406 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



The grand law of nature, Mr. Page sets forth as order. So it is. In 

 tracing this order, the first subject would naturally be the dawn of life. While 

 admitting that, as we descend into the rocky crust of our planet, we reach a 

 stage in the sub-Silurian metamorphic rocks, where life does not seem to have 

 existed, Mr. Page will not argue for the restriction of life to the Cambrian 

 period ; but he considers we must have something more certain than fanciful 

 analogies to carry our convictions any distance beyond these strata. He thinks 

 too, that the evidence of fossil life is greatly in favour of the belief that in this 

 stage we have reached, or all but reached, the dawn of organized existence." 

 All but reached ! Sometimes in our erratic way, we are tempted to ask, Yes ! 

 but What is under the granite ? And some day this will not seem so mad a 

 question as it does now. It would be slow work to hunt over the old Gneiss, 

 so the hunting is not done. Someday, some painstaking local geologist will do 

 it, and then perhaps life-forms will be found down there. 



However, we now let Mr. Page speak for himself. 



" As we ascend in the geological scale, we find life increasing and spreading 

 stage by stage into newer and higher forms ; and as we descend, we find it 

 decreasing and narrowing to simpler and lowlier aspects ; and surely we are 

 justified in the inference, that in the few scattered organisms of Cambria we 

 have all but attained the ultimate limits of vitality. Were matter and life co- 

 dependent, we might reasonably argue for their co-existence ; but as neither 

 can exist without the manifestation of vitality, and as life appears only in sub- 

 ordination to the material forces, so the one may have existed forages without 

 necessarily implying the presence of the other. And further, if untold epochs 

 have been spent in the evolution of life from its earliest to its present aspects, 

 it is equally conceivable that cycle after cycle may have rolled by in the 

 elimination of the purely material structure of the world before it seemed to 

 the Divine Mind a fitting habitat for the plants and animals with which He 

 had destined to adorn its surface." * * * " Starting from this point, we may 

 fairly inquire, how, and by what means this earth became the " procreant 

 cradle " of organized existences ? * * * Science cannot even indicate the 

 line of inquiry ; our highest philosophy is the humble recognition of the fact ; 

 the chemist and the physiologist may resolve the vital organism into cells and 

 granules, and nuclei, but here their efforts stop: they cannot endow these cells 

 and germs with life. * * * "This present ignorance, however, can form no 

 plea for the absence of future effort ; everything unknown is not to be held as 

 a miracle." 



The next subject is* the uniformity of type and pattern in past and present 

 time ; " the plants and animals of the ancient world, though differing widely in 

 genera and species were neither c abnormal ' nor ' monstrous ; ' but both in 

 point of size and form and structural adaptations were very much alike to 

 those of the present day. So much so indeed, that could we recall thein to 

 mingle in the busy scenes of life around us, they would neither startle us by 

 their appearance, nor alarm us by their habits, one whit more than the existing 

 flora and fauna of distant and different regions. The great types remain the 

 same throughout all time and space; and though the modifications have been 

 innumerable; ihcse modifications, even in their agreement, have never amounted 

 to an obliteration of any important primal distinction. Acrogenous, endo- 

 genous, and exogenous, radiate, articulate, molluscan, vertebrate range side by 

 side as distinctly now, each within its own typical idea, as when "they first 

 clothed the land, and peopled the waters." * * * " As \o function ; earth 

 and water ever seem to have had their varied tenantry. * * In the mutual 

 dependencies of existence, demand has ever pressed on supply, decay trodden 

 closely in 1 he wake of reproduction, and suffering been commensurate with 

 enjoyment. An ideal Cosmos of painless beatitude is a dream and a delusion." 



