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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Past Condition of Organic Nature
+#12 in our series by Thomas H. Huxley
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+Title:  The Past Condition of Organic Nature
+
+Author:  Thomas H. Huxley
+
+Release Date:  November, 2001  [Etext #2922]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Past Condition of Organic Nature
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+
+THE PAST CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE
+
+by Thomas H. Huxley
+
+
+
+
+IN the lecture which I delivered last Monday evening, I endeavoured to
+sketch in a very brief manner, but as well as the time at my disposal
+would permit, the present condition of organic nature, meaning by that
+large title simply an indication of the great, broad, and general
+principles which are to be discovered by those who look attentively at
+the phenomena of organic nature as at present displayed.  The general
+result of our investigations might be summed up thus: we found that the
+multiplicity of the forms of animal life, great as that may be, may be
+reduced to a comparatively few primitive plans or types of construction;
+that a further study of the development of those different forms
+revealed to us that they were again reducible, until we at last brought
+the infinite diversity of animal, and even vegetable life, down to the
+primordial form of a single cell.
+
+We found that our analysis of the organic world, whether animals or
+plants, showed, in the long run, that they might both be reduced into,
+and were, in fact, composed of, the same constituents.  And we saw that
+the plant obtained the materials constituting its substance by a
+peculiar combination of matters belonging entirely to the inorganic
+world; that, then, the animal was constantly appropriating the
+nitrogenous matters of the plant to its own nourishment, and returning
+them back to the inorganic world, in what we spoke of as its waste; and
+that finally, when the animal ceased to exist, the constituents of its
+body were dissolved and transmitted to that inorganic world whence they
+had been at first abstracted. Thus we saw in both the blade of grass
+and the horse but the same elements differently combined and arranged.
+We discovered a continual circulation going on,--the plant drawing in
+the elements of inorganic nature and combining them into food for the
+animal creation; the animal borrowing from the plant the matter for its
+own support, giving off during its life products which returned
+immediately to the inorganic world; and that, eventually, the
+constituent materials of the whole structure of both animals and plants
+were thus returned to their original source: there was a constant
+passage from one state of existence to another, and a returning back
+again.
+
+Lastly, when we endeavoured to form some notion of the nature of the
+forces exercised by living beings, we discovered that they--if not
+capable of being subjected to the same minute analysis as the
+constituents of those beings themselves--that they were correlative
+with--that they were the equivalents of the forces of inorganic
+nature--that they were, in the sense in which the term is now used,
+convertible with them.  That was our general result.
+
+And now, leaving the Present, I must endeavour in the same manner to put
+before you the facts that are to be discovered in the Past history of
+the living world, in the past conditions of organic nature.  We have,
+to-night, to deal with the facts of that history--a history involving
+periods of time before which our mere human records sink into utter
+insignificance--a history the variety and physical magnitude of whose
+events cannot even be foreshadowed by the history of human life and
+human phenomena--a history of the most varied and complex character.
+
+We must deal with the history, then, in the first place, as we should
+deal with all other histories.  The historical student knows that his
+first business should be to inquire into the validity of his evidence,
+and the nature of the record in which the evidence is contained, that
+he may be able to form a proper estimate of the correctness of the
+conclusions which have been drawn from that evidence.  So, here, we
+must pass, in the first place, to the consideration of a matter which
+may seem foreign to the question under discussion.  We must dwell upon
+the nature of the records, and the credibility of the evidence they
+contain; we must look to the completeness or incompleteness of those
+records themselves, before we turn to that which they contain and
+reveal.  The question of the credibility of the history, happily for us,
+will not require much consideration, for, in this history, unlike those
+of human origin, there can be no cavilling, no differences as to the
+reality and truth of the facts of which it is made up; the facts state
+themselves, and are laid out clearly before us.
+
+But, although one of the greatest difficulties of the historical student
+is cleared out of our path, there are other difficulties--difficulties
+in rightly interpreting the facts as they are presented to us--which
+may be compared with the greatest difficulties of any other kinds of
+historical study.
