new or changing influences, but only within certain limits, when these are reached they endure the strain no farther. The bow bent too far breaks. Probably it was so in those early periods. The weaker went first, at last all went, and then geologists report a general extermination.

The lower forms of life now are less sensitive to such influences than those of higher rank. It is reasonable to believe that the same was the case in geological times; and if so, may we not find in this fact an explanation of the greater length of the earlier periods as indicated by their fossil remains?

The progress of improvement would seem to have reached its limit, so far as soil and atmosphere are concerned, by the close of the Miocene, for, according to De la Saporta, Le Monde des Plantes, page 380, the flora of the Pliocene is still with us. He says:-"The principal groups, and even the genera of the plants which constitute the immense majority of our actual floras, were established from their beginning, probably even before the end of the Tertiary age, in the limits which they now occupy," and again, he says, page 342, "Let us not forget to remark that the European species still living occupy their actual country since the close of the Pliocene. They affect with secondary variations and shadings more or less pronounced the same characteristics. as in our own day." If in this Saporta be right, and one may judge by the sameness of plant life from that time onward, neither atmosphere nor soil underwent any further essential improvement.*

There were, however, great changes in the animal world. Dana probably puts it too broadly when he says on page 518 of his revised Manual of Geology, "All the fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals of the Tertiary are extinct." But I think it is beyond question that an enormous proportion of the Tertiary vertebrates have ceased to exist. In the Quaternary the fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals were mainly of new species. At its close the mammals disappeared, the others are with us yet. In the next or present period, we find in place of the mammals of the Quaternary, the cattle and beasts of to-day.

The extermination of the Pliocene fauna seems probably to have been due to the great climatic changes which followed. It is difficult to see why the large, well armed, and well armoured mammals of the Quaternary became extinct. Had

*This is not quite correct. The wonderful change in the prevalent flora from monocotyledonous to dicotyledonous plants took place at the close of the Lower Cretaceous period.-ED.

the order been reversed, and the giants of the Quaternary come last, we could easily understand that order. It then would have been only a case of "the survival of the fittest." In fact it was a survival of the weakest. It adds to the perplexing nature of the problem that the birds of the Quaternary so largely survive. So far as I can see, all that can be said with certainty is that the monsters of the Quaternary would have been a detriment and hindrance to the creatures which were about to make their appearance, and that some cause unknown to science," probably the same cause that started the chain of life, brought that section of it to an end.

If it be said that man lived at least in the latter part of the Quaternary, and that, gifted with superior intellect, and possessed of weapons, it was he that exterminated those great creatures; then for some unknown reason he destroyed the stronger and better protected species, and avoided killing the weaker but no less fierce ones which still survive. This seems too unreasonable for serious consideration, and so we are still left with the conclusion that the extermination of those monstrous Quaternary species just as present mammals were appearing was due to a << cause unknown to science."

Here I had intended to close my paper, but having been asked to give a brief statement as to the origination of new forms to succeed those exterminated, I will trespass on your patience a little longer.

What has already been said affords no assistance in the solution of this problem. Gravitation and chemical affinity account for the destruction of a building, but give no assistance in explaining the origination of a new one to take its place. For this we must invoke, in addition to physical laws, that to which the painter referred when he said he "mixed his colours with brains." In other words, we here find it necessary to supplement those laws by an intelligence able to employ the forces of nature for its purposes.

Very few will deny the intervention of a Creator when the first species came into existence. On what reasonable grounds can they say that He never did it again? So long as the train is to keep its course the switchman need only watch it as it goes by; but when its course is to be changed then his brain. and his hand come into operation.

Now for the application. Imagine a species which has long been in existence approaching its final stage. We know that it did disappear, and that in close proximity to the last of its generation a new species is found.

What method did the Creator employ to bring into existence. this new species? That he should have ignored all that he had thus far done and gone back to unorganised earth, air and water, is to me unthinkable: not that He lacked power, but that the All-wise should not have availed Himself of the forms then living, and which needed so little done compared with the de novo method, to change them into new species.

The following seems to me to have been what actually occurred, taking one species as typical of all. When this was approaching very close to the destined time of its extinction, the Creator may be supposed to have caused an ovum to develop into a creature resembling in generic traits its predecessors, but making such changes as differentiated the species which is next found. To borrow a suggestion from Huxley, it was as if in a world inhabited only by hyenas, dogs were born to them, and the hyenas ceased. If this occurred simultaneously in a sufficient number of instances, the extermination and origination would be world-wide.

