. The testimony of the rocks; . ibly reduced in its standing; ithad reached its culmmating point in the Oolite, and thenbegan to decHne; and with the first dawn of the Tertiary-division we find it occupying, as now, a very subordinateplace in creation. Curiously enough, it is not until itstimes of humiliation and decay that one of the mostremarkable of its orders appears, — an order itself illustra-tive of extreme degradation, and which figures largely, inevery scheme of mythology that borrowed through tradi-tional channels from Divine revelation, as a meet represent-ative of mans great enemy
. The testimony of the rocks; . ibly reduced in its standing; ithad reached its culmmating point in the Oolite, and thenbegan to decHne; and with the first dawn of the Tertiary-division we find it occupying, as now, a very subordinateplace in creation. Curiously enough, it is not until itstimes of humiliation and decay that one of the mostremarkable of its orders appears, — an order itself illustra-tive of extreme degradation, and which figures largely, inevery scheme of mythology that borrowed through tradi-tional channels from Divine revelation, as a meet represent-ative of mans great enemy the Evil One. 1 of courserefer to the ophidian or serpent family. The earliest ophid-ian remains kno^vn to the Palaeontologist occur in thatancient deposit of the Tertiary di\dsion knoAvn as the Lon-don Clay, and mast have belonged to serpents, some ofthem allied to the Pythons, some to the sea-snakes, which,judging from the corresponding parts of recent species,must have been fi^om fourteen to twenty feet in length. Fig. PAL^OPIIIS TOLIAPICUS. (Ophidian of the Eocene.) And here let us again pause for a moment, to remarkhow strangely these irascible, repulsive reptiles,—creatureslengthened out far beyond the proportions of the othermembers of their class by mere vegetative repetitions ofthe vertebra?,—condemned to derive, worm-like, their abil- HISTORY OF ANIMALS. Ill ity of progressive motion fi:om the ring-like scutes of theabdomen—venemous in many of their species,—formidablein others to even the noblest animals, from their fascinatingpowers and their great craft,—without fore or hinder limbs,without thoracic or pelvic arches,—the very tj^^es and ex-emplars (our highest naturahsts being the judges) of theextreme of animal degradation,—let us, I say, remark howstrangely their history has been mixed up with that of manand of rehgion in all the older m)i;hologies, and in thatDivine Revelation whence the older mythologies were de-rived. It was one of the mos
Size: 2614px × 956px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, bookpublish, booksubjectcreation
