6l8 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



believing, from the differences exhibited amongst the 

 several essentially similar types which have presented 

 themselves through a countless succession of geologic 

 ages. Looked at broadly, it is not contrary to what we 

 might expect, if we find that the most marked and 

 long-continued similarity exists between some of the 

 lowest forms of life preserved in the fossil state, which, 

 being tenants of deep seas and oceans, have all along 

 been exposed to almost similar conditions 1 . The 

 constitution of primordial living matter in the Silurian 

 epoch, in all probability, essentially resembled the 

 primordial living matter of to-day; and if the con- 

 ditions existing at the bottom of oceans are also 

 similar, what could be expected but that forms which 

 are comparatively little removed from the primordial 

 living matter of those ages, should be similar to those 

 which are removed to a like extent in the present day, 

 and to those which have been similarly removed in all 

 intervening epochs? No more competent authority 

 exists than Dr. Carpenter concerning the structure of 

 Foraminifera, and we have his deliberate statement 

 that 2 c there is no evidence of any fundamental modi- 

 fication or advance in the Foraminiferous type from 

 the palaeozoic period to the present time/ And further 



1 Mr. Darwin says (' Origin of Species,' p. 409) : ' Consider the pro- 

 digious vicissitudes of climate during the pleistocene period, which in- 

 cludes the whole glacial epoch, and note how little the specific forms of 

 the inhabitants of the sea have been affected.' 



2 'Introduction to the Study of the Foraminifera,' 1862, p. xi. 



