TRANSMUTABLE. 185 



near their base great deposits with none but the 

 lowest forms of organic life. I know of no such 

 deposits. Owen contends that life began with 

 the infusorial forms. They are at any rate well 

 fitted for fossil preparation ; but we do not find 

 them. Neither do we find beds exclusively of 

 hard corals and other humble organisms, which 

 ought, on the theory, to mark a period of vast 

 duration while the primaeval monads were working 

 up into the higher types of life. Our evidence 

 is, no doubt, very scanty ; but let not pur op- 

 ponents dare to say that it makes for them. So 

 far as it is positive, it seems to me point-blank 

 against them. As we ascend in the great stages 

 of the paleozoic series, (through Cambrian, silu- 

 riari, Devonian, and carboniferous rocks,) we have 

 in each a characteristic fauna; we have no wa- 

 vering of species we have the noblest cephalopods 

 and brachiopods that ever existed ; and they pre- 

 serve their typical forms till they disappear. 

 And a few of the types have endured, with 

 specific modifications, through all succeeding ages 

 of the earth. It is during these old periods that 

 we have some of the noblest icthic forms that 

 ever were created. The same may be said, I 

 think, of the carboniferous flora. As a whole, 

 indeed, it is lower than the living flora of our 

 own period ; but many of the old types were 

 grander, and of higher organization than the cor- 

 responding families of the living flora; and there 

 is no wavering, no wanting of organic definition, 

 in the old type.. We have some land reptiles 



