it observed, under no
phases of external conditions that geology can determine,
but apparently in obedience to some law of structural evolu-
tion which runs its course within a definite period. The
whole system of life, vegetable and animal, appears but to
be a pre-arranged series of typical ideas, each to be realised
at a certain period and Avithin certain limits of variation,
and when once realised to become passive for ever. The
realisation of these creative ideas must of course be accom-
panied by a thousand co-relative circumstances, and the
great caution of philosophy should be to avoid confounding
concomitants with causes, or mistaking mere ordinal arrange-
ment for sequential connection.

230 THE LAW.

[Term of the Human Race.]

This curious speculation as to the inherent limit of species
suggests another equally curious, and of still greater import
to man. Generally speaking, the species that has the widest
geographical range has also the longest duration in point of
time — this wider range increasing its chances of surviving
the occurrence of local catastrophes and the vicissitudes of
climate. Man, of all animals, is the most cosmopolitan in
his nature, being found, in one or other variety of his species,
in every region of the globe. It might, therefore, be natu-
rally inferred from this that the existence of the human
race will be of corresponding duration ; and this inference,
geologically speaking, would be correct were it not for
another law that seems to regulate vitality. Throughout
the whole systems of geology the higher seems to have a
more limited duration than the lower orders, their persist-
ence in time being inversely proportional to their biological
pre-eminence. Thus, the mammalia of the tertiary epoch
had a briefer existence than the reptiles of the Wealden and
oolite ; these reptiles a more restricted time-range than the
pala3ozoic Crustacea ; and these again a more limited base
of specific duration than the lower shell-fish and corals,
some of which in their generic aspects (like the lingula and
terebratula) are extant to the present day. If, then, this
generalisation can be established, we are forced to the con-
clusion that the term of the human species, as well as of
those domesticated animals on which he so much relies,
notwithstanding their wide geographical range, will be brief
in proportion to their organisation.

Startling as such speculations may be, it must ever be
remembered that there are a thousand qualifying circum-
stances in Man's case which do not apply to our reasonings

TERM OF HUMAN RACE. 231

regarding the lower animals. He has not only a wider geo-
graphical range, but is more omnivorous in his diet than other
creatures, the while that his structure and intellect enable
him to combat with difficulties of food and climate to which
they must at once succumb. Submerge Australia, and you
at once annihilate almost the entire division of marsupial
mammals, while as regards the aboriginal tribes you destroy
only a very small, and that by no means an important, section
of the human family. Alter the climate of Europe so as to
place it beyond the growth of the fruits and grains on which
its people now chiefly subsist, and, while its high civilisation
might be destroyed, and its dense population reduced to a
few nomadic races struggling with the rigours of the new
climate, still you do not annihilate them, nor greatly affect
the inhabitants of the other quarters of the globe. Direct
the Gulf-stream from its present course across the Atlantic,
and you at once destroy whole families of marine life de-
pendent on its thermal waters, and whole phases of vegeta-
tion that border the shores where its climatic influence
impinges ; but, so far as man is concerned, you only make
him shift ground and seek in other localities the congenial
conditions that have been withdrawn. Unless, therefore,
the human species has a limited creational term assigned to
it in accordance with that law which the more highly
organised existences seem to obey, we at once perceive that
the adaptability of man's constitution, and the inventive
powers of his intellect, give him, geologically speaking,
every chance of a prolonged tenure of this earthly domain.
It must be borne in mind that speculations such as these
refer to man only in his geological bearings, and touch not
at all on the rise, progress, and decay of nationalities, or
types of civilisation. These obey an altogether different set
of laws, having reference to that Moralism which separates
him from other living beings, and confers on him his highest
and most distinctive characteristics.

p

232 THE LAW.

[Influence of Man on the Future.]

The removal and extinction of species, viewed in con-
nection with the physical changes that are continually taking
place on the surface of the globe, necessarily lead to specu-
lations as to the conditions and phases of the FUTURE.
Eespecting these, however, it seems vain to offer even the
widest conjecture, so long as we remain in ignorance of the
law that has regulated the progression of the Past. Where
the terms of a law are known, the formulae may be readily
framed for the calculation of its times and results ; but where
these terms are little better than guessed at, our reasonings
can never rise beyond the value of the merest hypotheses.
Subjected as our planet is to numerous modifying causes,
we know, however, that vast changes are ever in progress,
and that the present aspects of nature will not be the same
as those she must assume in the eras that are to follow.
But what may be the nature and amount of these changes,
what the new conditions brought about by them, or what
the races of plants and animals adapted to these conditions,
science has yet no available means of determining. And
yet, as we have seen that in past ages certain species of one
epoch always passed less or more numerously into the suc-
ceeding epoch, so it is not unreasonable to presume that
many of the existing species will pass into the period which
is to follow. We have also seen that though in certain
regions extinctions took place rapidly and entirely, yet over
the whole world the progress of vitality has been gradual
and continuous ; and, generalising in like manner for the
future, it is surely allowable to presume on a similar con-
tinuity and gradation. We have also seen that whatever
the specific phases of vitality, they never diverged beyond
certain limits, but were ever constructed after a few grand

MAX AND THE FUTURE. 233

types and models ; and, believing in the continuity of
natural law, we rely on the future adherence to the same
primal patterns. In fine, progressing as nature is, the life
of the Future must differ specifically from that of the Pre-
sent ; but, speaking in general terms, the difference cannot
be more than that we have traced between the life of the
successive epochs of geological history.

