INTEODUCTION. 



NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PRIMEVAL WORLD. 



Before we enter upon an exposition of tlie fascinating 

 r-eience wliieli teaclies us tlie habits and structure of 

 tlie various forms of animal life, arranges them in their 

 several tribes and genera and species, points out their 

 resemblances and dilTereuces, and determines their part 

 in the grand economy of the universe ; before, in a 

 word, we proceed to a survey of the Animal Kingdom 

 as it is now presented to our gaze, it is well we should 

 inquire into its earlier histor}', and ascertain what facts 

 we can respecting the past condition of its individual 

 members. 



The researches of modern geologists have revealed 

 to us the fact that Earth was not always tenanted by 

 tlie same forms of animal life, but that each age and 

 period has possessed its own separate creation ; each 

 creation being, as it were, an advance upon its prede- 

 cessor, and a further, and in some respects a grander, 

 development of the Creative Power. 



The naturalist who would fully comprehend the 

 extent, beauty, and splendour of the science to which 

 lie has devoted himself, needs also to be a palajontolo- 

 gist ; that is, he should be able to trace these successive 

 developments from the tiny trilobites that inhabited the 

 Silurian seas, to the mighty mammoth which prowled 

 among the icy wastes of Siberia from the apparently 

 shapeless medusa which floats like an inanimate jelly 

 on the summer wave, to the exquisite organization and 

 colossal structure of the Asiatic elephant. 



We know that before our planet assumed its present 

 configuration, it passed through a series of great and 

 astounding changes, which have left their indelible 

 records upon its surface and in its bosom. We know 

 that these changes in the condition of the earth were 

 accompanied by not less surprising changes in the 

 characters of its then inhabitants. That such would 

 be the case we might e.isily have presumed from our 

 knowledge of the fact that all animals, even now, will 

 not flourish under the same conditions ; that while one 

 genus seeks the dry and barren sands of the desert, 

 another can only live among llie marshes of an inun- 

 dated coast; that while one basks in the warm rays 

 of a tropical sun, another flourishes in the obscure 

 twilight of the polar regions. 



We are not, however, left to the mercies of philoso- 

 (ihical speculation. The records of her past are securely 

 preserved by Earth, and may be read at leisure by those 

 who have eyes to see. The curtain that concealed them 

 for so many centuries has been lifted, and in her rocks 

 and fossils we may study the revolutions of millions of 



years. The paleontologist, therefore, pursues his in- 

 vestigations under singularly favourable circumstances. 

 He is not left to surmise or guess ; he has only to deal 

 with patent and irrefragable facts, with certain and 

 incontrovertible evidence. With equal eloquence and 

 truth it has been said that the earth is a book written 

 by the finger of God. Its leaves are those stratified 

 rocks which — superimposed on one another in an 

 ascending series — make up its crust, represent the 

 duration of ages by their thickness, and the cataclysms 

 of creation by their fractures. Its letters are the fossil 

 remains of the plants and animals that lie ensepulchred 

 in its womb ; the permanent traces of volcanic erup- 

 tions, and slow-moving glaciers, and ever-lapsing waters; 

 the faint but enduring footprints of the strange forms 

 which once crawled over its soft mud ; the rijiple-marks 

 of primeval seas, whose music has died away into the 

 silence of a remote and mysterious past ! All these 

 hieroglyphics, says a recent writer, with which the stony 

 leaves of the earth's gi-eat book are crowded, thick as 

 the inscriptions on the buried bricks of Nineveh and 

 the mummy caves of Egypt, have been deciphered with 

 remarkable accuracy by the geologist. Not less signi- 

 ficant are they to him than the trail of his enemy to 

 the North American Indian, or the footprints of the 

 camel to the Arab nomade of the desert. 



" As the ancient civilization," remarks Mr. Macmillan, 

 " of the great empires of Egypt, Nineveh, and Babylon, 

 has been recovered to us, and pictured in nearly all its 

 original grandeur and completeness, from the relics left 

 behind in the mounds of Khorsabad and the temples of 

 Memphis and Thebes, so from these remains of the pre- 

 Adamite world we can reconstruct, in imagination, the 

 successive scenery of its different epochs. Before the 

 eye of fancy, at the spell of some fossil, or insignificant 

 impression in a wayside stone, a combination of land- 

 scape scenery with which there is nothing analogous in 

 the present condition of things, passes in review ; and 

 standing on this high vantage-ground of Time, we can 

 survey, by the help of those landmarks placed here and 

 there for our guidance, the whole history of our earth, 

 the whole series of creations which one after another 

 appeared and vanished ! " 



This series of creations, regarded from the naturalist 

 or palaeontologist's point of view, we now proceed lo 

 consider. The reader who follows us carefully in our 

 necessarily brief but not the less accurate survey, will 

 remark, with wonder and admiration, how they all lead 

 up, by slow but certain steps, to the preparation of Earth 

 a 



