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And if I had followed out all these various lines of classification fully, I should discover in the end that there was no animal, either recent or fossil, which did not at once fall into one or other of these sub-kingdoms. In other words, every animal is organised upon one or other of the five, or more, plans, the existence of which renders our classification possible.
Casting surreptitious glances at the bookshelf, where he looked to see the life of Jesse James, he was astonished and somewhat reassured to discover a title like "Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone of the British Isles."
There's the fossil bird of Massachusetts, of which nothing is left but the footprints; but some of these are eighteen inches in length, and show a stride of two yards. The bird belonged to the order of the Grallae, and may have been ten or twelve feet in height. Then there is the Gastornis parisiensis, which was as tall as an ostrich, as big as an ox, and belongs to the same order as the other.
About thirty-two fossil species have been obtained in Madeira, and forty-two in Porto Santo, only five of the whole being common to both islands. In each the living land-shells are equally distinct, and correspond, for the most part, with the species found fossil in each island respectively.
Yet this impetus is evident, and a mere glance at fossil species shows us that life need not have evolved at all, or might have evolved only in very restricted limits, if it had chosen the alternative, much more convenient to itself, of becoming anchylosed in its primitive forms. Certain Foraminifera have not varied since the Silurian epoch.
Numerous existing doubtful forms could be named which are probably varieties; but who will pretend that in future ages so many fossil links will be discovered, that naturalists will be able to decide whether or not these doubtful forms ought to be called varieties? Only a small portion of the world has been geologically explored.
But, according to Principal Dawson, who has so sedulously examined the fossil remains of plants in North America, it is otherwise with the vast accumulations of coal in that country. "The true coal," says Dr.
But the recent discoveries in Fossil Osteology have proved that the earth, for ages before the last 5,000 or 6,000 years, was left to the lower animals; nay, that in a still earlier period of its existence no animal life at all was maintained upon its surface. So that, in fact, the foundation is removed of the reductio ad absurdum attempted by the learned prelates.
There is a laboratory of invertebrate paleontology of Paleozoic age, with a corps of paleontologists. Mr. C.D. Walcott is in charge. There is a laboratory of fossil botany, with a corps of paleobotanists, Mr. Lester F. Ward being in charge.
No history has recorded their creation or destruction; their very bones are found no more among the fossil relics of a former world. Centuries and thousands of years may have rolled away between the time in which those footsteps were impressed by tortoises upon the sands of their native Scotland, and the hour when they were again laid bare and exposed to our curious and admiring eyes.
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