TKRTIA.RY FOSSILS. 



24? 



tinctive in the case.* It would appear that the reviewer 

 is simply ignorant of this department of natural history, 

 and, with the self-esteem which often attends upon igno- 

 rance, he has somewhat unluckily ventured to give a 

 positive contradiction to that which is incontestably true. 



The reviewer at length comes to the organic phe- 

 nomena of the Tertiary system. "On the theory of de- 

 velopment," says he, «* * the stages of advance are in all 

 cases very small — from species to species,' and the phe- 

 nomena, * as shown in the pages of geology, are always of 

 a simple and modest character.' Let us test these as- 

 sumptions by one single step, from the chalk to the Lon- 

 don clay, or any other tertiary deposit. Among the mil- 

 lions of organic forms, from corals up to mammals, we 

 find hardly so much as one single secondary species." 

 The exceptions in reality are, the infusoria of the chalk, 

 and " two or three secondary species," which are said to 

 " straggle into the tertiary system." " Organic nature," 

 fie says, " is once more on a new pattern — plants as well 

 as animals are changed. It might seem as if we had 

 ■>een transported to a new planet ; for neither in the ar- 

 rangement of the genera and species, nor in their affinities 

 •vith the types of an older world, is there the shadow of 

 my approach to a regular plan of organic development." 

 N"ow fhe almost total break in the organic creation here 

 ,$sisted upon occurs in the interval between the exten- 

 sive deposits of the secondary formation and the com- 

 paratively isolated deposits of the tertiary. It is an inter- 

 val which the lithological arrangements clearly, indicate 

 to have been longer than any of those between the other 

 formations, during which minor changes of organic crea- 

 tion had taken place. It is simply, then, a period not 

 represented by strata or by fossils ; while it elapsed, the 

 continual advance of the organic world proceeded to a 

 point at which nearly all the old species had died out or 

 oeen changed. There was nothing more in the " step " of 

 our reviewer than this Such is the geological doctrine. 

 " Is the present creation of life," says Professor Phillips, 

 ** a continuation of the previous ones ; a term of the same 

 long series of communicated being ? I answer, yes."f 

 "There is no break," he says, " in the vast chain of or- 



• Reports of Ray Society, I. 



f He adds—" But not as the offspring is a continuation oi th« 

 parent" 



