by any process of growth or development, for the transition forms do not occur; the evolution or plan of progress was by successive creations of species, in their full perfection. The types are wholly independent, and are not connected lineally, either historically or zoologically. The earliest species of a class were often far from the very lowest, although among the inferior. In many cases the original or earliest group was but little inferior to those of later date, and the progress was toward a purer expression of the type. But geology declares, unequivocally, that the new forms were new expressions, under the type-idea, by created material forms, and not by forms educed or developed from one another."

"The evidence of Geology, to-day," says Professor Le Conte, "is that species seem to come in suddenly and in full perfection, remain substantially unchanged during the term of their existence, and pass away in full perfection. Other species take their place apparently by substitution, not by transmutation.” *

4. If the Development Theory be true, no animals of high and complicated organization should be found introduced suddenly, or at once, upon the scene, but by slow and insensible degrees: as there ought to be no organic chasms, so there ought to be no organic leaps; for, according to this hypothesis, none ever occurred. But we discover both.

We shall find that the scheme harmonizes as little in this respect with the revelations of geology as it did in the preceding. A great number both of vegetable and

* Religion and Science, p. 22.

animal organizations, of high grades, appear abruptly, and some of them with startling suddenness, upon the surface of our planet-"with no finely graded antecedents by the aid of which they might have crept up to their high places. Huge ferns such as are now nowhere seen; huge pines, stout and lofty as any that dominate Norwegian forests, appeared suddenly-with nothing between them and sea-weeds, not even the mosses. Huge cephalopods, with shells twelve or fifteen feet long, and of the very highest mollusc structure, appeared suddenly -with nothing between them and nothing. Huge sharks and Ganoids, over twenty feet long, and of the very highest type of fish structure-with great organic blanks just behind them-began the Age of Fishes. Huge reptiles from thirty to sixty feet long, and of the very highest reptile structure-with great organic blanks just behind them-began the Age of Reptiles. Huge land-animals, as the Megatheres and Deinotheres and Mastodons, to some of which our largest modern quadrupeds are mere pigmies; huge sea-mammals, as the Zeuglodons, seventy feet long-all with great organic blanks. just back of them-began the Age of Mammals. All of these came upon the scene with extreme abruptness; as if evoked by the stroke of a magician's wand.

"Now the Development Scheme does not object to huge and high-graded organisms, but it does object, and that most strenuously, to their occurring by huge leaps. It makes oath that they cannot do so. Lower species They must reach

of the same group must precede them.

their pinnacle by climbing slowly along finely graduated

precursors of less dignity. There can be no great chasm as to size or grade of structure between them and the most similar of preceding organisms. You see how such a notion flies in the face of facts. These fossil giants just mentioned-all of them-crowd up hard against general exterminations. All of them have the next lower species of their respective groups after them in time, or at the most with them; never just before them. A great gulf yawns between them and their nearest kindred of the preceding formation-always as to size, often as to grade of structure, and sometimes as to both. The lower steps of the necessary flight are before the climbers, instead of just behind them. There is a sort of broken stairs to come down on, but none whatever to go up on. And this not in a single instance merely. It is the habit of the geologic Ages."*

The supporters of the Development hypothesis feel and own this difficulty, but seek to escape from it by pleading that the geological record is imperfect, or at any rate has been but imperfectly read. Much, it must be acknowledged, remains to be investigated, and much too that will ever remain hard to decipher; still, "as Sir Roderick Murchison has long ago proved, there are parts of that record which are singularly complete, and in those parts we have the proofs of Creation without any indication of Development. The Silurian rocks, as regards Oceanic Life, are perfect and abundant in the forms they have preserved, yet there are no Fish. The

*Pater Mundi, Second Series, p. 118.

Devonian Age followed, tranquilly, and without a break; and in the Devonian Sea, suddenly, Fish appear-appear in shoals, and in forms of the highest and most perfect type. There is no trace of links or transitional forms between the great class of Mollusca and the great class of Fishes. There is no reason whatever to suppose that such forms, if they had existed, can have been destroyed in deposits which have preserved in wonderful perfection the minutest organisms."

5. If the Evolution Hypothesis be true, then as we travel back in time and approach the commencement of the process of development, i. e., as we descend through the Quaterniary, Tertiary, Secondary and Primary formations, animal structures should grow more and more simple, higher organisms should insensibly fade into lower, until at length nothing is left but mere embryos and fœtuses, floating larva, or sessile cells, in the tepid shallows of primeval seas; for, from such, it is asserted, all have come.

Again the question comes back to us, Are these things so? Let us step with the geologist into his chariot, and go and see for ourselves. Let us travel with him back toward the night of ancient chaos; and, that the result of our tour of observation may be fair and reliable, our journey shall be measured, not by centuries or milleniums, but by millions of years. Our way lies downward through the vast formations of the earth's crust. Bidding adieu to the green surface and the living scenes around us, we start on our descending course.

* Argyll's Primeval Man, p. 45.

The first step takes us past every trace of man and of man's works, and the next beyond the limits of all historic time. Reaching the great geological division of rocks called the TERTIARY, we pass through formation after formation, composed of sand, clay and lime, which together amount to a thickness of more than three thousand feet. As we descend through this long and diversified series of strata an age flies past at every step we take. We are on a road where the lapse of time is marked, not by a succession of seasons or of years, but by the coming and departure of repeated creations -by the slow excavation by water of deep channels and broad valleys in rocks of marble-by the gradual upheaval of ocean beds into mountain chains and continents-and by the insensible subsidence of other mountains and continents to the bosom of the deep, in which ages upon ages before they had been slowly formed. At length we are nearing the nether bounds of this great division of the earth's crust. All along our downward road, the animal population of the globe has been rapidly changing-strange, and yet stranger forms arresting our gaze at every stage. We have seen in foreign shapes sluggish elephants and mastodons and rhinoceroses, gigantic elks and fleet hipparions, browsing amid forest growths as strange to us as if we had alighted on the circumference of another planet. We have passed the family of the great and terrible Dinotherium, reposing in unconscious sleep amid the fitting of bats, the pranks of monkeys, and the hootings of nightly owls. We have noticed the depths of the sea