lOS FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKR, 



fish from the Lower Siluiian formations, — than purely nega- 

 tive evidence is, from its nature as such, suited to bear ; that 

 only a very few years had passed since it was known that ver- 

 tebrate remains occurred in tlie Uj)per Silurian, and only a 

 few more since they had been detected in the Old Red Sand- 

 stone ; nay, that within the present century their frequent 

 occurrence in even the Coal Measures was scarce suspected ; 

 and that, as his argument, had it been founded twelve years 

 ago on the supposed absence of fishes from the Upper Silu- 

 rian, or twenty years ago on the supposed absence of fishes 

 from the Old Red Sandstone, would have been quite as 

 plausible in reference to its negative data then as to its 

 negative data now, so it might now be quite as erroneous 

 as it assuredly would have been then. Or it might be 

 argued, that the fact of the absence of fish from the Lower 

 Silurians, even were it really a fact, would be in no degree 

 less reconcileable with the theory of creation by direct act, 

 than with the hypothesis of gradual development. The fact 

 that Adam did not exist during the firat, second, third, fourth, 

 and fifth days of the introductory week of Scripture naiTative, 

 furnishes no argument whatever against the fact of his crea- 

 tion on the sixth day. And the remark would of course 

 equally apply to tlie non-existence of fishes during the Lower 

 Silurian period, had they been really non-existent at the time, 

 and to their sudden appearance in that of the Upper. [But 

 the objection admits of a greatly more conclusive answer. 

 *' I fix my opponents down," says the author of the " Ves- 

 tiges," " to the consideration of this fact," i. e. that of the 

 absence of fishes from the earliest fossiliferous formations. 

 And I, in turn, fix you down, I reply, to the consideratiim 

 of the antagonist fact, not negative, but positive, and now, in 

 the course of geological discovery, fully established, that fishes 

 were not absent from the earliest fossiliferous formations. From 

 none of the great geological formations were fishes absent,— 



