d they have fallen, as
their work shows, on the right methods of producing it. And the
Egyptians anticipated us in even our most homely household contrivances.
They even fermented their bread and trussed their fowls after the same
fashion; and thus gave evidence, in these familiar matters, that they
thought and contrived "after the manner of men." Now, in acquainting
myself with the organisms of the geologic periods, I have been similarly
but more deeply impressed by what I must be permitted to term the
_human_ cast and character of the contrivances which they exemplified.
Not only could I understand the principles on which they were
constructed, but further, not a few of them had, I found, been actually
introduced into works of human invention ages ere they were discovered
in the rock. What the great Creator-worker had originated in the
Palaeozoic and Secondary periods, had been in after times originated by
the little creature-worker, wholly unaware that his contrivance had been
anticipated, and was but a repetition of a previously executed design.
In the later geologic ages the organization of the various extinct
animals so nearly resembled that of the animals which still live, that
we may regard it as not inadequately represented by the illustrations of
Paley. A few such exceptional contrivances appear among the mammals of
the Tertiary as that formed by the huge pickaxe-like tusks of the
Dinotherium, or a few such extraordinary modifications of the ordinary
mammalian framework as that exhibited in the enormously massive pelvic
arches and hinder limbs of the Mylodon and Megatherium. But not until we
pass into the deposits of the Secondary period, and get among its
cephalopoda, do we find a mechanism altogether unlike any with which we
are acquainted among living organisms. As admirably shown by Buckland,
the partitions which separate into chambers all the whorls of the
ammonite except the outermost one, were exquisitely adapted to
strengthen, by the tortuous windings of their outer edges, a shell which
had to combine great lightness with great powers of resistance. Itself a
continuous arch throughout, it was supported by a series of continuous
arches inside, somewhat resembling in form the groined ribs of the
Gothic roof, but which, unlike the ponderous stone work of the mediaeval
architects, were as light as they were strong. And to this combination
of arches there was added, in the ribs and grooves of the shell, yet