PALEONTOLOGY 3 



fertilized by refreshing showers, and washed by tidal waves ; 

 that the ocean not only moved in orderly oscillations regu- 

 lated, as now, by sun and moon, but was rippled and agitated 

 by winds and storms; that the atmosphere, besides these 

 movements, was healthily influenced by clouds and vapours, 

 rising, condensing, and falling in ceaseless circulation. With 

 these conditions of life, palaeontology demonstrates that life 

 has been enjoyed during the same countless thousands of 

 years ; and that with life, from the beginning, there has been 

 death. The earliest testimony of the living thing, whether 

 coral, crust, or shell, in the oldest fossiliferous rock, is at the 

 same time proof that it died. At no period does it appear 

 that the gift of life has been monopolized by contemporary 

 individuals through a stagnant sameness of untold time, but 

 it has been handed down from generation to generation, and 

 successively enjoyed by the countless thousands that consti- 

 tute the species. Palaeontology further teaches, that not only 

 the individual, but the species perishes ; that as death is 

 balanced by generation, so extinction has been concomitant 

 with the creative power which has continued to provide a 

 succession of species; and furthermore, that, as regards the 

 various forms of life which this planet has supported, there 

 has been "an advance and progress in the main." Thus \\<- 

 learn, that the creative force has not deserted the earth during 

 any of the epochs of geological time that have succeeded to 

 the first manifestation of such force ; and that, in respect to 

 no one class of animals, has the operation of creative force 

 been limited to one geological epoch ; and perhaps the most 

 important and significant result of palseontologieal research 

 has been the establishment of the axiom of the continuous 

 operation of the ordained oeeoming of living things. 



Thr presenl survey of the evidences of organic beings 

 in the earth's crust commences with the lowest or mosl 



