78 BIOLOGY 



CHAPTER XIV 



THE PAST HISTORY OF LIVING ORGANISMS 



WHEN we consider the past history of the animate world, 

 we have before us two records, neither of which unfor- 

 tunately is at all complete, but both are at least helpful. 

 In the first we have the strange tendency of the indivi- 

 dual during its development to reproduce certain stages 

 in the life-history of the race ; in the second, such frag- 

 ments as we can gather from " the strange graveyard 

 of the buried past the fossil-bearing rocks." 



Let us consider for a brief moment the second record 

 Palseontology. In the past history we recognise forms 

 which disappeared but yesterday, but as we delve more 

 deeply into the buried page3 we find traces of giant 

 reptiles and amphibians and strange forms of armour- 

 bearing fish. Throughout the chapters of this record 

 we find forms that have persisted from age to age, forms 

 that have lived from almost the beginning even unto 

 the present day. Other races we find that have had 

 their little day and ceased to exist, leaving behind them 

 no single form which we may call their descendants. 

 Other forms have also arisen, attained a period of great 

 prosperity, and then gradually waned away, but still 

 they left forms behind which correspond so closely with 

 them that we cannot but accept them as their lineal 

 descendants. As the earth grew older, other and higher 



