possessed the earth ages before man
was created spoke to us of the past.

No sooner were these facts established, than the relation between the
extinct world and the world of to-day became the subject of extensive
researches and comparisons; innumerable theories were started to account
for the differences, and to determine the periods and manner of the
change. It is not my intention to enter now at any length upon the
subject of geological succession, though I hope to return to it
hereafter in a series of papers upon that and kindred topics; but I
allude to it here, before presenting some views upon the maintenance of
organic types as they exist in our own period, for the following reason.
Since it has been shown that from the beginning of Creation till the
present time the physical history of the world has been divided into
a succession of distinct periods, each one accompanied by its
characteristic animals and plants, so that our own epoch is only the
closing one in the long procession of the ages, naturalists have been
constantly striving to find the connecting link between them all, and to
prove that each such creation has been a normal and natural growth
out of the preceding one. With this aim they have tried to adapt the
phenomena of reproduction among animals to the problem of creation, and
to make the beginning of life in the individual solve that great mystery
of the beginning of life in the world. In other words, they have
endeavored to show that the fact of successive generations is analogous
to that of successive creations, and that the processes by which
animals, once created, are maintained unchanged during the period to
which they belong will account also for their primitive existence.

I wish, at the outset, to forestall any such misapplication of the facts
I am about to state, and to impress upon my readers the difference
between these two subjects of inquiry,--since it by no means follows,
that, because individuals are endowed with the power of reproducing and
perpetuating their kind, they are in any sense self-originating. Still
less probable does this appear, when we consider, that, since man has
existed upon the earth, no appreciable change has taken place in the
animal or vegetable world; and so far as our knowledge goes, this would
seem to be equally true of all the periods preceding ours, each one
maintaining unbroken to its close the organic character impressed upon
it at the beginning.

The