only be added, that taking the evidence of the present as explaining the phenomena of the past—­the only safe method of reasoning in geological matters—­we have abundant proof that deposits which are actually contemporaneous, in the strict sense of the term, do not contain the same fossils, if far removed from one another in point of distance.  Thus, deposits of various kinds are now in process of formation in our existing seas, as, for example, in the Arctic Ocean, the Atlantic, and the Pacific, and many of these deposits are known to us by actual examination and observation with the sounding-lead and dredge.  But it is hardly necessary to add that the animal remains contained in these deposits—­the fossils of some future period—­instead of being identical, are widely different from one another in their characters.

We have seen, then, that the entire stratified series is capable of subdivision into a number of definite rock-groups or “formations,” each possessing a peculiar and characteristic assemblage of fossils, representing the “life” of the “period” in which the formation was deposited.  We have still to inquire shortly how it came to pass that two successive formations should thus be broadly distinguished by their life-forms, and why they should not rather possess at any rate a majority of identical fossils.  It was originally supposed that this could be explained by the hypothesis that the close of each formation was accompanied by a general destruction of all the living beings of the period, and that the commencement of each new formation was signalised by the creation of a number of brand-new organisms, destined to figure as the characteristic fossils of the same.  This theory, however, ignores the fact that each formation—­as to which we have any sufficient evidence—­contains a few, at least, of the life-forms which existed in the preceding period; and it invokes forces and processes of which we know nothing, and for the supposed action of which we cannot account.  The problem is an undeniably difficult one, and it will not be possible here to give more than a mere outline of the modern views upon the subject.  Without entering into the at present inscrutable question as to the manner in which new life-forms are introduced upon the earth, it may be stated that almost all modern geologists hold that the living beings of any given formation are in the main modified forms of others which have preceded them.  It is not believed that any general or universal destruction of life took place at the termination of each geological period, or that a general introduction of new forms took place at the commencement of a new period.  It is, on the contrary, believed that the animals and plants of any given period are for the most part (or exclusively) the lineal but modified descendants of the animals and plants of the immediately preceding period, and that some of them, at any rate, are continued into the next succeeding