XXXIV. HUGH MILLER. 



Mr Leonard Homer are of opinion that such rocks may yet 

 be discovered j while Sir Roderick Murchison, and Professor 

 Sedgwick, and Mr Miller, are of an opposite opinion. But 

 even were such rocks discovered to-morrow, it would not 

 follow that their organisms gave the least support to the de- 

 velopment hypothesis. In the year 1837, when fishes were 

 not discovered in the Upper Silurian rocks, the theorist would 

 have rightly predicted the existence of lower fossiliferous 

 beds ; but when they are discovered, and their fossils exa- 

 mined, they furnish the strongest argument that could be 

 desired against the theory they were expected to sustain. 

 This fact, no doubt, is so far in favour of the supposition that 

 there may be still lower fossil-bearing strata; but, as Mr 

 Miller observes, " The pyramid of organized existence, as it 

 ascends into the bypast eternity, inclines sensibly towards 

 its apex, — that apex of ^ beginning^ in which, on far other 

 than geological grounds, it is our privilege to believe. The 

 broad base of the superstructure planted on the existing scene 

 stretches across the entire scale of life, animal and vegetable ; 

 but it contracts as it rises into the past : man, — the quadru- 

 mana, — the quadrupedal mammal, — the bird, — and the rep- 

 tile, — are each in succession struck from off its breadth, till wo 

 at length see it with the vertebrata, represented by only the fish, 

 narrowing, as it were, to a point ; and though the clouds of 

 the upper region may hide its apex, we infer, from the decli- 

 nation of its sides, that it cannot penetrate much farther into 

 the profound." 



In our author's next chapter, — the twelfth of the series, — 

 he proceeds to examine the " Lamarckian hypothesis of the 

 origin of plants, and its consequences." 



In his thirteenth chapter, on "The Two Floras, Marine 

 and Terrestrial," he has shown that all our experience is op- 

 posed to the opinion that the one has been transmuted into 

 the other. If the marine had been converted into terrestrial 



