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The majority of palaeontologists conclude at once, and quite confidently, from this rise and spread of the deciduous trees, that a winter season has at length set in on the earth, and that this new type of vegetation appears in response to an appreciable lowering of the climate. The facts, however, are somewhat complex, and we must proceed with caution.
Closely connected with the statement, that the organic remains from an intermediate formation are in some degree intermediate in character, is the fact, insisted on by all palaeontologists, that fossils from two consecutive formations are far more closely related to each other, than are the fossils from two remote formations.
The greater part of these bore impressions of primitive organisms. Creation had evidently advanced since the day before. Instead of rudimentary trilobites, I noticed remains of a more perfect order of beings, amongst others ganoid fishes and some of those sauroids in which palaeontologists have discovered the earliest reptile forms.
The whole assemblage, says Desnoyers, indicate the shores of a lake, or several small lakes communicating with each other, on the borders of which many species of pachyderms wandered, and beasts of prey which occasionally devoured them. The tooth-marks of these last had been detected by palaeontologists long before on the bones and skulls of Paleotheres entombed in the gypsum.
The inhabitants of the world at each successive period in its history have beaten their predecessors in the race for life, and are, in so far, higher in the scale, and their structure has generally become more specialised; and this may account for the common belief held by so many palaeontologists, that organisation on the whole has progressed.
With respect to the first proposition, I may remark that whatever may be the case among the physical geologists, catastrophic palaeontologists are practically extinct. It is now no part of recognised geological doctrine that the species of one formation all died out and were replaced by a brand-new set in the next formation.
We ought only to look for a few links, and such assuredly we do find some more distantly, some more closely, related to each other; and these links, let them be ever so close, if found in different stages of the same formation, would, by many palaeontologists, be ranked as distinct species.
In comparing preceding periods with the present and with each other, most naturalists and palaeontologists now appear to recognize a certain number of species as having survived from one epoch to the next, or even through more than one formation, especially from the Tertiary into the post-Tertiary period, and from that to the present age.
I availed myself of the opportunity to endeavour to "take stock" of that portion of the science of biology which is commonly called "palaeontology," as it then existed; and, discussing one after another the doctrines held by palaeontologists, I put before you the results of my attempts to sift the well-established from the hypothetical or the doubtful.
It is notorious on what excessively slight differences many palaeontologists have founded their species; and they do this the more readily if the specimens come from different sub-stages of the same formation.
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