32 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
become possible by means of these two most ancient in- 
scriptions to reconstruct the history of ancient Egypt, and 
to decipher all hieroglyphic writings,so in many cases a few 
bones of an animal, or imperfect impressions of a lower 
animal or vegetable form, are sufficient for us to gain the 
most important starting-points in the history of the whole 
group, and in the search after their pedigree. A couple of 
small back teeth, which have been found in the Keuper 
formation of the Trias, have of themselves alone furnished 
a sure proof that mammals existed even in the Triassic 
period. 
Of the incompleteness of the geological accounts of 
creation, Darwin, agreeing with Lyell, the greatest of all 
recent geologists, says :— 
“T look at the geological record as a history of the world 
imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect; of this 
history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to 
two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there 
a short chapter has been preserved ; and of each page, only 
here and there a few lines. Each word of the slowly- 
changing language, more or less different in the successive 
chapters, may represent the forms of life which are en- 
tombed in our consecutive formations, and which falsely 
appear to us to have been abruptly introduced. On this — 
view, the difficulties above discussed are greatly diminished, 
or even disappear.”— Origin of Species, 6th Edition, p. 289. 
If we bear in mind the exceeding incompleteness of 
paleontological records, we shall not be surprised that we 
are still dependent upon so many uncertain hypotheses when 
actually endeavouring to sketch the pedigree of the different 
organic groups. However, we fortunately possess, besides 
