THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE. 143 



descended from one original, the Sanscrit, we give an 

 explanation of that resemblance. In the same way the 

 existence of identical structural roots, if I may so term 

 them, entering into the composition of widely different 

 animals, is striking evidence in favour of the descent 

 of those animals from a common original. 



To turn to another kind of illustration : — If you 

 regard the whole series of stratified rocks — that enor- 

 mous thickness of sixty or seventy thousand feet that 

 I have mentioned before, constituting the only record 

 we have of a most prodigious lapse of time, that 

 time being, in all probability, but a fraction of that of 

 which we have no record ; — if you observe in these 

 successive strata of rocks successive groups of animals 

 arising and dying out, a constant succession, giving you 

 the same kind of impression, as you travel from one 

 group of strata to another, as you would have in travel- 

 ling from one country to another ; — when you find this 

 constant succession of forms, their traces obliterated 

 except to the man of science, — when you look at this 

 wonderful history, and ask Avhat it means, it is only a 

 paltering with words if you are off'ered the reply, — 

 " They were so created." 



But if, on the other hand, you look on all forms of 

 organized beings as the results of the gradual modifi- 

 cation of a primitive type, the facts receive a meaning, 

 and you see that these older conditions are the neces- 

 sary predecessors of the present. Viewed in this light 

 the facts of palaeontology receive a meaning — upon any 

 other hypothesis, I am unable to see, in the slightest 

 degree, what knowledge or signification we are to draw 

 out of them. Again, note as bearing upon the same 



