Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation With a Sequel

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78 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE as several types formt>rly wanting to a completion of the series have been found in a fossil state.~ , It is scarcely less ev iclent, from the geological record, that the proooT es::; of orl0 ranic life has observed some cm-res-pondence with the progress of physical conditions on the surface. "\Ve do not know for certajn that the sea, at the time when it supported radiated, molluscous, and articu­lated families, was incapable of supporting fishes; but causes for such a ljn1itation are far from inconceivable. The huge saurians appear to have been precisely adapted to the lo\v muddy coasts and sea margins of the time when they flourished. Marsupials appear at the time when the surface was generally in that flat, imperfectly variegated state in vvhich we find Australia, the region where they now live in the greatest abundance, and one which has no higher native mammalian type. Finally, it was not till the land and sea had come into their present relations, and the former, in its 'principal continents had acquired the irregularity of surface necessary for man, that man appeared. \Ve have likewise seen reason for supposing that land animals could not have lived before the carbon­igenous era, owing to the great change of carbonic acid gas, pr u1ned to have been contained in the atmosphere down to that time. The surplus of this having gone, as ' M. Brogniart suggests, to form .the vegetation, whose ruins became coal, and the air being thus brought to it8 present state, land animals ·immediately appeared. So, also, sea-plants were at first the only specimens of vege­tation, because there appears to have been no place where other plants could be produced or supported. Land ve­getation followed. at first simple, afterward complex, pro~ hably in conformity with an advance of the conditions required by the higher class of plants. In short, we see everywhere throughout the geological history, stron5 traces of a parallel ad vance of the physical conditions and the organic forms. In examining the fossils of the lower marine creation, with a reference to the kind of rock in connexion with which they are found, it is observed that some strata are attended by a much greater abundance of both species and individuals than others. They abound most in calcare(\\13 • Intervals in the series were numerous in the department of tlH Ti_achydermata; many of these gaps an• now filled up from the ex tmct genera found in the tertiary formation. • ORIGIN OF THE ANI.MATED TRIBES. 79 rocks, which is precisely what might be expected, since lime Is necessary for the formation of the shells CJf the mollusks and articulata, and the hard substance of the crinoidea and corals; next in the carboniferous series· ~ext in the tertiary; next in the new red ~ndstone ; next Ill ~lates; and lastly, least of a)l, in the primary rocks.* Th~s may have been the case without regard to the ongi­n~ twn of new species, but more probably it was other­Wise; or why, for instance, should the polypiferous zoo­phyta be found almost exclusively in the limestones? There are, indeed, abundant appearances as if, through­out all the changes of the surface, the various kinds of organic life invariably pressed in, immediately on the spe?ially suitable conditions arising, so that no place whiCh could support any form of organic being, might be left fo1· any length of time unoccupied. Nor is it less re­markable how various species are withdrawn from the ea1~th, when the proper conditions for their particular e~1sten~e are changed. The trilobite, of which fifty spe­Cies existed during the earlier formations, was extirpated before the secondary had commenced, and appeared no ~ more. The ammonite does not appear above the chalk. The species, and even genera of all the early radii.ta and mollusks were exchanged for others long ago. Not one species of any creature which flourished before the ter­tiary (Ehrenberg's infusoria excepted) now ~xists; and of the mammalia which arose during that series, many forms are altogether gone, while of others we have now only kindred species. Thus to find not only frequent a~ditions to the previously existing forms, but frequent w1thdrawals of forms which had apparently become inap­propriate- a con~tant shifting as well as advance-js a fact calculated very forcibly to arrest attention. A candid consideration of all these circumstances can scarcely fail to introduce into our minds a somewhat dif­ferent idt- t of organic creation from what has hitherto been gent ~ally entertained. That God created animated beings aE well as the terraqueous theatre of their being, ia a fact f. ~ powerfully evidenced, and so universally re­ceived, ti at I at once take it for granted. But in the par­ticulars of this so highly supported idea, 1\ve sure)y here see cause for some re-consideration. It may no-vv be inw ~ See paper by Professor Edward Forbes, r.cad to the British A.s!ociation, 1839.