olumns of the older
Vertebrata are in any sense embryonic in their whole structure.

Obviously, if the earliest fossiliferous rocks now known are coeval with
the commencement of life, and if their contents give us any just
conception of the nature and the extent of the earliest fauna and flora,
the insignificant amount of modification which can be demonstrated to
have taken place in any one group of animals, or plants, is quite
incompatible with the hypothesis that all living forms are the results
of a necessary process of progressive development, entirely comprised
within the time represented by the fossiliferous rocks.

Contrariwise, any admissible hypothesis of progressive modification
must be compatible with persistence without progression, through
indefinite periods. And should such an hypothesis eventually be proved
to be true, in the only way in which it can be demonstrated, viz. by
observation and experiment upon the existing forms of life, the
conclusion will inevitably present itself, that the Palaeozoic, Mesozoic,
and Cainozoic faunae and florae, taken together, 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 palaeontology 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.

FOOTNOTES:

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

[34] Anniversary Address for 1851, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. vii.

[35] See Hooker's "Introductory Essay to the Flora of Tasmania," p.
xxiii.

[36] 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.

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

[38] As this Address is passing through the press (March 7, 1862),
evid