io8 EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH 



organisms, in their bionomic relations, and in the kaleidoscopic 

 panorama which geological history presents of their evolution. 

 In the closing words of Darwin's Origin of Species: 

 "It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with 

 many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, 

 with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling 

 through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately 

 constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent 

 upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been pro- 

 duced by laws acting around us. ... There is grandeur in 

 this view of life with its several powers, having been originally 

 breathed by the Creator 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." 



