Still, however, the question of organization remains. Did these ancient Placoid fishes stand high or low in the scale? According to the poet, “What can we reason but from what we know?” We are acquainted with the Placoid fishes of the present time; and from these only, taking analogy as our guide, can we form any judgment regarding the rank and standing of their predecessors, the Placoids of the geologic periods. But the consideration of this question, as it is specially one on which the later assertors of the development hypothesis concentrate themselves, I must, to secure the space necessary for its discussion, defer till my next chapter. Meanwhile, I am conscious I owe an apology to the reader for what he must deem tedious minuteness of description, and a too prolix amplitude of statement. It is only by representing things as they actually are, and in the true order of their occurrence, that the effect of the partially selected facts and exaggerated descriptions of the Lamarckian can be adequately met. True, the disadvantages of the more sober mode are unavoidably great. He who feels himself at liberty to arrange his collected shells, corals, and fish-bones, into artistically designed figures, and to select only the pretty ones, will be of course able to make of them a much finer show than he who is necessitated to represent them in the order and numerical proportions in which they occur on some pebbly beach washed by the sea. And such is the advantage, in a literary point of view, of the ingenious theorist, who, in making figures of his geological facts, takes no more of them than suits his purpose, over the man who has to communicate the facts as he finds them. But the homelier mode is the true one. “Could we obtain,” says a distinguished metaphysician, “a distinct and full history of all that has passed in the mind of a child, from the beginning of life and sensation till it grows up to the use of reason,—how its infant faculties began to work, and how they brought forth and ripened all the various notions, opinions, and sentiments which we find in ourselves when we come to be capable of reflection,—this would be a treasure of natural history which would probably give more light into the human faculties than all the systems of philosophers about them since the beginning of the world. But it is in vain,” he adds, “to wish for what nature has not put within the reach of our power.” In like manner, could we obtain, it may be remarked, a full and distinct account of a single class of the animal kingdom, from its first appearance till the present time, “this would be a treasure of natural history which would cast more light” on the origin of living existences, and the true economy of creation, than all the theories of all the philosophers “since the beginning of the world.” And in order to approximate to such a history as nearly as possible,—and it does seem possible to approximate near enough to substantiate the true readings of