But in the Silurian age, when there were no elevations higher than the Canadian hills, when water covered the face of the earth with the exception of a few isolated portions lifted above the almost universal ocean, how monotonous must have been the conditions of life!  And what should we expect to find on those first shores?  If we are walking on a sea-beach to-day, we do not look for animals that haunt the forests or roam over the open plains, or for those that live in sheltered valleys or in inland regions or on mountain-heights.  We look for Shells, for Mussels and Barnacles, for Crabs, for Shrimps, for Marine Worms, for Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins, and we may find here and there a fish stranded on the sand or tangled in the sea-weed.  Let us remember, then, that, in the Silurian period, the world, so far as it was raised above the ocean, was a beach, and let us seek there for such creatures as God has made to live on sea-shores, and not belittle the Creative work, or say that He first scattered the seeds of life in meagre or stinted measure, because we do not find air-breathing animals when there was no fitting atmosphere to feed their lungs, insects with no terrestrial plants to live upon, reptiles without marshes, birds without trees, cattle without grass, all things, in short, without the essential conditions for their existence.

What we do find—­and these, as I shall endeavor to show my readers, in such profusion that it would seem as if God, in the joy of creation, had compensated Himself for a less variety of forms in the greater richness of the early types—­is an immense number of beings belonging to the four primary divisions of the Animal Kingdom, but only to those classes whose representatives are marine, whose home then, as now, was either in the sea or along its shores.  In other words, the first organic creation expressed in its totality the structural conception since carried out in such wonderful variety of details, and purposely limited then, because the world, which was to be the home of the higher animals, was not yet made ready to receive them.

I am fully aware that the intimate relations between the organic and physical world are interpreted by many as indicating the absence, rather than the presence, of an intelligent Creator.  They argue, that the dependence of animals on material laws gives us the clue to their origin as well as to their maintenance.  Were this influence as absolute and unvarying as the purely mechanical action of physical circumstances must necessarily be, this inference might have some pretence to logical probability,—­though it seems to me unnecessary, under any circumstances, to resort to climatic influences or the action of any physical laws to explain the thoughtful distribution of the organic and inorganic world, so evidently intended to secure for all beings what best suits their nature and their needs.  But the truth is, that, while these harmonious relations underlie the whole creation in such a manner as to indicate a great central plan, of which all things are a part, there is at the same time a freedom, an arbitrary element in the mode of carrying it out, which seems to point to the exercise of an individual will; for, side by side with facts, apparently the direct result of physical laws, are other facts, the nature of which shows a complete independence of external influences.