120 THE MIDDLE PAST. 



comb, chain-pore, spider-web, and other corals of the De- 

 vonian and mountain limestones of the huge reptile-like 

 fishes that swarmed in carboniferous waters ; and are intro- 

 duced to other species and newer forms of vitality. The 

 vegetation that adorns the lands of the mesozoic period 

 bears a closer resemblance and affinity to the tree-ferns, 

 cycads, zamias, palms, and subtropical pines of the present 

 day ; and the botanist feels he can now institute compari- 

 sons with some prospect of success, and attempt restorations 

 with greater confidence and certainty. So also in the ani- 

 mal world the approximations are becoming closer and 

 closer ; the divergence from existing families is less percep- 

 tible even to the unscientific observer ; and the zoologist 

 now meets with all the great divisions of vertebrate life 

 fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals. A vast progress has 

 been made in the great onward evolution of vitality 

 whole families of lower life have died out, and higher ones 

 have taken their places and orders only beginning to come 

 into existence in the primeval world are now approaching 

 their culmination, or point of greatest numbers, variety, 

 and development. 



Besides these gradational advances from lower to higher 

 forms, which are common to every geological epoch, there 

 are also some curious external characteristics which must 

 arrest the notice even of the least scientific and the least 

 geological of observers. So noticeable are these features, 

 that if the fossils of the palaeozoic cycle were arranged on 

 one side of a museum, and those of the neozoic on another, 

 the difference would strike the casual observer as strongly 

 as would the difference between the brute-man sculptures 

 of the* ^ r inevites and Egyptians on the one hand, and the 

 man-god sculptures of the Greeks and Eomans on the other. 

 It is like passing from the Assyrian and Egyptian chambers 

 of the British Museum to those devoted to the Greeks and 



