116 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



such a mockery." (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1918, p. 446.) 

 Chetverikov, it is true, proposes a teleological reason for this 

 progressive diminution, but the fact remains that for dysteleo- 

 logical evolutionism, which dispenses with the postulate of a 

 Providential coordination and regulation of natural agencies, 

 this diminuendo of the "evolving" insects stands in irrecon- 

 cilable opposition to the crescendo of the ''evolving" mammals, 

 and constitutes a difficulty which a purely mechanistic philos- 

 ophy can never surmount. 



Not to prolong excessively this already protracted enumera- 

 tion of discrepancies between fossil fact and evolutionary as- 

 sumption, we shall mention, as an eighth and final difficulty, 

 the indubitable persistence of unchanged organic types from 

 the earliest geological epochs down to the present time. This 

 phenomenon is all the more wonderful in view of the fact that 

 the decision as to which are to be the ''older" and which the 

 "younger" strata rests with the evolutionary geologist, who is 

 naturally disinclined to admit the antiquity of strata contain- 

 ing modern types, and whose position as arbiter enables him 

 to date formations aprioristically, according to the exigencies 

 of the transformistic theory. Using, as he does, the absence 

 of modern types as an express criterion of age, and having, 

 as it were, his pick among the various fossiliferous deposits, 

 one would expect him to be eminently successful in eliminating 

 from the stratigraphic groups selected for senior honors all 

 strata containing fossil types identical with modern forms. 

 Since, however, even the most ingenious sort of geological 

 gerrymandering fails to make this elimination complete, we 

 must conclude that the evidence for persistence of type is in- 

 escapable and valid under any assumption. 



When we speak of persistent types, we mean generic and 

 specific, rather than phyletic, types, although it is assuredly 

 true that the persistence of the great phyla, from their abrupt 

 and contemporaneous appearance in Cambrian and pre-Cam- 

 brian rocks down to the present day, constitutes a grave 

 difficulty for progressive evolution in general and monophy- 