In reasoning on the future aspects of vitality, we must
ever make allowance for the influence and operations of
MAN, who comes on the present stage of geological time as
a sub-creative power and new modifying agent. In the
olden epochs the laws of change acted solely through the
operations of purely physical agents, and what under their
control took ages to accomplish may now, under the
agency of man, be brought about within the scope of a
single century. To the materialism and mechanism of the
Past we now add the mentalism of the Present — an emana-
tion " after God's own image," and a reasoning instrument
in the hands of the Creator to effect most important changes
on the vitality of the globe. The modifications brought
about by man in his onward progress are already remark-
able, though only the merest fraction of what they are
destined to be under the influences of increasing population
and higher civilisation. In his onward progress of cultiva-
tion, observe how many species of plants be destroys, and
how many new varieties he creates ; how by his drainage and
tillage he modifies soil and climate, making new conditions,
obnoxious and fatal to some races, and congenial to others ;
and how, in taking possession of new countries, he destroys
the carnivorous and dangerous animals, and substitutes the
domesticated in their stead — extirpates the indigenous
flora, and plants in its place the vegetation of other regions !
Mark what changes the white man has wrought, within the
last few centuries, on the life of the globe, in North and

234 THE LAW.

South America, in Southern Africa, in Australia, and in
New Zealand, by the extirpation, the introduction, and the
interchange of species ! With the exception of the dingo,
or problematically native dog, no placental mammal was
known in Australia, which lay like a belated outlier of
secondary life, at the time of its discovery by European
navigators ; and now most of the quadrupeds of Europe
are there thriving and increasing amazingly. When we
turn to the New World we find the same process on an
older and larger scale. All the domestic animals of Europe,
naturally unknown in America, have firmly taken root in
that continent, and many of them now roam in a wild state
as freely as if they had been indigenous to the country.
Even the " pests and vermin " of the Old World have in-
sensibly found their way to the New ; and the New has
not been slow in making reprisals on the Old by the trans-
mission of such unwelcome settlers. In the fulfilment of
this great law of natural progress, the inferior races of his
own kind are also vanishing before the civilisation of the
higher ; and, however much our sympathies may be excited
by the fact, their continuance would be only to retard that
Divine scheme of advancement to which everything above,
beneath, and around us has ever been incessantly tending.
No scheme of benevolent enlightenment can ever avert
the fate of the natives of New Zealand and Australia ;
no project of civilisation, however ingenious, postpone the
doom of the Red Indian. As the waves of Progress have
successively swept away the nationalities, pre-historic and
historic, of Asia and Europe, so the same tide is irresist-
ibly swelling towards the obliteration of mental and moral
inferiority in other regions. The order has gone forth from
the beginning : its execution is inevitable.

Observe, then, what an amount of extirpation, inter-
change, and transmission of species has been effected by

PROGRESSION OR SUCCESSION ? 235

man within the lapse of a few centuries ; and note how
impossible it is to predicate of future life-changes where
such a power has been superinduced upon the purely phy-
sical agencies of nature ! It is true that man's influence
has its limit. He may modify, but he cannot create — ex-
tirpate, but cannot replace — may alter the distribution, but
cannot change the character of functional performance.
Over and above him are the great external conditions of
nature, to which he is as subject as the meanest creature he
modifies ; but within certain limits he acts as a sub-creator,
and this influence must ever be allowed for in all our rea-
sonings on the future aspects of vitality.

[Progression or Succession?]

There is just one other speculation, and we can scarcely
avoid adverting to it. We have traced a progress in the
past, we perceive a progress going on around us, and we
presume an analogous progress in the future. Whether,
then, is this progress part of some great recurring succession,
or is it a progression from a beginning we cannot trace to
an eternity of which we cannot even imagine'? ^Nature
operates in great successions as well as in what appears to
our limited observation a great cosmical progression. We
note the movement of the silent shadow on the sun-dial,
and were our observations limited to the space between
morning and mid-day, we might fairly question whether
this slowly-progressing shadow went forward and forward
for ever, or whether it did not form part of a recurring suc-
cession. We watch, and the shadow attains its meridian,
falls back, and again commences its progress to-day as it did
on the yesterday, and as we presume it will do on the to-
morrow. As the earth daily on her axis, so also in her

236 THE LAW.

orbit she obeys a great law of annual recurrence — a succes-
sion that might readily be mistaken for progression by one
whose observations were limited to a few long days in the
month of June. The magnetic needle, which in 1660
pointed due north in London, began in 1662 to diverge to
the westward, till, in 1815 (a lapse 155 years), it pointed 24|-°
west of north. Since 1815 it has been gradually returning
from this extreme divergence, and we therefore regard it as
obeying some law of secular succession. So also with the
polar direction of the earth's axis, which we usually regard
as pointing to one spot or " fixed point" in the heavens —
viz., the " Polar Star." This, however, is not strictly cor-
rect. The pole moves very slowly, so as to describe very
nearly what is called a small circle in the heavens. This
small circle, and the motion of the pole along it, are such
that, in 12,000 or 13,000 years, the pole will be distant
from the present pole by more than 40° ; but in some 25,000
years it will have returned to the point in the heavens
which it now occupies. In the geologic ages we have seen
again and again the return of cold and warm influences to
the same latitudes. First, the icy sterility of the Cambrian
grits ; second, the doubtful glaciers of the old red ; next
those of the Permian or new red ; and again, those of the
boulder-drift that immediately preceded the current era.
These are also indicative of great secular recurrences in
nature — successions rather than continuous progression.
May it not be so with the World itself? Is it going for-
ward, with all its physical mutations and garniture of life,
from a beginning philosophy cannot trace to an end that
fancy cannot dream of? Does nature never repeat herself;
or" is all that has taken place only part of a great succession
that will again be repeated ? Is there in reality nothing
new under the sun, and is that which now exists only that
which already has been? or is there not, as implied* in the

