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ee ee ee ee 
Organized Beings in Time. 333 
The ordinary illustration of the relation of Polarity, in a natural 
history sense, is that representing the rela- 
tion of opposition or progression in oppo- 
site directions of the Animal and Vege- 
table series ; the meeting point of both being 
at the points of lowest development of 
each (a, v, in the accompanying diagram), 
where the animal and vegetable natures 
are almost confounded, whilst the strongest 
manifestations of each are at A and V, the 
highest animals being farthest removed 
from the highest vegetables,—in other 
words, at opposite poles of the sphere of 
organized beings. 
‘The earnest desire implanted instinctively in every inquiring mind, 
to discover a law or scheme in arrangements of Nature, has given 
origin to many speculations concerning the distribution of life in 
geological time, all of them founded on facts more or less clearly 
understood. Hence have arisen the hypothesis of an evolution of all 
organized types, during the course of time, from one rudimentary 
prototype; that of the succession of distinctly originating forms of 
animals and vegetables in order of the progression within their re- 
spective series ; of the coeval starting of the great groups wholly or 
mostly at the beginning, but in each instance by the lower forms of 
the type ; of the representation by the faunas and floras of geo- 
logical epochs ; of the successive zones of life belting the geographical 
regions between the poles and the equator; of a uniformity of life 
arrangements throughout time and repetition through substitution 
of equal and similar groups; and of manifestations in the distribu- 
tion of life in time of analogies that are essentially theological. 
For several years I have been persuaded that the simple and un- 
questionable phenomena of substitution of groups by representative 
groups, manifested in the arrangements of the faunas and floras of 
all geological epochs, and comparable with like phenomena exhibited 
by the geographical distribution of existing organized beings, would 
prove sufficient forthe explanation of all the appearances that have 
suggested such speculations, some purely hypothetical, some fairly 
theoretical, as those I have just indicated. The apparent contradic- 
tions and unexplained peculiarities presented by the more ancient 
epochs as contrasted with the middle and newer ones, seemed to 
depend on the incomplete state of our knowledge, and to be possibly 
explainable by supposing, that of some great geological epochs in time 
we had as yet iicokered no traces.. Thus the great gap between 
the Paleozoic and Mesozoic life might depend upon our not yet 
having discovered traces of the rudimentar ‘y formations that had 
been deposited during the interval between the Permian and Triassic 
epochs. 
