314 SKETCHES OF CUE ATI OK 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 



METHOD IN THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 



IVTATITRE has always issued her bulletins. It is a most 

 -^ interesting fact in the history of the animal creation 

 that Nature advertised her plans in the very earliest crea- 

 tive acts. In our study of the relics of the primeval ages 

 we do not find the grand and fundamental purposes of In- 

 finite Wisdom unfolding themselves by degrees as type 

 after type of organic life made its advent upon our planet. 

 It is quite true that the full development of Nature's 

 schemes can only be apprehended in the ultimate results, 

 and that, with our highest wisdom, we are continually sur- 

 prised at the wealth of resources exposed in the unfolding 

 of a simple plan. But Nature had her plans, and these 

 were mature in the very beginning. All possible contin- 

 gencies being foreseen, no amendments or modifications 

 have been necessitated by the growth of successive popu- 

 lations and the march of human improvement. The out- 

 lines of Nature's grand methods were announced in her 

 initial creative efforts. It was thus in the plan of conti- 

 nental development ; it was thus in the plan of the animal 

 creation. It is only in the infinite flexibility of her plans, 

 and in the inexhaustible richness of their filling up, that 

 Nature transcends all the possibilities of human expecta- 

 tion. 



To the geologist no fact is more familiar or more patent 

 than the simultaneous introduction upon the earth of three 

 of the four fundamental plans of animal structure which 

 in the following ages were to sport into the infinite variety 



