that more than one species of much higher animals have had a similar
longevity; but the only example which I can at present give confidently
is the snake's-head lampshell (_Terebratulina caput serpentis_), which
lives in our English seas and abounded (as _Terebratulina striata_ of
authors) in the chalk.

The longest line of human ancestry must hide its diminished head before
the pedigree of this insignificant shell-fish. We Englishmen are proud to
have an ancestor who was present at the Battle of Hastings. The ancestors
of _Terebratulina caput serpentis_ may have been present at a battle of
_Ichthyosauria_ in that part of the sea which, when the chalk was
forming, flowed over the site of Hastings. While all around has changed,
this _Terebratulina_ has peacefully propagated its species from
generation to generation, and stands to this day, as a living testimony
to the continuity of the present with the past history of the globe.


Up to this moment I have stated, so far as I know, nothing but well-
authenticated facts, and the immediate conclusions which they force upon
the mind. But the mind is so constituted that it does not willingly rest
in facts and immediate causes, but seeks always after a knowledge of the
remoter links in the chain of causation.

Taking the many changes of any given spot of the earth's surface, from
sea to land and from land to sea, as an established fact, we cannot
refrain from asking ourselves how these changes have occurred. And when
we have explained them--as they must be explained--by the alternate slow
movements of elevation and depression which have affected the crust of
the earth, we go still further back, and ask, Why these movements?