ts of mind, such as that which deals with the
arrangement and development of the scheme of organic being, human
thought is not profitlessly revolving in an idle circle, but progressing
Godwards, and gradually unlocking the order of creation. And, on the
other hand, it will be equally his proper business to demand of the
Pantheist how,--seeing that only _persons_ (such as the Cuviers and
Lindleys) could have wrought out for themselves the real arrangement of
this scheme,--how, I say, or on what principle, it is to be held that it
was a scheme originated and established at the beginning, not by a
_personal_, but by an impersonal God. But our present business is with
the _fact_ of the parallel arrangements, Divine and human,--not with the
inferences legitimately deducible from it.

[Illustration: Fig. 5.

OLDHAMIA ANTIQUA;--the oldest known Zoophyte.

Wrae Head, Ireland.]

[Illustration: Fig. 6.

PALAEOCHORDA MINOR.

(One half nat. size.)]

Beginning with the plants, let us, however, remark, that they do not
precede in the order of their appearance the humbler animals. No more
ancient organism than the _Oldhamia_ of the Lowest Irish Silurians, a
plant-like zoophyte somewhat resembling our modern sertularia, has yet
been detected by the geologist; though only a few months ago the
researches of Mr. Salter in the ancient rocks of the Longmynd,
Shropshire, previously deemed unfossiliferous, have given, to it what
seem to be contemporary vegetable organisms, in a few ill-preserved
fucoids. So far as is yet known, plants and animals appear together. The
long upward march of the animal kingdom takes its departure at its
starting point from a thick forest of algae. In Bohemia, in Norway, in
Sweden, in the British Islands, in North America, wherever, in fine,
what appears to be the lowest, or at least one of the lowest, zones of
life has yet been detected, the rocks are found to be darkened by the
remains of algae, so abundantly developed in some cases, that they
compose, as in the ancient Lower Silurians of Dumfriesshire, impure beds
of anthracite several feet in thickness. Apparently, from the original
looseness of their texture, the individual plants are but indifferently
preserved; nor can we expect that organisms so ancient should exhibit
any _very_ close resemblance to the plants which darken the half-tide
rocks and skerries of our coasts at the present time. We do detect,
however, in some of these primordial fossils