The laws regulating the geographical distribution of animals, and their combination into distinct zooelogical provinces called faunae, with definite limits, are very imperfectly understood as yet; but so closely are all things linked together from the beginning till to-day, that I am convinced we shall never find the clew to their meaning till we carry on our investigations in the past and the present simultaneously.  The same principle according to which animal and vegetable life is distributed over the surface of the earth now, prevailed in the earliest geological periods.  The geological deposits of all times have had their characteristic faunae under various zones, their zooelogical provinces presenting special combinations of animal and vegetable life over certain regions, and their representative types reproducing in different countries, but under similar latitudes, the same groups with specific differences.

Of course, the nearer we approach the beginning of organic life, the less marked do we find the differences to be; and for a very obvious reason.  The inequalities of the earth’s surface, her mountain-barriers protecting whole continents from the Arctic winds, her open plains exposing others to the full force of the polar blasts, her snug valleys and her lofty heights, her tablelands and rolling prairies, her river-systems and her dry deserts, her cold ocean-currents pouring down from the high North on some of her shores, while warm ones from tropical seas carry their softer influence to others,—­in short, all the contrasts in the external configuration of the globe, with the physical conditions attendant upon them, are naturally accompanied by a corresponding variety in animal and vegetable life.

But in the Silurian age, when there were no elevations higher than the Canadian hills, when water covered the face of the earth with the exception of a few isolated portions lifted above the almost universal ocean, how monotonous must have been the conditions of life!  And what should we expect to find on those first shores?  If we are walking on a sea-beach to-day, we do not look for animals that haunt the forests or roam over the open plains, or for those that live in sheltered valleys or in inland regions or on mountain-heights.  We look for Shells, for Mussels and Barnacles, for Crabs, for Shrimps, for Marine Worms, for Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins, and we may find here and there a fish stranded on the sand or strangled in the sea-weed.  Let us remember, then, that in the Silurian period the world, so far as it was raised above the ocean, was a beach; and let us seek there for such creatures as God has made to live on seashores, and not belittle the Creative work, or say that He first scattered the seeds of life in meagre or stinted measure, because we do not find air-breathing animals when there was no fitting atmosphere to feed their lungs, insects with no terrestrial plants to live upon, reptiles without marshes, birds without trees, cattle without grass,—­all things, in short, without the essential conditions for their existence....