+
+What is this record of the past history of the globe, and what are the
+questions which are involved in an inquiry into its completeness or
+incompleteness?  That record is composed of mud; and the question which
+we have to investigate this evening resolves itself into a question of
+the formation of mud.  You may think, perhaps, that this is a vast
+step--of almost from the sublime to the ridiculous--from the
+contemplation of the history of the past ages of the world's existence
+to the consideration of the history of the formation of mud!  But, in
+nature, there is nothing mean and unworthy of attention; there is
+nothing ridiculous or contemptible in any of her works; and this
+inquiry, you will soon see, I hope, takes us to the very root and
+foundations of our subject.
+
+How, then, is mud formed?  Always, with some trifling exception, which I
+need not consider now--always, as the result of the action of water,
+wearing down and disintegrating the surface of the earth and rocks with
+which it comes in contact--pounding and grinding it down, and carrying
+the particles away to places where they cease to be disturbed by this
+mechanical action, and where they can subside and rest.  For the ocean,
+urged by winds, washes, as we know, a long extent of coast, and every
+wave, loaded as it is with particles of sand and gravel as it breaks
+upon the shore, does something towards the disintegrating process.  And
+thus, slowly but surely, the hardest rocks are gradually ground down to
+a powdery substance; and the mud thus formed, coarser or finer, as the
+case may be, is carried by the rush of the tides, or currents, till it
+reaches the comparatively deeper parts of the ocean, in which it can
+sink to the bottom, that is, to parts where there is a depth of about
+fourteen or fifteen fathoms, a depth at which the water is, usually,
+nearly motionless, and in which, of course, the finer particles of this
+detritus, or mud as we call it, sinks to the bottom.
+
+Or, again, if you take a river, rushing down from its mountain sources,
+brawling over the stones and rocks that intersect its path, loosening,
+removing, and carrying with it in its downward course the pebbles and
+lighter matters from its banks, it crushes and pounds down the rocks
+and earths in precisely the same way as the wearing action of the sea
+waves.  The matters forming the deposit are torn from the mountain-side
+and whirled impetuously into the valley, more slowly over the plain,
+thence into the estuary, and from the estuary they are swept into the
+sea.  The coarser and heavier fragments are obviously deposited first,
+that is, as soon as the current begins to lose its force by becoming
+amalgamated with the stiller depths of the ocean, but the finer and
+lighter particles are carried further on, and eventually deposited in a
+deeper and stiller portion of the ocean.
+
+It clearly follows from this that mud gives us a chronology; for it is
+evident that supposing this, which I now sketch, to be the sea bottom,
+and supposing this to be a coast-line; from the washing action of the
+sea upon the rock, wearing and grinding it down into a sediment of mud,
+the mud will be carried down, and at length, deposited in the deeper
+parts of this sea bottom, where it will form a layer; and then, while
+that first layer is hardening, other mud which is coming from the same
+source will, of course, be carried to the same place; and, as it is
+quite impossible for it to get beneath the layer already there, it
+deposits itself above it, and forms another layer, and in that way you
+gradually have layers of mud constantly forming and hardening one above
+the other, and conveying a record of time.
+
+It is a necessary result of the operation of the law of gravitation that
+the uppermost layer shall be the youngest and the lowest the oldest,
+and that the different beds shall be older at any particular point or
+spot in exactly the ratio of their depth from the surface.  So that if
+they were upheaved afterwards, and you had a series of these different
+layers of mud, converted into sandstone, or limestone, as the case
+might be, you might be sure that the bottom layer was deposited first,
+and that the upper layers were formed afterwards.  Here, you see, is the
+first step in the history--these layers of mud give us an idea of time.
