Night of Toils

 

A NIGHT OF TOILS the evolutions of the earth as set forth in this and the preceding section. For this purpose the author has introduced a parallel table, exhibiting on one side a scale of animal life beginning with the humblest and ascending to the highest species; and on the other side the successive series of rock, formations, in which fossiliferous remains have been found up to the present superficial deposits of the globe. Objections have been made to the correctness of  the author’s analogies, scale, and his classifications classifications of animals, the chiefs of which will be adverted to in the next  pursuing the progress progress of the deve development lopment of both pla plants nts and animals animals upon the globe, we have seen an advance in  both cases from simple to hi higher gher forms of or organization. ganization. In tthe he botanical department department we have first sea, afterwards afterwards land plants; and amongst these the simpler (cellular and cryptogamic) before the more complex. In the department of  zoology, we see, firs, traces all but certain of infusoria [shelled animalec animalecullae]; ullae]; then polypiarian, crinoidea, and some humble forms of the articulata and mollusca; afterwards higher forms of the mollusca; and it appears that these existed for agesand before there were any higher types of being. first step fishes, thethe humblest class of  the vertebrata; moreover, the earliest fishes partake of theThe character of forward the lowergives sub kingdom, articulata. CHAPTER

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