Affinities of Fish to Higher Creatures. 223 Its belly is covered with long scales, its sides with bright and probably coloured scale armour of horny consistency, and its neck and back adorned with horny crests, tubercules, and pendants. It runs, leaps, and glides through the herbage of the coal forests, its eye glancing and its bright scales shining in the sun." 1 It is the as yet earliest known lizard, the Hylonomus, the oldest animal which has a fair claim to be called reptile. In these rocks are highly organised reptiles, like lizards, with two spinous processes to their vertebræ, with socketed teeth, well-developed limbs, long tails, and biconcave vertebræ. They connect the Carboniferous with the great reptiles of the Mesozoic age. This age was their special time. Some were gigantic, others small; browsers on plants, and terrible renders of living flesh; some had a resemblance to or prophecy of birds, and not a few prefigured future mammals. There was the Iguanodon, or his relative Hadrosaurus, with small head and teeth for munching leaves and fruit of trees; and the terrible Megalosaurus, a vast lizard, with some bird-like foreshadowings. The short deep jaws and heads of some others made them like the carnivorous mammals of later times. The Cetiosaurus, huge monster, was not less than ten feet in height and fifty in length. There were seamonsters, with heads eight feet long, and conical teeth a foot in length; but, perhaps, no creatures set before us so fully the stretched-out reptiles of the fifth day creation, as the Mosasaurus and Elasmosaurus by their enormous length and terrible powers of assertion in the world. Animals of the water are cold, stiff, mute, in contrast with birds, which are warm, free, and full of melody; yet they are spoken of as created on the same day; and they are closely allied. The advance to birds was through the lizard: “God created every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind." The contrast is between the water and the air; fish in the one, birds flying in the other. The affinities of fish to higher creatures may be thus stated 1. Fishes crawl upon the ground like Reptiles—the Eel. 2. Fishes climb trees like Reptiles, as the Anabas, or Climbing Perch. "The Story of the Earth and Man:" J. W. Dawson, LL.D. 3. Fishes imitate Birds in using their pectoral fins for flying, as the Flying-fish. 4. Fishes imitate Amphibia in using the swim-bladder as a lung-the Lepidosiren, or Mud-fish. 5. Fishes imitate Reptiles in hatching their eggs internally, as the ovoviviparous Shark. 6. Fishes imitate Birds in building a nest, as the Stickleback. 7. Fishes imitate Birds in incubating their eggs. The male Arius carries them in the mouth. 8. Fishes imitate Marsupial Mammals by having a pouch in which are placed the eggs, and into which the young retire for safety; as the Hippocampus, or Sea-horse, and some species of Pipe-fish. 9. Fishes imitate Mammals in producing viviparous young, as the Ditrema, and the Viviparous Blenny. 10. Both the Viviparous and Ovoviviparous Fishes imitate the higher classes of animals, in that the male has coition with the female. II. Fishes endeavour to change their fins into limbs, as the Lepidosiren, or Mud-fish. The Basking-Shark, and some of the members of the order Elasmobranchii, convert their ventral fins into claspers. The way which spans the interval between fish and fowl is not apparent to the unlearned; but the student has studied their inner structure, and notices that the fish form glides into the amphibian, and that into the lizard; then he compares lizard with bird. Even in the higher crocodilia there are points in the anatomy of the head, of the vertebral column, and of internal organs, which foreshadow the bird. The Plesiosaurus is not very unlike a swan, and yet it is a gigantic reptile. Startling is the ease with which, by modifying or developing certain parts, a lizard may be turned into a bird. That which puzzled one in childhood, becomes clear when we inquire into the reason of things. We behold the transformation in those reptilebats, Pterodactyles, of the Mesozoic ages, which were lizards of a high order. One species had twenty feet of expanse in its wings, the skulls show a good capacity of brain, the skeletons were light yet strong, the hollow bones having pores for the introduction of air. "Imagine such a creature, a flying dragon, with vast skinny wings, its body perhaps "1 covered with scales, both wings and feet armed with strong claws, and with long jaws furnished with sharp teeth. Nothing can be conceived more strange and frightful. Some of them had the hind legs long, like wading birds. Some had short legs, adapted perhaps for perching. They could probably fold up their wings and walk on all fours." In this old-world time, lizards had wings; birds had tails and hands like lizards. In the same Mesozoic ages, birds existed resembling those of our own day; and almost at the same time some weak small mammals, forerunners of those higher types which were to possess the world. Probably the earliest birds were sea-fowl; some were waders, equal in size to the ostrich, stalking through the shallows; birds with teeth probably preceded those with plain beaks. The following is the latest scientific classification of Birds : Three main groups or sub-classes— 1. Saurura-all extinct birds with an elongated tail, on which are arranged tail-quills featherwise. Fossil in the Secondary formation. 