516 
deposit, which is only exposed in places along the coast. It is not 
probable indeed that it extends far inland. It is very rarely ex- 
posed, in consequence of its position at the base of the cliff, being 
usually covered by the beach. Had it been 20 feet lower than it 
is, we might never have known of its existence ; and as the sea is 
continually wearing back our coast line, the time will come when 
all traces of this interesting deposit will have been destroyed. 
Seeing that the Forest bed (so-called) is such a mere fragment, it 
need not surprise us to find that among the fossils in our own 
Museum from this bed, some are unique. All that we know of 
Cervus Sedgwiclni (fide Mr. Gunn) are the fragmentary antlers 
in his collection ; there is also in our Museum, an interesting 
though imperfect specimen of the horn of an animal, which 
Mr. Gunn has named Cervus bovoides, because he considers it 
to combine cervine and bovine affinities, which is altogether 
unlike anything which has been elsewhere discovered. 
Although our knowledge of the past life history of the globe 
is thus, and must always be, so imperfect, recent additions to that 
knowledge are so important as to justify us in the belief that we 
shall before long be in possession of, if we do not already possess 
it, an overwhelming amount of evidence that there has been no 
break in the -history of the oi’ganic, any more than of the inorganic 
world ; that those principles of continuity which have been firmly 
established, so far as the crust of the earth is concerned, showing 
that the present state of things is merely the continuation of the 
past, will be speedily accepted as unquestionably true of the 
former life history of the globe ; that palaeontology and zoology 
bear the same relation to one another as do geology and physical 
geography. 
If it be true that existing animals are descended from those of 
which palaeontology teaches, we ought to find, as we trace the 
geological history backward, that the lines of life converge, just as 
in a genealogical tree we find the degrees of consanguinity of the 
members of the different pedigrees become closer as we approach 
the individual from whom all branches of the family have sprung ; 
and it is precisely this which the geological history reveals to us. 
