TIME AND CHANGE 
the shower did not cause him to quicken his pace, 
as amphibians rather like the rain. Just what his 
immediate forbears were like, or what the forms 
were that connected him with the fishes, we shall 
probably never know. Doubtless the great book 
of the rocky strata somewhere holds the secret, if 
we are ever lucky enough to open it at the right 
place. How many other secrets, that evolutionists 
would like to know, those torn and crumpled leaves 
hold! 
It is something to me to know that it rained that 
day when our amphibian ancestor ventured out. 
The weather was beginning to get organized also, 
and settling down to business. It had got beyond 
the state of perpetual mist and fog of the earlier 
ages, and the raindrops were playing their parts. 
Yet, from all the evidence we have, we infer that the 
climate was warm and very humid, like that of a 
greenhouse, and that vegetation, mostly giant ferns 
and rushes and lycopods, was very rank, but there 
was no grass, or moss, no deciduous trees, or flowers, 
or fruit, as we know these things. 
A German anatomist says that we have the ves- 
tiges of one hundred and eighty organs which have 
stuck to us from our animal ancestors, — now use- 
less, or often worse than useless, like the vermiform 
appendix. Eleven of these superannuated and ob- 
solete organs we bring from the fishes, four from 
amphibians and reptiles. The external ear is a ves- 
32 
