FOSSIL PEDIGREES 127 



These obscure and fragmentary vestiges of a vanished past, 

 by reason of their very incompleteness, lend themselves quite 

 readil^^ to all sorts of theories and all sorts of speculations. 

 Of the ''Stone Book of the Universe" we may say with truth 

 that which Oliver Wendell Holmes says of the privately-in- 

 terpreted Bible, namely, that its readers take from it the same 

 views which they had previously brought to it. "I am, hew- 

 ever, thoroughly persuaded," say the late Yves Delage, "that 

 one is or is not a transformist, not so much for reasons de- 

 duced from natural history, as for motives based on personal 

 philosophic opinions. If there existed some other scientific 

 hypothesis besides that of descent to explain the origin of 

 species, many transformists would abandon their present opin- 

 ion as not being sufficiently demonstrated. ... If one takes 

 his stand upon the exclusive ground of the facts, it must be 

 acknowledged that the formation of one species from another 

 species has not been demonstrated at all." ("L'heredite et les 

 grands problemes de la biologic generale," Paris, 1903, pp. 

 204, 322.) 



