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 Paleozoic, 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 paleontology 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.

End of Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life.

CORAL AND CORAL REEFS.*

([Footnote] *A Lecture delivered in Manchester, November 4th, 1870.)

The subject upon which I wish to address you to-night is the structure
and origin of Coral and Coral Reefs. Under the head of "coral" there are
included two very different things; one of them is that substance which
I imagine a great number of us have champed when we were very much
younger than we are now,--the common red coral, which is used so much,
as you know, for the edification and the delectation of children of
tender years, and is also employed for the purposes of ornament for
those who are much older, and as some think might know better. The other
kind of coral is a very different substance; it may for distinction's
sake be called the white coral; it is a material which most assuredly
not the hardest-hearted of baby farmers would give to a baby to chew,
and it is a sub