CHAPTER XIII 



THE PAST HISTORY OF ANIMALS 



i. The two Records 2. Imperfection of the Geological Record 

 3. Palaontological Series 4. Extinction of Types 5. Various 

 Difficiilties 6. Relative Antiquity of Animals 



i. The Two Records. Reviewing the development of the 

 chick, W. K. Parker said, " Whilst at work I seemed 

 to myself to have been endeavouring to decipher a palimp- 

 sest, and that not erased and written upon just once, but 

 five or six times over. Having erased, as it were, the 

 characters of the culminating type those of the gaudy 

 Indian bird I seemed to be amongst the sombre grouse, 

 and then, towards incubation, the characters of the Sand- 

 Grouse and Hemipod stood out before me. Rubbing these 

 away, in my downward walk, the form of the Tinamou 

 looked me in the face ; then the aberrant Ostrich seemed 

 to be described in large archaic characters ; a little while 

 and these faded into what could just be read off as per- 

 taining to the Sea Turtle ; whilst, underlying the whole, 

 the Fish in its simplest Myxinoid form could be traced 

 in morphological hieroglyphics." 



There is another palimpsest the geological record 

 written in the rocks. For beneath the forms which dis- 

 appeared, as it were, yesterday, the Dodo and the Solitaire, 

 the Moa and the Mammoth, the Cave Lion and the Irish 

 Elk, there are mammals and birds of old-fashioned type the 

 like of which no longer live. Beneath these lie the giant 



