i82 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



But as long as no fact is adduced to show that any one well-known 

 species among the many thousands that are buried in the whole series of 

 fossiliferous rocks, is actually the parent of any one of the species now 

 living, such arguments can have no weight; and thus far the supporters 

 of the transmutation theory have failed to produce any such facts. In- 

 stead of facts we are treated with marvelous bear, cuckoo, and other 

 stories. Credat Judaeus Apella ! 



Had Mr. Darwin or his followers furnished a single fact to show 

 that individuals change, in the course of time, in such a manner as to 

 produce at last species different from those known before, the state of the 

 case might be different. But it stands recorded now as before, that the 

 animals known to the ancients are still in existence, exhibiting to this 

 day the characters they exhibited of old. The geological record, even 

 with all its imperfections, exaggerated to distortion, tells now, what 

 it has told from the beginning, that the supposed intermediate forms 

 between the species of different geological periods are imaginary 

 beings, called up merely in support of a fanciful theory. The origin 

 of all the diversity among living beings remains a mystery as totally 

 unexplained as if the book of Mr. Darwin had never been written, for 

 no theory unsupported by fact, however plausible it may appear, can be 

 admitted in science. 



It seems generally admitted that the work of Darwin is particu- 

 larly remarkable for the fairness with which he presents the facts ad- 

 verse to his views. It may be so ; but I confess that it has made a very 

 different impression upon me. I have been more forcibly struck by his 

 inability to perceive when the facts are fatal to his argument, than 

 by anything else in the whole work. His chapter on the Geological 

 Eecord, in particular, appears to me, from beginning to end, as a series 

 of illogical deductions and misrepresentations of the modem results of 

 Geology and Palaeontology. I do not intend to argue here, one by one, 

 the questions he has discussed. Such arguments end too often in 

 special pleading, and any one familiar with the subject may readily 

 perceive where the truth lies by confronting his assertions with the 

 geological record itself. But since the question at issue is chiefly to be 

 settled by pal^ontological evidence, and I have devoted the greater part 

 of my life to the special study of the fossils, I wish to record my protest 

 against his mode of treating this part of the subject. Not only docs 

 Darwin never perceive when the facts are fatal to his views, but when 

 he has succeeded by an ingenious circumlocution in overleaping the 

 facts, he would have us believe that he has lessened their importance or 

 changed their meaning. 



