40 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
generic connection, which, as it were, marry together dissimilar 
races; but it furnishes no genealogical link to show that the 
existences of one race derive their lineage from the exist- 
ences of another. The scene shifts, as we pass from forma- 
tion to formation; we are introduced in each toa new dra- 
matis persone; and there exist no such proofs of their being 
at once different and yet the same, as those produced in the 
Winter z Tale, to show that the grown shepherdess of the one 
scene is identical with the exposed infant of the scene that 
went before. Nay, the reverse is well nigh as strikingly the 
case, as if the grown shepherdess had been introduced into 
the earlier scenes of the drama, and the child into its con- 
cluding scenes. 
The argument is a very simple one. Of all the vertebra- 
ta, fishes rank lowest, and in geological history appear first. 
We find their remains in the Upper and Lower Silurians, in 
the Lower, Middle, and Upper Old Red Sandstone, in the 
Mountain Limestone, and in the Coal Measures; and in the 
latter formation the first reptiles appear.* Fishes seem to 
have been the master existences of two great systems, may- 
hap of three, ere the age of reptiles began. Now fishes dif- 
fer very much among themselves: some rank nearly as low 
as worms, some nearly as high as reptiles; and if fish could 
have risen into reptiles, and reptiles into mammalia, we would 
necessarily expect to find lower orders of fish passing into 
higher, and taking precedence of the higher in their appear- 
ance in point of time, just as in the Winter’s Tale we see 
the infant preceding the adult. If such be not the case —if 
fish made their first appearance, not in their least perfect, but 
in their most perfect state — not in their nearest approxima- 
tion to the worm, but in their nearest approximation to the rep- 
tile — there is no room for progression, and the argument 
* See Note B. 
