THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD 197 



magnificent culmination in such examples of vital activity as 

 we see manifested in the higher mammalia, and especially in 

 the more perfectly organised birds and insects. In this first 

 and most widespread of the coal-making epochs we see the 

 results of a world-wide and even cosmical adaptation which 

 influenced the whole future course of life-development ; while 

 the later and more limited periods of coal-formation have 

 been due apparently to highly favourable local conditions, of 

 which the production of our deeper peat beds are the latest 

 example. 



If then, as I am endeavouring to show, all life 

 development — all organic forces — are due to mind-action, 

 ' we must postulate not only forces, but guidance ; not only 

 such self-acting agencies as are involved in natural selection 

 and adaptation through survival of the fittest, but that far 

 higher mentality which foresees all possible results of the 

 constitution of our cosmos. That constitution, in all its 

 complexity of structure and of duly co-ordinated forces acting 

 continuously through eons of time, has culminated in the 

 foreseen result. No other view yet suggested affords any 

 adequate explanation ; but this vast problem will be more 

 fully discussed later on. 



This earliest, but, as some think, the most extended 

 period of geological time, has been very cursorily touched 

 upon, both because its known life-forms are more fragmentary 

 and less generally familiar than those which succeeded them, 

 and because the object here is to show reasons for consider- 

 ing it as essentially preparatory for that wonderful and 

 apparently sudden burst of higher life-development of which 

 we will now endeavour to eive some account. 



t>* 



The Mesozoic or Secondary Formations 



When we pass from the Palaeozoic to the Mesozoic era 

 Are find a wonderful change in the forms of life and are 

 ransported, as it were, into a new world. The archaic 

 ishes wholly disappear, while the early Amphibia (Laby- 

 inthodonts) linger on to the Trias, their place being taken by 

 rue reptiles, which rapidly develop into creatures of strange 

 orms and often of huge dimensions, whose skeletons, to the 

 ininstructed eye, might easily be mistaken for those of 



