238 J. M. CLARKE GEOLOGY AND ORDER OP THE STATE 



quiiy sets plainl}^ before us, first, the paramount question as to the oft 

 alleged and too often magnified imperfections of the record of life on 

 the earth. 



' In many, probabl}^ in most, expositions of the science of geology and 

 paleontology, prepared for the use of students and general readers, the 

 so-called imperfections in the record of past life are brought out with a 

 vivid intensity. These expositions are, I think, in large part due to a 

 more or less unconsciously apologetic attitude on the part of the authors, 

 as though they were in some way, being apostles of the science, likely to 

 be held to account for any overstatement of its claims ; and these attorneys 

 in bankruptcy are not inaptly, to my mind, comparable to buyers of 

 ancient but damaged rugs — torn, raveled, worn bare of their patterns: 

 ostentatiously declaring their defects while overlooking the beauty, the 

 symbolism, the perfection of the design, seen clear through all the ravages 

 made by the wear of time. 



I find myself out of sympathy with such deprecating portraitures. 

 Neither my experience nor my philosophy finds support for pessimistic 

 conceptions of the ultimate hope of completing our tapestries from the 

 patterns we know and the threads we are yet to pick \v^. For a few 

 years, as we reckon human history, we have scratched with our hammers 

 some surface exposures of the tablets of the law in parts of the earth most 

 easily accessible to us, and the occasional explorer into remoter parts has 

 gathered the life records in haphazard way, here a few pounds weight, 

 there a few tons. Not one-fiftieth part of the exposed rocks of the earth 

 lias yet been closely scrutinized for these life records, and of the unex- 

 posed, but known, strata, practically none at all in the great total. This 

 State of New York covers 47,000 square miles, two-thirds of which are 

 underlaid by life records of the earth. This fossiliferous area is one- 

 eighteen-hundredth part of the land area of this globe, about one-eleven- 

 hundredth part of the exposed fossiliferous rocks. In this State the 

 work of assembling the evidences of the life record has proceeded con- 

 tuiuously in organized attack for eighty years. An eminent French geol- 

 ogist has intimated that there are few places of equal area in the workl 

 where the life record is so completely assembled — and yet every year 

 l)riDgs new and necessary additions to our quiver. What shall we say of 

 the other 1,099 equal areas of fossiliferous rocks on the earth? Many of 

 them have indeed been studied with precision, but there remains and must 

 remain for long years yet an overwlielming balance of the unknown. In 

 the abundance and perfection of the life that is preserved in these rocks 

 only the living seas themselves arc comparal^le. I have estimated the 



