t; that these
soon attained their highest point, and then gradually, on each
succeeding platform, the variety of nature in its higher--the
vertebrate--form increased, and the upper margin of animal life
attained a more and more elevated point, culminating at length in man;
while certain of the older forms were dropped, as no longer required.

In the oldest fossiliferous rocks next to the Eozoic, which so far
have afforded only Protozoa--e. g., the Cambrian and Lower
Silurian--we find the mollusca represented mainly by their highest
and lowest classes, by allies of the cuttle-fish and nautilus, and by
the lowest bivalve shell-fishes. The Articulata are represented by the
highest marine class--the crustaceans--and by the lowest--the worms,
which have left their marks on some of the lowest fossiliferous beds.
The Radiata, in like manner, are represented by species of their
highest class--the starfishes, etc.--and by some of their simpler
polyp forms. At the very beginning, then, of the fossiliferous series,
the three lower sub-kingdoms exhibit species of their most elevated
aquatic classes, though not of the very highest orders in those
classes. The vertebrated sub-kingdom has, as far as yet known, no
representative in these lowest beds. In the Upper Silurian series,
however, we find remains of fishes; and in the succeeding Devonian and
carboniferous rocks the fishes rise to the highest structures of their
class; and we find several species of reptiles, representing the next
of the vertebrated classes in ascending order. Here a very remarkable
fact meets us. Before the close of the Palaeozoic period the three
lower sub-kingdoms and the fishes had already attained the highest
perfection of which their types are capable. Multitudes of new species
and genera were added subsequently, but none of them rising higher in
the scale of organization than those which occur in the Palaeozoic
rocks. Thenceforth the progressive improvement of the animal kingdom
consisted in the addition, first of the reptile, which attained its
highest perfection and importance in the Mesozoic period, and then of
the bird and mammal, which did not attain their highest forms till the
Modern period. This geological order of animal life, it is scarcely
necessary to add, agrees perfectly with that sketched by Moses, in
which the lower types are completed at once, and the progress is
wholly in the higher.

In the inspired narrative we have already noticed s