Henry Woodivard — Datvn of Life on the Earth. 291 



those living around him to-day, until he finds himself surrounded by 

 a fauna and a flora, which, though broadly related to our own, yet 

 differs so much in every detail that he fails at once to perceive that 

 it has anything in common with that now existing. Yet comparative 

 anatomy and comparative botany teach us that all the types of past 

 life — like the early alphabets and symbols invented by mankind — 

 can be brought into accord and correlated with existing types, and 

 that in each case one system of classification is capable of embracing 

 the whole.. 



In order rightly to understand the records of Earth's monuments, 

 we must, in the first place, call in the geologist to explain to us 

 such physical facts as are needful for us to become acquainted with 

 before attempting to read its organic remains aright, each one of 

 which may be looked upon as a hieroglyphic symbol which the 

 palaeontologist aims at deciphering. 



From the geologist we learn that the great storehouses wherein, 

 the life-relics of the earth's past inhabitants lie embalmed are the 

 sedimentary rocks. He tells us that these have resulted from 

 the wear and tear carried on by meteo-ric agents of all those 

 portions of the earth's surface elevated above the general ocean of the 

 globe. We thu-s learn, that fro7ii the very beginning of life on the 

 earth there must have been areas of depression and areas of eleva- 

 tion on our planet ; the former occupied by the waters of the ocean, 

 and the latter forming continents and islands exposed to all the 

 influences of sun and wind, frost, snow and ice, rain and rivers, 

 without which no sedimentary deposits could have been formed. 

 We learn, moreover, from an inspection of the organic remains them- 

 selves, preserved in the various rocks, that there were in former 

 ages terrestrial plants and animals as well as fresh-water and marine 

 forms of life, although the evidences of the last-named types are 

 by far the most abundant. 



Thus in the ancient submerged Forest-bed on the Norfolk Coast, 

 in the Brick-earths of Ilford and Grays, in the Valley of the Thames, 

 and in the London Clay, we have abundant evidence of old land 

 conditions, the first being preserved as a- land-deposit, the second as 

 a fluviatile one " almost in situ,'' the last named being an estuarine 

 or near-shore deposit, formed at the embouchure of some large 

 river, probably flowing, as the Nile does at the present day, from 

 near the Equator in a north-easterly direction, watering a continent 

 once occupying a part at least of the present site of the Atlantic, 

 and perhaps embracing within its extent the Cape de Verdes, the 

 Canaries and Azores, all of which are volcanic, and mark an area of 

 disturbance and oscillation of level which may have been more than 

 once elevated and again submerged in very modern times. 



But although, as already stated, these later sedimentary deposits 

 afford remains of animals and plants, which, with few exceptions, 

 differ but little from those of the present day, yet it must be borne 

 in mind that their geographical distribution has been greatly 

 modified. For instance, referring back to the Norfolk Forest-bed 

 and the Brick-earth of the Thames Valley, we find abundant 



