To reduce the table within limits,
I have grouped together all the lower forms of life in the animal table,
viz., the sponges, corals, encrinites, and molluscs. It is sufficient to
say that these appear in all the rocks except the very oldest--the
Caelenterata beginning, and the Molluscoids exhibiting an early order in
_brachiopoda_, which seems to be dying out. Crustaceans and insects
appeared as early as Silurian times.
The idea of successive "kingdoms" or "periods," each of which was
_complete_ in its actual fauna upon earth before the next was fully
ushered in, can no longer be defended.
It is in the _completion_ of one class of life before the other, that
the fallacy of the period theory lies--for completion is essential to
that theory which supposes "the Mosaic author" to have intended to
describe the _process of production on earth_.
But it is quite impossible to deny that there _is_ a certain observable
movement and gradual procession in the history of life which is exactly
consistent with what is most likely to have happened, supposing the
Divine designs of life-forms were first declared in successive order at
short intervals of time, and then that the processes of nature worked
out the designs in the fulness of time and gradually in order, each one
_beginning_ before the next, but only beginning.
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