THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE. 137 



dying out, a constant succession, giving you the same 

 kind of impression, as you travel from one group of 

 strata to another, as you would have in travelling from 

 one country to another ; — when you find this constant 

 succession of forms, their traces obliterated except to 

 the man of science, — when you look at this wonderful 

 history, and ask what it means, it is only a paltering 

 with words if you are offered the reply, — " They were 

 so created." 



But if, on the other hand, you look on all forms of 

 organized beings as the results of the gradual modifi- 

 cation of a primitive type, the facts receive a meaning, 

 and you see that these older conditions are the necessary 

 predecessors of the present. Yiewed in this light the 

 facts of palaeontology receive a meaning — upon any 

 other hypothesis, I am unable to see, in the slightest 

 degree, what knowledge or signification we are to draw 

 out of them. Again, note as bearing upon the same 

 point, the singular likeness which obtains between the 

 successive Faunae and Florae, whose remains are pre- 

 served on the rocks : you never find any great and 

 enormous difference between the immediately successive 

 Faunae and Florae, unless you have reason to believe 

 there has also been a great lapse of time or a great 

 change of conditions. The animals, for instance, of the 

 newest tertiary rocks, in any part of the world, are 

 always, and without exception, found to be closely allied 

 with those which now live in that part of the world. 

 For example, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, the large 

 mammals are at present rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, 

 elephants, lions, tigers, oxen, horses, &c. ; and if you 

 examine the newest tertiary deposits, which contain the 

 animals and plants which immediately preceded those 



