I'JC THE PROGRESS OF SCIEN n 



There is no reasonable ground for believing that 

 the oldest remains yet obtained carry u> 

 m-ar the beginnings of life. The impressive warn- 

 ings of Lyell against hasty speculations, based upon 

 negative evidence, have been fully justified ; time 

 after time, highly organised types have been dis- 

 covered in formations of an age in which the ex- 

 istence of such forms of life had been confidently 

 declared to be impossible. The western territories 

 of the United States alone have yielded a world 

 of extinct animal forms, undreamed of fifty 

 ago. And, wherever sufficiently numerous series 

 of the remains of any given group, Avhich has en- 

 dured for a long space of time, are carefully 

 examined, their morphological relations are never 

 in discordance with the requirements of the 

 doctrine of evolution, and often afford convincing 

 evidence of it. At the same time it has been 

 shown that certain forms persist with very little 

 change, from the oldest to the newest fossiliferous 

 formations ; and thus show that progressive de- 

 velopment is a contingent, and not a nece 

 result of the nature of living matter. 



logy is, as it were, the biology of our planet 

 as a whole. In so far as it comprises the surface 

 configuration and the inner structure of the earth, 

 it answers to morphology; in so far as it studies 

 changes of condition and their causes, it corre- 

 spi.nds with physiology; in so far as it deals with 

 th.- causes which have effected the ] -f the 



