CHAPTER XVIII 



PAST HISTORY 



1. The two records 2. Imperfection of the geological record 

 3. False ontological series 4. Extinction of types 5. Relative 

 antiquity of animals 6. Great steps in evolution 7. The 

 ascent of man. 



1. The Two Records. Reviewing the development of 

 the chick, W. K. Parker said, ' Whilst at work I seemed 

 to myself to have been endeavouring to decipher a 

 palimpsest, and that not erased and written upon just 

 once, but five or six times over. Having erased, as it 

 were, the characters of the culminating type those of 

 the gaudy Indian bird I' seemed to be amongst the 

 sombre grouse, and then, towards incubation, the char- 

 acters of the Sand- Grouse and Hemipod stood out before 

 me. Rubbing these away, in my downward walk, the 

 form of the Tinamou looked me in the face ; then the 

 aberrant Ostrich seemed to be described in large archaic 

 characters ; a little while and these faded into what 

 could just be read off as pertaining to the Sea Turtle ; 

 whilst, underlying the whole, the Fish in its simplest 

 Myxinoid form could be traced in morphological hiero- 

 glyphics." 



There is another palimpsest the geological record 

 written in the rocks. For beneath the forms which dis- 

 appeared, as it were, yesterday the Dodo and the 

 Solitaire, the Moa and the Mammoth, the Cave Lion and 

 the Irish Elk there arc mammals and birds of old- 

 fashioned type the like of which no longer live. Beneath 

 these lie the giant reptiles, beneath these great amphi- 

 bians, preceded by hosts of armoured fishes, beyond the 



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