CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



of every living thing had been separately and specially cre- 

 ated. Fortunately, the inquiry as to the significance of the 

 fossils found began on the western edge of the European 

 continental region, which has in past ages sunk repeatedly 

 beneath the sea and then risen again to become dry land. In 

 thus rising the fossil-bearing beds, which were deposited in 

 successive seas and estuaries, have been somewhat tilted, and 

 their edges have been exposed to view, so that it is easy to 

 examine them and the fossils they contain. More than a 

 century ago William Smith, an English land-surveyor, showed 

 that the order of the rocks that contained these fossils is 

 perfectly clear. Nearly all the chief phases in the succession 

 of life are represented in the old sea beds that now form 

 rocks in the British Isles and the adjacent parts of the Euro- 

 pean continent. Approximately the same succession has been 

 ob«"*rved in other parts of the world, and several of the 

 greatest gaps in the geological hi<;tory of Western Europe 

 have been filled by the discovery ot rocks of intervening ages 

 elsewhere. 



The order of the formation of the series of fossil-bearing 

 rocks has thus been definitely determined by observing the 

 order in which the layers rest one upon another and by com- 

 paring this order in detail in different parts of the world. 

 There is nothing hypothetical in the result of this research. 

 (The main difiiculty is the imperfection of the record made 

 by the fossils. Generally no part of an animal but its hard 

 skeleton is found; the softer parts have been preserved only 

 in exceptional circumstances. Most of the rocks, at least 

 those of the earlier periods, were formed in seas or estuaries, 

 and so yield remains of land animals only where these have 

 been carried into the water. A fossil is buried by accident 

 and is discovered by accident. We may say that our knowl- 

 edge of fossils depends on a chapter of accidents. It is not 



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