To sum it all in briefest possible form, as it appears to me, the disappearance of species was due to natural law alone in the effects of the betterment of the air, water and soil, while the appearing of new species was due also to natural law, plus the supernatural at the initial point of the new species.

This opens a new theme, one, as it seems to me, of great interest. It would be out of place for me to pursue it now. If any one desires to look into it from the standpoint of the writer, I would refer him to my article in the October number of the Bibliotheca Sacra of 1903, entitled Miracle, Law and Evolution, a copy of which I did myself the pleasure of sending not very long ago to the Institute.

The thesis there maintained is as follows: God in all His work, whether classed as Miracle, Law, Evolution, Inspiration or Redemption, employed natural means, or, if you please, natural laws to their limit, and then, by His power, did the needed thing, after which the supernatural ceased and natural laws resumed their sole action.

The origination of new species is one of the many applications of this principle.

DISCUSSION.

Dr. HENRY WOODWARD, F.R.S.-Your Secretary has been so kind as to send me an invitation to come to-day.

I am sorry that the author took as his copy and authority the text-book of Dana, because geological science is one that is always progressing, and you have only to notice the fact that although this work of Dana's has been a most valued text-book of geology in America, and has been largely used on this side also, that it began its first edition about 1859, the second was published in 1874, and the third in 1879. Well now, between 1879 and the present time a great advance in geology has occurred, and I think that it is hardly possible that any geologist or palæontologist can accept the idea of the entire extermination of life in geological time in the sense that Professor Dana and the author express it. Whether we accept and endorse the views of Darwinian evolution, or we retain the old conviction with regard to the creation of all the varied forms of life, we are convinced of one thing, that from the time that life first appeared upon the globe, it has never been entirely exterminated. That is a fundamental principle which I think one might accept without any prejudice or reserve, that life having once commenced upon the earth, it has never disappeared from it.

Then with regard to the appearance of that life. All through the geological periods we have a 'succession of forms appearing, but of the many groups that have vivified the surface of the earth, and the waters of the sea, very few indeed have been entirely exterminated.* A few groups have become extinct in the course of long periods of time; such forms as the Trilobites have disappeared. Hugh Miller's great "cherubims" (Pterygoti), found in the Upper Silurian and Devonian rocks, have entirely ceased to live. But the great class of Crustacea to which they belong remains just the same and has gone on through all periods of time, different species. having been evolved in a regular orderly sequence up to the present day. I do not think, either, that one can accept the idea of any

* Of the invertebrata I find eighteen groups which are persistent; three are extinct; and five groups are of comparatively modern appearance in time.

great break in the physical conditions of the globe. There have been great alterations locally in the earth, both in the distribution of land and water, but these changes have never so materially affected the life on the globe as to bring about its complete extermination. There have always been some parts of the waters of the ocean habitable, and of the land, after land animals first made their appearance, where life was enabled to continue. One thing has to be borne in mind, that in the earlier periods the thickness of the sedimentary deposits was so vast and the time which they occupied in their deposition was so great, that one looks in astonishment at the comparatively small period of time represented by the accumulations formed during Secondary and Tertiary ages. They are more like a few sheets of paper when compared to the vast pile of strata of the older rocks (many miles in thickness. The thousands of feet of the Tertiary and Secondary rocks are entirely eclipsed by the hundreds of thousands of feet thicknesses of strata of the older sedimentary deposits.

With regard to the points the author specially lays stress upon, I merely wish first of all to make an emphatic protest against the opinion of the universal extermination of life at any one time, or that at certain periods a universal extermination took place. Such dogmas were generally accepted by the older geologists, and they saw no other explanation. They did not know sufficiently concerning this ancient life to form a clearer idea. They saw great changes and breaks, and they were not aware that these were not continuous over the whole world; they imagined that each break in the series ushered in a fresh formation and a new creation.

My father, Samuel Woodward, of Norwich, a well known Norfolk geologist, who lived from 1790 to 1838, entertained precisely the same views as the author (Mr. Warring) and Professor Dana did: that there was a general and universal destruction of life at all the different geological epochs, marking each series of formations; but all that is now "ancient history," and no longer accepted by geologists at the present day.

In reference to the three points touched upon by the author, the air, the water, and the soil: with regard to the air, it is now universally accepted by chemists, biologists and geologists, that since life appeared upon the surface of the earth and in the waters of rivers, lakes, and seas, no material change of vast consequence