THE RECORD OF THE ROCKS 



the succession of forms was so orderly and so connected that 

 he even went so far as to speak of their "genealogy" as 

 something that, though not yet worked out, would eventu- 

 ally be discovered. So many of the philosophical ideas of 

 Louis Agassiz are those of the modern evolutionist that it 

 must always seem strange to us that he never accepted the 

 theory in any practical form. 



This is a strange contrast — that of Huxley and Agassiz — 

 Huxley, hard, logical, walking on the strait and narrow path, 

 adhering strictly to fact, ended as a champion of evolution; 

 Agassiz, with marvellous intuition, with broad views and 

 wide-ranging imagination, remained its opponent. Huxley, 

 who demanded proof for every hypothesis, was driven to his 

 conclusion by the cumulation of evidence. Agassiz, quite 

 ready to accept an unprovable, transcendental explanation, 

 remained as he was, and the tide of science passed his 

 theories by. 



No doubt Huxley in 1881 had a far larger body of evi- 

 dence to his hand than Agassiz had in 1857; and it may be 

 that Agassiz, had he lived till then, would have found in 

 evolution (though not necessarily in Darwin's explanation) 

 the groundwork of his own metaphysical laws and hypoth- 

 eses. We today, with half-a-century of additional and inde- 

 scribably more accurate and detailed knowledge of fossils, 

 can not merely endorse Huxley's statement but can extend 

 and elucidate it. 



Notwithstanding, there are people who, having enough 

 knowledge of geology to speak its language, can still deny 

 the evidence. They assert that palaeontologists are arguing 

 in a circle, and their own argument is somewhat as follows: 

 William Smith the land-surveyor, who is known as the 

 Father of English Geology, observed (so they say) a few 

 strata or layers of rock in part of that little island of Britain 



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