or on that

neither can it be sunk and buried out of sight. At length patience, like natural variation, finds its limits, and lo! we hear him speak vexedly with his lips-"To grant to species the special power of producing hybrids, and then to stop their further propagation by different degrees of sterility, not strictly related to the facility of the first union between their parents, seems a strange arrangement!"*-But strange as it may be, the arrangement has been made, and its universal operation must be acknowledged to be evidence, clear and strong, in proof of the stability of species, and consequently, in refutation of the theory of development by unlimited variability. Whenever a new species has come into being, or begun to be, we may be sure some power has been in operation not included "in the ordinary course of nature."

3. If the Development Theory be true, there must have been a series of forms graduating insensibly from the pri mary creature, whatever that was, to each distinct kind of animal now living; and these being so many and various, it might reasonably be expected that its able and zealous advocates had discovered more or less of these series or chains of descent. But they have found none-no, not one.

"As all living forms of life," says Mr. Darwin, "are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole

* Darwin's Origin of Species, p. 245.

world." Now, if these chains of lineal descent have been or can be traced backward, or if clear evidence of their having existed has been or can be traced in the fossil records of the earth's crust, it must be accepted as strong evidence in support of the doctrine of evolution.* But has this been done? Can Darwin, or Huxley, or any other believer in this hypothesis point them out to us? Can they unmistakably and without a break follow any of them? Out of the thousands and millions which, according to their theory, must exist, can they trace out as much as one, great or small, belonging to sea or land, in this or any other quarter of the globe? No, not even one.

How is this desideratum accounted for? What have the supporters of the theory to say in view of this extraordinary fact? They say, "The discovery of fossil remains has been an extremely slow and fortuitous process." But this is a mere evasion of the difficulty. The search for these, fortuitous as it may be, is not as "for a needle in a hay-mow." The organisms that have lived and died on the earth have been so numerous, that these lines of lineal descent must pierce down through the rocky formations of the past thick as stand the straws of wheat in the harvest field. Admitting that multitudes of them have faded out of existence, and left no visible trace behind, yet other multitudes must have left remains that were capable of being preserved, and, like the fossils actually found, must have been preserved in

* Origin of Species, p. 428.

great numbers, if they ever existed. Of these long lines of closely graded fossils, running back from all the living species to the low and simple forms from which they have descended-have none of them been discovered? none of them been stumbled upon? Numerous and diversified and universally strewn, as Mr. Darwin is confident they have been, a few of them at least ought to have been found and traced out by this time.

"The record," we are again reminded, "has been but very imperfectly read thus far." Be it so; but has not as much as one line been yet read or spelled through? Every desirable aid and facility for this end have been afforded. Nature herself has laid open her records before us, even from their earliest dates. In every clime and region, the strata of the earth is found heaved and ruptured, so that often the geologist, in travelling a few miles in distance across these broken layers, passes over ages and cycles of ages in time. Earthquakes have split open mountains to their bases, and thrust up islands from the bottom of the seas. Rivers, too, have scooped out for themselves lengthy channels, vast cañons, hundreds and even thousands of feet deep, through the solid rocks. Tides, also, have washed and sifted the crumbling ledges and soil along the shores for thousands and tens-of-thousands of miles. Add to all this what has been done by the labor of man-mines have been worked far and deep, plains have been excavated for canals, valleys have been filled and hills have been pierced for railroads, in every direction, over all Europe and America, for the last half a century. And through this whole period, geologists in

great numbers, from every nation in both continents, have been exploring these strata and chasms and shores and excavations with keen and scrutinizing eyes. In short, “sea and land and air, all around the world, have been vexed by their curious inquiries." And what has been the result? With all these facilities proffered by nature and art, and after all this labor and investigation and study, not one complete line of lineal descent has been traced-out of the more than forty thousand different species of fossil remains collected, not a single chain, or even any considerable part of a chain, can be constructed. The utmost that has been accomplished has been to link together a few varieties of the same species. Between species and species, order and order, in every direction, among the living and among the dead, there have been found breaks, which no known form or forms can span. Along every line run in this search by the most ingenious engineers of evolution we find a succession of gaps; and many of them gaps so wide and deep as to forbid the idea that a connecting chain ever stretched across them.

And what imparts striking significance to this fact is, that often transitional or connecting forms are utterly wanting where we might most naturally expect to find them. No connecting links between molluscan and vertebrate fish have ever been discovered. No forms slowly graduating from reptiles into birds have ever been brought to light: "Those remarkable fossil reptiles, the Ichthyosauria and Plesiosauria, extended, through the secondary period, probably over the greater part of

the globe; yet no single transitional form has yet been met with, in spite of the multitudinous individuals preserved."* The same is true of the Cetacea or whale group; no relic of an incipient stage, or half-way developed form, has been anywhere detected. The Chelonian order-the tortoises, turtles and terrapins-is another instance of an extreme form without any transitional stages as yet known. Again, Batrachians-frogs and toads-so far as known, have no link to connect them to the Eft group on the one hand, or to the reptiles on the other.

The only instance, says the author last quoted, in which an approach towards a series of nearly related forms has been obtained is the existing Horse, its predecessor Hipparion, and other extinct forms. But even here there is no proof whatever of modification by minute and infinitesimal steps; a fortiori no approach to a proof of modification by "natural selection," acting upon indefinite fortuitous variations. "These extinct forms," says Professor Owen, "differ from each other in a greater degree than do the Horse, the Zebra, and the Ass, which are not only good zoological species as to form, but are species physiologically, i. e., they cannot produce a race of hybrids fertile inter se." +

To what has been presented under this argument, we may add the testimony of one who stands among the foremost of living geologists, Professor Dana, of Yale College: "Species have not been made out of species

* Mivart's Genesis of Species, p. 146.

† Anatomy of Vetebrates, Vol. III., p. 792.