SCIENCE OF FOSSIL LIFE 335 
in the development of higher forms of recent animals is 
very interesting and very significant, and helps materially 
in elucidating the idea that the fossil series represent roughly 
the successive stages through which animal forms have 
passed in their upward course of development from the 
simplest to the highest, through long ages of time. Curi- 
ously enough, however, Agassiz failed to grasp the meaning 
of the principle that he had worked out. After illustrating 
so nicely the process of organic evolution, he remained to the 
end of his life an opponent of that theory. 
Huxley.—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) was led 
to study fossil life on an extended scale, and he shed light in 
this province asin others upon which he touched. With crit- 
ical analysis and impartial mind he applied the principles 
of evolution to the study of fossil remains. His first conclu- 
sion was that the evidence of evolution derived from palzon- 
tology was negative, but with the advances in discovery he 
grew gradually to recognize that paleontologists, in bringing 
to light complete evolutionary series, had supplied some of 
the strongest supporting evidence of organic evolution. By 
many geologists fossils have been used as time-markers for 
the determination of the age of various deposits; but, with 
Huxley, the study of them was always biological. It is to 
the latter point of view that paleontology owes its great 
importance and its great development. The statement of 
Huxley, that the only difference between a fossil and a recent 
animal is that one has been dead longer than the other, 
represents the spirit in which the study is being carried 
forward. 
With the establishment of the doctrine of organic evolu- 
tion paleontology entered upon its moder phase of growth; 
upon this basis there is being reared a worthy structure 
through the efforts of the recent votaries to the science. It 
is neither essential nor desirable that the present history of 