+
+The whole surface of the earth,--I speak broadly, and leave out minor
+qualifications,--is made up of such layers of mud, so hard, the
+majority of them, that we call them rock whether limestone or
+sandstone, or other varieties of rock.  And, seeing that every part of
+the crust of the earth is made up in this way, you might think that the
+determination of the chronology, the fixing of the time which it has
+taken to form this crust is a comparatively simple matter.  Take a
+broad average, ascertain how fast the mud is deposited upon the bottom
+of the sea, or in the estuary of rivers; take it to be an inch, or two,
+or three inches a year, or whatever you may roughly estimate it at;
+then take the total thickness of the whole series of stratified rocks,
+which geologists estimate at twelve or thirteen miles, or about seventy
+thousand feet, make a sum in short division, divide the total thickness
+by that of the quantity deposited in one year, and the result will, of
+course, give you the number of years which the crust has taken to form.
+
+Truly, that looks a very simple process!  It would be so except for
+certain difficulties, the very first of which is that of finding how
+rapidly sediments are deposited; but the main difficulty--a difficulty
+which renders any certain calculations of such a matter out of the
+question--is this, the sea-bottom on which the deposit takes place is
+continually shifting.
+
+Instead of the surface of the earth being that stable, fixed thing that
+it is popularly believed to be, being, in common parlance, the very
+emblem of fixity itself, it is incessantly moving, and is, in fact, as
+unstable as the surface of the sea, except that its undulations are
+infinitely slower and enormously higher and deeper.
+
+Now, what is the effect of this oscillation?  Take the case to which I
+have previously referred.  The finer or coarser sediments that are
+carried down by the current of the river, will only be carried out a
+certain distance, and eventually, as we have already seen, on reaching
+the stiller part of the ocean, will be deposited at the bottom.
+
+Let C y (Fig. 4) be the sea-bottom, y D the shore, x y the sea-level,
+then the coarser deposit will subside over the region B, the finer over
+A, while beyond A there will be no deposit at all; and, consequently,
+no record will be kept, simply because no deposit is going on.  Now,
+suppose that the whole land, C, D, which we have regarded as stationary,
+goes down, as it does so, both A and B go further out from the shore,
+which will be at yl; x1, y1, being the new sea-level.  The consequence
+will be that the layer of mud (A), being now, for the most part,
+further than the force of the current is strong enough to convey even
+the finest 'debris', will, of course, receive no more deposits, and
+having attained a certain thickness will now grow no thicker.
+
+We should be misled in taking the thickness of that layer, whenever it
+may be exposed to our view, as a record of time in the manner in which
+we are now regarding this subject, as it would give us only an
+imperfect and partial record: it would seem to represent too short a
+period of time.
+
+Fig.4.
+
+Suppose, on the other hand, that the land (C D) had gone on rising
+slowly and gradually--say an inch or two inches in the course of a
+century,--what would be the practical effect of that movement?  Why,
+that the sediment A and B which has been already deposited, would
+eventually be brought nearer to the shore-level, and again subjected to
+the wear and tear of the sea; and directly the sea begins to act upon
+it, it would of course soon cut up and carry it away, to a greater or
+less extent, to be re-deposited further out.
+
+Well, as there is, in all probability, not one single spot on the whole
+surface of the earth, which has not been up and down in this way a
+great many times, it follows that the thickness of the deposits formed
+at any particular spot cannot be taken (even supposing we had at first
+obtained correct data as to the rate at which they took place) as
+affording reliable information as to the period of time occupied in its
+deposit. So that you see it is absolutely necessary from these facts,
+seeing that our record entirely consists of accumulations of mud,
+superimposed one on the other; seeing in the next place that any
+particular spots on which accumulations have occurred, have been
+constantly moving up and down, and sometimes out of the reach of a
+deposit, and at other times its own deposit broken up and carried away,
+it follows that our record must be in the highest degree imperfect, and
+we have hardly a trace left of thick deposits, or any definite
+knowledge of the area that they occupied, in a great many cases.  And
+mark this!  That supposing even that the whole surface of the earth had
+been accessible to the geologist,--that man had had access to every
+part of the earth, and had made sections of the whole, and put them all
+together,--even then his record must of necessity be imperfect.
