62 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 



the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of 

 this volume only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; 

 and of each page only here and there a few lines. Each word of the 

 slowly changing language, more or less different in the successive 

 chapters, may represent the forms of life which are entombed in our 

 successive formations and which falsely appear to us to have been 

 abruptly introduced." 



OTHER OPINIONS AS TO THE ADEQUACY OF THE EVIDENCES 



OF PALAEONTOLOGY 



'The primary and direct evidence in favour of evolution can be 

 furnished only by palaeontology. The geological record, so soon as 

 it approaches completeness, must, when properly questioned, yield 

 either an affirmative or a negative answer: if Evolution has taken 

 place there will its mark be left; if it has not taken place there will 

 lie its refutation." T. H. Huxley. 



'The geological record is not so hopelessly incomplete as Darwin 

 believed it to be. Since The Origin of Species was written our knowl- 

 edge of that record has been enormously extended, and we now possess 

 no complete volumes, it is true, but some remarkably full and illumi- 

 nating chapters. The main significance of the whole lies in the fact 

 that, just in proportion to the completeness of the record is the unequivocal 

 character of its testimony to the truth of the evolutionary theory." 

 W. B. Scott. 



"On the other hand, matters have greatly improved since Darwin 

 wrote his oft-cited Chapter X; many lands then geologically unknown 

 have been explored and many of the missing chapters and paragraphs 

 in the history of life have been brought to light. The most ancient 

 biologically intelligible period of the earth's history is called the 

 Cambrian and, compared with the succeeding periods, the Cambrian 

 has always been poor in fossils, great areas and thicknesses of rocks 

 being entirely barren. No one could doubt that our knowledge of 

 Cambrian life was most incomplete and inadequate. A few years ago 

 Dr. C. D. Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, dis- 

 covered in the Canadian Rockies a most marvelous series of Cambrian 

 fossils of an incredible delicacy and beauty of preservation, which 

 have thrown a flood of new and unexpected light into very dark places. 

 It is clear that the Cambrian seas swarmed with a great variety and 

 profusion of life, but that in only a few places, so far known to us, 