ONWARD AND UPWARD. 237

facts of geology, a recurrence of infinitesimally divergent
phenomena that assume the stamp and character of an ever
onward progress 1 From the restricted nature of individual
life we are unconsciously led to associate with everything
around us the idea of a beginning, a progress, and an end.
An endless progression, like an eternity of unchangeable
sameness, is a notion we cannot realise ; and we are apt to
regard the successive phases of geological history as mere
stages in a progression which has had its beginning in the
Past, and must come to an end in the Future. The be-
ginning and end of this progression, however widely sepa-
rated, may after all only mark the limits of a single stage in
some vaster scheme of progress ; and what seems to termi-
nate the present may only be the beginning of another and
higher phase of terrestrial vitality.

[Onward and Upward.]

Ignorant of the teachings of geology and the great pro-
gression it unfolds, mankind have hitherto regarded the
scheme of life as culminating and terminating with their
own race. All or nearly all the hopes that give colouring
to their thoughts and direction to their actions proceed
from this belief, though in strictest science the belief itself
rests on no logical foundation. It is true, one of our high-
est biological authorities (Professor Agassiz) "thinks it can
be shown by anatomical evidence, that man is not only the
last and highest among the living beings of the present
period, but that he is the last term of a series, beyond
which there is no material progress possible in accordance
with the plan upon which the whole animal kingdom is
constructed ; and that the only improvement we can look
for upon earth, for the future, must consist in the develop-

238 THE LAW.

ment of man's intellectual and moral faculties." This,
however, is a mere plausible assertion; the "anatomical
evidence" is not produced ; and every one cognisant of the
history of man knows that intellectual and moral develop-
ment has ever been restricted to the newer, and advancing
varieties of our race. It is true that man at present stands
the crowning form of vital existence, but the facts of the
past give no countenance to the belief that he shall remain
the crowning form in future epochs. From its dawn until
now the great evolution of life has been ever upward, geo-
logically speaking (and be it borne in mind we are treating
the question solely from a geological stand-point) : shall it
not continue to be upward still ? We see no symptom of
decay either in the physical or vital forces of nature ; and
so long as these forces continue to operate, mutation and
progress must inevitably follow. Man's own history, phy-
sical and moral, has been one of incessant change and pro-
gress. The features of different races, their mental quali-
ties, civil systems, and religious beliefs, have all less or
more partaken of this mutation ; and the difference that
now subsists between the most intellectual, city-dwelling,
machine -making Anglo-Saxons and the men of the old
flint-implements and bone-caves may be infinitesimally small
when compared with that which may exist between the
noblest living nations and races yet to be evoked. Unless
science has altogether misinterpreted the past, and the
course of Creation as unfolded by geology be no better than
a delusion, the future must transcend the present, as the
present transcends that which has gone before it. Man
present cannot possibly be man future. Noble as he may
appear in his highest aspects, it were to limit creative
power and arrest its progress to aver that man may not be
superseded by another form still nobler and more divine.
Physiologically, we cannot suppose that the homologies of

ONWARD AND UPWARD. 239

the vertebrate skeleton have been exhausted in the struc-
tural adaptations of man : psychologically, we dare not pre-
sume against the correlation of a nobler intellect with a
higher organisation. On the contrary, in these ascending
forms the divine idea of moral perfection, though uncon-
ceivably unattainable by created existences, may be nearly
and more nearly approached, and stage by stage the loftiest
and holiest aspirations of the present may become the real-
isations of the future. To speculations such as these,
though lying fairly in the way of geological inquiry, science
can do little more than merely indicate the line of reason-
ing ; and if they shall be thought to involve any question
as to man's religious beliefs and his hopes of a future life,
on this point also science is mute, and defers with humility
to the teachings of a higher philosophy.

CONCLUSION.

AND now my task is finished. I have endeavoured, in
tracing the long line of Past Life, to assimilate its extinct
forms to those now existing, that we may be enabled to
catch a glimpse, however faint, of the unity and connection
that run throughout the whole. Impossible as it was,
within the limits of this Sketch, to enter into minute de-
tails, I have restricted myself to such an outline as might,
with a little previous information, be intelligible to the
majority of general readers, or which, in the want of that
information, might be readily filled up by the perusal of
any of the ordinary works on Geology. To those who may
sneer at " smatterings of science," or grow facetious on the
"dangers of a little learning" (and these are generally the
mere technical tradesmen of some narrow department), I
have only to answer, that a beginning must be made some-
where— that the little learning of to-day may form a foun-
dation for the larger stock of the to-morrow — and that the
mind is more likely to be stimulated to further inquiry by
the generalisations of a vivid outline than by an array of
details, the very nomenclature of which is often a puzzle
and perplexity.

