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pedigrees or armorial bearings; and we have to discover and trace the many diverging lines of descent in our natural genealogies, by characters of any kind which have long been inherited. Rudimentary organs will speak infallibly with respect to the nature of long-lost structures. Species and groups of
which are called aberrant, and which may fancifully be called living fossils, will aid us in forming a picture of the ancient forms of life. Embryology will
to us the structure, in some degree obscured, of the prototypes of each great class. |
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| When we can feel assured that all the individuals of the same species, and all the closely allied species of most genera, have within a not very remote period
from one parent, and have migrated from some one
and when we better know the many means of migration, then, by the light which geology now throws, and will continue to throw, on former changes of climate and of the level of the land, we shall surely be enabled to trace in an admirable manner the former migrations of the inhabitants of the whole world. Even at present, by comparing the differences
the inhabitants of the sea on the opposite sides of a continent, and the nature of the various inhabitants
that continent in relation to their apparent means of immigration, some light can be thrown on ancient geography. |
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| The noble science of Geology loses glory from the extreme imperfection of the record. The crust of the earth with its
remains must not be looked at as a well-filled museum, but as a poor collection made at hazard and at rare intervals. The accumulation of each great fossiliferous formation will be recognised as having depended on an unusual concurrence of
and the blank intervals between the successive stages as having been of vast duration. But we shall
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