IV. 



The Animal World in its Historical and Falseontological Development. 



It is SO easy to observe that the earth's crust, from the 

 deepest valleys to the highest mountain top contains 

 innumerable animal remains, that even antiquity could 

 not fail to notice it. But some two thousand years 

 passed by before a correct knowledge was attained of 

 the relations of these remains to the present world. 

 Some thought they were sports of nature, products of 

 creative power leading to no special object, but in a 

 certain measure to be regarded as exercises preliminary 

 to the actual creation of life; others considered the fossils 

 as remains of living creatures, indeed, but of such as 

 still existed, and which had been destroyed by overflows 

 and subsequent withdrawals of the sea. The legend of 

 the universal deluge, especially, derived great support 

 from this second opinion. Only when, at the end of last 

 century, the stratification of the earth's crust was revealed 

 to science, after the outlines of a history of the solar system 

 and of a special history of the earth or geology had been 

 indicated by Kant and Laplace, only then arose the 

 possibility and necessity of a real palaeontology, or knowl- 

 edge of pre-historic life. At the beginning of this cen- 

 tury it was discovered that the fossils corresponding 



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