Whatever the amount of information conveyed, one of
the main objects has been to keep prominently in view the
operation of natural law, and to discourage the common

242 CONCLUSION.

but mistaken idea of the cataclysmal and revolutionary in
the past history of the globe. There can be no true notion
of nature or of nature's requirements so long as her facts
are Tie wed through the medium of the miraculous or abnor-
mal ; and it were greatly to be desired that in social and
moral, as well as in natural science, we should learn to re-
cognise in every instance the fixity and unerring operation
of Law, and so cease to ascribe to the blind deity of Fate
what our own knowledge ought to teach us to avoid and
enable us to avert. Nor let it be thought, we again repeat,
that by so doing we place a wider distance between the
Creator and his works, or that any knowledge of this kind
has a tendenc}^ to self-sufficiency and irreverence. Law is
but the mode in which the Creator has chosen to manifest
himself in his works, and the highest attainment of reason
is to give intelligible expression to these modes, so that
we may be enabled to determine their courses and antici-
pate their results. For this purpose I have endeavoured,
throughout the preceding review, to group and associate
facts, and therefrom to deduce such generalisations as seem
warranted by the teachings of Palaeontology. Where the
objects of research are so fragmentary and obscure, where
so few of the innumerable forms entombed in the crust of
the globe can have yet been exhumed, and where so little
has been done in distant regions to discover and identify
contemporaneous formations, I am fully aware how provi-
sional and temporary such generalisations must necessarily
be. In the mean time, however, they serve as centres
round which to marshal new facts, and they give consist-
ency to what might otherwise appear a mass of heterogene-
ous and not unfrequently contradictory details.

And speaking of facts, I would here, in the name of
Palaeontology, solicit that assistance which lies, less or
more, in the power of every one to afford. The objects of

ADVANTAGES OF THE STUDY. 243

research, are scattered everywhere ; and every chip and frag-
ment that bears on it the impress of organic structure,
however worthless it may appear to him Avho stumbles
against it, may be the means not only of restoring a new
form to the life of a former epoch, but the means of sug-
gesting the connection that leads to the determination of
some great creational law. Much as has been done within
the last twenty years, we still stand greatly in need of
additional data; and without an extensive array of facts
whereon to found our generalisations, the laws that regu-
late the great cosmical evolution of vitality must remain,
in a proportional degree, uncertain and obscure. Nor let
it be thought that any devotion to palaeontology — to the
"stocks and stones" of the sneerers at science — will ever
lessen our love for the fresh and beautiful in existing na-
ture. To him who has traced with appreciation the long
line of vegetable evolution, the flowers will bloom with,
new lustre, the woodlands with fresh verdure, and the
solemn forest-growths inspire unwonted adoration and awe.
To the student of the Past the lowest shell-fish may claim
an ancestry that excites new interest; the meanest reptile
may retain some curious feature of its gigantic prototypes;
and some obscure and solitary quadruped may be the last
of a line that once held regal sway in the forests of pre-
human epochs. As the existing throws new light on the
extinct, so the extinct adds fresh interest to the existing ;
and thus, to the paleontologist, the study of life becomes
not only a more exciting pursuit, but a higher and more
ennobling theme.

Besides these intellectual advantages, there are others of
a moral kind that spring indirectly from the study of
palaeontology. There is no other science, perhaps, that
tends to engender so much the feeling of community ; none
that connects more closely the whole of animated nature

244 CONCLUSION.

into one inseparable system. It shows that life existed be-
fore we were ; it indicates that life may exist after mankind
has ceased to be. Evade and resent as we may the idea of
a genetic connection with the lower animals, there is no
gainsaying the fact that with them we constitute part and
parcel of a great vital plan. They are our life-comrades;
they suffer hunger and thirst as we do; they are happy
under pleasure, and miserable under pain. Exalted above
them by a higher intellect and the gift of moral perception,
we are bound to extend to them the humanity of our posi-
tion ; and we err against the Creator's scheme the moment
we deal with them otherwise than is indicated by the great
law of interdependence which pala3ontology reveals. And
if we are thus led by cosmical considerations to extend
mercy to our fellow- creatures, much more are we called
upon to exercise it towards our fellow-men. It were a
sorry account of our knowledge of the material and vital
worlds, and the laws by which they are governed, did we fail
to apply it to the material and moral welfare of our race.
Vanity and vexation of spirit, did the tree of knowledge
ripen no fairer fruit than the pride and boast of knowing !
In this way the philosophy of our science ascends above the
mere materialities of the earth, and becomes portion of the
higher philosophy of the heart and soul.

And now, and in the last place, a word on the spirit in
which we should inquire. Geology is at best but a recent
science, and its task (as yet but imperfectly performed) is
a very wide and difficult one : wide, as embracing a vast
field of co-relative science ; and difficult, as the objects of
research can only be obtained by great labour, are often
obscure, and, for the most part, far removed from their
producing causes. In this case, though the history of the
past be ever attractive, its elimination requires extensive
travel and careful research. Guided solely by a desire to

HOW TO INQUIRE. 245

arrive at Truth, our observations must be made with great
caution ; and even with the utmost care we must often
remain contented with mere description — confessing, and
not ashamed to confess, that the facts observed are beyond
our explanation. To observe without being biased by pre-
conceived theory — to describe accurately so that others may
reap the legitimate fruits of our observation — to advance
our opinions with humility, where there is so much lia-
bility to error — and to deal charitably towards the opinions
of others — are duties, without the exercise of which no man
can be said to be imbued with the right spirit of geology.
It has been nobly said, that " to do justly, to love mercy,
and to walk humbly/' are the chief requirements of moral
duty: would the same spirit were ever reverently carried
into matters of scientific investigation! It was for the
want of these qualities that the early course of geology
was so much obstructed ; it is still for the neglect of their
exercise that so much contention prevails, and that humble
honest truth is so often over-ridden by bold-faced ignorance
and dogmatism.

