higher and higher forms, so the life of the future must transcend that of the present, as the present excels the past. Unless geology has altogether misinterpreted the history of this earth, and her teachings be no better than a fable and delusion, philosophy is chained to this conclusion. Could we discover the terms of the law that has regulated the evolutions of past vitality, we might approximate to some idea of its future forms; but, ignorant of these terms, we can only rely on the upward progress of life, and believe that its newer phases will retain the same appreciable relations to the present that the present does to the age that immediately preceded. The great primal patterns-radiate, articulate, molluscan, and vertebrate-will ever remain the same: their modifications seem endless, their adaptations interminable. THE LAW. HAVING reviewed in detail the life-phases of the successive epochs of geology, we now proceed to a few generalisations respecting the advent and exit-the rise, progress, and decay-of specific vitality. In so doing, we shall endeavour to give expression to some of the leading laws which seem to have influenced Life since its first appearance on the terraqueous globe, believing that details are of themselves comparatively worthless unless we can co-relate and connect them into something like order and system. I am fully aware, where so much of our evidence is merely negative, and where more, perhaps, is still fragmentary and imperfect, that any attempt of this kind may be thought premature and perhaps presumptuous. But the law of our nature, like the law of creation, is ORDER; and the mind instinctively groups and associates, and tries to connect effects with their causes, the moment it turns itself to any new field of research. And so, in Palæontology, these generalisations, however tentative and temporary, serve as centres round which to marshal new facts, and help to give consistency and interest to what might otherwise appear a mass of discordant and repulsive details. And granting that many of these generalisations may be set aside by future discoveries, so long as they are received in the same spirit in which they are submitted, they cannot retard the higher and higher forms, so the life of the future must transcend that of the present, as the present excels the past. Unless geology has altogether misinterpreted the history of this earth, and her teachings be no better than a fable and delusion, philosophy is chained to this conclusion. Could we discover the terms of the law that has regulated the evolutions of past vitality, we might approximate to some idea of its future forms; but, ignorant of these terms, we can only rely on the upward progress of life, and believe that its newer phases will retain the same appreciable relations to the present that the present does to the age that immediately preceded. The great primal patterns-radiate, articulate, molluscan, and vertebrate—will ever remain the same: their modifications seem endless, their adaptations interminable. THE LAW. HAVING reviewed in detail the life-phases of the successive epochs of geology, we now proceed to a few generalisations respecting the advent and exit—the rise, progress, and decay-of specific vitality. In so doing, we shall endeavour to give expression to some of the leading laws which seem to have influenced Life since its first appearance on the terraqueous globe, believing that details are of themselves comparatively worthless unless we can co-relate and connect them into something like order and system. I am fully aware, where so much of our evidence is merely negative, and where more, perhaps, is still fragmentary and imperfect, that any attempt of this kind may be thought premature and perhaps presumptuous. But the law of our nature, like the law of creation, is ORDER; and the mind instinctively groups and associates, and tries to connect effects with their causes, the moment it turns itself to any new field of research. And so, in Palæontology, these generalisations, however tentative and temporary, serve as centres round which to marshal new facts, and help to give consistency and interest to what might otherwise appear a mass of discordant and repulsive details. And granting that many of these generalisations may be set aside by future discoveries, so long as they are received in the same spirit in which they are submitted, they cannot retard the progress of research, by leading either to presumptuous dogmatism on the one hand, or to ungenerous illiberality on the other. They are submitted in the spirit of honest earnestness, more anxious to arrive at the expression of one plain truth than give currency to a thousand hypotheses, however brilliant and attractive. And yet, while the main value must ever be ascribed to inductive reasoning from facts, hypothetical promptings cannot always be ignored. They have their own value, and oftener than once has the road to truth been indicated by the fingerposts of hypothesis. [Dawn of Life.] As at present, so during all former life-epochs, the land and waters were tenanted by various families of plants and animals these families exhibiting affinities and gradations even as plants and animals do now. It is true, that as we descend into the rocky crust we arrive at a stage (the metamorphic strata) when plants and animals do not seem to have existed; but on this point the evidence is merely negative, and Geology cannot say with certainty that Life. was not coeval with the globe itself, though the presumption is, that organic being was not called into existence till about the dawn of the Silurian era. Nothing is gained by the assumption that it had a prior existence, and that every organism has been obliterated by the metamorphism to which the earlier strata have been subjected. We can only reason from what we know; and in the mean time the lowest Silurian or Cambrian rocks stand as the farthest verge to which Paleontology has pushed her discoveries. It has been argued, no doubt, that as the vertebrate animals seem to show an ascent through the geological periods from fish to reptile, from reptile to bird, and from bird to mammal, so the invertebrate may also obey a similar law of |