CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



before the age of iron into a stout pin; and below this again 

 was found a fine stone implement. 



No one can doubt that in this old street of Winchester the 

 ground had gradually risen layer by layer, and that each 

 layer contained objects dropped by successive generations 

 of men who lived while it was forming. From these facts 

 alone one could learn much of the history of Winchester 

 and could reconstruct that succession of cultures which, as 

 we know from other facts (not to mention written docu- 

 ments) , is applicable to at least the whole of England. These 

 coins and pots and tools are fossils, and their orderly suc- 



FiG. 2. — Diagrammatic section across the London basin. 



cession is everywdiere the same, unless, indeed, the ground 

 has been disturbed by subsequent building operations. 



If we dig deeper we shall come, it may be, to layers of 

 gravel and brick-earth, as we do in London (Fig. 2); then 

 to stiff clay, and below that to other harder rocks. Except 

 perhaps in the upper gravels, we no longer come across the 

 remains of man, but we find the bones and the shells of 

 other animals, and these, we note, occur in just such regular 

 succession as did the coins and pots. Are we not bound to 

 make a similar inference and to say that the fossils indicate 

 successive layers of rock and a succession of animal inhabi- 

 tants? We do indeed find that the more closely we study 

 any thickness of rock the more does each successive layer 

 prove to contain its characteristic fossils. These layers can 

 be seen and measured and traced across country, and so far 



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