50 THE PAST CONDITION 



the Eehinodermata / out of all the orders of the Coden- 

 terata and Protozoa only one, the Rugose Corals. 



So that, you see, out of somewhere about 120 orders 

 of animals, taking them altogether, you will not, at the 

 outside estimate, find above ten or a dozen extinct. 

 Summing up all the order of animals which have left 

 remains behind them, you will not find above ten or 

 a dozen which cannot be arranged with those of the 

 present day ; that is to say, that the difference does 

 not amount to much more than ten per cent. ; and the 

 proportion of extinct orders of plants is still smaller. 

 I think that that is a very astounding, a most astonish- 

 ing fact, seeing the enormous epochs of time which 

 have elapsed during the constitution of the surface of 

 the earth as it at present exists ; it is, indeed, a most 

 astounding thing that the proportion of extinct ordinal 

 types should be so exceedingly small. 



But now, there is another point of view in which 

 we must look at this past creation. Suppose that we 

 were to sink a vertical pit through the floor beneath 

 us, and that I could succeed in making a section right 

 through in the direction of New Zealand, I should find 

 in each of the different beds through which I passed 

 the remains of animals which I should find in that 

 stratum and not in the others. First, I should come 

 upon beds of gravel or drift containing the bones of 

 large animals, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, and 

 cave tteer. Rather curious things to fall across in 

 Piccadilly ! If I should dig lower still, I should come 

 upon a bed of what we call the London clay, and in 

 this, as you will see in our galleries up-stairs, are found 

 remains of strange cattle, remains of turtles, palms, and 

 large tropical fruits ; with shell-fish such as you see the 



