[6] 



tion over large areas. The depth of the Secondary and Tertiary is from 

 twenty to twenty-five miles. We see, therefore, that the first life-forms 

 made their appearance as marine organisms in the Laurentian, or first 

 stratified rock period ; but whether the animal or the vegetable form 

 first appeared, or whether both were developed from one primordial- 

 organism, it is impossible at present to say. In each successive layer of 

 rock we meet with fossil remains of animal and vegetable life, which 

 steadily develop into more highly organised forms, through the different 

 periods, until, at last, they assume the exquisite phases we now behold 

 around us. The vegetable kingdom was the first to exist upon the land, 

 the first land-plant being found in the fossil state in the Cambrian layer, 

 at the same time that marine animal life was assuming the forms of 

 worms, shell-fish, and star-fishes. In the Silurian period the first verte- 

 brate animals made their appearance in the form of lowly-organised fishes, 

 from which, in the Carboniferous age, developed amphibious creatures, 

 the first breathing animals, living both in and out of water, and the 

 progenitors of the large kingdom of land animals, including man. 



Now, if we take the pedigree of man, as arranged by Darwin and 

 Haeckel, and compare it with this geological tree, we shall see how 

 perfectly the sister sciences of Paleontology and Biology corroborate each 

 other. The first form of life, says Haeckel, was the Moneron, a 

 structureless albuminous atom of bioplasm, not even possessing the 

 structure of a mere cell. We place this, which belongs to the primitive 

 order Protozoa, in the Laurentian period, where we are told by geologists 

 that fossil foraminifera have been found. This promordial organism 

 gradually developed into single nucleated cells, called Amoebae, and these 

 again into masses of nucleated cells, called Synamcebse. These simple 

 and multiple cell organisms we place in the next period, Huronian, in 

 the strata of which geologists tell us have been found fossil remains of 

 lowly organised molluscs, or soft-bodied animals. Ciliata are the next 

 forms of life, which consist of Synamcebse, covered with vibratile cilia. 

 These gradually developed a mouth, becoming Gastrceada, and after- 

 wards Turbellaria, a low form of worm (Vermes), with a mouth and 

 alimentary canal ; and are placed in the Cambrian period, in which 

 stratum have been found remains of this kind of life. The ascent con- 

 tinues through the transition stage of Scolecida to Himatega, or sack- 

 worms, with their rudimentary spinal cords; from which gradually 

 evolved Acrania, or the first vertebrate animals, without skulls, brains, 

 central heart, jaws, or limbs; but with a true vertebral cord. This 



