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The Foot-prints of the Creator : $b or, The Asterolepis of Stromness — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Foot-prints of the Creator : $b or, The Asterolepis of Stromness

John Stuart Mill · en
The last and _fifteenth_ chapter of Mr. Miller’s work, “On the Bearing
of Final Causes on Geologic History,” if read with care and thought,
will prove at once delightful and instructive. The principle of _final
causes_, or the conditions of existence, affords a wide scope to our
reason in Natural History, but especially in Geology. It becomes an
interesting inquiry, if any reason can be assigned why at certain periods
species began to exist, and became extinct after the lapse of lengthened
periods of time, and why the higher classes of being succeeded the lower
in the order of creation? The incompleteness of geological science,
however, does not permit us to remove, for the present, the veil which
hangs over this mysterious chronology; but our author is of opinion that
in about a quarter of a century, in a favored locality like the British
Islands, geological history “will assume a very extraordinary form.”

It is a singular fact, which will yet lead to singular results, that
Cuvier’s arrangement of the four classes of vertebrate animals should
exhibit the same order as that in which they are found in the strata of
the earth. In the _fish_, the average proportion of the brain to the
spinal cord is only as 2 to 1. In the _reptile_, the ratio is 2½ to 1.
In the _bird_, it is as 3 to 1. In the _mammalia_, it is as 4 to 1; and
in _man_, it is as 23 to 1. No less remarkable is the fœtal progress of
the human brain. It first becomes a brain resembling that of a fish; then
it grows into the form of that of a reptile; then into that of a bird;
then into that of a mammiferous quadruped, and finally it assumes the
form of a human brain, “thus comprising in its fœtal progress an epitome
of geological history, as if man were in himself a compendium of all
animated nature, and of kin to every creature that lives.”

With these considerations, Mr. Miller has brought his subject to the
point at which Science in its onward progress now stands. It is to
embryology we are in future to look for further information upon the
most intimate relations which exist between all organized beings. We may
fairly entertain the hope that the time is not far when we shall not
only fully understand the Plan of Creation, but even lift some corner
of the veil which has hitherto prevented us from forming adequate ideas
of the first introduction of animal and vegetable life upon earth, and
of the changes which both kingdoms have undergone in the succession of
geological ages.

                                                              L. AGASSIZ.

CAMBRIDGE, _September, 1850_.




CONTENTS


                                                                      PAGE

    STROMNESS AND ITS ASTEROLEPIS.—THE LAKE OF STENNIS                  21

    THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES                    37

    THE RECENT HISTORY OF THE ASTEROLEPIS.—ITS FAMILY                   48