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

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Title: Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life

Author: Thomas H. Huxley

Posting Date: January 6, 2009 [EBook #2936]
Release Date: November, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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

Produced by Amy E. Zelmer

GEOLOGICAL CONTEMPORANEITY AND PERSISTENT TYPES OF LIFE.

By Thomas H. Huxley

[1]

MERCHANTS occasionally go through a wholesome, though troublesome and
not always satisfactory, process which they term "taking stock." After
all the excitement of speculation, the pleasure of gain, and the pain of
loss, the trader makes up his mind to face facts and to learn the exact
quantity and quality of his solid and reliable possessions.

The man of science does well sometimes to imitate this procedure; and,
forgetting for the time the importance of his own small winnings, to
re-examine the common stock in trade, so that he may make sure how far
the stock of bullion in the cellar--on the faith of whose existence so
much paper has been circulating--is really the solid gold of truth.

The Anniversary Meeting of the Geological Society seems to be an
occasion well suited for an undertaking of this kind--for an inquiry,
in fact, into the nature and value of the present results of
paleontological investigation; and the more so, as all those who have
paid close attention to the late multitudinous discussions in which
paleontology is implicated, must have felt the urgent necessity of some
such scrutiny.

First in order, as the most definite and unquestionable of all the
results of paleontology, must be mentioned the immense extension and
impulse given to botany, zoology, and comparative anatomy, by the
investigation of fossil remains. Indeed, the mass of biological facts
has been so greatly increased, and the range of biological speculation
has been so vastly widened, by the researches of the geologist and
paleontologist, that it is to be feared there are naturalists in
existence who look upon geology as Brindley regarded rivers. "Rivers,"