Evening star., 1901-04-20

mails made very little progress, remaining
as subordinate creatures. incapable of bat
tie, and waiting patiently for relief.
The relief came at last, with what seems,
geologically speaking, surprising swiftness.
We do not know how the reptilian empire
fell; whether the enormous forms exhaust
ed the vegetation, became weakened, and
fell prey to the carnivoreS, which in time
were forced to feed on another, or
whether a plague, some bacterial disease,
smote the reptiles and spared the hardy
and oft-tried little mammals. The passage
from cretaceOuS to eOcene time sees, in any
case, the last of the old dinosaurs; the rep
tiles that remain, crocodles and serpents
and so forth, are virtually the specialized
reptiles of today.
Their Rise to Power.
Directly the field was open the mammals
proved worthy of their far triassic ancestry
and seemed to realize that their inherit
ance had come to them at last. In turn
they grew monstrOus, and became adorned
with horns and hoofs, or with rending
claws and aggressive teeth: some in light
fairy forms. flew through the air as bats;
others took to the water, and gave us the
race of whales. surprising in bulk the
largest reptiles of the past.
And so through long series of forms We
reach the mammals of our own time; the
saber-toothed machairodus gives way to
our lions and our tigers, the mastodon to
! the mammoth the mammoth to our modern
whole, We have that strange being. Pith-
ecanthrOpus, the great man-ape of Java,
and man himself the primitive cave
dweller, whose course is only now begun.
Still More Primitive.
From such a field it may be healthy to re-
turn to what is not only probable, but
proved. Humble as the fauna of the ole
| nellus beds appears to us, its compleXity
assures us that it was preceded by others
still more primitive. In many lands thick
series of stratiied rocks underlie the low
est Cambrian. and fossils may now at any
time be found in them. If we follow Mr..
H. NJ. Bernard, who traces the trilobltes
back into the worms. and VINO mas called
the Olenellus browsing annel1d a
somewhat unkind aspersion-we may re-
gard worms as fairly primitive creatures:
but what of the ancestry of the worms
themselves?
Is it, however. at all likely that the
earths earliest inhabitants have been any
where preserved amid all the stresses and
movements that the rocks have undergone
since their formation? Minute Jelly-like
masses each one endowed with life. and
of the most complex molecular Organiza-
tion when compared with the inorganic
world around them, may have lived and
multiplied for aeonS before the arrival OF
a single worm upon the scene.
We are at present on the eve of dlScoV-
cries in the dim pre-Cambrian realms: but
it is safe to assert that the first forms OF
life have long passed beyond pursuit. The
fascination of the faunas that preceded the
dynasty of Olenellus is, however, surely
strong enough to stir the imagination and
to promote the most strenuous research.
We are still like travellers on some noun
tain crest at sunrise, watching the unfold
ing of the upper levels of the hills, and
seeking to peer into the dark hollows that
lie thousands of feet below. Here and
there "A peak emerges from the enveloplng
clouds, but We cannot yet survey the
landscape as a whole. At length some skill =
full observer, some subtle spirit, will dissi-
pat the mists at one point. and will allow
a shaft of light to penetrate down to the
abyss. and this one discovery will be tor
him the glory of a lifetime.