+
+But to how much has man really access?  If you will look at this Map you
+will see that it represents the proportion of the sea to the earth:
+this coloured part indicates all the dry land, and this other portion
+is the water.  You will notice at once that the water covers
+three-fifths of the whole surface of the globe, and has covered it in
+the same manner ever since man has kept any record of his own
+observations, to say nothing of the minute period during which he has
+cultivated geological inquiry.  So that three-fifths of the surface of
+the earth is shut out from us because it is under the sea.  Let us look
+at the other two-fifths, and see what are the countries in which
+anything that may be termed searching geological inquiry has been
+carried out: a good deal of France, Germany, and Great Britain and
+Ireland, bits of Spain, of Italy, and of Russia, have been examined,
+but of the whole great mass of Africa, except parts of the southern
+extremity, we know next to nothing; little bits of India, but of the
+greater part of the Asiatic continent nothing; bits of the Northern
+American States and of Canada, but of the greater part of the continent
+of North America, and in still larger proportion, of South America,
+nothing!
+
+Under these circumstances, it follows that even with reference to that
+kind of imperfect information which we can possess, it is only of about
+the ten-thousandth part of the accessible parts of the earth that has
+been examined properly. Therefore, it is with justice that the most
+thoughtful of those who are concerned in these inquiries insist
+continually upon the imperfection of the geological record; for, I
+repeat, it is absolutely necessary, from the nature of things, that
+that record should be of the most fragmentary and imperfect character.
+Unfortunately this circumstance has been constantly forgotten.  Men of
+science, like young colts in a fresh pasture, are apt to be exhilarated
+on being turned into a new field of inquiry, to go off at a
+hand-gallop, in total disregard of hedges and ditches, losing sight of
+the real limitation of their inquiries, and to forget the extreme
+imperfection of what is really known. Geologists have imagined that
+they could tell us what was going on at all parts of the earth's
+surface during a given epoch; they have talked of this deposit being
+contemporaneous with that deposit, until, from our little local
+histories of the changes at limited spots of the earth's surface, they
+have constructed a universal history of the globe as full of wonders and
+portents as any other story of antiquity.
+
+But what does this attempt to construct a universal history of the globe
+imply?  It implies that we shall not only have a precise knowledge of
+the events which have occurred at any particular point, but that we
+shall be able to say what events, at any one spot, took place at the
+same time with those at other spots.
+
+Let us see how far that is in the nature of things practicable.  Suppose
+that here I make a section of the Lake of Killarney, and here the
+section of another lake--that of Loch Lomond in Scotland for instance.
+The rivers that flow into them are constantly carrying down deposits of
+mud, and beds, or strata, are being as constantly formed, one above the
+other, at the bottom of those lakes.  Now, there is not a shadow of
+doubt that in these two lakes the lower beds are all older than the
+upper--there is no doubt about that; but what does 'this' tell us about
+the age of any given bed in Loch Lomond, as compared with that of any
+given bed in the Lake of Killarney?  It is, indeed, obvious that if any
+two sets of deposits are separated and discontinuous, there is
+absolutely no means whatever given you by the nature of the deposit of
+saying whether one is much younger or older than the other; but you may
+say, as many have said and think, that the case is very much altered if
+the beds which we are comparing are continuous.  Suppose two beds of
+mud hardened into rock,--A and B-are seen in section. (Fig.  5.)
+
+[Fig. 5.]
