FOSSILS OF THF PERMIAN" SYSTEM 



233 



Jie dicotyledons increase afterwards while the others de- 

 cline, — we cannot well resist the conclusion, that we 

 see the traces of a progress in the history of this king- 

 dom of nature. It may be less clear than we could wish ; 

 but such light as we have certainly favors the develop- 

 ment theory. 



We now come to the Magnesian Limestone deposit, 

 latterly called the Permian System. At this place, the 

 Edinburgh reviewer introduces some general observa- 

 tions, which I hope he will yet acknowledge to be unjust, 

 as I am sure the whole of his substantive charges are. 

 <s It may be true," he says, " that sea-weeds came first, 

 but of this we have no proof." How a good geologist 

 can have allowed himself to speak in this manner, even 

 in eagerness to theorize against theory, I am quite at a 

 loss to understand, for the positive facts of the occurrence 

 of fucoids in the Lower Silurians, and of the very first 

 traces of land vegetation in subsequent formations, are as 

 palpable and undoubted as he himself acknowledges the 

 precedence of fish by invertebrata to be ; nor has any one 

 ever pretended to expect that land vegetation would be 

 found earlier than the marine. I have here ventured no 

 conjecture of my own, but only spoken as all the geolo 

 gical books teach. " Of land plants," he continues, 

 *' we have not the shadow of proof that the simpler forms 

 came into being before the more complex." The reader 

 has just been told upon undoubted authority that, in the 

 first great show of land vegetation, taking such positive 

 evidence as we have, the simple forms are vastly more 

 numerous than the complex. Finding that we have first 

 ample marine vegetation, then aland vegetation in which 

 the plants, with only a small exception, are cellular and 

 cryptogamic, while of the exception a very small number 

 are dicotyledonous, and a conspicuous group (the conifers) 

 intermediate — I feel that I am entitled to say that positive 

 evidence speaks for a precedence of high but simple forms ; 

 which is what I have done. " It is true," thus proceeds the 

 reviewer, " that we see polypiaria, crinoidea, articulata, 

 and mollusca ; but it i3 not true that we meet with them 

 in the order stated by our author." It is humiliating to 

 have to answer an objection so mean. There is no state- 

 ment that the animals came in this order. I have only 

 put the words into this arrangement, in accordance with 

 the custom now commonly followed of observing the 



