196 



DISCOVERY 



CH. 



organisms existing in our own times and those repre- 

 sented by fossils ; and that in the course of ages simple 

 forms of life had been modified or developed into more 

 complicated or more perfect forms, until the highest 

 animals, and even man, were produced. On this view, 

 man is heir of all the ages, and in the course of his life 

 he climbs up his own genealogical tree from the condition 

 of simple cell to that of lord of creation. Geoffroy 

 St. Hilaire expressed this important relationship in the 

 words : " The embryological development of a living 

 creature is a summary of the phases of the palaeonto- 

 logical development of its species." 



We have in this statement a clear recognition of the 

 evolution of animal forms in geological times as opposed 

 to that view that the various groups of fossils repre- 

 sented new creations at different epochs. By the study 

 of living forms Darwin showed that variation provided 

 a key though not the only key to the workshop of 

 organic Nature. He was not able to make much use of 

 the record of the rocks in marshalling the arguments for 

 evolution, but the gap was filled by 'the work of Huxley 

 in England, Albert Gaudry in France, E. D. Cope in 

 America, E. H. Haeckel in Germany, and other natura- 

 lists, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. 



We happen to live in a world at a certain epoch, and 

 are apt to think this epoch the most important. Of 

 course, it is so for us individually, yet when the whole 

 history of the world is considered, the three score years 

 and ten of man are but an episode. Life upon the earth 

 has been continuous from the amorphous protoplasm 

 of the primeval shore to man in his most perfect form. 

 The animals of the past were the progenitors of those 

 of the present, and there must have been links connecting 

 the fossil and living forms. Palaeontologists have sought 



