3*74 Professor Owen's Address. 



earth was vivified by the sun's light and heat, was fertilized by 

 refreshing showers and washed by tidal waves. No stagnation 

 has been permitted to air or ocean. The vast body of waters not 

 only moved, as a whole, in orderly oscillations, regulated, as now, 

 by sun and moon, but were rippled and agitated here and there 

 successively by winds and storms. The atmosphere was healthily 

 influenced by its horizontal currents, and by ever-varying clouds 

 and vapours rising, condensing, dissolving, and falling in endless 

 vertical circulation. With these conditions of life, we know that 

 life itself hasbeen enjoyed throughout the same countless thousands 

 of years ; and that with life, from the beginning, there has been 

 death. The earliest testimony of the living thing, whether shell, 

 crust, or coral in the oldest fossiliferous rock, is at the same time 

 proof that it died. It has further been given us to know, that not 

 only the individual but the species perishes ; that as death is 

 balanced by generation, so extinction has been concomitant with 

 creative power, which has continued to provide a succession of 

 species ; and furthermore, that as regards the varying forms of 

 life which this planet has witnessed, there has been " an advance 

 and progress in the main." Geology demonstrates that the creative 

 force has not deserted this earth during any of her epochs of time ; 

 and that in respect to no one class of animals has the manifestation 

 of that force been limited to one epoch. Not a species of fish that 

 now lives, but has come into being during a comparatively recent 

 period ; the existing species were preceded by other species, and 

 these again by others still more different from the present. No 

 existing genus of fishes can be traced back beyond a moiety of 

 known creative time. Two entire orders (Cycloids and Ctenoids) 

 have come into being, and have almost superseded two other 

 orders (Ganoids and Placoids), since the newest or latest of the 

 secondary formations of the earth's crust. Species after species of 

 land animals, order after order of air-breathing reptiles have suc- 

 ceeded each other; creation ever compensating for extinction. 

 The successive passing away of air-breathing species may, have 

 been as little due to exceptional violence, and as much to natural 

 law, as in the case of marine plants and animals. It is true, 

 indeed, that every part of the earth's surface has been submerged ; 

 but successively, and for long periods. Of the present dry land 

 different natural continents have different Faunae and Florae ; and 

 the fossil remains of the plants and animals of these continents 

 respectively show that they possessed the same peculiar characters, 



