Appendix to Chapter V. 435 
some special explanation ; and we may perhaps believe that we 
see, in these large areas, the many formations long anterior to 
the Cambrian epoch in a completely metamorphosed and 
denuded condition’”’ The probability of this view he 
sustains by certain general considerations, as well as par- 
ticular facts touching the geology of oceanic islands, &c. 
On the whole, then, it seems to me but reasonable to 
conclude, with regard to all four objections in question, as 
Darwin concludes with regard to them :— 
For my part, following out Lyell’s metaphor, I look at the 
geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept, 
written in a changing dialect ; of this history we possess the last 
volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this 
volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved ; 
and of each page only here and there a few lines. Each word of 
the slowly-changing language, more or less different in the 
successive chapters, may represent the forms of life, which 
are entombed in our consecutive formations, and which falsely 
appear to us to have been abruptly introduced. On this view, 
the difficulties above discussed are greatly diminished, or even 
disappear *. 
As far as I can see, the only reasonable exception that 
can be taken to this general view of the whole matter, is one 
which has been taken from the side of astronomical 
physics. 
Put briefly, it is alleged by one of the highest authorities 
in this branch of science, that there cannot have been any 
such enormous reaches of unrecorded time as would be 
implied by the supposition of there having been a lost history 
of organic evolution before the Cambrian period. The 
grounds of this allegation I am not qualified to examine ; 
but in a general way I agree with Prof. Huxley in feeling 
that, from the very nature of the case, they are necessarily 
1 Origin of Species, p. 289. 
2 Tid. 
Ff 2 
