234 WALKS AND TALKS. 



the Cambrian fauna did not originate by descent from any 

 older fauna. But you will easily infer that I take another 

 view of the facts. 



Let us glance over these populations. There are first in 

 order and highest of all, the Trilobites, which I have already 

 described. With them, in the very dawn of this ^Eon were 

 Brachiopods few and feeble, but in Lingula as strong and 

 numerous as in any later age. Here grew also, calcareous 

 sponges not corals, but forerunners of corals not plants, 

 though rooted and fixed poor, humble creatures pinned help- 

 lessly to the sea-mud, appointed to an age when the work of 

 nature was still crude and unfinished, yet sensitive, capable, 

 undoubtedly, of suffering, and capable of enjoying life. Death, 

 certainly, was there, and pain. The Trilobite, in the very 

 attitude in which existence ended, reveals conscious suffering 

 and apprehension. We often find their forms closely rolled 

 together, as if shrinking from the felt approach of death. The 

 little trilobite^ in his final repose, proclaims suffering and death 

 in the world before "sin entered." 



Glancing down to the next epoch, we find other creatures. 

 Ah, this glance overleaps a million years or more. It is an 

 easy step for thought, but who can realize the slow rolling 

 years, the insensibly changing conditions through which nature 

 was fitted for the slight step in progress which the next epoch 

 reveals ? Here are trilobites still, and brachiopods and sponges; 

 and here are those huge orthoceratites of which I spoke ani- 

 mated sticks and logs suspended in the water long and slimy 

 tentacles projecting at the open end ; fierce, huge eyes look- 

 ing out for some other creature on which to feed; strong, 

 lance-shaped teeth with which to seize and tear him. From 

 this grim presence all other creatures fled away save those, 

 alas, which nature fixed in the soil and doomed to serve as 

 food for these monster molluscs. Here were meadows of 

 crinoidal forms which have already been described. Raising 

 their sculptured urns on gently waving stems, they spread 

 their jointed arms and fingers in search of their own aliment, 

 and were nipped for supper by some ravaging Orthoceras. 



