bear somewhat the same proportion to
the whole series of living beings which have occupied this globe, as the
existing fauna and flora do to them.

Such are the results of paleontology as they appear, and have for some
years appeared, to the mind of an inquirer who regards that study simply
as one of the applications of the great biological sciences, and who
desires to see it placed upon the same sound basis as other branches of
physical inquiry. If the arguments which have been brought forward are
valid, probably no one, in view of the present state of opinion, will
be inclined to think the time wasted which has been spent upon their
elaboration.

[Footnote 1: The Anniversary Address to the Geological Society for
1862.]

[Footnote 2: "le plus grand service qu'on puisse rendre a la science est
d'y faire place nette avant d'y rien construire."--CUVIER]

[Footnote 3: Anniversary Address for 1851, 'Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.'
vol. vii.]

[Footnote 4: See Hooker's 'Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania',
p. xxiii.]

[Footnote 5: See the abstract of a Lecture "On the Persistent Types of
Animal Life," in the 'Notices of the Meetings of the Royal Institution
of Great Britain'.--June 3, 1859, vol. iii. p. 151.

[Footnote 6: "Memoirs of the Geological Survey of the United
Kingdom.--Decade x. Preliminary Essay upon the Systematic Arrangement of
the Fishes of the Devonian Epoch."]

[Footnote 7: As the Address is passing through the press (March 7,
1862), evidence lies before me of the existence of a new Labyrinthodont
('Pholidogaster'), from the Edinburgh coal-field, with well-ossified
vertebral centra.]

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Geological Contemporaneity and
Persistent Types of Life, by Thomas H. Huxley

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEOLOGICAL CONTEMPORANEITY ***

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