82 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



the various forms, that compose the "pedigree of the Horse," 

 are generic. We have, to borrow Gerard's simile, nothing more 

 than the piers of the evolutionary bridge, without the arches, 

 and we do not know whether there ever were any arches. 

 There is, indeed, a sort of progression, e.g., from the four- 

 toed to a one-toed type, so that the morphological gradation 

 does, in some degree, coincide with temporal succession. But, 

 on the other hand, the fossil forms, interpreted as stages in the 

 phylogeny of the Horse, are separated from one another by 

 gaps so enormous, that, in the absence of intermediate spe- 

 cies to bridge the intervals, it is practically impossible, par- 

 ticularly in the light of our experimental knowledge of Gen- 

 etics, to conceive of any transition between them. Nor is this 

 all. The difficulty is increased tenfold, when we attempt to 

 relate the Equidae to other mammalian groups. Fossil un- 

 gulates appear suddenly and contemporaneously in the Ter- 

 tiary of North America, South America and Europe, without 

 any transitional precursors, to connect them with the hypo- 

 thetical proto-mammalian stock, and to substantiate their 

 collaterality with other mammalian stocks. 



To all such difficulties the evolutionist replies by alleging 

 the incompleteness of the geological record, and modern hand- 

 books on palaeontology devote many pages to the task of 

 explaining why incompleteness of the fossil record is just 

 what we should expect, especially in the case of terrestrial 

 animals. The reasons which they assign are convincing, but 

 this particular mode of solving the difficulty is a rather pre- 

 carious one. Evolutionists should not forget that, in sacri- 

 ficing the substantial completeness of the record to account for 

 the absence of intermediate species, they are simultaneously 

 destroying its value as a proof of the relative position of 

 organic types in time. Yet this, as we have seen, is precisely 

 the feature of greatest strategic value in the palaeontological 

 "evidence" for evolution. We must have absolute certainty 

 that the reputed "ancestor" was in existence prior to the ap- 

 pearance of the alleged "descendant," or the peculiar force of 



