Have we not said that nothing remains of the procession
of organisms during half the earth's story but a shapeless seam
of carbon or limestone?
A simple illustration will serve to justify the procedure we are
about to adopt. Suppose that the whole of our literary and
pictorial references to earlier stages in the development of the
bicycle, the locomotive, or the loom, were destroyed. We should
still be able to retrace the phases of their evolution, because
we should discover specimens belonging to those early phases
lingering in our museums, in backward regions, and elsewhere.
They might yet be useful in certain environments into which the
higher machines have not penetrated. In the same way, if all the
remains of prehistoric man and early civilisation were lost, we
could still fairly retrace the steps of the human race, by
gathering the lower tribes and races, and arranging them in the
order of their advancement. They are so many surviving
illustrations of the stages through which mankind as a whole has
passed.
Just in the same way we may marshal the countless species of
animals and plants to-day in such order that they will, in a
general way, exhibit to us the age-long procession of life.
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