2H2 Kansas Academy of Science. 



thus produced are called elementary species, and differ distinctly 

 but not widely from the mother species." 



It is well known that geologists have long been dissatisfied with 

 the theory of natural selection by the accumulation of slow pro- 

 gressive changes as the one method of the origin of species. 



Professor White again says : "There has been an increasing dis- 

 trust of the theory of natural selection for the origin of species 

 that Darwin proposed a half- century ago, and it has been especially 

 felt in endeavoring to apply it to certain lines of paleontological 

 investigation. It has been regarded with growing disfavor in such 

 cases, as it is shown that genera, families, orders and classes of ani- 

 mal and plants have, during geological time, usually originated 

 with such comparative rapidity as to make it necessary to infer that 

 species have originated suddenly ; that the ratio of progressive de- 

 velopment has not only not been uniform, but has been exeedingly 

 diverse ; that environment had little to do with the origin or destruc- 

 tion of species. These and other items made it necessary to presup- 

 pose some other theory for the sudden origin of species to harmonize 

 them with the past conditions which they reveal. After the fishes 

 and reptiles, a sudden change marks the introduction of the placental 

 mammals which occurred about the beginning of Tertiary time. 

 These highly organized animals assumed faunal dominion of the 

 earth which the decadent dinosaurs had just departed from. They 

 came in great diversity of forms, and their organization was little if 

 any inferior to that of the mammals now living of lower grade than 

 the Quadrumana. There has been found no evidence of evolution 

 from earlier forms by any slow process, and they became extinct at 

 or before the close of the Eocene epoch. They were succeeded by 

 the Miocene and Pliocene mammalia, exhibiting many strange and 

 suddenly introduced forms. Indeed, the history of the mammalia 

 from the earliest Tertiary to the present time embraces a record of 

 rapid and varied evolution of the highest grades of animals, culmi- 

 nating in man. If it should ever be possible to trace the evolution 

 of man from the lower animals, it will probably be found that it 

 has been accomplished, not by the slow process of natural selec- 

 tion, but by a series of sudden mutations." 



Indeed, the theory accounts for much in the evolutionary his- 

 tory of man that has been lacking. In the first place, his geolog- 

 ical history is quite insufficient to allow of his gradual development, 

 according to the theory of natural selection, by slow accretions of 

 alterations. The earliest form of lemur, Anapt07norphus, which 

 was probably the ancestor of all of the Anthropoidse, is too recent 



