that live in sheltered valleys
or in inland regions or on mountain-heights. We look for Shells, for
Mussels and Barnacles, for Crabs, for Shrimps, for Marine Worms, for
Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins, and we may find here and there a fish
stranded on the sand or tangled in the sea-weed. Let us remember, then,
that, in the Silurian period, the world, so far as it was raised above
the ocean, was a beach, and let us seek there for such creatures as God
has made to live on sea-shores, and not belittle the Creative work,
or say that He first scattered the seeds of life in meagre or stinted
measure, because we do not find air-breathing animals when there was
no fitting atmosphere to feed their lungs, insects with no terrestrial
plants to live upon, reptiles without marshes, birds without trees,
cattle without grass, all things, in short, without the essential
conditions for their existence.

What we do find--and these, as I shall endeavor to show my readers, in
such profusion that it would seem as if God, in the joy of creation, had
compensated Himself for a less variety of forms in the greater richness
of the early types--is an immense number of beings belonging to the four
primary divisions of the Animal Kingdom, but only to those classes whose
representatives are marine, whose home then, as now, was either in the
sea or along its shores. In other words, the first organic creation
expressed in its totality the structural conception since carried out in
such wonderful variety of details, and purposely limited then, because
the world, which was to be the home of the higher animals, was not yet
made ready to receive them.

I am fully aware that the intimate relations between the organic and
physical world are interpreted by many as indicating the absence, rather
than the presence, of an intelligent Creator. They argue, that the
dependence of animals on material laws gives us the clue to their origin
as well as to their maintenance. Were this influence as absolute and
unvarying as the purely mechanical action of physical circumstances
must necessarily be, this inference might have some pretence to
logical probability,--though it seems to me unnecessary, under any
circumstances, to resort to climatic influences or the action of any
physical laws to explain the thoughtful distribution of the organic and
inorganic world, so evidently intended to secure for all beings what
best suits their nature and their needs. But the truth is, th