+
+Well, you say, it is admitted that the lowermost bed is always the
+older.  Very well; B, therefore, is older than A.  No doubt, 'as a
+whole', it is so; or if any parts of the two beds which are in the same
+vertical line are compared, it is so.  But suppose you take what seems
+a very natural step further, and say that the part 'a' of the bed A is
+younger than the part 'b' of the bed B.  Is this sound reasoning?  If
+you find any record of changes taking place at 'b', did they occur
+before any events which took place while 'a' was being deposited?  It
+looks all very plain sailing, indeed, to say that they did; and yet
+there is no proof of anything of the kind.  As the former Director of
+this Institution, Sir H. De la Beche, long ago showed, this reasoning
+may involve an entire fallacy.  It is extremely possible that 'a' may
+have been deposited ages before 'b'.  It is very easy to understand how
+that can be.  To return to Fig. 4; when A and B were deposited, they
+were 'substantially' contemporaneous; A being simply the finer deposit,
+and B the coarser of the same detritus or waste of land.  Now suppose
+that that sea-bottom goes down (as shown in Fig. 4), so that the first
+deposit is carried no farther than 'a', forming the bed Al, and the
+coarse no farther than 'b', forming the bed B1, the result will be the
+formation of two continuous beds, one of fine sediment (A A1)
+over-lapping another of coarse sediment (B Bl). Now suppose the whole
+sea-bottom is raised up, and a section exposed about the point Al; no
+doubt, 'at this spot', the upper bed is younger than the lower.  But we
+should obviously greatly err if we concluded that the mass of the upper
+bed at A was younger than the lower bed at B; for we have just seen
+that they are contemporaneous deposits.  Still more should we be in
+error if we supposed the upper bed at A to be younger than the
+continuation of the lower bed at Bl; for A was deposited long before
+B1.  In fine, if, instead of comparing immediately adjacent parts of
+two beds, one of which lies upon another, we compare distant parts, it
+is quite possible that the upper may be any number of years older than
+the under, and the under any number of years younger than the upper.
+
+Now you must not suppose that I put this before you for the purpose of
+raising a paradoxical difficulty; the fact is, that the great mass of
+deposits have taken place in sea-bottoms which are gradually sinking,
+and have been formed under the very conditions I am here supposing.
+
+Do not run away with the notion that this subverts the principle I laid
+down at first.  The error lies in extending a principle which is
+perfectly applicable to deposits in the same vertical line to deposits
+which are not in that relation to one another.
+
+It is in consequence of circumstances of this kind, and of others that I
+might mention to you, that our conclusions on and interpretations of
+the record are really and strictly only valid so long as we confine
+ourselves to one vertical section.  I do not mean to tell you that there
+are no qualifying circumstances, so that, even in very considerable
+areas, we may safely speak of conformably superimposed beds being older
+or younger than others at many different points. But we can never be
+quite sure in coming to that conclusion, and especially we cannot he
+sure if there is any break in their continuity, or any very great
+distance between the points to be compared.
+
+Well now, so much for the record itself,--so much for its
+imperfections,--so much for the conditions to be observed in
+interpreting it, and its chronological indications, the moment we pass
+beyond the limits of a vertical linear section.
+
+Now let us pass from the record to that which it contains,--from the
+book itself to the writing and the figures on its pages.  This writing
+and these figures consist of remains of animals and plants which, in
+the great majority of cases, have lived and died in the very spot in
+which we now find them, or at least in the immediate vicinity.  You
+must all of you be aware--and I referred to the fact in my last
+lecture--that there are vast numbers of creatures living at the bottom
+of the sea.  These creatures, like all others, sooner or later die, and
+their shells and hard parts lie at the bottom; and then the fine mud
+which is being constantly brought down by rivers and the action of the
+wear and tear of the sea, covers them over and protects them from any
+further change or alteration; and, of course, as in process of time the
+mud becomes hardened and solidified, the shells of these animals are
+preserved and firmly imbedded in the limestone or sandstone which is
+being thus formed.  You may see in the galleries of the Museum up
+stairs specimens of limestones in which such fossil remains of existing
+animals are imbedded.  There are some specimens in which turtles' eggs
+have been imbedded in calcareous sand, and before the sun had hatched
+the young turtles, they became covered over with calcareous mud, and
+thus have been preserved and fossilized.
