THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



plex in character and had already developed nearly, 

 or quite, all the fundamental organs of existing ani- 

 mals. Thus evolution must begin with animals high 

 up in the scale of differentiation and all stages from 

 them to the prototypes which were originated sup- 

 posedly in the warm ocean slime of the Proterozoic 

 epoch are pure conjecture. 



In the next period, the Ordovician, fish-like organ- 

 isms appear which have complete dermal plates and 

 have acquired the power of locomotion. Thus in a 

 period of great quiet in which no break in time can be 

 noted, a most important new type, with the power of 

 locomotion by swimming and vastly different from 

 shell-fish, suddenly appears. 



The acquisition of a vertebra is acknowledged to be 

 one of the most important advances in structure. A 

 vertebra is found first in the fishes of the Silurian age. 

 Palaeontologists have imagined many supposititious 

 forms of earlier fishes to link the vertebrates with the 

 earlier fishes which have notochords, but the simple 

 fact is that when the Silurian vertebrates appeared 

 they did so without any transitional form having 

 been preserved. 



Again, one of the greatest steps in evolution oc- 

 curred when amphibians with feet and legs and with 

 an air-breathing apparatus appeared in the Carbonif- 

 erous age. It is customary to assume that these ani- 

 mals developed from fish which lived in such shallow 

 water that they were driven to adopt land locomotion 



i: 1543 



