CONCLUSION. 



AND now my task is finished. I have endeavoured, in 

 tracing the long line of Past Life, to assimilate its extinct 

 forms to those now existing, that we may be enabled to 

 catch a glimpse, however faint, of the unity and connection 

 that run throughout the whole. Impossible as it was, 

 within the limits of this Sketch, to enter into minute de- 

 tails, I have restricted myself to such an outline as might, 

 with a little previous information, be intelligible to the 

 majority of general readers, or which, in the want of that 

 information, might be readily filled up by the perusal of 

 any of the ordinary works on Geology. To those who may 

 sneer at " smatterings of science," or grow facetious on the 

 "dangers of a little learning" (and these are generally the 

 mere technical tradesmen of some narrow department), I 

 have only to answer, that a beginning must be made some- 

 where that the little learning of to-day may form a foun- 

 dation for the larger stock of the to-morrow and that the 

 mind is more likely to be stimulated to further inquiry by 

 the generalisations of a vivid outline than by an array of 

 details, the very nomenclature of which is often a puzzle 

 and perplexity. 



Whatever the amount of information conveyed, one of 

 the main objects has been to keep prominently in view the 

 operation of natural law, and to discourage the common 



