346 The Future of Geology. 



fossils are turning up with two sets of features. Our preconceived 

 notions of what ought to be, are sadly disconcerted. An already ex- 

 tensive terminology is threatened with an inundation of new terms, 

 too necessary to be evaded. 



If we are not greatly mistaken, there are little clouds rising on 

 the geological horizon that indicate revolutions elsewhere in the series. 

 That narrow black line drawn on geological diagrams between the 

 words " Trias" and u Permian" has more meaning in it than its thin 

 dimensions indicate. The line between " Eocene" and " Cretaceous" 

 has swollen out, broken up, and is enlarging fast into intermediate 

 sections. But all its changes and increase will be as nothing com- 

 pared with those which must take place by and by, in its representa- 

 tive lower down. If we interpret aright the signs indicated by extinct 

 organisms preserved to us in palaeozoic rocks, and the comparison of 

 them with others contained in the lowest mesozoic or secondary strata, 

 there is a gap in our knowledge of the succession of formations, the 

 extent of which it is almost disheartening to think upon. Although 

 the palaeozoic fauna and flora are assuredly portions of the same 

 unique system of organised nature with the assemblages of creatures 

 of after-date in time, they exhibit differences in detail so great that, 

 on superficial consideration, we might almost be inclined to regard 

 them as belonging to some other world than our own. These dif- 

 ferences are such as at present set all our calculations respecting the 

 climatal conditions of the primeval (palaeozoic) epochs at defiance. 

 But that these oldest of creations were linked with those that came 

 after, and those amidst which we live, is evident in the number of 

 generic types common to all, and expressed yet more strongly in the 

 presence of straggling representatives of types of life, characteristically 

 palaeozoic, among the very lowermost strata of the secondary period. 

 All analogy, however, teaches us that there is a graduation of one geo- 

 logical epoch into another ; and every day's advance in research goes 

 to confirm this belief. The facts to which we have alluded indicate 

 evidences of such a graduation of palaeozoic into secondary. But the 

 stages of that graduation, the intermediate formations, have not yet 

 been discovered. Calculating from the amount of the blank in the 

 series of organised types, there must have been a vast interval of 

 time intervening between the Permian and Triassic epochs, during 

 which, doubtless, sediments were being deposited in seas, sea-beds 

 upheaved, animals and plants flourishing, generations and genera- 

 tions, nay more, creations and creations (we use the popular and 

 hypothetical term, for want of a better), appearing, succeeding, and 

 disappearing ; and yet of all these mineral accumulations, and or- 

 ganised assemblages, there has not been as yet a fragment found. 



" They are but ill discoverers," wrote Lord Bacon, " that think 

 there is no land when they can see nothing but sea. 1 ' Columbus 

 had fewer signs to warrant his belief in a new continent than we 

 have to indicate an unexplored, and as yet unseen, geological world. 