Guided by this spirit, and exercising it within her own
proper field, a glorious future lies before geology — that
future being nothing short of a perfect history of our
planet. "We say, exercising it within her own proper field ;
for it cannot be denied that many, assuming to themselves
the character of geologists, indulge in speculations for
which the science is not fairly accountable. "Theories of
the Earth," " Vestiges of Creation," " Untieings of the
Geological Knot," " Pro- Adamite Sketches," and " Scrip-
tural Reconciliations," are ever crowding thick upon us —
enough to destroy the reputation of any science not founded
on the sure and ample bases of Truth and Philosophy.
The day for a veritable theory of the World is yet far
distant ; let us content ourselves in the mean time by labour-

246 CONCLUSION.

ing diligently in the way. The vestiges of vital develop-
ment are yet but faintly discernible ; we shall never trace
them to their source and origin under the guidance of a
materialistic hypothesis. To attempt, on the other hand,
reconciliations of geology with Scripture is to mistake the
functions of both — to confound the philosophically ascer-
tainable with what needed to be revealed — the physical
with the spiritual, and reason with faith. It has been re-
plied, no doubt, that the Words and the Works of God
cannot possibly be at variance. This, however, is a mere
dignified nothingism. No rational man ever supposed they
could, but men may differ in their interpretation of either,
and this makes all the difference. Geology loses by such
well-meant but ignorant attempts — theology cannot be a
gainer.

Let us then, as geologists, restrict ourselves to our own
proper field — the physical evidences of God's working in
creation , labouring to comprehend his plan, and from a
comprehension of that plan to rise to the higher conception
of his will as regards our own place and function in the
scheme of vitality. To combine our knowledge of the
earth's history as an intellectual attainment with the prac-
tical application of its treasures to our material necessities,
is a high and important aim; to ascend from this aim to
the conception of the whole as an orderly Cosmos, with
whose ordainings, physical and vital, our thoughts and
actions are inseparably interwoven, is the loftiest attainment
— the true philosophy of geology. As yet this height has
lain far and dimly before us ; arid the path of the earlier
travellers has been often uncertain and obscure. Light,
however, is beginning to crest the mountain-tops, and ob-
jects to cast their shadows across the valley below. Yet a
little longer, and the sun will attain its meridian, and bathe

THE HOPE THAT ANIMATES. 247

in the light of knowledge all that is permissible and pos-
sible to be known. Let us take care, lest by presumptuous
generalisation, by illiberality to the opinions of others, by
the want of moral courage to avow the truth as it appears
to us, or by giving way to unworthy prejudices, we should
do aught to retard such a devoutly- to-be-wished-for con-
summation.

INDEX.

INDEX.

PAOK

Acanthodes, Lower Old Red species, figured, . . .98

Acrogens, their aspect and function, .... 41

Adiantites, gigantic fern from Irish Old Red, figured, . . 93

J^pyornis, extinct bird of Madagascar, .... 164
Agassiz, Professor, quoted, .... 183, 201

Agassiz, on immortality of animals, quoted, . . . 206

Agencies, nature of, affecting the globe, . . .71

Amblypterus, ganoid fish of coal-measures, . . . 110

Ammonites, oolitic cephalopods, figured, .... 135
Amphigens, their aspect and function, .... 40

Ananchytes, characteristic chalk sea-urchin, figured, . . 145

Ancyloceras, characteristic chalk cephalopod, . . . 147

Animal life, its governing conditions in space, ... 48

Animals, systematic classification of, . . .57

Annelid burrows, or tracks of marine worms (?), ... 94

Anoplotherium, restored outline of form, . . . 156

An tholites, fossil flowers of the Carboniferous, . . . 105

Archseocidaris, carboniferous, plates and spine of, . . 107

Archseogosaurus, carboniferous reptile, .... 110
Archaeology, interest and importance of, . . . .18

Articulata, aspect and apparent functions of, . . . 63

Avicula, oolitic species, figured, . . . . .134

Barnacles, occurring fossil in oolite, .... 132

Belemnites, internal shells of fossil cuttle-fishes, . . 135

Bellerophon, carboniferous gasteropod, figured, . . . 109

Bellinurus, limuloid carboniferous crustacean, figured, . . 108

Beryx, fish of cretaceous epoch, figured, .... 148
Birds, occurrence of in cretaceous strata, . . . 149

Birds, supposed first appearance of, . . . .127

Boreal shells from valley of the Clyde, . . . .167

Botanical arrangement, principles regulating, ... 33

250 INDEX.

PAGE

Bothrodendron, pitted stem of the Carboniferous, . . 104

Boulder-clay or Glacial period, ..... 165

Boulders or drift-masses imbedded in chalk, . . . 143

Bramatherium, gigantic tertiary mammal from India, . . 159

Cainozoic or " Recent Life" systems of strata, . . . 151

Calamites, reed-like stems of the coal-measures, . . . 104
Calceola (a little slipper), Devonian shell, figured,
Cambrian era, its vital characteristics, ....

Carboniferous era, its physical and vital characteristics, . 100

Carboniferous flora, its peculiar aspect and nature, . . 102

Carpolites, fossil fruits of the Carboniferous, . . 105

Caulopteris, tree-fern stem of the coal-measures, . . 104

Cell, the vegetable, nature of, . . . .33
Centres of creation, for human species, .... 216

Cephalaspis, characteristic fish of Lower Old Red, . . 97

Cephalopods of the chalk, curious configurations of, . . 147

Cephalopods of the Oolitic era, various, figured, . . . 135

Ceratiocaris, palaeozoic bivalved crustacean, ... 89
Cereals, their first appearance, ..... 152

Chondrites, Silurian sea-weed, figured, .... 85

Conclusion, general review of generalisations, . . . 241

Climate, its influence on plant life, ... 29

Climatius, spiny-fish of Lower Old Red, . 98

Clisiophyllum, carboniferous coral, figured, . . . 106

Clymenia, characteristic Devonian shell, figured, . . 94

Coal-fields of the Oolitic era, . . . . .132

Coccosteus, characteristic fish of Lower Middle Old Red, . 97
Colder and warmer cycles, hypothesis of, .

