All known animals at the present day may be divided into some five or six primary divisions, which are known technically as “sub-kingdoms.”  Each of these sub-kingdoms [9] may be regarded as representing a certain type or plan of structure, and all the animals comprised in each are merely modified forms of this common type.  Not only are all known living animals thus reducible to some five or six fundamental plans of structure, but amongst the vast series of fossil forms no one has yet been found—­however unlike any existing animal—­to possess peculiarities which would entitle it to be placed in a new sub-kingdom.  All fossil animals, therefore, are capable of being referred to one or other of the primary divisions of the animal kingdom.  Many fossil groups have no closely-related group now in existence; but in no case do we meet with any grand structural type which has not survived to the present day.

[Footnote 9:  In the Appendix a brief definition is given of the sub-kingdoms, and the chief divisions of each are enumerated.]

The old types of life differ in many respects from those now upon the earth; and the further back we pass in time, the more marked does this divergence become.  Thus, if we were to compare the animals which lived in the Silurian seas with those inhabiting our present oceans, we should in most instances find differences so great as almost to place us in another world.  This divergence is the most marked in the Palaeozoic forms of life, less so in those of the Mesozoic period, and less still in the Tertiary period.  Each successive formation has therefore presented us with animals becoming gradually more and more like those now in existence; and though there is an immense and striking difference between the Silurian animals and those of to-day, this difference is greatly reduced if we compare the Silurian fauna with the Devonian; that again with the Carboniferous; and so on till we reach the present.

It follows from the above that the animals of any given formation are more like those of the next formation below, and of the next formation above, than they are to any others; and this fact of itself is an almost inexplicable one, unless we believe that the animals of any given formation are, in part at any rate, the lineal descendants of the animals of the preceding formation, and the progenitors, also in part at least, of the animals of the succeeding formation.  In fact, the palaeontologist is so commonly confronted with the phenomenon of closely-allied forms of animal life succeeding one another in point of time, that he is compelled to believe that such forms have been developed from some common ancestral type by some process of “evolution.”  On the other hand, there are many phenomena, such as the apparently sudden introduction of new forms throughout all past time, and the common occurrence of wholly isolated types, which cannot be explained in this way.  Whilst it seems certain, therefore, that many of the phenomena of the succession of animal life in past periods can only be explained by some law of evolution, it seems at the same time certain that there has always been some other deeper and higher law at work, on the nature of which it would be futile to speculate at present.