POSITION OF PALEONTOLOGY. n 



individual and the general constitution of the animal 

 world. This connection requires a scientific solution, a 

 reduction to causes, and this all the more urgently be- 

 cause their relations, though as yet hidden, are rendered 

 more probable by a third series of phenomena, the 

 conquest of which is likewise the achievement of natural 

 history. We allude to the record of the primaeval 

 world. 



Therefore, the knowledge of palasontological facts also 

 forms part of the indispensable basis of our operations. 

 Geology entered the right track forty years ago. We 

 now know that the world was not made backwards, but 

 originated by gradual formations and metamorphoses; 

 we may — nay, we must, infer that, at a definite epoch of 

 refrigeration, life appeared in a natural manner, that is 

 to say, without any incomprehensible act of creation; and 

 during this slow transformation of the earth's crust, we 

 see living beings also gradually increasing, differentiat- 

 ing, and perfecting themselves. 



Yet more. As was first convincingly proved in detail • 

 by Agassiz, one of the most vehement antagonists of the 

 theory of descent, we behold the palaeontological or his- 

 torical series of organisms in the same sequence as the 

 phases of the development of the individual. There are 

 here vast chasms yet to be filled up by future observa- 

 tion, though in many points we must not altogether 

 despair of success. But that the process of palaeonto- 

 logical development is, in general, the one indicated, is 

 disputed only by naturalists, who, like Barrande, years 

 ago anchored themselves to inalterable convictions in 

 science, as in creed, to dogmas. 



These groups of facts, thus mutually referring to each 