+
+Not only does this process of imbedding and fossilization occur with
+marine and other aquatic animals and plants, but it affects those land
+animals and plants which are drifted away to sea, or become buried in
+bogs or morasses; and the animals which have been trodden down by their
+fellows and crushed in the mud at the river's bank, as the herd have
+come to drink.  In any of these cases, the organisms may be crushed or
+be mutilated, before or after putrefaction, in such a manner that
+perhaps only a part will be left in the form in which it reaches us.  It
+is, indeed, a most remarkable fact, that it is quite an exceptional
+case to find a skeleton of any one of all the thousands of wild land
+animals that we know are constantly being killed, or dying in the
+course of nature: they are preyed on and devoured by other animals or
+die in places where their bodies are not afterwards protected by mud.
+There are other animals existing in the sea, the shells of which form
+exceedingly large deposits.  You are probably aware that before the
+attempt was made to lay the Atlantic telegraphic cable, the Government
+employed vessels in making a series of very careful observations and
+soundings of the bottom of the Atlantic; and although, as we must all
+regret, up to the present time that project has not succeeded, we have
+the satisfaction of knowing that it yielded some most remarkable results
+to science.  The Atlantic Ocean had to be sounded right across, to
+depths of several miles in some places, and the nature of its bottom
+was carefully ascertained.  Well, now, a space of about 1,000 miles
+wide from east to west, and I do not exactly know how many from north to
+south, but at any rate 600 or 700 miles, was carefully examined, and it
+was found that over the whole of that immense area an excessively fine
+chalky mud is being deposited; and this deposit is entirely made up of
+animals whose hard parts are deposited in this part of the ocean, and
+are doubtless gradually acquiring solidity and becoming metamorphosed
+into a chalky limestone.  Thus, you see, it is quite possible in this
+way to preserve unmistakable records of animal and vegetable life.
+Whenever the sea-bottom, by some of those undulations of the earth's
+crust that I have referred to, becomes upheaved, and sections or
+borings are made, or pits are dug, then we become able to examine the
+contents and constituents of these ancient sea-bottoms, and find out
+what manner of animals lived at that period.
+
+Now it is a very important consideration in its bearing on the
+completeness of the record, to inquire how far the remains contained in
+these fossiliferous limestones are able to convey anything like an
+accurate or complete account of the animals which were in existence at
+the time of its formation.  Upon that point we can form a very clear
+judgment, and one in which there is no possible room for any mistake.
+There are of course a great number of animals--such as jelly-fishes,
+and other animals--without any hard parts, of which we cannot
+reasonably expect to find any traces whatever: there is nothing of them
+to preserve.  Within a very short time, you will have noticed, after
+they are removed from the water, they dry up to a mere nothing;
+certainly they are not of a nature to leave any very visible traces of
+their existence on such bodies as chalk or mud.  Then again, look at
+land animals; it is, as I have said, a very uncommon thing to find a
+land animal entire after death.  Insects and other carnivorous animals
+very speedily pull them to pieces, putrefaction takes place, and so, out
+of the hundreds of thousands that are known to die every year, it is
+the rarest thing in the world to see one imbedded in such a way that
+its remains would be preserved for a lengthened period.  Not only is
+this the case, but even when animal remains have been safely imbedded,
+certain natural agents may wholly destroy and remove them.
+
+Almost all the hard parts of animals--the bones and so on--are composed
+chiefly of phosphate of lime and carbonate of lime.  Some years ago, I
+had to make an inquiry into the nature of some very curious fossils
+sent to me from the North of Scotland.  Fossils are usually hard bony
+structures that have become imbedded in the way I have described, and
+have gradually acquired the nature and solidity of the body with which
+they are associated; but in this case I had a series of 'holes' in some
+pieces of rock, and nothing else.  Those holes, however, had a certain
+definite shape about them, and when I got a skilful workman to make
+castings of the interior of these holes, I found that they were the
+impressions of the joints of a backbone and of the armour of a great
+reptile, twelve or more feet long.  This great beast had died and got
+buried in the sand; the sand had gradually hardened over the bones, but
+remained porous. Water had trickled through it, and that water being
+probably charged with a superfluity of carbonic acid, had dissolved all
+the phosphate and carbonate of lime, and the bones themselves had thus
+decayed and entirely disappeared; but as the sandstone happened to have
+consolidated by that time, the precise shape of the bones was retained.
