246 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



duced, and it has also induced many authorities to affirm in the most 

 positive manner that the organized beings of two epochs have been 

 totally distinct. As an instance of this common phraseology we may 

 cite a recent declaration that in Australia, as in Europe, " the 

 greater part of the country sank under the sea during the Tertiary 

 period, and every trace of the previous creations of plants and animals 

 were destroyed, and replaced by a totally different set." l This 

 violence of expression may be justified ; but let us call to mind Sir 

 C. Lyell's remarks in 185 1, 2 in reference to the dredging operations 

 of Messrs. Forbes and MacAndrew between the Isle of Portland 

 and the Land's End. During one hundred and forty dredgings, at 

 various distances from the shore, they obtained a large quantity of 

 marine invertebrates, but very few traces of vertebrate life ; none of 

 them referable to terrestrial animals. " If," says Sir Charles, 

 " reliance could be placed on negative evidence, we might deduce 

 from such facts that no cetacea existed in the sea, and no reptiles, 

 birds, or quadrupeds on the neighboring land." 



In comparing the fauna and flora of the two periods, or of two 

 contemporaneous countries, the amount of agreement or difference 

 which an observer will trace must depend very much upon the 

 method he employs. If he is a profound believer in certain systems 

 of classification, he may affirm objects to be totally distinct, or new 

 creations, and so forth, while they are closely allied ; and if we con- 

 sider the pernicious influence of spasmodic theories in blinding the 

 mind even to obvious facts, it is consoling to find so great an authority 

 as Prof. Huxley confirming opinions which are in conformity with 

 the most probable deductions from general science. He tells us that 

 if we leave negative differences out of consideration, and regard the 

 fossil world in the broad spirit suggested by comparative anatomy, 

 we shall be struck with " the srnallness of the total change." Out of 

 " two hundred known orders of plants, not one is certainly known to 

 exist exclusively in a fossil state. The whole lapse of geological time 

 has as yet not yielded a single new ordinal type of vegetable struc- 

 ture." In the animal world the change has been greater ; but still 

 " no fossil animal is so distinct from those now living as to require to 

 be arranged even in a separate class from those which contain exist- 

 ing -forms. It is only when we come to the orders, which may be 

 roughly estimated at about a hundred and thirty, that we meet with 

 fossil animals so distinct from those now living as to require orders 

 for themselves ; and these do not amount, on the most liberal esti- 

 mate, to more than about ten per cent, of the whole." 



Our limited space prevents further extracts from Prof. Huxley's 

 paper, but the notice above given will show the nature of the views 

 taken by him, and call attention to their importance. 



RELATIONS OF DEATH TO LIFE IN NATURE. 



All life is a system of progressive change in cycles, the germ 

 first, then the embryo, the young, the adult, and, last, the seed or 

 germ again, to continue the rounds ; the adult sooner or later disap- 



1 Annals of Natural History, Feb., 1862, p. 144. 



2 Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, May, 1851, p. 53. 



