POSITION OF PALAEONTOLOGY. II 



mysterious, is indicated between the evolution of the 

 individual and the general constitution of the animal 

 world. This connection requires a scientific solution, a 

 reduction to causes, and this all the more urgently be- 

 cause their relations, though as yet hidden, are rendered 

 more probable by a third series of phenomena, the 

 conquest of which is likewise the achievement of natural 

 history. We allude to the record of the primaeval 

 world. 



Therefore, the knowledge of palaeontological facts 

 also forms part of the indispensable basis of our opera- 

 tions. Geology entered the right track forty years 

 ago. We now know that the world was not made 

 backwards, but originated by gradual formations and 

 metamorphoses ; we may nay, we must, infer that, at a 

 definite epoch of refrigeration, life appeared in a natural 

 manner, that is to say, without any incomprehensible 

 act of creation ; and during this slow transformation of 

 the earth's crust, \ve see living beings also gradually 

 increasing, differentiating, and perfecting themselves. 



Yet more. As was first convincingly proved in detail 

 by Agassiz, one of the most vehement antagonists of the 

 theory of descent, we behold the palaeontological or his- 

 torical series of organisms in the same sequence as the 

 phases of the development of the individual. There are 

 here vast chasms yet to be filled up by future observa- 

 tion, though in many points we must not altogether 

 despair of success. But that the process of palaeon- 

 tological development is, in general, the one indicated, 

 is disputed only by naturalists, who, like Barrande, 

 years ago anchored themselves to inalterable convictions 

 in science, as in creed, to dogmas. 



