WHAT EVOLUTION IS 45 



only near the very end, long after the 

 group of which he is a member, the 

 mammals, had established itself. 



The sequence of forms that is here 

 portrayed is an orderly one and the 

 order is such as would be expected on 

 evolutionary grounds. Had special 

 creation been the rule of nature there 

 would have been no reason for inver- 

 tebrates to have preceded vertebrates 

 in their time of appearance, or for 

 fishes to have come before amphibians 

 and the like. But this order of ap- 

 pearance being such as it is, one must 

 conclude that this aspect of the fossil 

 series gives unequivocal support to 

 the evolutionary view. 



Facts of the kind that have just 

 been narrated were well known in 

 Darwin's day. Since that time the 

 study of fossils, and particularly of 

 vertebrate fossils, has enormously 

 expanded. Huxley in his time was 



