114 . ORGANIC EVOLUTION CONSIDERED 



but that it remains in the possession of the ancestral 

 estate; and that from the Cretaceous period (if not 

 much earlier) to the present day, the deep sea has 

 covered a large part of what is now the area of the 

 Atlantic. But if Globigerina and Terebratula caput- 

 serpentis, and Beryx, not to mention other forms of 

 animals and plants, thus bridge over the interval 

 between the present and the Mesozoic periods, is it 

 possible that the majority of other living things 

 underwent a * sea-change into something new and 

 strange ' all at once? 



" Thus far I have endeavored to expand and to 

 enforce by fresh arguments, but not to modify in any 

 important respect, the ideas submitted to you on a 

 former occasion. But when I come to the proposi- 

 tions touching progressive modification, it appears to 

 me, with the help of the new light which has broken 

 from various quarters, that there is much ground for 

 softening the somewhat Brutus-like severity with 

 which, in 1862, I dealt with a doctrine for the truth of 

 which I should have been glad enough to be able to 

 find a good foundation. So far indeed as the Inver- 

 tebrata and the lower Vertebrate/, are concerned, the 

 facts and conclusions which are to be drawn from 

 them appear to remain what they were. For anything 

 that, as yet, appears to the contrary, the earliest 

 known Marsupials may have been as highly organ- 

 ized as their living congeners; the Permian lizards 

 show no signs of inferiority to those of the present 

 day; the Labyrinthodonts cannot be placed below 

 the living Salamander and Triton; the Devonian 

 Ganoids are closely related to Polypterus and to 

 Lepidosiren."* 



I have quoted at length Professor Huxley's revised 

 and reaffirmed opinion as to the known geological 



* Cyclopedia of Science, p. 172. 



