116 Review of Darwin 



reputation as a scientific naturalist. He fairly and ably states the 

 many objections to his view that must occur to the minds of zool- 

 ogists, botanists and geologists, and manfully, though unsuccess- 

 fully, attempts to cope with them. 



Such objections are, the geographical distribution of the crea- 

 tures supposed in Mr. Darwin's view to be nearly related by 

 descent, the want of the innumerable transitional forms that should 

 exist, the difficulty of accounting for the peculiar instincts of many 

 animals, the sterility of first crosses and hybrids compared with 

 the fertility of crosses of varieties, the want of any trace of unlimi- 

 ted variation in the geological succession of animals. 



We shall only refer to the last of these, the geological objec- 

 tion. Geology he admits shews no trace of the " finely graduated 

 organic chain " which in his theory should connect man with the 

 extinct kangaroo-rat-like marsupials of the oolite and trias, and 

 all our existing animals and plants with the perished creatures 

 supposed to be their progenitors. He has but one explanation of 

 this, the "extreme imperfection of the ■ geological records." To 

 illustrate this imperfection, he refers to the immense lapse of time 

 involved in the geological record, to the small number of species 

 known compared with this great lapse of time, to the breaks caused 

 by the absence of fossiliferous deposits at certain periods. All 

 these are fair abatements from the completeness of the geological 

 series, and many of the remarks made on them are very valuable ; 

 but they do not mitigate the condemnation of the selection theory 

 pronounced by geology. Breaks in the geological record are usually 

 only local, and if general, might indicate actual destruction and 

 renewal of species. Though it is true that estuary and land deposits 

 have in most cases been preserved only in times of subsidence ; 

 this is not true of marine deposits, some of the most perfect of 

 which mark times of elevation. Moreover, in those parts of the 

 geological scale which are the most perfect and unbroken, there 

 is no graduated transition of forms. Take for instance the great 

 Silurian limestones of America, or the plant-bearing beds of the 

 coal formation. In both we find some species perseveringly 

 unchanged through many great deposits, and others suddenly 

 appearing and disappearing, and this in cases where the profusion 

 of specimens and continuity of formations preclude any supposition 

 of much imperfection in the evidence. Nothing is more conclusive 

 on this subject than the last of the fossiliferous deposits, next to 

 the modern period ; as, for instance, the Post-Pliocene clays and 



