Go deeper still, and the kinds of animals change further.  Fewer and fewer resemble those which now range the earth; more and more belong to other species.

Descend through layer after layer till we come to rocks built in earliest ages and not one fossil shall we find precisely the same as one animal living now.

So not only are the rocks built in successive order, stratum after stratum belonging to age after age in the past, but fossil-remains also are found in successive order, kind after kind belonging to past age after age.

Although in the first instance the succession of fossils was understood by means of the succession of rock-layers, yet in the second place the arrangement of rock-layers is made more clear by the means of these very fossils.

A geologist, looking at the rocks in America, can say which there were first-formed, which second-formed, which third-formed.  Also, looking at the rocks in England, he can say which there were first-formed, second-formed, third-formed.  He would, however, find it very difficult, if not impossible, to say which among any of the American rocks was formed at about the same time as any particular one among the English rocks, were it not for the help afforded him by these fossils.

Just as the regular succession of rock-strata has been gradually learned, so the regular succession of different fossils is becoming more and more understood.  It is now known that some kinds of fossils are always found in the oldest rocks, and in them only; that some kinds are always found in the newest rocks, and in them only; that some fossils are rarely or never found lower than certain layers; that some fossils are rarely or never found higher than certain other layers.

So this fossil arrangement is growing into quite a history of the past.  And a geologist, looking at certain rocks, pushed up from underground, in England and in America, can say:  “These are very different kinds of rocks, it is true, and it would be impossible to say how long the building up of the one might have taken place before or after the other.  But I see that in both these rocks there are exactly the same kinds of fossil-remains, differing from those in the rocks above and below.  I conclude therefore that the two rocks belong to about the same great age in the world’s past history, when the same animals were living upon the earth.”

Observing and reasoning thus, geologists have drawn up a general plan or order of strata; and the whole of the vast masses of water-built rocks throughout the world have been arranged in a regular succession of classes, rising step by step from earliest ages up to the present time.

[Illustration]

AMERICA THE OLD WORLD

(FROM GEOLOGICAL SKETCHES.)

BY L. AGASSIZ.

[Illustration]