44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



other side of the account stand the claims of the geologists and 

 biologists. They have reveled in the prodigality of the ciphers 

 which they put at the end of the earth's hypothetical life. Long 

 cribbed and cabined within the narrow bounds of the popular 

 chronology, they have exulted wantonly in their new freedom. 

 They have lavished their millions of years with the open hand of 

 a prodigal heir indemnifying himself by present extravagance for 

 the enforced self-denial of his youth. But it can not be gainsaid 

 that their theories require at least all this elbow-room. If we 

 think of that vast distance over which Darwin conducts us from 

 the jellyfish lying on the primeval beach to man as we know 

 him now ; if we reflect that the prodigious change requisite to 

 transform one into the other is made up of a chain of generations, 

 each advancing by a minute variation from the form of its prede- 

 cessor ; and if we further reflect that these successive changes are 

 so minute that in the course of our historical period say three 

 thousand years this progressive variation has not advanced by a 

 single step perceptible to our eyes, in respect to man or the ani- 

 mals and plants with which man is familiar, we shall admit that 

 for a chain of change so vast, of which the smallest link is longer 

 than our recorded history, the biologists are making no extrava- 

 gant claim when they demand at least many hundred million 

 years for the accomplishment of the stupendous process. Of 

 course, if the mathematicians are right, the biologists can not 

 have what they demand. If, for the purposes of their theory, 

 organic life must have existed on the globe more than a hundred 

 million years ago, it must, under the temperature then prevailing, 

 have existed in a state of vapor. The jellyfish would have been 

 dissipated in steam long before he had had a chance of displaying 

 the advantageous variation which was to make him the ancestor 

 of the human race. I see, in the eloquent discourse of one of my 

 most recent and most distinguished predecessors in this chair. Sir 

 Archibald Geikie, that the controversy is still alive. The mathe- 

 maticians sturdily adhere to their figures, and the biologists are 

 quite sure the mathematicians must have made a mistake. I will 

 not get myself into the line of fire by intervening in such a con- 

 troversy. But until it is adjusted the laity may be excused for 

 returning a verdict of "not proven" upon the wider issues the 

 Darwinian school has raised. 



The other objection is best stated in the wordg of an illustrious 

 disciple of Darwin, who has recently honored this city by' his pres- 

 ence I refer to Prof. Weismann. But in referring to him, I can 

 not but give, in passing, a feeble expression to the universal sorrow 

 with which in this place the news was received that Weismann's 

 distinguished antagonist, Prof, Romanes, had been taken from us 

 in the outset and full promise of a splendid scientific career. 



