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the bird, and the lower mammals. The change of form which marks 

 the rise from the birds to the marsupials, from these again to the 

 lowest placental, the rodentia; from these to the ruminants, the 

 carnivora, the quadrumana. Every change in the position and 

 size of the parts, as we rise in the scale, is represented in the pro- 

 cess of development. In the development of the brain, the dif- 

 ferent members of the quadrumana exhibit vast differences. Accord- 

 ing to the high authority of Professor Huxley, the gap between 

 the highest and the lowest of the group is greater than that which 

 separates the highest ape from the lowest man. 



Let us now glance at the record of past life as exhibited in the 

 great series of stratified rocks. Imperfect as is the geological 

 record of past life, rare though the conditions be, which admit of 

 the preservation of organic remains, yet we discover in the imperfect 

 and broken fragments, the evidence of the one great law. the 

 advance of life. In the great Canadian series of rocks, which is the 

 earliest known to contain the remains of life, is found the Eozoon, 

 a member of the lowest class of living forms. In the Cambrian 

 series, the highest known remains are those of annelids and poly- 

 zoa. The highest of the Cambro-Silurian group are cephalopods 

 and crustaceans. In the upper Silurian we reach the stage of fishes, 

 we have then representatives of the five sub-kingdoms, the proto- 

 zoa, caelenterata, mollusca, annulosa, and vertebrata. In the Car- 

 boniferous groups we first discover the remains of reptiles, these 

 have only been found on the continents of Europe and America, 

 none having yet been found in the British Isles. Reptiles of 

 various kinds abound in the Triassic epoch. Labyrinthodonts in 

 bony structure resembling modern batrachians, but containing 

 characters found in lizards, crocodiles, and ganoid fishes. The foot- 

 steps of what appear to have been birds appear on the sandstones 

 of Connecticut, North America ; and at Frome, in Somerset, some 

 small mammalian teeth have been found, which Professor Owen 

 thinks have belonged to some small marsupial insectivorous animal 

 resembling the Myrmecobius of Australia. The Oolite period was 

 rich in reptile forms, some of them seeming to supply the link 

 between the reptile and the bird ; mammalian remains also occur, 



