64 EXPLANATIONS. 



doubted as he himself acknowledges the prece- 

 dence of fish by invertebrata to be ; nor has any 

 one ever pretended to expect that land vegetation 

 would be found earlier than the marine. I have 

 here ventured no conjecture of my own, but only 

 spoken as all the geological books teach. " Of 

 land plants," he continues, " we have not the 

 shadow of proof that the simpler forms came into 

 being before the more complex." The reader has 

 just been told upon undoubted authority that, in 

 the first great show of land vegetation, taking such 

 positive evidence as we have, the simple forms are 

 vastly more numerous than the complex. Finding 

 that we have first ample marine vegetation, then a 

 land vegetation in which the plants, with only a 

 small exception, are cellular and cryptogamic, 

 while of the exception a very small number are 

 dicotyledonous, and a conspicuous group (the coni- 

 fers) intermediate — 1 feel that I am entitled to say 

 that positive evidence speaks for a precedence of 

 high by simple forms ; which is what I have done. 

 " It is true," thus proceeds the reviewer, " that we 

 see poly piaria, crinoidea, articulata, and moUusca ; 

 but it is not true that we meet with them in the 

 order stated by our author." It is humiliating to 



