But if, on the other hand, you look on all forms of organized beings as the results of the gradual modification of a primitive type, the facts receive a meaning, and you see that these older conditions are the necessary predecessors of the present. Viewed in this light the facts of palaeontology receive a meaning--upon any other hypothesis, I am unable to see, in the slightest degree, what knowledge or signification we are to draw out of them. Again, note as bearing upon the same point, the singular likeness which obtains between the successive Faunae and Florae, whose remains are preserved on the rocks: you never find any great and enormous difference between the immediately successive Faunae and Florae, unless you have reason to believe there has also been a great lapse of time or a great change of conditions. The animals, for instance, of the newest tertiary rocks, in any part of the world, are always, and without exception, found to be closely allied with those which now live in that part of the world. For example, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, the large mammals are at present rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, elephants, lions, tigers, oxen, horses, etc.; and if you examine the newest tertiary deposits, which contain the animals and plants which immediately preceded those which now exist in the same country, you do not find gigantic specimens of ant-eaters and kangaroos, but you find rhinoceroses, elephants, lions, tigers, etc.,--of different species to those now living,--but still their close allies. If you turn to South America, where, at the present day, we have great sloths and armadilloes and creatures of that kind, what do you find in the newest tertiaries? You find the great sloth-like creature, the 'Megatherium', and the great armadillo, the 'Glyptodon', and so on. And if you go to Australia you find the same law holds good, namely, that that condition of organic nature which has preceded the one which now exists, presents differences perhaps of species, and of genera, but that the great types of organic structure are the same as those which now flourish. What meaning has this fact upon any other hypothesis or supposition than one of successive modification? But if the population of the world, in any age, is the result of the gradual modification of the forms which peopled it in the preceding age,--if that has been the case, it is intelligible enough; because we may expect that the creature that results from the modification of an elephantine mammal shall be something like an elephant, and the creature which is produced by the modification of an armadillo-like mammal shall be like an armadillo. Upon that supposition, I say, the facts are intelligible; upon any other, that I am aware of, they are not.