66 EXPLANATIONS. 



predict that affinities of an equally startling 

 nature will yet be made familiar to naturalists. 

 Meanwhile, it is enough to show that this con- 

 fident critic has raised an accusation for which 

 he has not a shadow of ground. 



Taking up the special fossils of the Permian 

 system, he says, " The earliest reptDes are not of 

 such a structure as to link themselves, on a natural 

 scale, to the noble sauroids of the preceding car- 

 boniferous epoch." They are not the marine 

 saurians, or fish lizards (ichthyosauri) which occur 

 in a higher formation, but lacertilians, or animals 

 of lizard-like character. Now what first strikes 

 me here is the extraordinary nari'owness of a mind 

 which sees nothing indicative of natural procedure, 

 no hint towards great generalizations, in the 

 simple fact of reptiles following upon fish in this 

 grand march of life through the morning time of 

 the world. He knows that, in every classification of 

 the animal kingdom, reptiles rank next above fish, 

 that in some living families there is such a con- 

 vention and intermixture of both characters, that 

 naturalists cannot agree to which class they should 

 be assigned. He actually sees, in a general view 

 of the earlier reptiliferous formations, animals 



