THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 105 



composition of widely different animals, is striking evidence 

 in favour of the descent of those animals from a common 

 original. 



To turn to another kind of illustration : If you regard 

 the whole series of stratified rocks that enormous thickness 

 of sixty or seventy thousand feet that I have mentioned 

 before, constituting the only record we have of a most 

 prodigious lapse of time, that time being, in all probability, 

 but a fraction of that of which we have no record ; if 

 you observe in these successive strata of rocks successive 

 groups of animals arising and dying out, a constant suc- 

 cession, giving you the same kind of impression, as you 

 travel from one group of strata to another, as you would 

 have in travelling from one country to another ; when 

 you find this constant succession of forms, their traces 

 obliterated except to the man of science, when you look 

 at this wonderful history, and ask what it means, it is 

 only a paltering with words if you are offered the reply, 

 ' They were so created/ 



But if, on the other hand, you look on all forms of 

 organized beings as the results of the gradual modification 

 of a primitive type, the facts receive a meaning, and you 

 see that these older conditions are the necessary pre- 

 decessors of the present. Viewed in this light the facts 

 of palaeontology receive a meaning upon any other 

 hypothesis, I am unable to see, in the slightest degree, 

 what knowledge or signification we are to draw out of them. 

 Again, note as bearing upon the same point, the singular 

 likeness which obtains between the successive Faunae and 

 Florae, whose remains are preserved on the rocks : you 

 never find any great and enormous difference between 

 the immediately successive Faunae and Florae, unless you 

 have reason to believe there has also been a great lapse 

 of time or a great change of conditions. The animals, for 

 instance, of the newest tertiary rocks, in any part of the 

 world, are always, and without exception, found to be 

 closely allied with those which now live in that part of the 

 world. For example, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, the 

 large mammals are at present rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, 

 elephants, lions, tigers, oxen, horses, etc. ; and if you 

 examine the newest tertiary deposits, which contain the 

 animals and plants which immediately preceded those 

 which now exist in the same country, you do not find 

 gigantic specimens of ant-eaters and kangaroos, but you 



