PROOFS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AUTHORITIES, ETC. XXX111 



great naturalist: he says (see Proofs, Illustration^, $-c., No. 10), 

 "The lower condition of structure and development is manifested 

 in a more bulky body." As to the fine work which Mr. Miller shows 

 to have been expended on the dermal plates of the ancient ganoids, 

 the same course of illustration and argument would make out the 

 encrinites moniliformis a high animal, or place the butterfly above 

 the bird on account of its curiously-formed wing. 



Mr. Miller's sixth chapter is one which he must now review with 

 so much mortification, that, notwithstanding the taunting tone in 

 which it is written, a magnanimous adversary would speak of it with 

 tenderness. 



At the time when this work first appeared, one large fossilifeyous 

 series at the bottom of the scale, namely, the Lower Silurian, had 

 yielded no i - emains of fish, though it had been long and diligently 

 explored. This, though a negative fact, was one of some importance 

 to the development hypothesis, and was noticed accordingly. The 

 first resource of disingenuousness on the opposite side of the question 

 was to lump the Lower and Upper Silurians together, and tell the 

 ignorant public that vertebrated animals, the highest type of being, 

 were found in the very lowest formation. It never could have been 



(/ 



apprehended from anything said by these gentlemen, that the Lower 

 Silurians constituted a distinct formation, three thousand feet thick, 

 and representative of an immense stretch of time. It, therefore, 

 became necessary to speak more emphatically of the long invertebrate 

 era of the Lower Silurians. " It is still customary," we said, " to 

 speak of the earliest fauna as one of an elevated kind. When rigidly 

 examined, it is not found to be so. IN THE FIBST PLACE, IT COX- 

 TAINS NO FISH. There were seas supporting crustacean and niol- 

 luscan life, but utterly devoid of a class of tenants who seem able to 

 live in every example of that element which supports meaner 

 creatures. This single fact, that only invertebrate animals now 

 lived, is surely in itself a strong proof that, in the course of 

 nature, time was necessary for the creation of the superior crea- 

 tures." We thought proper to use some categorical language, to 

 prevent the adversary from any longer blinking or misrepresenting 

 this fact. 



Objectors, feeling that to lump the two formations would no 

 longer serve their purpose, were exceedingly anxious to discover 

 some remains of fish below the Upper Silurians, or even in the 

 senior portions of those Upper Silurians where as yet no such fossils 

 had been detected. A temporary gratification of their wishes was 

 in store for them. Ichthyic fossils from the Wenlock Limestone 

 Avere announced by Professor Sedgwick in 1845 ; he was sure of his 

 fact, for he had " seen" the fossils.* They were in such quantity, 

 that seven species were determined. Next, Sir Roderick Murchison 

 wrote to Mr. Miller in 1847 : " The Lower Silurian is no longer to 

 be viewed as an invertebrate period ; for the Oiichus (species not yet 



* Edinburgh Review, July, 1845. 

 Y 



