PALEONTOLOGY. 3 



Palaeontology has shewn 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 oscillations regu- 

 lated, as now, by sun and moon, but was rippled and agitated 

 by winds and storms ; that the atmosphere, besides these 

 movements, was healthily influenced by clouds and vapours, 

 rising, condensing, and falling in ceaseless circulation. With 

 such 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 consti- 

 tute the species. Palaeontology further teaches, that not only 

 the individual, but the species perishes ; that as death is 

 balanced by generation, so extinction has been concomitant 

 with the creative power which has produced a succession of 

 species ; and furthermore, that, in this succession, there has 

 been "an advance and progress in the main." Thus we learn 

 that the creative force has not deserted the earth during any 

 of the epochs of geological time that have succeeded to the 

 first manifestation of such force ; and that, in respect to no 

 one class of animals, has the operation of creative force been 

 limited to one geological epoch ; and perhaps the most im- 

 portant and significant result of palaeontological research has 

 been the establishment of the axiom of the continuous 

 operation of the ordained becoming of the species of living 

 things. 



