5 o SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



That Phillips betrayed no bigoted opposition to the 

 doctrine of Evolution is shown by several attempts which he 

 himself subsequently made to construct a phylogeny of dif- 

 ferent groups of animals from a knowledge of their fossil 

 remains, but while he succeeded in tracing several interesting 

 lines of descent among species, he confessed himself unable 

 to bring the more widely separated groups or genera into an 

 ancestral connection. Since these early attempts of Phillips, 

 we have learned not only to affiliate species and genera, but 

 even families and orders, and the frequent discovery of 

 missing links offers the most striking testimony to the truth 

 of the theory of Evolution. 



That Phillips was thoroughly justified in his position 

 towards Evolution is suggested by the fact that even Hux- 

 ley, the most philosophic advocate of the theory, fully ad- 

 mitted that at the time of publication of the Origin, Pal- 

 aeontology lent to its doctrine no support. 



An argument which evidently had great weight with 

 Phillips, in his rejection of the theory of Natural Selec- 

 tion, was the excessive duration that it postulated for geo- 

 logical time. This still remains an argument of weight, so 

 that some biologists impressed with the vast periods which 

 the Darwinian theory demands for its operations, are pre- 

 pared to measure geologic time by Darwinian requirements. 

 On this subject Huxley expressed himself with his usual 

 wisdom, perceiving plainly enough that biologists are in 

 possession of no data as to the rate at which species may 

 become modified — were we to judge the past from the 

 present we might have to admit that they do not become 

 modified at all — he referred biologists to the geologist, 

 telling them in pithy words that they must take their time 

 from the geological clock. 



Phillip's position towards the Darwinian theory seems 

 to me to have been altogether a wise one ; since his time 

 the doctrine of Evolution has obtained universal accept- 

 ance, but Darwin's theory is still a battle-ground for con- 

 tending opinions. 



And though we are compelled to call Evolution to our 

 aid when we attempt to explain the facts of palaeontology, 