+If that sandstone had remained soft a little longer, we should have
+known nothing whatsoever of the existence of the reptile whose bones it
+had encased.
+
+How certain it is that a vast number of animals which have existed at
+one period on this earth have entirely perished, and left no trace
+whatever of their forms, may be proved to you by other considerations.
+There are large tracts of sandstone in various parts of the world, in
+which nobody has yet found anything but footsteps.  Not a bone of any
+description, but an enormous number of traces of footsteps.  There is
+no question about them.  There is a whole valley in Connecticut covered
+with these footsteps, and not a single fragment of the animals which
+made them has yet been found.  Let me mention another case while upon
+that matter, which is even more surprising than those to which I have
+yet referred.  There is a limestone formation near Oxford, at a place
+called Stonesfield, which has yielded the remains of certain very
+interesting mammalian animals, and up to this time, if I recollect
+rightly, there have been found seven specimens of its lower jaws, and
+not a bit of anything else, neither limb-bones nor skull, or any part
+whatever; not a fragment of the whole system!  Of course, it would be
+preposterous to imagine that the beasts had nothing else but a lower
+jaw!  The probability is, as Dr. Buckland showed, as the result of his
+observations on dead dogs in the river Thames, that the lower jaw, not
+being secured by very firm ligaments to the bones of the head, and
+being a weighty affair, would easily be knocked off, or might drop away
+from the body as it floated in water in a state of decomposition. The
+jaw would thus be deposited immediately, while the rest of the body
+would float and drift away altogether, ultimately reaching the sea, and
+perhaps becoming destroyed.  The jaw becomes covered up and preserved in
+the river silt, and thus it comes that we have such a curious
+circumstance as that of the lower jaws in the Stonesfield slates. So
+that, you see, faulty as these layers of stone in the earth's crust
+are, defective as they necessarily are as a record, the account of
+contemporaneous vital phenomena presented by them is, by the necessity
+of the case, infinitely more defective and fragmentary.
+
+It was necessary that I should put all this very strongly before you,
+because, otherwise, you might have been led to think differently of the
+completeness of our knowledge by the next facts I shall state to you.
+
+The researches of the last three-quarters of a century have, in truth,
+revealed a wonderful richness of organic life in those rocks. Certainly
+not fewer than thirty or forty thousand different species of fossils
+have been discovered.  You have no more ground for doubting that these
+creatures really lived and died at or near the places in which we find
+them than you have for like scepticism about a shell on the sea-shore.
+The evidence is as good in the one case as in the other.
+
+Our next business is to look at the general character of these fossil
+remains, and it is a subject which it will be requisite to consider
+carefully; and the first point for us is to examine how much the
+extinct 'Flora' and 'Fauna' as a 'whole'--disregarding altogether the
+'succession' of their constituents, of which I shall speak
+afterwards--differ from the 'Flora' and 'Fauna' of the present
+day;--how far they differ in what we 'do' know about them, leaving
+altogether out of consideration speculations based upon what we 'do
+not' know.
+
+I strongly imagine that if it were not for the peculiar appearance that
+fossilised animals have, any of you might readily walk through a museum
+which contains fossil remains mixed up with those of the present forms
+of life, and I doubt very much whether your uninstructed eyes would
+lead you to see any vast or wonderful difference between the two.  If
+you looked closely, you would notice, in the first place, a great many
+things very like animals with which you are acquainted now: you would
+see differences of shape and proportion, but on the whole a close
+similarity.
+
+I explained what I meant by ORDERS the other day, when I described the
+animal kingdom as being divided in sub-kingdoms, classes and orders. If
+you divide the animal kingdom into orders, you will find that there are
+about one hundred and twenty.  The number may vary on one side or the
+other, but this is a fair estimate.  That is the sum total of the orders
+of all the animals which we know now, and which have been known in past
+times, and left remains behind.
