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But, although palaeontology is a comparatively youthful scientific speciality, the mass of materials with which it has to deal is already prodigious. In the last fifty years the number of known fossil remains of invertebrated animals has been trebled or quadrupled.
Such a science exists in that application of the principles of biology to the interpretation of the animal and vegetable remains imbedded in the rocks which compose the surface of the globe, which is called Palaeontology. At no very distant time, the question whether these so-called "fossils," were really the remains of animals and plants was hotly disputed.
It is worthy of special note in this connection that Hertwig likewise evidently regards as the sole really empirically and inductively serviceable proof of Descent, that which is drawn from palaeontology, from prehistoric animal and plant remains.
We have to consider the fishes carefully as the class which, on the evidence of palaeontology, comparative anatomy, and ontogeny, may be regarded with absolute certainty as the stem-class of all the higher Vertebrates or Gnathostomes. Naturally, none of the actual fishes can be considered the direct ancestor of the higher Vertebrates.
Every one practically acquainted with palaeontology is aware that it is not every tooth, nor every bone, which enables us to form a judgment of the character of the animal to which it belonged; and that it is possible to possess many teeth, and even a large portion of the skeleton of an extinct animal, and yet be unable to reconstruct its skull or its limbs.
I think she does not care to mention it at this time; but if she finds out anything of interest she will tell me, if she does anybody. Perhaps she does not mean to tell anybody. It is a rather delicate business, a young girl studying the natural history of a young man. Not quite so safe as botany or palaeontology!"
But the primeval man, whose history never has been and never will be written, whose career on the earth, dateless and chartless, can be dimly revealed to us only by palaeontology, excites in us a very different feeling.
On the other hand, all the chief laws of palaeontology plainly proclaim, AS IT SEEMS TO ME, THAT SPECIES HAVE BEEN PRODUCED BY ORDINARY GENERATION."
In this sense the present will indeed explain the past, and the young naturalist is happy who enters upon his life of investigation now, when the problems that were dark to all his predecessors have received new light from the sciences of Palaeontology and Embryology. Only a germ in a withered flower, That the rain will bring out sometime.
On the other hand, all the chief laws of palaeontology plainly proclaim, as it seems to me, that species have been produced by ordinary generation: old forms having been supplanted by new and improved forms of life, the products of variation and the survival of the fittest.
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