104 ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION 



any of these altering in any way the progressive character of that suc- 

 cession of organized beings. Truly this shows that the important, the 

 leading feature of this whole drama is the development of life, and 

 that the material world affords only the elements for its realization. 

 The simultaneous disappearance of entire faunae and the following 

 simultaneous appearance of other faunas show further that, as all 

 these faunas consist of the greatest variety of types in all formations, 

 combined everywhere into natural associations of animals and plants 

 between which there have been definite relations at all times, their 

 origin can at no time be owing to the limited influence of monoto- 

 nous physical causes ever acting in the same way. Here again, the 

 intervention of a Creator is displayed in the most striking manner, 

 in every stage of the history of the world. 



SECTION XXIV 



PARALLELISM BETWEEN THE GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION OF ANIMALS 

 AND PLANTS AND THEIR PRESENT RELATIVE STANDING 



The total absence of the highest representatives of the animal 

 kingdom in the oldest deposits forming part of the crust of our globe 

 has naturally led to the very general belief that the animals which 

 have existed during the earliest period of the history of our earth 

 were inferior to those now living, nay, that there is a natural grada- 

 tion from the oldest and lowest animals to the highest now in exist- 

 ence. To some extent this is true; but it is certainly not true that all 

 animals form one simple series from the earliest times, during which 

 only the lowest types of animals would have been represented, to the 

 last period, when Man appeared at the head of the animal creation. ^^"^ 

 It has already been shown (Sect, vii.) that representatives of all the 

 great types of the animal kingdom have existed from the beginning 

 of the creation of organized beings. It is therefore not in the succes- 

 sive appearance of the great branches of the animal kingdom that we 

 may expect to trace a parallelism between their succession in geo- 

 logical times and their relative standing at present. Nor can any such 

 correspondence be observed between the appearance of classes, at 



^ Agassiz, Twelve Lectures on Embryology, pp. 68, 128. 



