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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1154 



een-hundredth part of the land area of 

 this globe, about one eleven-hundredth part 

 of the exposed fossiliferous rocks. In this 

 state the work of assembling the evidences 

 of the life record has proceeded continu- 

 ously in organized attack for eighty years. 

 An eminent French geologist has intimated 

 that there are few places of equal area in the 

 world where the life record is so completely 

 assembled — and yet every year brings new 

 and necessary additions to our quiver. 

 What shall we say of the other 1,099 equal 

 areas of fossiliferous rocks on the earth? 

 Many of them have indeed been studied 

 with precision, but there remains and must 

 remain for long years yet an overwhelming 

 balance of the unknown. In the abundance 

 and perfection of the life that is preserved 

 in these rocks only the living seas them- 

 selves are comparable. I have estimated 

 the number of individuals of a few of the 

 species occurring in one insulated mass of 

 marine Devonian strata known as the Perce 

 rock, a section which above the waterline 

 represents a sea deposit 300 feet thick, 

 1,300 feet long and about 250 feet wide; 

 and the figures for these few species run 

 into the hundreds of millions of individuals 

 • — yet the rock is not richly fossiliferous, 

 in the customary use of that expression. 



It seems to be my experience, too, that 

 the most closely studied formations have 

 already yielded up a large percentage of 

 their actual fauna. For some well-studied 

 formations in limited areas the known 

 fauna is, approximately speaking, a true 

 and fairly full expression of the actual 

 fauna. I can not of course pursue this 

 matter here into its further details with 

 its brilliant vistas already before us of 

 learning the inchoate life of the primitive 

 soils and first impounded waters, but I 

 think I shall venture to enter the lists on 

 call, to contend that for plant and animal 

 life alike the records of the rocks, where 



unaltered, are unimpeachable for adequate 

 suggestiveness of the designs which the 

 threads of life have woven. And when the 

 imputation is too often made of imperfec- 

 tion through loss of anatomical detail, or 

 the destruction of essential structures, com- 

 pare by way of simple illustration com- 

 pressed into the emergencies of this occa- 

 sion the growth of knowledge of fossil anat- 

 omy within the fragment of the lifetime of 

 one man. Fifty years ago all that was 

 known of the ventral organization of the 

 trilobite was a mere suggestion embedded 

 in a nest of speculations ; of its ontogeny a 

 few discrete facts. So far has knowledge 

 advanced that to-day we seem to know 

 these animals in all their essential details 

 and development; and if aught is left to 

 become known of internal anatomy or ecol- 

 ogy, the lessons of the past are the promise 

 of the future. What was known of the 

 Burypterida fifty years ago was little but 

 their outline and their grosser form. To- 

 day their ontogeny is understood almost 

 from birth onward, their anatomy almost 

 to ultimate details, their habits at least as 

 well as those of vast numbers of living ani- 

 mals, their phylogeny as well as or better 

 than the phylogeny of any living race sub- 

 jected to this speculative treatment. Sup- 

 plement these illustrations, which are near- 

 est to me, with the scores of others known 

 to you and with the tremendous strides 

 made in this same period of time among 

 the extinct vertebrates, and within the 

 realm of lost floras where sheaves of knowl- 

 edge have piled higher with every year. 



These are the theses I should wish to nail 

 on the doors of our temple : 



Nature makes for the individual. This 

 truth is registered on the tablets of the 

 earth ; it lies also in human observation and 

 in human experience. Its recognition is of 

 paramount ianportance; its acceptance 

 sweeps away cobwebs of vagrant hypoth- 



