189(3.] -Lv* I^Ba cy. 



the reeking Carboniferous time, and could have known of the refrigera- 

 tion which the earth was to undergo, he would have exclaimed that all 

 living things must utterly perish. Consider the effects of a frost in May. 

 See its widespread devastation. Yet, six months hence the very same 

 trees which are now so blackened, will defy any degree of cold. And 

 then, to make good the loss of time, these plants start into activity rela- 

 tively much earlier in spring than the same species do in frostless climates. 

 This very day, when frosts are not yet passed, our own New York hill- 

 sides are greener with surface vegetation than the lands of the Gulf 

 States are, which have been frostless for two months and more. The 

 frogs and turtles, the insects, the bears and foxes, all adjust themselves 

 to a climate which seems to be absolutely prohibitive of life, and some 

 animals may actually freeze during their hibernation, and yet these April 

 days see them again in heyday of life and spirits ! What a wonderful 

 transformation is all this ! This enforced period of quiescence is so im- 

 pressed upon the organization that the habit becomes hereditary in plants, 

 and the gardener says that his begonias and geraniums and callas must 

 have a "rest," or they will not thrive. But in time he can so far break 

 this habit in most plants as to force them into activity for the entire year. 

 These budding days of April, therefore, are the songs of release from 

 the bondage of winter which has come on as the earth has grown aged 

 and cold. 



I must bring still one more illustration of the survival of the unlike, 

 out of the abundance of examples which might be cited. It is the fact 

 that, as a rule, new types are variable and old types are inflexible. The 

 student of fossil plants will recall the fact that the liriodendrons, gink- 

 gos, sequoias, sassafrasses and other types came into existence with 

 many species and are now going out of existence with one or two species. 

 Williams has considered this feature, for extinct animal forms, at some 

 length in his new Geological Biology. "Many species," he writes, 

 "which by their abundance and good preservation in fossil state give 

 us sufficient evidence in the case, exhibit greater plasticity in their char- 

 acters at the early stage than in later stages of their history. A minute 

 tracing of lines of succession of species shows greater plasticity at the 

 beginning of the series than later, and this is expressed, in the systematic 

 description and tabulation of the facts, by an increase in the number of 

 the species." "When species are studied historically, the law appears 

 evident that the characters of specific value .... present a greater 

 degree of range of variability at an early stage in the life-period of 

 the genus than in the later stages of that period." So marked is this 

 incoming of new types in many cases that some students have supposed 

 that actual special creation of species has occurred at these epochs. It 

 should be said that there is apt to be a fallacy in observation in these 

 instances, because the records which are, to our vision, simultaneous in the 

 rocks may have extended over ages of time ; but it is nevertheless true 

 that some important groups seem to have come in somewhat quickly with 



