EDITOR'S TABLE. 



557 



wonderfully this world which we 

 find so beautiful has become adapted 

 to us and we to it. We are too much 

 accustomed to take the world as it 

 actually exists for granted as some- 

 thing that always has been and that 

 always will be. We are apt to for- 

 get that the whole human period is 

 but as a narrow fringe upon the vast 

 space of geologic time, and that the 

 world before the advent of man was 

 a very different world from that in 

 which we live. We talk of the ever- 

 lasting hills and of the primeval for- 

 est, but to the geologist the hills are 

 not everlasting and the forest is but 

 a creation of yesterday. The poet 

 Tennyson has caught the true geo- 

 logical standijoint in the following 

 fine verses of In Memoriam : 



There rolls the deep where grew the tree. 



Earth, what changes thou hast seen ! 



There, where the long street roars, hath heen 

 The stillness of the central sea. 



The hills are shadows, and they flow 

 From form to form, and nothing stands ; 

 They melt like mist, the solid lands, 



Like clouds they shape themselves and go. 



The earth, which we find to-day 

 bright with varied hues, vocal with 

 innumerable sounds, rich in fruits 

 and fi'agrant with odors, lay for an 

 almost incalculable period of time 

 destitute, or all but destitute, of color, 

 soundless save for the noise of wave 

 and tempest, and with no promise as 

 yet of the rich profusion of vegeta- 

 ble and animal forms that now di- 

 versify its surface and fill it with the 

 thrill and manifold activities of life. 

 We often speak of man as " the heir 

 of all the ages," but not often, prob- 

 ably, do we pause to realize the sig- 

 nificance of the word. We talk of 

 evolution, but seldom make any due 

 effort to grasp the plenitude and 

 grandeur of the thought. These 

 senses of which we have the use, and 

 each of which brings a different world 

 within our ken, whence are they ? 

 It seems so natural to see; it seems 



so natural to hear, to touch, to smell, 

 to taste, that we forget through what 

 slow processes, by what an incalcu- 

 lable number of slight accretions 

 and delicate modifications these won- 

 derful channels of knowledge and 

 sensation have been made for us. 

 We go back through the ages and 

 we come to a sightless, voiceless 

 world. For a period probably as 

 long as all the rest of geological 

 time the only forms of life were pro- 

 tozoa. Sight was developed among 

 the wonderful crustaceans of the Si- 

 lurian period, but as yet there were 

 no organs of hearing. The first 

 stridulation of an insect wing was 

 heard (if it was heard) in the Devo- 

 nian age, the birth epoch of the first 

 vertebrates, fishes ; but long ages had 

 to pass before the first bee hummed 

 over a fiower or the first butterfly 

 fluttered its wings in the sunshine. 

 There were no flowers in the Devo- 

 nian age nor yet in the ensuing Car- 

 boniferous, though in both there was 

 a mighty vegetation. 



The earliest birds belong to the 

 Cretaceous period the classic age of 

 reptiles. They were not songsters, 

 however far from it ; nor were they 

 beautiful to look upon, for they had 

 strong points of affinity with the 

 reptile tribe from which there is rea- 

 son to believe they were developed. 

 It was not till well into the Tertiary 

 period that birds as we know them 

 began to trill and twitter in the 

 woods. It was in the same period 

 that the mammals began to take 

 masterful possession of the earth. 

 The earliest mammalian forms were 

 not the perfect organisms as regards 

 form or activity with which the 

 modern world is familiar, and many 

 of them had but a comparatively 

 short existence. In the Tertiary pe- 

 riod, however, there was a vast out- 

 break of insect, bird, and mammalian 

 life, and now began in earnest the 

 struggle for existence that struggle 



