CONTENTS 11 



PAGE 



up to a high form of Segmental Continuity — The sea has been the 

 great storehouse from which, from time to time, the earth has 

 received its primitive terrestrial types — How the " gaps " in 

 the evolutionary chain can be explained — The step from one form 

 of Continuity to a higher form must always have been sudden. 

 At each step a certain proportion of the Continuity-type in ques- 

 tion developed as a new type with multiplied Continuity, while 

 the remainder bred true to type as regards Continuity, or were 

 " permanently arrested " as regards Continuity — Parallel between 

 growth-cycle evolution and that of Continuity-types in Nature's 

 body — The action of Environment in producing, maintaining, 

 and intensifying Continuity — Force of Gravity — No multiplication 

 of Continuity has taken place on land as it has in water, but the 

 successive terrestrial Continuity-types are all probably derivatives 

 and representatives of ancestral fixed marine Continuity-types. 



Chapter XVII 



The Evolution of Continuity (continued) .... 158 



The crust of the earth ; its strata, and sections — Successive Con- 

 tinuity-types do not regularly appear as fossil remains with 

 successive strata — In the earliest ages all the known forms of 

 Continuity had already evolved ; this is known by the fossils 

 found in Silurian rocks. 



Force of Attraction, as an indirectly compressing agency, has 

 been the factor which produced the successive forms of living 

 Continuity — Attraction has all along acted as Gravity, or terrestrial 

 attraction — How Gravity may have produced its results — Relative 

 density — Water-pressure — The production of Filamentous Con- 

 tinuity — The diminution of cell-density with development — The 

 evolution of the Zooid, and megazooid — Suggestion that the 

 repeated multiplication of Continuity may have been due to the 

 development of fertilised ova under higher water-pressure con- 

 ditions than usually obtaining — The factor responsible for fertilised 

 ova being brought to develop in these increased pressure con- 

 ditions would be Segregation, or Repulsion acting in special ways — 

 Different forms of Segregation, and their probable effects — It 

 may be that as many strata were laid down before the Silurian 

 Period as have been deposited since that time. 



Chapter XVIII 



The Evolution of Phanerogams 169 



The main groups of the Vegetable Kingdom — Theory to the effect 

 that each group may have a distinct derivation from a marine 

 type which exhibited an identical form of Continuity — The chapter 

 briefly deals with the origin of the Phanaerogams — The views 

 generally held at the present time regarding the evolution of 

 Phanaerogams — Some new suggestions — Marine zooidal colonies ; 

 their " cones " and " flowers " — The sporosac ; the sporosac-gono- 

 blastidium and the Gymnosperm cone — The evolution of the medu- 

 siform gonophore, and of the gonoblastidium containing such 

 gonophores — The Angiosperms came suddenly into existence ; 

 probably not as an offshoot from the disappearing Cycadophytes, 

 but as a new type suddenly derived from a primitive Hydrozoal 

 type possessing some form of medusiform gonophore — The Gymno- 

 sperms would be derived in an earlier age from a still more primi- 

 tive Hydrozoal type which possessed sporosac-gonoblastidia — The 

 homologies of the medusiform gonophore and the typical Angio- 

 sperm flower. 



