CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



changes with a fair assurance that, one after another, forms 

 showing the comparable actual stages might be found. Here 

 the lack of the connecting links does not seriously disturb 

 the evolutionist, although their discovery would be an event 

 of profound interest. 



Our own lineage lies of course in the mammalian line; 

 hence the dawning of mammalian life is of intense personal 

 concern. Here we know much of the truth, for many of the 

 stages have been revealed. The chief distinctions that sep- 

 arate the mammals from their reptilian prototypes are the 

 peculiar methods of nourishing the young both before and 

 after birth, much of the internal mechanism of the mother 

 being directly or indirectly modified as a result of this habit. 

 That the early mammals were egg-layers is attested by the 

 retention of the egg-lying habit in the monotremes, such as 

 the duckbill of Australia, the lowliest of existing mammalian 

 forms, which, with many another evolutionary laggard, is a 

 veritable living fossil, existing in a place remote from the 

 busy competition that impels advance. The palaeontologist 

 cannot trace the development of these diagnostic mam- 

 malian characteristics, for they are limited largely to soft 

 parts. The preserved strictly mammalian features that may 

 be compared with features possessed by members of the 

 ancestral reptilian group are few. We find differentiated 

 teeth, which are embedded in the rear of the jaw by more 

 than one root; a single bone in the lower jaw, which is 

 directly articulated with the temporal bone of the skull; 

 and other minor details, largely changes toward greater 

 simplicity. 



Back at the beginning of the age of reptiles there existed, 

 mainly in the Southern Hemisphere, a group of reptiles 

 known, from their differentiated dog-like teeth, as cynodonts, 

 from Kvvoq, a Greek word for dog. That they were not mam- 



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