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XI PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 459 
only record we have of a most prodigious lapse of 
time, that time being, in all probability, but a 
| fraction of that of which we have no record ;—if 
you observe in these successive strata of rocks 
successive groups of animals arising and dying 
out, a constant succession, giving you the same 
kind of impression, as you travel from one group 
of strata to another, as you would have in travel- 
ling from one country to another ;—when you 
find this constant succession of forms, their 
traces obliterated except to the man of science 
—when you look at this wonderful history, and 
ask what it means, it is only a paltering with 
words if you are offered the reply—“ They were 
so created.” 
But if, on the other hand, you look on all 
forms of organised beings as the results of the 
gradual modification of a primitive type, the facts 
receive a meaning, and you see that these older 
conditions are the necessary predecessors of the 
present. Viewed in this light the facts of pale- 
ontology receive a meaning—upon any other 
hypothesis I am unable to see, in the slightest 
degree, what knowledge or signification we are 
to draw out of them. Again, note as bearing 
upon the same point, the singular likeness which 
obtains between the successive Faune and Flore, 
whose remains are preserved on the rocks: you 
never find any great and enormous difference 
between the immediately successive Faun and 
