TERTIA.RY FOSSILS . 



247 



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. 44 On the theory of de- 

 velopment," says he, 44 4 the stages of advance are in all 

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

 nomena, * as shown ii 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 44 two or three secondary species," which are said to 



straggle into the tertiary system." 44 Organic nature," 

 he says, 44 is once more on a new pattern — plants as well 

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

 seen 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." 

 Xow (he almost total break in the organic creation here 

 insisted 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 

 been changed. There was nothing more in the 44 step " of 

 our reviewer than this Such is the geological doctrine. 

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

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

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

 44 There is no break," he says, 44 in the vast chain of or- 



* Reports of Ray Society, I. 



t He adds — "But not as the offspring is a continuation ol the 

 parent." 