Coniferous trees of the oolite, seasonal growth, . . . 130

Connecticut Valley, fossil footprints of, . . .126

Conularia, carboniferous pteropod, figured, . . . 109

Coprolites, or fossil droppings, carbon iferous, • . . 109

Corals, various carboniferous genera, figured, . . 106

Corals, various Silurian forms, figured, . .87

Co-relation of parts, Cuvier's law of, . . 53

Creation, apparent course of, as indicated by Geology, . . 221

Creation still in progress, .... . 226

Creations, new, how and by what means effected, . 194

Cretaceous era, physical and vital features of, . . 142

Crioceras, characteristic cephalopod of chalk, . . . 147

Crust of the earth, its composition and structure, . 69

Crustacea of oolite, their characteristics, . . .133

Cruziana, Silurian sea-weed, figured, .... 85

Ctenacanthus, carboniferous fin-spine, figured, . . . Ill

Ctenoptychius, palatal tooth of carboniferous fish, . .111

Current or Human era, its aspects, . . . .168

Cuttle-fishes, or naked Cephalopods of oolite. . . '. 135

INDEX. 251

PAGE

Cyathophyllum, carboniferous cup-coral, figured. . . 106

.Cycadaceous plants of the Oolitic epoch, .... 132
Cypris, small bivalved crustacean of coal, . . .108

Darwin, on origin of life, quoted, . . . ... 210

Darwin's hypothesis as to origin of species, . . . 197

Death, consideration of, in scheme of vitality. . . . 185

Dendrerpeton, lizard-like reptile of Coal era, . . . 110

Development hypotheses, considered, .... 197

Devonian flora, various fragments of, figured, . . . 92, 93

Devonian, or Old Red Sandstone era, .... 91

Dinornis, great fossil bird of New Zealand, . . . 164
Diplacanthus, Lower Old Red species, figured, . . .98
Diprotodon, extinct kangaroo of Australia, . . 159,366

Distribution of life never uniform, .... 186

Dithyrocaris, carboniferous bivalved crustacean, . . 108

Dodo, extinct bird of the Mauritius, .... 164

Dromatherium, jaw of, from North America, . . . llo

Egg-packets, supposed fossil spawn of Crustacea, . . 96

Electricity and vital phenomena, . . . . .181

Elgin sandstones, containing reptilian remains, ... 99

Embryology, nature of the doctrine of, . . . . 202

Encrinites, Silurian genera, figured, . . .87

Encrinites, various carboniferous forms, figured. . . 107

Endogens, their aspect and function, .... 44

Eocene flora and fauna, their characteristics, . . . 155

Equisetites, fossil stems resembling the equisetum, . . 104

Euomphalus, carboniferous gasteropod, figured, . . . 109

Eurypteridae, palaeozoic Crustacea, characters of, . . 95

Eurypterites, Silurian Crustacea, figured, . . . 89

Eurypterus or Idothea, carboniferous crustacean, figured, . 108

Exogens, their aspect and function, . . .45

External conditions of life never uniform, . . . 188

Extinction or creation of species, never general, . . .195

Fauna and flora, their mutual co-adaptations, ... 66

Flint implements from upper pleistocene, figured. . . 170

Flora and fauna of the Current epoch, . . . .168

Flora and fauna, their mutual co-adaptations, ... 66
Footprints, how occurring in a fossil state, . . . 126

Foraminiferse, their abundance in chalk rocks, . . . 143

Fossils, interest attached to, ..... 18

Fossils, nature and character of, . . . .20

Fresh- water formations, occurrence of, . . . 154

Fresh-water shells of the Tertiary era, .... 157
Function, uniformity of, in all time past, . . . .184

Functional adaptations of animal life, .... 51

252 INDEX.

PAGE

Future life- periods, probable aspects of, . . .174

Future vitality, man's influence on, .... 232

Galerites, characteristic chalk sea-urchin, figured, . . 145

Generation, spontaneous, unsatisfactory evidence of, . .181

Geological classification — systems and periods, . . .73

Geology, her own proper field of inquiry, . . . 245

Geology, spirit in which to study, .... 244

Geology, the vital problems yet to solve, ... 75

Glacial action, appearances of, during Old Red era, . . 91

Glacial or Northern Drift epoch, ..... 1(55
Glyptodon, extinct gigantic armadillo, .... 163
Goniaster (corner-star), chalk star-fish, figured, . . . 145

Goniatite, carboniferous cephalopod, figured, . . . 109

Graptolites, Silurian zoophytes, figured, .... 86

Gryphsea, characteristic shell of the Oolite, . . .134

Gymnogens, their aspect and function, . . . .42

Gyracanthus, carboniferous fin-spine, figured, . . . Ill

Hamites, characteristic chalk cephalopod, . . .347

Hemipneustes, sea-urchin of Cretaceous epoch, figured, . . 145

Higher and lower, as applied to organised beings, . . 55

Hippurites, characteristic cretaceous bivalve, . . .146

Homology, the anatomical doctrine of, . . .53

Human race, mutability of, . , . . .173

Human race, probable antiquity of, . . 215

Human race, probable duration of, .... 230

HylaBosaurus, great land saurian of the Weald, . . . 138

Hypotheses, their value in science, . . . .178

Hypozoic or metamorphic strata, ..... 81

»

