HI LECTURES OX EVOLUTION 81 



beautiful and well-preserved of the fossils found 

 in our English chalk. It can. be studied anatomi- 

 cally, so far as the hard parts are concerned, 

 almost as well as if it were a recent fish. But 

 the genus Beryx is represented, at the present 

 day, by very closely allied species which are living 

 in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. We may go 

 still farther back. I have already referred to the 

 fact, that the Carboniferous formations, in Europe 

 and in America, contain the remains of scorpions 

 in an admirable state of preservation, and that 

 those scorpions are hardly distinguishable from 

 such as now live. I do not mean to say that they 

 are not different, but close scrutiny is needed in 

 order to distinguish them from modern scorpions. 



More than this. At the very bottom of the 

 Silurian series, in beds which are by some authori- 

 ties referred to the Cambrian formation, where the 

 signs of life begin to fail us even there, among 

 the few and scanty animal remains which are 

 discoverable, we find species of molluscous animals 

 which are so closely allied to existing forms that, 

 at one time, they were grouped under the same 

 generic name. I refer to the well-known Lingula 

 of the Lingula flags, lately, in consequence of 

 some slight differences, placed in the new genus 

 Linguhlla. Practically, it belongs to the same 

 great generic group as the Lingula, which is to be 

 found at the present day upon your own shores 

 and those of many other parts of the world. 



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