Geological Record of Life. 155 



In thy eternal course, both when thou climb'st, 



And when high noon hast gain'd, and when thou fall'st. 



Moon, that now meet'st the orient sun, now fliest, 



Let your ceaseless change 



Vary to our great Maker still new praise. 



170. Under the genial action of the solar energy, 

 an expansion of organic types, to adopt Professor 

 Dana's phrase, took place upon the 



globe; and there were found at once, be- 

 sides the lowest orders of life, also the highest orders, 

 but represented only in their lowest species. Such 

 as these were sufficiently provided for in the im- 

 proving conditions of life. Many species already 

 existing reached their stage of greatest prosperity, 

 in the evolving conditions which suited them best; 

 they passed that stage, and declined, either to die out 

 entirely, or to survive in a few families. The tribes 

 that culminated so are those of the crinoids, 

 brachiopods, trilobites, ganoid fishes, amphibians, 

 true reptiles, mollusks. Many other tribes have 

 their era of culmination now, as gasteropods, birds, 

 higher insects, teliost fishes. Brute mammals were 

 to reach their climax in the Champlain period of 

 the quaternary. And all creation, as we shall see, 

 was to culminate in man, who never rose upon an 

 inferior order of his own kind, and is never to be 

 superseded or decline. His culmination is elsewhere; 

 and the fortunes of the earth culminate in him. 



171. When the sun then by his beaming presence, 

 and the seasons which he controlled, had made the 



