Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/89

Rh as a character inherited from reptilian ancestors; the ichthyornis, stranger still, with biconcave vertebra?, like those of fishes, and teeth set in sockets.

As giving, in a few words, an idea of the rapid progress in this department, I may mention that Morris's "Catalogue of British Fossils," published in 1843, contained 5,300 species; while that now in preparation by Mr. Etheridge enumerates 15,000. But, if these figures show how rapid our recent progress has been, they also very forcibly illustrate the imperfection of the geological record, and give us, I will not say a measure, but an idea, of the imperfection of the geological record. The number of all the described recent species is over 300,000, but certainly not half are yet on our lists, and we may safely take the total number of recent species as being not less than 700,000. But in former times there have been at the very least twelve periods, in each of which by far the greater number of species were distinct. True, the number of species was probably not so large in the earlier periods as at present; but, if we make a liberal allowance for this, we shall have a total of more than 2,000,000 species, of which about 25,000 only are as yet upon record; and many of these are only represented by a few, some only by a single specimen, or even only by a fragment.

The progress of paleontology may also be marked by the extent to which the existence of groups has been, if I may so say, carried back in time. Thus, I believe that in 1830 the earliest known quadrupeds were small marsupials belonging to the Stonesfield slates; the most ancient mammal now known is Microlestes antiquus from the Keuper of Würtemberg; the oldest bird known in 1831 belonged to the period of the London Clay, the oldest now known is the archæopteryx of the Solenhofen slates, though it is probable that some at any rate of the footsteps on the Triassic rocks are those of birds. So, again, the Amphibia have been carried back from the Trias to the Coal-measures; fish from the Old Red Sandstone to the Upper Silurian; reptiles to the Trias; insects from the Cretaceous to the Devonian; Mollusca and Crustacea from the Silurian to the Lower Cambrian. The rocks below the Cambrian, though of immense thickness, have afforded no relics of animal life, if we except the problematical Eozoön Canadense, so ably studied by Dawson and Carpenter. But, if paleontology as yet throws no light on the original forms of life, we must remember that the simplest and the lowest organisms are so soft and perishable that they would leave "not a wrack behind."

Passing to the science of geography, Mr. Clements Markham has recently published an excellent summary of what has been accomplished during the half-century. But the progress in our knowledge of geography is, and has been, by no means confined to the improvement of our maps, or to the discovery and description of new regions of the earth, but has extended to the causes which have led to the present configuration of the surface. To a great extent, indeed, this