+
+Now, how many of those are absolutely extinct?  That is to say, how many
+of these orders of animals have lived at a former period of the world's
+history, but have at present no representatives?  That is the sense in
+which I meant to use the word "extinct."  I mean that those animals did
+live on this earth at one time, but have left no one of their kind with
+us at the present moment.  So that estimating the number of extinct
+animals is a sort of way of comparing the past creation as a whole with
+the present as a whole.  Among the mammalia and birds there are none
+extinct; but when we come to the reptiles there is a most wonderful
+thing: out of the eight orders, or thereabouts, which you can make among
+reptiles, one-half are extinct.  These diagrams of the plesiosaurus,
+the ichthyosaurus, the pterodactyle, give you a notion of some of these
+extinct reptiles.  And here is a cast of the pterodactyle and bones of
+the ichthyosaurus and the plesiosaurus, just as fresh as if it had been
+recently dug up in a churchyard. Thus, in the reptile class, there are
+no less than half of the orders which are absolutely extinct.  If we
+turn to the 'Amphibia', there was one extinct order, the
+Labyrinthodonts, typified by the large salamander-like beast shown in
+this diagram.
+
+No order of fishes is known to be extinct.  Every fish that we find in
+the strata--to which I have been referring--can be identified and
+placed in one of the orders which exist at the present day.  There is
+not known to be a single ordinal form of insect extinct.  There are
+only two orders extinct among the 'Crustacea'.  There is not known to
+be an extinct order of these creatures, the parasitic and other worms;
+but there are two, not to say three, absolutely extinct orders of this
+class, the 'Echinodermata'; out of all the orders of the 'Coelenterata'
+and 'Protozoa' only one, the Rugose Corals.
+
+So that, you see, out of somewhere about 120 orders of animals, taking
+them altogether, you will not, at the outside estimate, find above ten
+or a dozen extinct.  Summing up all the orders of animals which have
+left remains behind them, you will not find above ten or a dozen which
+cannot be arranged with those of the present day; that is to say, that
+the difference does not amount to much more than ten per cent.: and the
+proportion of extinct orders of plants is still smaller.  I think that
+that is a very astounding, a most astonishing fact, seeing the enormous
+epochs of time which have elapsed during the constitution of the surface
+of the earth as it at present exists; it is, indeed, a most astounding
+thing that the proportion of extinct ordinal types should be so
+exceedingly small.
+
+But now, there is another point of view in which we must look at this
+past creation.  Suppose that we were to sink a vertical pit through the
+floor beneath us, and that I could succeed in making a section right
+through in the direction of New Zealand, I should find in each of the
+different beds through which I passed the remains of animals which I
+should find in that stratum and not in the others.  First, I should
+come upon beds of gravel or drift containing the bones of large
+animals, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, and cave tiger.  Rather
+curious things to fall across in Piccadilly!  If I should dig lower
+still, I should come upon a bed of what we call the London clay, and in
+this, as you will see in our galleries upstairs, are found remains of
+strange cattle, remains of turtles, palms, and large tropical fruits;
+with shell-fish such as you see the like of now only in tropical
+regions.  If I went below that, I should come upon the chalk, and there
+I should find something altogether different, the remains of
+ichthyosauri and pterodactyles, and ammonites, and so forth.
+
+I do not know what Mr. Godwin Austin would say comes next, but probably
+rocks containing more ammonites, and more ichthyosauri and plesiosauri,
+with a vast number of other things; and under that I should meet with
+yet older rocks, containing numbers of strange shells and fishes; and
+in thus passing from the surface to the lowest depths of the earth's
+crust, the forms of animal life and vegetable life which I should meet
+with in the successive beds would, looking at them broadly, be the more
+different the further that I went down.  Or, in other words, inasmuch
+as we started with the clear principle, that in a series of
+naturally-disposed mud beds the lowest are the oldest, we should come
+to this result, that the further we go back in time the more difference
+exists between the animal and vegetable life of an epoch and that which
+now exists.  That was the conclusion to which I wished to bring you at
+the end of this Lecture.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of
+The Past Condition of Organic Nature by Thomas H. Huxley
+
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