Among the plants, the most important change has been in the growth of flowering plants, which have been constantly becoming more plenty, and the plants which bear fruits have also become more numerous. The broad-leaved trees seem to be constantly gaining on the forests of narrow-leaved cone-bearers, which had in an earlier day replaced the forests of ferns.
In these Tertiary ages, as in the preceding times of the earth, the lands and seas were much changed in their shape. It seems that in the earlier ages the land had been mostly in the shape of large islands grouped close together where the continents now are. In this time, these islands grew together to form the united lands of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the twin American continents; so that, as life rose higher, the earth was better fitted for it. Still there were great troubles that it had to undergo. There were at least two different times during the Tertiary age termed glacial periods, times when the ice covered a large part of the northern continents, compelling life of all sorts to abandon great regions, and to find new places in more southern lands. Many kinds of animals and plants seem to have been destroyed in these journeys; but these times of trial, by removing the weaker and less competent creatures, made room for new forms to rise in their places. All advance in nature makes death necessary, and this must come to races as well as to individuals if the life of the world is to go onward and upward.
Looking back into the darkened past, of which we yet know but little compared with what we would like to know, we can see the great armies of living beings led onward from victory to victory toward the higher life of our own time. Each age sees some advance, though death overtakes all its creatures. Those that escape their actual enemies or accident, fall a prey to old age: volcanoes, earthquakes, glacial periods, and a host of other violent accidents sweep away the life of wide regions, yet the host moves on under a control that lies beyond the knowledge of science. Man finds himself here as the crowning victory of this long war. For him all this life appears to have striven. In his hands lies the profit of all its toil and pain. Surely this should make us feel that our duty to all these living things, that have shared in the struggle that has given man his elevation, is great, but above all, great is our duty to the powers that have been placed in our bodies and our minds.
THE PITCH LAKE IN THE WEST INDIES
(From At Last.)
By C. KINGSLEY.
