164 WHAT MAY BE LEARNED FROM EOZOON 



So I had to give way. I have done my best to avoid extinc- 

 tion ; but it is clear that I must at length be overcome, and 

 must either disappear or subside into a humbler condition, and 

 that other creatures better provided for the new conditions of 

 the world must take my place." In such terms we may suppose 

 that this patriarch of the seas might tell his history, and mourn 

 his destiny, though he might also congratulate himself on hav- 

 ing in an honest way done his duty and fulfilled his function in 

 the world, leaving it to other and perhaps wiser creatures to 

 dispute as to his origin and fate, while perhaps much less 

 perfectly fulfilling the ends of their own existence. 



Thus our dawn animal has positively no story to tell as to 

 its own introduction or its transmutation into other forms of 

 existence. It leaves the mystery of creation where it was, but 

 in connection with the subsequent history of life we can learn 

 from it a little as to the laws which have governed the succes- 

 sion of animals in geological time. First, we may learn that 

 the plan of creation has been progressive, that there has been 

 an advance from the few low and generalized types of the 

 primaeval ocean to the more numerous, higher, and more 

 specialized types of more recent times. Secondly, we learn that 

 the lower types, when first introduced, and before they were 

 subordinated to higher forms of life, existed in some of their 

 grandest modifications as to form and complexity, and that 

 in succeeding ages, when higher types were replacing them, 

 they were subjected to decay and degeneracy. Thirdly, we 

 learn that while the species has a limited term of existence in 

 geological time, any large type of animal existence, like that of 

 the Foraminifera or Sponges, for example, once introduced, 

 continues and finds throughout all the vicissitudes of the earth 

 some appropriate residence. Fourthly, as to the mode of in- 

 troduction of new types, or whether such creatures as Eozoon 

 had any direct connection with the subsequent introduction 

 of Mollusks, Worms, or Crustaceans, it is altogether silent, nor 



