Feb. 1, 188G.] 



♦ KNOV^LEDGE ♦ 



107 



the times of calving and lambing are measared among 

 countrymen by moon circuits. In pa.storal life, ao-aiu, 

 began the practice of hiring labour : and we know that 

 from the very beginning labour was hired by the month 

 and by the week, that is by direct reference to the moon, a 

 practice which has reached to our own time, and probably 

 will last so long as the human race endures upon the 

 earth. 



But it was not until agriculture began to replace 

 pasture, as pasture had rejilaced hunting, that the 

 heavenly bodies of various orders, and the sky which 

 held them, became the objects of special attention,— 

 merging gradually into veneration and into adoration. 

 ihe beginning of the actual ceremonials and theoloo-ies 

 oi our day must be referred to this stage of human 

 progress. It may well be that much even of the theolo- 

 gical doctrine of our time, and it is certain that much of 

 Its ceremonial observance, must be referred to the time 

 when first men began to till the earth for their subsistence. 

 Ihe evidence on this important part of my subject comes 

 next then to bs considered. 



THE STORY OF CREATION. 



a plain account 0? evolution. 



Bt Edward Clodd. 



IV. -THE PAST LTFE-HISTORV OF THE EARTH. 



HOLOGT deals with the stuff of which the 

 earth is made, with its origin,- structure, 

 and arrangement. But so inter-related is 

 the material of which all things are spun 

 that inquiry into the structure of rocks 

 has to be extended well-nigh at the outset 

 to their contents— that is, to the fossil 

 forms or imprints of ancient life which are not only 

 preserved within the larger number of strata, but which 

 entirely compose vast masses, as in the coal-measures, 

 chalk hills, and coral islands. Therefore the interest 

 which the study of the earth's crust, of its erupted, fire- 

 fused, and water-laid rocks, awakens, especially in their 

 witness to ceaseless changes through an ever-receding 

 past, becomes more immediate and human when the 

 relics of ancient life - forms are examined, and 

 their appearance, persistence, or disappearance ; their 

 order and succession in an ever - varying-, ever- 

 ascending scale, traced. For in them lies the record of 

 lijc on the earth through mea.sureless time, the life that 

 was, parent of all life that is ; from simple slime-speck to 

 structure of subtlest complexity named man, with its 

 passionate story of agonies and joys, of struggle towards 

 a kingdom of heaven yet unentered. 



True it is that the record is very imperfect, that the 

 gaps remain wide and numerous even when supplemented 

 by remains from other parts of the globe. But the 

 wonder is that the blanks are not greater, when the 

 nature and extent of the changes to which all rocks have 

 been, and are being, subjected are considered. In addition 

 to the havoc and effacemeut wrought by the earth's in- 

 ternal heat, and by divers ::gencies to be dealt with in 

 due course, the formation of every deposit involves the 

 waste of an older deposit, which has in its turn been 

 derived from more primitive stuff, the eifect throughout 

 being injury to, or destruction of, the organic con'tenfs. 

 It is impossible that the vast number of lowest life- 

 forms, whether plant or animal, should have been pre- 



served. Traces of marine organisms survive in the trails 

 and borings of sea-worms, or in the imprint of carcasses 

 of jelly-fish stranded on the ripple-marked mud of ancient 

 sea-shores, but of the soft-bodied creatui-es themselves 

 not a vestige remains. Only the hard parts of animals 

 and plants ; shell, skeleton ; wood, bark, seeds ; would 

 reach the fossil state in more or less perfect form, and 

 even their preservation is contingent upon the nature of 

 the beds in which they are interred. As it is, but 

 a remnant of all that ever lived in the water, and 

 a far less proportion of the smaller population of the land, 

 are represented in actual fragments. Sometimes only an 

 impression survives, as when a dissolved shell has left its 

 witness in cast or mould in clay or mud, or an extinct 

 bird or reptile its foot-prints on the sands of a far-off 

 time. Sometimes, in the compensating action of nature, 

 chemical agents, in destroying the original structure, 

 infiltrate the vacancy with minerals, replacing the form, 

 occasionally in minutest detail. 



Rich as are igneous rocks in wealth-yielding mineral 

 veins and ores, they are, save where recent plants and 

 animals have been accidentally enveloped in the flowing 

 lava or dust of volcanic eruptions, destitute of fossils. 

 There was a period in the earth's history when life was 

 not, and its beginnings, which were probably in north 

 polar regions, were certainly subsequent to the ejection of 

 the molten or pasty masses which cooled into true volcanic 

 or fire-formed rocks. 



Fossils are found only in sedimentary rocks, although 

 not universally in these, many of them having no organic 

 remains. Varied and mixed as they are in c<imposition, 

 their specific names and differences need not be detailed 

 here, and it .suffices to group them under two heads — 

 namely, those derived from sediment in its several states 

 of grave], sand, and mud ; and those formed of the 

 remains of plants, as coal in its several stages from i^eat 

 to the hard graphite or bkick-lead of the older formations ; 

 or of the remains of animals composing chalk, lime- 

 stone, and other organically-derived rocks. But whatever 

 their source, and however much the original order of 

 strata has been deranged by hidden agencies which 

 have tilted them at all angles, cleaved and contorted 

 them, and superposed the older on the newer, there 

 is a well-ascertained succession in them which their 

 fossils alone have enabled us to determine, each 

 formation having its own characteristic kind or 

 dominant type of animal and plant. Not that there 

 are any hard - and - fast lines between the disappear- 

 ance of an earlier species and the appearance of 

 another, the forms being often commingled. Some of the 

 low and simple types persist through almost all forma- 

 tions, some of the more complex are found in only one or 

 two formations, but there is a merging of erne into 

 another ; there are gradations and alliances of type, as of 

 birils with reptilian characters and vice versd. And 

 although seemingly isolated tyj)es occui', or the divergence 

 between earlier and later types has blurred their relation, 

 it will be seen that the modern are the ancient slowly and 

 wondrously modified. In short, the life-history of tlie 

 globe is one both of unbroken relation and progress. 



Before summarising the formations and their tyjjical 

 fossils, the order and nature of past life-forms, more espe- 

 cially in their relation to present life-forms, will be made 

 clearer by the accompanying schedule of the sub-kingdoms 

 into which existing plants and animals are divided, 

 beginning in each case with the lowest. For it will be 

 seen that these divisions apply to fossil plants and 

 animals, since they conform sd completely in stiaictural 

 jilaii to the types reprosenteel in the several sub- 