Ice-action, appearances of, during Devonian period, . . 91

Ice-action, supposed occurrence of, in Permian, . . . 115

Ichnites, or fossil footprints, how occurring, . . 1 26

Ichnology, or science of fossil footprints, . . . .126

Ichthyosaurus, oolitic marine reptile, figured, . . . 137

Igneous or fire-formed rocks, defined, . . 69

Immortality of life-forms, question of, . 206

Implements, flint, what they indicate, . . . .217

Inoceramus, cretaceous species of, figured, . . . 146

Inquiry, spirit of, necessary for geology, . . . 244

Insects, various genera, fossil in oolite, .... 133
Irish gigantic deer, sketch of, figured, .... 169

Labyrinthodon, lower secondary reptile, figured, . . 125

Lamarckian hypothesis of vital development, . . . 197

Law, natural, its nature and importance, . . % 242

Law of similar habit and economy, .... 199

INDEX. 253

PAGE

Law, uniformity and universality of action, ... 80

Laws apparently regulating past vitality, . . . 177

Leaf, as the primary structural organ, . . . .32

Lepidodendron, characteristic plant of the Carboniferous, . 104

Life, dawn of, as known to geology, . . . .178

Life, origin of, wholly unknown, . . . . .180

Life-periods of geology, arrangement of, . . . . 73

Lignites and coals of the Cretaceous epoch, . . . 143

Lmgula, Silurian brachiopod, figured, .... 88

Lituites, Silurian cephalopod? figured, .... 88

London basin, its flora and fauna, . . . .155

Loxonema, carboniferous gasteropod, figured, . . . 109

Machairodus, fossil cave-lion of Europe, .... 159
Maclurea, characteristic Silurian shell, figured, ... 88

Mammals in Permian sandstones of America, . . . 165

Mammoth, or extinct hairy elephant, .... 162
Man, his advent or first appearance, . . . 170, 213

Man, his advent in accordance with the general plan of vitality, 215
Man, his early condition, as indicated by geology, . . 217

Man, his influence on future life-aspects, .... 232
Man, inferior races of, their inevitable decay, . . . 234

Man, not the last of this vital series, .... 237

Marsupial quadrupeds of Triassic era, . . . .128

Marsupials of the Oolite, jaws of various, .... 139
Marsupites, cretaceous echinoderms, figured, . . . 144

Mastodon, extinct elephantoid mammal, .... 162
Megaceros Hibernicus, or great Irish deer, . . . 169

Megalanea, extinct lace-lizard of Australia, . . . 159

Megalodon (large toothed hinge), Devonian shell, figured, . 94

Megalosaurus, great land saurian, figured, . . .138

Megatherium, extinct gigantic ground-sloth, . . . 163

Merycotherium, fossil mammal from India, . . . 159

Mesozoic systems, their chief characteristics, . . .119

Microlestes, insectivorous mammal of trias, . . .128

Migration and migratory races at all periods, . . .387

Modiola, oolitic bivalve, figured, ..... 134
Mollusca, aspect and apparent functions of, . . . 62

Mollusca of the Oolite, various genera, figured, . . . 134

Monkey, development of, considered, .... 205
Moral perception, restricted to man, .... 205

Murchisonia, gasteropod, carboniferous species of, . . 109

Murchisonia, gasteropod, Devonian species, figured, . . 94

Murchisonia, gasteropod, Silurian, figured, ... 88

Natural selection, Mr Darwin's theory of, ... 204

New life forms, how introduced, . . . . .192

Nummulites and nummulitic strata, .... 157

254 INDEX.

PAOK

Oldhamia, Silurian polyzoan, figured, .... 86

Old Red Sandstone or Devonian era, . . . .91

Oolitic era, physical and vital features of, ... 128

Oolitic era, physical geography of, . . ' . . 141

Oolitic flora, restored aspect of, . . . . . 130

Orbitoidal limestone of North America, . . . .158

Orbitoides, abundant foraminiferous forms, . . . 144

Orthoceratite, carboniferous species, figured, . . . 109

Orthoceratite, Silurian, figured, ... . . .88

Osmeroides, fish of chalk formation, figured, . . . 148

Pain, consideration of, in scheme of life, . . . 185

Palsechinus, carboniferous sea-urchin, figured, ; . . 107

Palaeoniscus, ganoid fish of Carboniferous era, . . . 110
Palaeoniscus, Permian species, figured, . . . .114

Palaeontology, advantages of the study of, ... 242
Palaeontology, its general scope and function, . . .25

Palaeontology, its intellectual bearings, .... 24

Palaeontology, its practical bearings, .... 33

Palaeontology, science of ancient beings, defined, . . 20

Palaeophytology, or science of fossil plants, ... 46

Palaeotherium, restored outline of form, .... 156

Palaeozoic, or ancient life-systems, ..... 79

Palaeozoology, or science of extinct life, .... 65

Palapteryx, or extinct apteryx of New Zealand, . . 159, 166

Palms, doubtfully occurring in the coal-measures, . . 103

Pampas of South America, their fossils, .... 163

Permian, or Lower New Red Sandstone era, . . . 114
Phascolotherium, jaw of, from the upper Oolite, . . .140

