238 GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ANIMALS. 



of the earth. This progress consists in an increasing simi- 

 larity to the living fauna, and among the Vertebrates, espe- 

 cially, in their increasing resemblance to Man. 



501. But this connection is not the consequence of a 

 direct lineage between the faunas of different ages. There 

 is nothing like parental descent connecting them. The 

 Fishes of the Palaeozoic age are in no respect the ancestors 

 of the Reptiles of the Secondary age, nor does Man descend 

 from the Mammals which preceded him in the Tertiary 

 age. The link by which they are connected is of a higher 

 and immaterial nature ; and their connection is to be sought 

 in the view of the Creator himself, whose aim, in forming 

 the earth, in allowing it to undergo the successive changes 

 which Geology has pointed out, and in creating successively 

 all the different types of animals which have passed away, 

 was to introduce Man upon the surface of our globe. 

 Man is the end towards which all the animal creation 

 has tended, from the first appearance of the first Palaeozoic 

 Fishes. 



502. In the beginning His plan was formed, and from it 

 He has never swerved in any particular. The same Being 

 who, in view of man's moral wants, provided and declared, 

 thousands of years in advance, that " the seed of the woman 

 shall bruise the serpent's head," laid up also for him in the 

 bowels of the earth those vast stores of granite, marble, coal, 

 salt, and the various metals, the products of its several revo- 

 lutions ; and thus was an inexhaustible provision made for 

 his necessities, and for the development of his genius, ages 

 in anticipation of his appearance. 



503. To study, in this view, the succession of animals in 

 time, and their distribution in space, is, therefore, to become 

 acquainted with the ideas of God himself. Now, if the suc- 

 cession of created beings on the surface of the globe is the 

 realization of an infinitely wise plan, it follows that there 



