If I am now asked: What do the rocks have to tell us, in view of the fact that they refuse to testify to a life succession? I can only say that we are not as yet in a position to decide this question. There are several other matters connected with the character and mode of occurrence of the fossils, which are almost equally important with anything already considered, in forming a true scientific induction regarding this matter. These facts must be considered in subsequent chapters. Already, however, we can say this much, that we have in the rocks almost as complete a world, in some respects vastly more complete, than the living world of to-day. With the life succession theory repudiated, we have still to deal with the fossils themselves which have been thus systematically classified; =but this geological series becomes only the taxonomic or classification series of an older state of our present world=, buried somehow and at some time or times in the remote past--the how and the when of which we have not as yet the means to determine. But I think we are now prepared to enter the mazes of the biological argument, and to study the subject of extinct species, which by many is supposed to furnish a line of independent evidence in favor of the life succession theory. FOOTNOTE: [32] See Zittel, "History of Geol.," pp. 210, 211. CHAPTER VII EXTINCT SPECIES Let us now test the value of this assumed life succession by another very simple question. In "Eocene times," so we are told, England was a land of palms, with a semi-tropical flora and fauna. In fact at this time, cycads, gourds, proteads (like the Australian shrubs and trees), the fig, cinnamon, screw-pine, and various species of acacias and palms, abounded in England and Western Europe; while turtles, monkeys, crocodiles, and other sub-tropical and warm-temperate forms were equally abundant. Then again, in the Pleistocene deposits of the same countries, we find various species of elephant and rhinoceros, with a hippopotamus, lion, and hyena, identical with species now living in the tropics, "although," as Dana says, "these modern kinds are dwarfs in comparison." =Now, how are we to prove that these various forms of animal life did not exist together in these countries at the same time as the trees and plants before mentioned?=