30 MAMMALIAN DESCENT. [Lect. II. 



risen altogether far above the level or platform of their 

 ancestors. 



With regard to the Prototheria (or first beasts) I 

 am of opinion, that if the silent rocks of the Carboni- 

 ferous epoch — the huge masses of Mountain Limestone 

 — could speak, they would tell us of an abundance of 

 teatless mammals (such as are now seen in the Ornitho- 

 rliynchus) both on the dry land, and in the brooks 

 and streams of water that then drained the land. 



It is the business of the palaeontologist to dig and 

 bore the solid earth, and from thence extract a register 

 from which he will proljably learn that Duckbills and 

 Echidnas swarmed in the ages of the Calamites and 

 Lepidodendron. 



But there is a poetical use of the w^ords " lower parts 

 of the earth," as well as a literal ; in these living strata 

 (in stage below stage of types in their pre-natal life), 

 hidden from the sun, it is my work to dig. 



Tliese things are an allegory, and yet they are true ; 

 between the embryologist and the palaeontologist there is 

 a mavellous harmony — they have one heart and one way 

 — cor unum, via una. If my valued fellow-labourer, 

 with his huge ungainly instruments, the hammer and 

 the pick-axe, is slow in bringing up his facts, I shall not 

 wait for him, but, with my small needle and shears, I 

 shall go on laying bare and sj)reading out the strata of 

 the organism — a real microcosm, a world in a nutshell. 



Many years ago the common Mole yielded me results 



