338 PALAEONTOLOGY. 



further and truer insight has been carried into the natural arrangement 

 and subdivision of the classes of animals since palaeontology expanded 

 our survey of them. 



The knowledge of the type or fundamental pattern of certain systems 

 of organs, e. g., the framework of the Vertebrata and the teeth of the 

 Mammalia, has been advanced by the more frequent and closer ad- 

 herence to such type discovered in extinct animals, and thus the highest 

 aim of the zoologist has been greatly promoted by palaeontology. 



By this science the law of the geographical distribution of animals, 

 as deduced from existing species, is shown to have been in force during 

 periods of time long antecedent to human history, or to any evidence of 

 human existence ; and yet, in relation to the whole known period of 

 life-phenomena upon this planet, to have been a comparatively recent 

 result of geological forces determining the present configuration and 

 position of continents. Hereby palaeontology throws light upon a most 

 interesting branch of geographical science, that, viz., which relates to 

 former configurations of the earth's surface, and to other dispositions of 

 land and sea than prevail at the present day. 



Finally, palaeontology has yielded the most important facts to the 

 highest range of knowledge to which the human intellect aspires. It 

 teaches that the globe allotted to man has revolved in its orbit through 

 a period of time so vast, that the mind, in the endeavour to realize it, 

 is strained by an effort like that by which it strives to conceive the 

 space clividing the solar system from the most distant nebulae. 



Palaeontology has shown that, from the inconceivably remote period 

 of the deposition of the Cambrian rocks, the earth has been vivified by 

 the sun's light and heat, has been fertilized by refreshing showers, and 

 washed by tidal waves ; that the ocean not only moved in orderly os- 

 cillations regulated, as now, by sun and moon, but was rippled and 

 agitated by winds and storms; that the atmosphere, besides these move- 

 ments, was healthily influenced by clouds and vapours, rising, condensing, 

 and falling in ceaseless circulation. With these conditions of life, 

 palaeontology demonstrates that life has been enjoyed during the same 

 countless thousands of years ; and that with life, from the beginning, 

 there has been death. The earliest testimony of the living thing, 

 whether coral, crust, or shell, in the oldest fossiliferous rock, is at the 

 same time proof that it died. At no period does it appear that the gift 

 of life has been monopolized by contemporary individuals through a 

 stagnant sameness of untold time, but it has been handed down from 

 generation to generation, and successively enjoyed by the countless 

 thousands that constitute the species. Palaeontology further teaches, 

 that not only the individual, but the species perishes ; that as death is 



