36 Reviews — Prof. A. Gaudnj — On Evolution. 



Lave already remarked that to judge from the analogy of existing 

 forms the ancient Prosobranchiate Mollusca were not carnivorons. 

 If, instead of being weakly, protected by a shell, or a carapace, 

 hiding under sediments, there were in the beginning forms of life 

 more powerful for attack than for defence, perhaps life would not 

 have been developed on our planet, and there would have been 

 a void, where life is now both abundant and varied. 



" Silurian forms must have composed a silent world. No doubt 

 they were not without beauty, I can quite believe (says Professor 

 Gaudry) that Verneuil, Salter, Barrande, Hall, whose lives have been 

 devoted to their study, must have greatly admired these ancient 

 forms. Nevertheless, there is a great distance between the calm 

 existence of the Silurian days and that more animated life which 

 v^e contemplate in the more recent periods. 



"The Devonian strata show a great progress in the organic world — 

 since they correspond with the development of the Vertebrata, These 

 vertebrates it is true are only fishes, and moreover many of these 

 are strangely formed and very different from those of to-day, 



" Carboniferous and Permian times have witnessed fresh progress. 

 Together with the Trilobites and the Merostomata which have 

 decreased, the higher Crustacea, such as Decapods, begin to appear. 

 Insecta, Myriapoda, and Arachnida become numerous. Yertebrata 

 are no longer only represented by Fishes. As in France, so in 

 Germany, Eussia, England, and America, Reptiles began to multiply. 

 But with the exception of certain genera, towards the end of the 

 Primary period they have neither the diversity nor development 

 which we shall see in the Secondary period. 



The remains of Birds and Mammals have not been found in 

 Primary formations. The warm-blooded vertebrates are absent, or 

 at least they must have been very rare. This shows great inferiority; 

 for these warm -blooded animals were those whose functions are the 

 most active : and activity is just the measure of the power of the 

 animal. 



" Besides, from an sesthetic point of view, the Mammalia with their 

 varied forms and the Birds with the riches of their plumage play the 

 first role in Nature. Imagine our country without the song of birds 

 or the cry of the Mammalia, we should find it very dull. The forests 

 of primaeval days could not compare with the shrubberies of the 

 present time where birds give such lovely concerts. And then 

 again, without wishing to assert under what form the intelligence of 

 animals was first awakened, we may be permitted to suppose it was 

 by means of the senses. For in man himself philosophers admit 

 that sensation is the primordial faculty : it precedes reasoning. But 

 sensation in the primary creatures must have been less developed 

 than that of beings of later epochs. Those birds which hatch, and 

 those mammalia which suckle, their young seem to love them more 

 than do the other animals. In the times in which these did not 

 exist, the strongest of all the afiections, maternal love, must have 

 been but little manifested, 



"As we descend the course of geological life we shall notice 



