The Chain of Life in Geological Time: A Sketch of the Origin and Succession of Animals and Plants

Questions as to the origin and history of life are not at the present time answered by mere philosophical speculation and poetical imagining. Such solutions of these questions as science can profess to have obtained are based on vast accumulations of facts respecting the remains of animals and plants preserved in the rocky beds of the earth’s crust, which have been successively accumulated in the course of its long geological history. These facts undoubtedly afford the means of attaining to very certain conclusions on many points relating to the history of life on the earth. But, on the Other hand, they have furnished the material for hypotheses which, though confidently affirmed to be indisputable, have no real foundation in nature, and are indirectly subversive of some of the most sacred beliefs of mankind.