32 Introduction. 



The other is based upon the fact that each stratum has- 

 its own special kind of organic remains, and which organic re- 

 mains are never found in any other stratum ; and if approxi- 

 mately found, they are of diminished or increased growth to 

 that of some special stratum in which they are indigenous, 

 or else modified in some particular manner, so that a good 

 palaeontologist could readily distinguish the aborigines from 

 the strangers, or derived impurity. 



The general lesson which was implied by such special 

 aggregation of organic bodies, and also from the great lapse 

 of time which existed between the end of one formation and 

 the end of another, and so on, implied, for special organisms, 

 a special preparedness to receive them, and before a sufficient 

 state of preparedness could be obtained, adapted for great 

 varieties of growth, long ages or epochs must elapse, till 

 finally an age arrived which permitted all, or nearly all, 

 varieties of form and species from lowest to highest in the 

 scale of vital organism to live contemporaneously, though it 

 is admitted in very different proportion as to size, number, 

 and aggregate quantity. 



Why one period of the world should be so uniform and 

 specially adapted for a teeming variety both of plants and 

 animals, and other periods or epochs appear to have been 

 comparatively restricted to few varieties, seems, to say the 

 least, wondrous strange. 



Again, why the Creator had to fit up the world one way, 

 and in another epoch has to fit up the same world in another 



