﻿XXxiv PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



creative additions ; and it is by watching these additions that we get 

 some insight into Nature's true historical progress, and learn that 

 there was a time when Cephalopoda were the highest types of animal 

 life, the primates of this world ; that Fishes next took the lead, then 

 Reptiles ; and that during the secondary period they were anatomi- 

 cally raised far above any forms of the reptile class now living in the 

 world. Mammals were added next, until Nature became what she 

 now is, by the addition of Man." — Ibid. p. ccxvi. 



From a recent work on Comparative Anatomy, by Professor Owen, 

 distinguished by grand and comprehensive views in regard to the 

 relations of different parts of the vertebrate creation to* each other, 

 I cite the following passage : — 



" To what natural or secondary causes the orderly succession and 

 progression of such organic phenomena may have been committed, 

 we are as yet ignorant. But if, without derogation to the Divine 

 Power, we may conceive the existence of such ministers and personify 

 them by the term ' Nature,' we learn from the past history of our 

 globe, that she had advanced with slow and stately steps, guided by 

 the archetypal light amidst the wreck of worlds, from the first em- 

 bodiment of the vertebrate idea, under its old ichthyic vestment, 

 until it became arranged, in the glorious garb of the human form*." 



I shall make one more extract, from the pages of Mr. Hugh 

 Miller's ' Footprints of the Creator,' as it will place in a clear point 

 of view the idea entertained by many geologists, that the successive 

 development of the living inhabitants of the globe kept pace with a 

 corresponding improvement in its habitable condition. 



" It is of itself," he says, " an extraordinary fact, without reference 

 to other considerations, that the order adopted by Cuvier in his 

 4 Animal Kingdom,' as that in which the four great classes of verte- 

 brate animals, when marshalled according to their rank and standing, 

 naturally range, should be also that in which they occur in order of 

 time. The brain which bears an average proportion to the spinal 

 cord of not more than two to one, came first, — it is the brain of the 

 fish ; that which bears to the spinal cord, an average proportion of 

 two-and-a-half to one, succeeded it, — it is the brain of the reptile ; 

 then came the brain averaging as three to one, — it is that of the 



* Owen on the Nature of Limbs, p. 86. 



