LECTURE II.

SOME LINKS NOT MISSING.

THE opponents of the evolution hypothesis are justified in saying that, as by it a consecutive chain of living creatures from the origin of organic life is implied, its friends should be able to demonstrate its truth by showing at least to a reasonably full degree the links of such a chain. The popular estimate is either very vague as to really what evolutionists have been able to do in this way, or it supposes a decided lack of success. Those who comprehend at last that species do not constitute impassable barriers, yet hope to establish at some point the necessity of supernatural interference. When Prof. Marsh returned from his first expedition in Colorado, bringing the remarkable finds out of the old Tertiary deposits, he was asked if he had found the missing link. "Yes, sir!" he replied, "thousands of them." The fact is, however, that a good deal more is made of this missing link than is warranted. The wonder is, when we consider the vast field to be searched, covering the whole globe, and miles in depth, that any large amount of consecutive history of the planet can be established; for not only is it impossible to examine this record with any speed, but most of the forms of prehistoric life have perished. Vast as the finds seem to be, they do not include an appreciable fraction of that which reveled on the earth in successive generations. The uninvestigated is to that brought under notice as one hundred thousand to one. Remember

that in this case a cumulative argument becomes a demonstration; because, after a reasonable number of links establish a degree of development, the creation theory is disproved. By that theory each creative day was the absolute beginning of a new and disconnected order of creatures. But, as a matter of fact, every order, genus, or species of life-every class of any sort-overlaps the next. There is as positive distinction and separation between fifty sorts of fossil forms as between six. So you may as well insist on fifty days of creation as six days. The demand, therefore, for a production of missing links is obviated to a great extent, so long as the demand for a separation of creation into six distinct periods fails. This can not be done; there are no such breaks in the order of events. But this is true, there are a great many long, long periods, in which no fossils were deposited-periods, it is supposed, when land elevation was going on. If the land were sinking in any section, life-forms would be often ingulfed in deposits of mud, or gravel, or sand; or overwhelmed, as the coal-deposits were in the carboniferous ages. Mr. Darwin gives his reasons for believing that most of the great formations that are so full of fossils were deposited when the beds of the seas were sinking; and these eras were succeeded by long, blank periods, when no deposits of extent were made. But these blank periods by no means correspond to the mythical nights that are supposed to have followed the creative days. They simply occur when they happen, and make the consecutive study of life-forms all the more difficult.

At the best, most of all life-structures have crumbled to dust or been destroyed by heat, and are lost. You should also consider, before we try to look up the missing links, what an enormous passage it was from the primordial cell up to the present day. Whether we reckon with Thompson one hundred million years, or extend it to two hundred and fifty or three hundred millions, our road is sufficiently

long to make it improbable that the record has been fully preserved. Consider, also, that this record, where it exists, runs through leaves of rocks over one million of feet in thickness. This making of man has taxed Nature in all her living past, in all her energies. To find all the steps of creative development is no simple matter. Those who think that all that is wanted is a race of men with tails like monkeys, or of monkeys that can kindle a fire, are totally ignorant of what is demanded.

The first link of all should be a something so midway between the organic and inorganic that it can not be positively established as either. This is not, however, required by those who, like Darwin, presuppose life to be already begun, yet it is one of the easiest links to establish. The rhizopod is not even cellular, nor in the most limited sense is it organic, yet the rhizopod is possessed of sensation and purpose. Here we have the clearest evidence that the inorganic may not only have the semblance of life, but actually possess life itself. This link is in reality the most important one of all to study and comprehend. The transition from the organic to the inorganic carries us back not into the infinite realm of darkness and lifelessness, but into the realm of life and purpose. I shall not here enter into the biological discussions that arise, but refer you to that magnificent product of American study and thought, “The Origin of the Fittest," by Prof. E. D. Cope; and to the equally remarkable and noble monographs of Edmund Montgomery. I must in this lecture content myself with the mere statement of the transition.

The early differentiation of life into two kingdoms, animal and vegetable, slightly diverging in forms and functions, but always intimately interrelated, would obligate us to trace these two kingdoms back into some common life matrix; and at the same time to show, if possible, certain forms common to both kingdoms. We must not make the mistake of supposing the animal kingdom to be higher in

time than the vegetable, but the two to be collateral.

The one did not rise out of the other, but both diverged from primeval life conditions, each bearing off certain functions; yet there is at present such a relation between these two departments of organic life that we may relatively consider the vegetable as the lower. As a rule, it alone can construct protoplasmic material from inorganic elements. It does the primal work, wholly automatic, while the animal kingdom, ceasing to spend its energy in creating protoplasm, devours that already made by the vegetable, and spends its force in higher consciousness. No doubt the first differentiation of the two kingdoms arose at a point where this division of labor happened to occur: some protista devoured and learned to devour protoplasm already prepared by their fellows.

In establishing the required connection between the two kingdoms, we shall have no difficulty at all; for there is a large group of existences that it is impossible to positively classify as animals, and it is equally impossible to establish their vegetable character. They constitute a table-land between the two kingdoms common to both. The name given to these existences is protista, or animals that have functions of a vegetable sort. They take their nourishment through roots instead of mouths, and in so far are plant-like. A polyp is only a cylinder adhering to a plant, without arterial system or respiration. It is merely a double layer of cells, hollow in the middle, with a membrane that supports the muscles. It is propagated by buds or granules that drop off when ripe, and adhere in turn to some other plant, and grow, and bud again. Yet naturalists assure us this is an animal-an animal that lives, eats, grows, propagates itself like a vegetable. Then just beside these you find plants that act, eat, and otherwise are like animals. The Venus fly-trap and several other plants have apparatus for catching, and digestive organs to dispose of insects and bits of flesh. They catch

and eat with as much appetite as a frog. They will devour beefsteak if you will feed it to them.

We pass at last out of the no-man's-land and are surely among animals. Here life is at first propagated, or multiplied rather, by subdivision. But we know that all later life is reproduced by eggs, which are cells detached from the parent. In this cell is folded up not only the germ of life, but that bias that produces a special kind of life; and, as we saw in a previous lecture, the whole family history is there too. There is nothing in this world so wonderful as an egg. By raising the temperature it is to be made to develop in its shell flesh, bones, feathers, or it shall in the womb develop all the parts of a human being. Now the first eggs were nothing more than cells of the inner layer of the parent, and the parent was one of those creatures that you can hardly otherwise determine to be either animal or plant. The sponge is such, and its egg is a seed on the way to being an egg. For really a sponge lays eggs, and they are bits of protoplasm, like other eggs. these eggs go through the changes of a more highly organized egg. In a germinal way the development of animal life is thus begun. As soon as hatched the embryo will attach itself to some object, and go on to attain the condition of an adult sponge.

And

If anywhere, it would seem probable that, unaided, Nature would find it impossible to bridge the way for lower forms over to those with backbones. For ages every creature had its bony part outside, or else, inside, he had something very different from a skeleton reticulated from a backbone. Then came a wonderful change, almost as if an animal should turn himself inside out, and whereas before his skeleton was outside him, henceforth it should be inside. The grades of change are not all discoverable, but enough are on hand to show that it was not by a special creation. Just at the lower end of vertebrates there is the shark with an inside skeleton of cartilage that never hard