LOWER SILURIAN FOSSILS. 



217 



and that the more complicated structures are gradually 

 developed among the higher bands, in what we might 

 call a natural ascending scale ;"* the pretext for giving 

 this unqualified contradiction to the above grand fact be- 

 ing, that when we take the special groups of animals, as 

 the invertebrata, the fishes, the reptiles, &c, there are 

 some real or apparent grounds for denying that the low 

 forms of these groups came before the higher. The fal- 

 lacy consists in sinking the great broad palpable facts of 

 the case, about which not the least doubt anywhere ex- 

 ists, and giving prominence to certain facts of far inferior 

 magnitude, and comparatively obscure, but in w T hose ob- 

 scurity there is a possibility of creating a kind of diver- 

 sion. I trust to be able to show that, even in the spe- 

 cial groups of fossils, there is no real obstacle to the 

 theory of a gradual natural development of life upon our 

 planet. 



The view which the Edinburgh critic gives of the ear- 

 liest stratified rocks is much the same as my own account 

 of them. There is a Hypozoic formation, or series, de- 

 void of remains of plants and animals; then a formation 

 (Lower Silurian) called in my early editions the Clay- 

 slate and Grawacke system, in which we find " no ani- 

 mals of the higher classes, with a regular skeleton and a 

 backbone;" only corals, encrinites, crustaceans, and mol- 

 lusks. " Vegetable appearances," he says, " do not ap 

 pear among the British rocks ; but there must have been 

 a mass of vegetable life in the ancient sea, as no fauna 

 can appear without a flora to uphold it." This last in- 

 ference is of little immediate consequence; but I may 

 remark, that it coincides with one which I ventured to 

 make, prompted thereto by some of the recent papers of 

 Mr. Murchison. We here see it sanctioned by a writer 

 who is understood to be a distinguished investigator of the 

 lowest fossiliferous beds. It is from no wish to amuse 

 the reader, but merely as a pleading in behalf of several 

 of the alleged geological misstatements in my book, that 

 I bring forward another distinguished reviewer of the 

 Vestiges of Creation, (North British Review, No. 6,) 

 taxing me with having been driven to make this very 

 surmise as an escape from a difficulty ! More than this : 

 the North British Reviewer is at odds with his Edinburgh 

 orother, in bringing bones and teeth of fish into the first 

 * " Edinburgh Review ' 



