ages beyond the Tertiary. Where are the progenitors of the Mastodon, of the Palæotherium, of the Sevatherium? where is the head of the elephant's family? the first sketch of the elephantoid genus, where? Now we can find in the Secondary rocks, in the chalk, numbers of shells, some of them exceedingly minute and of most delicate texture, yet with all their parts complete! but an elephant or a mammoth is larger than a shell, and if their progenitor existed, with infinite number of intermediate forms, there must be enormous remnants of their fossil appearances somewhere; certainly some of them ought to be in the Secondary formation, if the Theory is of any value, but not a fragment is to be found.

It is in this corner of creation, moreover, that all those animals are seen for the first time which Mr Darwin is so fond of connecting together by family descent, the tapir, the horse, elephant, giraffe, pig, &c. The same number of vertebræ forming the neck of the giraffe and the elephant, at once explains itself on the theory of descent with slow and successive modifications' (513). Well, we have the elephant and we have a species of the camelopardus in the Tertiary, and we have the horse and pig, and very true it is that they all have seven vertebræ in their necks (as also man has, and the dogs and cats as well as the rats and mice); but where are the scattered members of this strange family to be found, the intermediate animals, in 'ten thousand generations,' connecting them in successive links?

And here too in this page of the earth's history we are too far off to appeal to the pre-Silurian world, for between the Tertiary and the Silurian are all the other formations of the earth's crust; so that in the search for all these lost

links Mr Darwin has to run the gauntlet of all the rocks from the Cretacean down to the Cambrian, thence to the basal rocks of the Silurian, and thence to Chaos and old Night.'

So then in all this immense series, in all these 'millions of ages' required for forming the rocks, between the Tertiary and the Silurian, there is not a particle of evidence to be adduced for the help of Natural Selection. Why then appeal to a pre-Silurian imaginary formation? here is space enough to find what is wanted, how comes it that nothing which is wanted can be found?

Mr Darwin has told us that species very rarely endured for more than a geological period' (171), an admission which, though true, is startling from this quarter, as it is a clear acknowledgment of the negative evidence in palæontology, which Mr Darwin has declared to be worthless. It is obvious that this his rule can only stand on negative evidence; a species that has existed in one formation, is not found in the next. Therefore, argues Mr Darwin, it has ceased to exist, convinced of the fact simply because he cannot find the species. In this case the negative evidence in paleontology satisfies Mr Darwin, as it does us also.

But now we ask why, if the negative evidence is admitted as a proof in one instance, is it rejected in another? We say that the elephant, &c., did not exist, or that its antecedent link did not exist, in the Secondary, because there is no trace of them to be found in that formation; and this we urge against the existence of an animal which has only a theoretical standing, and whose real existence is the thing to be proved. Negative evidence against a creature that cannot be produced, is inevitable.

Produce us your cretacean mastodon, or your giraffe, in the Old Red Sandstone, and we will believe that they then existed, but this you cannot do, and therefore we do not believe your theory:

In the mean time it will be observed that negative evidence is admitted in the theory when wanted, and repudiated when it is found to be inconvenient.

The conclusion then is this:

All the great creatures, of which we have been speaking, first make their appearance in the first Tertiary formation.

They do not appear in the antecedent or Secondary formation, nor in any other geological epoch, though the other strata contain abundant fossils of the organic beings which existed during their formation, and which are considered peculiar to them.

The animals that existed in the Secondary formation are not found in the Tertiary, from whence it is concluded that they did not exist in the Tertiary.

The animals that existed in the Tertiary formation are not found in the Secondary,* from whence it is also concluded that they did not exist in the Secondary.

*Sir C. Lyell observes: 'It seems impossible to account for our not having yet found any bones of fish in the Silurian rocks, except by supposing that they were not yet in being, or that they occupied only a limited area.'-Principles of Geology, 10th edition, p. 145, 1866.

Here the negative evidence is admitted as full proof of an important fact in palæontology-we apply this principle in arguing on the Tertiary formation. Nevertheless, in his Antiquity of Man, Sir C. Lyell protests against the negative evidence, just as Mr Darwin does; and thus does he make the Silurian rocks echo to his master's voice, 'It would be a waste of time to speculate on the number of original monads or germs from which all plants and animals were subsequently evolved; moreover as the oldest fossiliferous strata known to us (the Silurian), may be the last of a long series of antecedent formations, which once contained organic beings' (p. 470).

The Tertiary formation then is the era of the first appearance of the animals in question; they began to exist in that epoch, and not sooner.

This is sufficient; all the rest must follow as an inevitable corollary.

The evidence of geology entirely confutes Mr Darwin's Theory of the Transmutation of Species.

CHAPTER XII.

LYELL'S CONFUTATION OF TRANSMUTATION.

THE reader will already have perceived that Sir Charles Lyell entered the lists as an opponent of Transmutation many years ago. This appears in all the earlier editions of the Principles of Geology; ours is the third, of the year 1834. It is from this edition that extracts will be given of his confutation of Lamarck, and it will soon be perceived that every point in that confutation is direct against Mr Darwin, and we may add against Sir C. Lyell himself also. Subsequent to the publication of Mr Darwin's Origin of Species, Sir C. Lyell went over to the opinions which he had so ably confuted; and in his publication on "The Antiquity of Man' has advocated the dogma of Transmutation, even in its most extravagant form. That volume was published in the year 1861.

In the third edition of the Principles of Geology, the learned author has no scruple in expressing himself as a believer in a Creator, he speaks of the Divine Author of all things, and considers the phenomena of Nature as his work. Thirty years ago this was not unusual in the language of scientific writers, but now the fashion is changed, and in the School of Transmutation it would be inappropriate and misplaced. Mr Darwin has candidly told us that 'Natural