59 



to be met with in the fossils of the Baltic and 

 Sicily, it would be an extremely rash judgment 

 to conclude that such ancestors never existed. 

 The conclusion which can be drawn from the 

 absence of such forms in the amber fossils of 

 of Sicily and the Baltic is that no such fossils 

 are to be found in the Baltic and Sicilian ter 

 tiary amber, but nothing more. It would be 

 even rash to conclude that they never existed 

 there ; for we have no evidence to show that 

 remains of all fossils even in that environment 

 have been preserved. And this brings us to 

 the second assumption, viz., that all living forms 

 that have ever existed upon the earth have left 

 behind them fossil remains. No one who gives 

 the subject a thought for a moment will enter 

 tain so wild a notion. We know that fossil- 

 ization is now the exception, and it is fairly 

 certain that it has been the exception in all past 

 time. A concurrence of the conditions which 

 preserve for us in fossil state the forms of life 

 which at one time or other inhabited our globe 

 is not frequent and certainly is not constant. 

 In all probability the proportion of organisms 

 in relation to the whole animal and vegetable 



