If there is in this, on the contrary, anything which should astonish us, it is to find that among these numerous fossil remains of beings which have lived there should be known to us some whose analogues still exist, from a germ to a vast multitude of living forms, of different and ascending grades of perfection, ending in man.
"This fact, as our collection of fossils proves, should lead us to suppose that the fossil remains of the animals whose living analogues we know are the less ancient fossils.

The species to which each of them belongs had doubtless not yet time to vary in any of its forms.
"We should, then, never expect to find among the living species the totality of those that we meet with in the fossil state, and yet we cannot conclude that any species can really be lost or extinct.

It is undoubtedly possible that among the largest animals some species have been destroyed as a result of the multiplication of man in the regions where they live.

But this conjecture cannot be based on the consideration of fossils alone; we can only form an opinion in this respect when all the inhabited parts of the globe will have become perfectly known." Lamarck did not have, as we now have, a knowledge of the geological succession of organic forms.

The comparatively full and detailed view which we possess of the different vast assemblages of plant and animal life which have successively peopled the surface of our earth is a vision on which his eyes never rested.