BY MRS MILLER. Ivil. 



known periods of time, the world swarmed with living crea- 

 tures." Again, " Why do we not find great piles of strata 

 beneath the Silurian system, stored with the remains of the 

 progenitors of the Silurian groupes of fossils ? For cer- 

 tainly, on my theory, such strata must somewhere have been 

 deposited at these ancient and utterly unknown epochs in the 

 world's history 1" 



"We cannot answer why, except by the simple assertion, 

 grounded on fact, that Nature reveals to us no such thing. 

 But if the imagination go thus far, it may be allowed to 

 go a little farther. "What kind of beings inhabited those 

 primeval strata 1 Were they perfectly developed after their 

 kind, or only rudimentary ] Were their organs of vision, 

 for example, adapted to their modes of life, like those of 

 the trilobite, — the ancient inhabitant of a really ancient 

 ocean ? or had they but the very beginnings of eyes, striving 

 after a structural adaptation 1 If the first were the case, 

 where is the use of that laboured hypothesis which requires 

 us to believe that not only living creatures as they exist, but 

 all their organs, are the result of a process of transmutation, 

 which gradually brings them nearer to perfection. ' "" He 

 who will go thus far," says Mr Darwin, " ought not to hesi- 

 tate to go farther, and to admit that a structure even as per- 

 fect as the eye of an eagle might be formed by natural se- 

 lection, although in this case he does not know any of the 

 transitional grades. * His reason ought to conquer his ima- 

 ginatioUy though I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to 

 be surprised at any degree of hesitation in extending the prin- 

 ciple of natural selection to such startling lengths." 



Was, then, this ancient repository of progenitive life. — 