Phillipsia (after Professor Phillips), carboniferous, trilobite, . 108

Plagiaulax, jaw and teeth from the upper Oolite, . . 140

Plan and order of life pre-ordained, .... 184

Plants, systematic classifications of, .... 37

Platysomus, Permian fish, figured, .... 114

Plesiosaurus, Oolitic marine reptile, figured, . . . 137

Pleuracanthus, carboniferous fin-spine, figured, . . . Ill

Pleurotomaria, carboniferous species, figured, . . . 109

Poecilodns, carboniferous palatal tooth of fish, . . . Ill

Polyzoa of the chalk, their characteristics, . . 145

Post-tertiary and Tertiary, definitions of, ... 153

Present, the, its flora and fauna, ..... 27

Productus, characteristic carboniferous brachiopod, . . 109

Progression or succession in nature, .... 235

Protozoa, aspect and apparent functions of, . . . 59

Provinces of animal life, ...... 50

Psammodus, carboniferous palatal tooth of fish, . . . Ill

Psiloplyton, plant from Canadian Old Red, figured, ' . .. 92

Pterichthys, characteristic fish of Middle Old Red, . . 97

INDEX. 255

PAGE

Pterodactyle, flying reptile of the Oolite, figured, . . 138

Pterozamites, pinnate leaf of, Triassic era, . . . 125

Pterygotus angiicus, from Lower Old Red, figured, . 95

Pterygotus, upper Silurian species, figured, . . 89

Radiata, aspect and apparent functions of, . 60

Radiolites, cretaceous bivalve, figure of, . . . 146

Rain-prints, or impressions of ancient showers, ... 94

Ramsay, Professor, on Permian glaciers, .... 115

Representative species, what is meant by, ... 50

Reptiles, carboniferous, lowly nature of, . . . . 110

Reptiles, gigantic secondary, their functions, . . . 185

Reptiles of the Old Red, still doubtful, . 99

Rhizodus, sauroid fish, jaw and dentition of, . . Ill

Rock-systems of geology, arrangement of, ... 73

Rotalia, cretaceous foraminiferous organism, . . . 144
Rytina, extinct dugong of Kamtschatka, . . . .172

Sauroid fishes of Carboniferous era, .... 110

Scaphites, characteristic chalk cephalopod, . . . 147

Scriptural reconciliations, in utility of, . . . 245
Seals, sub-fossil, in pleistocene strata, . . . .167

Sedimentary, or water-deposited rocks, defined, ... 70

Sigillarise, gigantic trees of the Carboniferous era, . . 104

Silurian era, physical and vital characteristics, ... 83

Silurian flora, scanty and fragmentary, .... 84

Siphonia, silicified spongiform organ in chalk, . . . 144

Sivatherium, sub-fossil ruminant of India, . . . 159

Solitaire, extinct bird of Rodriguez, .... 172

Species, duration of, in time, ..... 228

Species representative and identical, .... 50

Spirifer, carboniferous species, figured, .... 109

Spirorbes, calcareous tubes of, in coal-measures, . . 106, 108

Sponges and their function in cretaceous strata, . . . 143

Star-fish, Silurian, figured, ...... 87

Stigmaria, roots of the carboniferous sigillaria, . . . 104

Stone implements of the upper pleistocene, . . . 170

Stringocephalus, characteristic Devonian shell, figured, . . 94

Strophomena, Silurian brachiopod, figure of, . . 88

Stylonurus, crustacean from Forfarshire Old Red, . . 95

Succession or progression in natural events, . . . 235

Superposition of strata, key to geological time, ... 70

Telerpeton, lacertilian reptile from Elgin sandstones, . . 126

Temperature, internal, its effect on climate, ... . 189

Terebratula, carboniferous species, figured, . . ] 09
Tertiary and post-tertiary strata, defined, . . .153

Tertiary, its different chronological stages, . . . 157

256 INDEX.

PAGE

Textularia, abundant foraminiferous organism, . . . 144

The Record — as depending on Geology, .... 69
Thecodont reptiles, their high position, . . . .199

Theory of the World, Geology not prepared for, . . . 245

Time, its estimate in years and centuries, . . . 220

Time, pre-geological and geological, .... 218

Transitional or intermediate forms, . . . .198

Triassic era, physical and vital conditions of, . . . 121

Triconodon, jaw and teeth of, from Upper Oolite, . . 140

Trigonia, Oolitic bivalve, figured, ..... 134
Trigonocarpon, supposed coniferous fruit, . . . 105

Trilobites, characteristic Silurian Crustacea, figured, . . 88

Trogontherium, gigantic fossil beaver of Europe, . . 160

Turrilites, characteristic chalk cephalopod, . . .147

Type and pattern, uniformity of, in life, . . . 1 82

Typical order of nature, ..... 31

Uniformity of natural law, . . . . .71

Varieties, their limit and continuance, .... 202
Vegetation, the existing zones of, .

Vegetation, effects of altitude on, . 29

Vegetation, existing provinces of, . . 30

Ventriculites, fossil chalk sponge, figured, . .144

Vertebrata, aspect and apparent functions of, . . 64

Vestiges of Creation, its materialistic views, . . .197

Vestiges of Creation, referred to, . . . . . 209

Vital hypotheses, how to receive, .... 208

Walchia, triassic coniferous stem, figured, . . . 125

Well ingtonias of California, limited range of, . . .173

Xiphodon, restored outline of form, . . . .156

Zoological arrangement, principles of, . . . 52

Zones of depth, as influencing marine life, . . 49

Zosterites, Devonian sea-weed, figured, .... 92

THE END.

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