2. Ratite-birds with no keel to the breast-bone, such as the extinct birds of New Zealand-Dinornis, and the existing birds of the Ostrich tribe, viz., Apteryx, Emu, Cassowary, Ostrich, Rhea. These are nearly all wingless and do not fly; consequently the wing muscles require no great keel on the breast-bone for their attachment. Amongst them are the extinct water-birds with teeth, in the Cretacious age, such as the Hesperornis. The remainder of the birds are called Carinate, having a keel to their breast-bone, and most of them power of flight. Some of these lived in the Cretaceous age. The previous investigation, sufficiently minute and adequately comprehensive, evidences that the Scriptural account of animal life beginning in the water with the fish, extending to the land, and from the reptile, rising into birds, is a surprisingly correct statement; and that it comprehensively agrees with the ascertained facts of modern science concerning the succession of life. A natural and laudable curiosity now leads to the inquiry -What did the wisest of the uninspired ancients think "The Story of the Earth and Man:" J. W. Dawson, LL.D. Q concerning the world's origin? A brief summary of the Bible statement may well be compared with one by a man whose genius is of universal renown. The Bible statement—(1) The origin and existence of many worlds were from the beginning. (2) Light was called into existence to be, what it is now known to be, the great conditioner of all things. (3) There was a separation by which mingled elements acquired what may be called individuality; for, at first, as Plato says "All things were without reason and measure, . . . this, I say, being their nature, God fashioned them by form and number, . . . and out of them He constructed the universe:"1 the elements being grouped in gases, liquids, solids; or, as Scripture calls them, air, water, earth. (4) In the water, on the land, and in the air, manifold forms of life appeared; first in the water, thence extending to the land, afterwards rising into the air, until the world was replenished. Now, take from Plato, who represents Socrates, the following statements-" God desired that all things should be good and nothing bad as far as this could be accomplished. Wherefore also finding the whole sphere not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly manner, out of disorder He brought order, considering that this was far better than the other." . . . Now the creation took up each of the four elements; for the Creator compounded the world out of all the fire, and all the water, and all the air, and all the earth, leaving no part of any of them outside.3 ... The Creator of the universe spoke as follows:-Gods and sons of Gods, who are My works, and of whom I am the Artificer and Father, My creations are indissoluble, if so I will. . . . Three tribes of mortal beings remain to be created-without them the universe will be incomplete, for it will not have in it every kind of animal which a perfect world ought to have. On the other hand, if they were created and received life from Me, they would be on an equality with the gods. In order then that there may be mortals, and that this universe may be truly universal, do ye, according to your natures, betake yourselves to the formation of animals, imitating the power which I showed in 1 "Timæus," translation by Rev. B. Jowett. Ibid. p. 527, sect. 32. Narrative of Plato. 227 creating you.'. . . They imitating Him, received from Him the immortal principle of the soul; and around this they fashioned a mortal body, and made the whole body to be a vehicle of the soul, and constructed within a soul of another nature which was mortal, subject to terrible and irresistible affections.2 A brief mention may be made of the generation of other animals, but there is no need to dwell upon them at length. ... Of the men who came into the world, those who are cowards or have led unjust lives, may be fairly supposed to change into the nature of women in the second generation. . . . Thus were created women and the female sex in general. But the race of birds was created out of innocent, light-minded men, who, although their thoughts were directed towards heaven, imagined, in their simplicity, that the clearest demonstration of the things above was to be obtained by sight; these were turned into birds, and they grew feathers instead of hair. The race of wild pedestrian animals again came from those who had no philosophy in all their thoughts, and never considered at all about the nature of the heavens. In consequence of these habits of theirs they had their fore legs and heads trailing upon the earth to which they were akin; and they had also the crown of their heads oblong, and in all sorts of curious shapes, in which the courses of the soul were compressed by reason of disuse. And this was the reason why quadrupeds and polypods were created. . . . And the most foolish of them who trailed their bodies entirely upon the ground and have no longer any need of feet, He made without feet to crawl upon the earth. The fourth class were the inhabitants of the water: these were made out of the most entirely ignorant and senseless of beings, whom the transformers did not think any longer worthy of pure respiration, because they possessed a soul which was made impure by all sorts of transgression, hence arose the race of fishes and oysters, and other aquatic animals, which have received the most remote habitations as a punishment of their extreme ignorance.' "3 We have not taken that which Mr. Jowett rightly calls "obscure and repulsive,” but the simplest and best. If any man can find in Plato or Aristotle, amongst Greeks or 1. 66 Timæus," pp. 534, 535, sect. 42. 2 Ibid. p. 563, sect. 70. 3 Ibid. pp. 584, 585, sect. 90, 91, 92, Jowett's translation. |