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THE GEOLOGIST. 
The grand law of nature, Mr. Page sets forth as ordeb,. 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 da 
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 Hfe 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 for ages 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 '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 them 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 ; these modifications, even in their agreement, have never amounted 
to an obliteration of any important primal distinction. Acrogenous, endo- 
genous, and exogenous, radiate, articulate, moUuscan, vertebrate range side by 
side as distinctly now, each within its own typical idea, as when they first 
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 the wake of reproduction, and suffering been commensurate with 
enjoyment. An ideal Cosmos of painless beatitude is a dream and a delusion." 
clothed 
" As to function ; earth 
