THE DISCOVERER 



79 



Institution in 1855, " no real parallel between the 

 successive forms assumed in the development of the 

 life of the individual at present, and those which have 

 appeared at different epochs in the past." But, so 

 complete was the revolution effected by the Origin of 

 Species, that in 1878 he wrote : — 



On the evidence of palaeontology, the evolution of 

 many existing forms of animal life from their prede- 

 cessors is no longer an hypothesis but an historical 

 fact. 1 



While, in an address to the British Association at 

 York two years afterwards, he said : — 



If the doctrine of evolution had not existed, palae- 

 ontologists must have invented it, so irresistibly is it 

 forced upon the mind by the study of the remains of 

 the Tertiary Mammalia which have been brought to 

 light since 1859. 2 



Huxley soon found that extinct animals also afforded 

 play for his favourite inquiry into the architecture and 

 affinities of organisms, and hence, in his hands, the 

 fossil became, as it were, a living thing, bringing a 

 message from the past. His inquiry into the char- 

 acter of some supposed fish-shields from the Down- 

 ton sandstone, near Ludlow, led to the revolutionising 

 of old theories concerning the earliest fishes. He 

 showed that the huge creatures named, from the com- 



1 Coll. Essays, ii. p. 226. 2 II. 241. 



