II GEOLOGICAL CONTEMPORANEITY 287 



order and nature of^terrestrial life, as a whole, 

 are open questions/ Geology at present provides 

 us with most valuable topographical records, but 

 she has not the means of working them into a 

 universal history.^ Is such a universal history, 

 then, to be regarded as unattainable ? Are all 

 the grandest and most interesting problems which 

 offer themselves to the geological student, essenti- 

 ally insoluble ? Is he in the position of a scientific 

 Tantalus doomed always to thirst for a knowledge 

 which he cannot obtain ? The reverse is to be 

 hoped ; nay, it may not be impossible to indicate 

 the source whence help will come. 



In commencing these remarks, mention was 

 made of the great obligations under which the 

 naturalist lies to the geologist and palaeontologist. 

 Assuredly the time will come when these obliga- 

 tions will be repaid tenfold, and when the maze of 

 the world's past history, through which the pure 

 geologist and the pure palaeontologist find no 

 guidance, will be securely threaded by the clue 

 furnished by the naturalist. 



All who are competent to express an opinion on 

 the subject are, at present, agreed that the mani- 

 fold varieties of animal and vegetable form have 

 not either come into existence by chance, nor 

 result from capricious exertions of creative power ; 

 but that they have taken place in a definite order, 

 the statement of which order is what men of 

 science term a natural law. Whether such a law 



