OF THE ORGANIC FOSSILS. 423 



philosophy, he may consult Lamarck, De Maillet, and 

 others : to be ingenious were something, and there 

 is attraction in novelty ; but fiction and folly that are 

 alike dull and stale, do not deserve even criticism. 

 But more sober inquirers have conceived that the 

 earlier species of animals were less perfect than the 

 more recent, and have imagined a gradual improve- 

 ment in their organizations ; as they have further 

 presumed on a gradually increasing number of 

 genera and species. These questions must, how- 

 ever, be determined by facts, not by speculative 

 reasonings. It is plain that any theory of this nature 

 must labour under the radical fault of deficiency of 

 evidence. Though we follow a succession according 

 to the order of the strata, it teaches nothing on these 

 subjects, because of its imperfection, particularly in 

 the more remote strata, where we know not what has 

 existed. If we even suppose, as has been said, that 

 the first animals were solely marine, and limited to 

 corals and shell fishes, there are not facts to prove 

 this. All the strata were formed under the sea, and 

 could contain only marine remains, except under rare 

 accidents. It will be so in the rocks now forming. 

 The animals thus supposed exclusive have also pecu- 

 liar powers of durability, while the higher organiza- 

 tions are perishable ; especially so under such changes 

 as the earlier rocks have undergone ; so that, for all 

 which this imaginary evidence proves, the earlier 

 ocean might have teemed with as great a variety of 

 life as the present one, as there might also have been 

 an inhabited earth. I repeat what I have often urged 

 before : we are trying to measure truth by our own 

 ignorance : the usual proceeding of ignorance united 

 to vanity. 



But the question as to land animals must be further 



