[Illustration: Fig. 60. PLACODUS GIGAS. Crushing Teeth. (_Trias._)] Such of the fishes of the present time as live on crustacea and the shelled molluscs,--such as the Wrasse or rock-fish family, and at least one of the Goby family, the sea-wolf,--have an apparatus of crushing teeth greatly more solid and strong than the teeth of such of their contemporaries as are either herbivorous or feed on the weaker families of their own class. A similar remark applies to the ancient sharks, as contrasted with those of later times. So long as the strongly-armed ganoidal order prevailed in nature, the sharks were furnished with massive crushing teeth; but when the ganoids waned in creation, and the soft-scaled cycloid and ctenoid orders took and amply filled the place which they had left vacant, the well known modern form of sharks' teeth was introduced,--a form much rather suited for cutting soft bodies than for crushing hard ones. In fine, the offensive weapons of the times of the Coal Measures seem very formidable, just as those personal weapons of the middle ages seem so that were borne at a time when every soldier took the field cased in armor of proof. The slim scimitar or slender rapier would have availed but little against massive iron helmets or mail coats of tempered steel. And so the warriors of the period armed themselves with ponderous maces, battle-axes as massive as hammers, and double-handed swords of great weight and strength. Before passing onwards to other and higher classes and orders, as they occurred in creation, permit me to make the formidable armor of the earlier fishes, offensive and defensive, the subject of a single remark. We are told by Goethe, in his autobiography, that he had attained his sixth year when the terrible earthquake at Lisbon took place,--"an event," he says, "which greatly disturbed" his "peace of mind for the first time." He could not reconcile a catastrophe so suddenly destructive to thousands, with the ideas which he had already formed for himself of a Providence all-powerful and all-benevolent. But he afterwards learned, he tells us, to recognize in such events the "_God of the Old Testament._" I know not in what spirit the remark was made; but this I know, that it is the God of the Old Testament whom we see exhibited in all nature and all providence; and that it is at once wisdom and duty in his rational creatures, however darkly they may perceive or imperfectly they may comprehend, to hold in implicit faith that the Adorable Monarch of all the past and of all the future is a King who "can do no wrong." This early exhibition of tooth, and spine, and sting,--of weapons constructed alike to cut and to pierce,--to unite two of the most indispensable requirements of the modern armorer,--a keen edge to a strong back,--nay, stranger still, the examples furnished in this primeval time, of weapons formed not only to kill, but also to torture,--must be altogether at variance with the preconceived opinions