THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE. 155 



of existence which still continue in the sea, should 

 thus die out, while the little bivalved crustaceans, 

 which began life almost as far back and lived on the 

 same sea-floors with the Trilobites, should still abound 

 in all our seas ; and while the king-crabs, of precisely 

 similar habits with the Trilobites, should apparently 

 begin to prosper. Equally strange is the fate of the 

 great swimming Eurypterids which we saw in the 

 Devonian. They also continue, but in diminished 

 force, in the Carboniferous, and there lay down for 

 ever their well -jointed cuirasses and formidable wea- 

 pons, while a few little shrimp-like creatures, their 

 contemporaries, form the small point of the wedge 

 of our great tribes of squillas and crabs and lobsters. 

 Some years ago the late lamented palaeontologist, 

 Salter, a man who scarcely leaves his equal in his 

 department, in conjunction with Mr. Henry Wood- 

 ward, prepared a sort of genealogical chart of the 

 Crustacea on which these facts are exhibited. Some 

 new species have since been discovered, and a little 

 additional light about affinities has been obtained; 

 but taken as it stands, the history of the Crustacea as 

 there shown in one glance, has in it more teaching 

 on the philosophy of creation than I have been able 

 to find in many ponderous quartos of tenfold its pre- 

 tensions. Had Salter been enabled, with the aid of 

 other specialists like Woodward, to complete similar 

 charts of other classes of invertebrate animals, scien- 

 tific palaeontology in England would have been further 

 advanced than it is likely to be in the next ten years. 



