1880.] on ' The Orufm of Species: 367 



all othor known Tertiary deposits put together ; and yet, with the 

 exception of the case of the American tcrtiaries, these investigations 

 have extended over very limited areas, and at Pikermi were confined 

 to an extremely small space. 



Such appear to me to bo the chief events in the history of the 

 progress of knowledge during the last twenty years, which account for 

 the changed feeling with which the doctrine of evolution is at present 

 regarded by those who have followed the advance of biological science, 

 in respect of those problems which bear indirectly upon that doctrine. 



But all this remains mere secondary evidence. It may remove 

 dissent, but it docs not compel assent. Primary and direct evidence 

 in favour of evolution can be furnished only by palaeontology. The 

 geological record, so soon as it approaches completeness, must, when 

 properly questioned, yield either an affirmative or a negative answer : 

 if evolution has taken place, there will its mark be left ; if it has not 

 taken place, there will lie its refutation. 



What was the state of matters in 1859 ? Let us hear Mr. Darwin, 

 who may be trusted always to state the case against himself as strongly 

 as possible. 



" On this doctrine of the extermination of an infinitude of con- 

 necting links between the living and extinct inhabitants of the world, 

 and at each successive period between the extinct and still older 

 species, why is not every geological formation charged with such 

 links ? Why does not every collection of fossil remains afford plain 

 evidence of the gradation and mutation of the forms of life? We 

 meet with no such evidence, and this is the most obvious and 

 plausible of the many objections which may be urged against my 

 theory." * 



Nothing could have been more useful to the opposition than this 

 characteristically candid avowal, twisted as it immediately was into 

 an admission that the writer's views were contradicted by the facts of 

 palaeontology. But, in fact, Mr. Darwin made no such admission. 

 What he says in effect is, not that palaeontological evidence is against 

 him, but that it is not distinctly in his favour ; and without attempt- 

 ing to attenuate the fact, he accounts for it by the scantiness and the 

 imperfection of that evidence. 



What is the state of the case now, when, as we have seen, the 

 amount of our knowledge respecting the mammalia of the Tertiary 

 epoch is increased fifty-fold, and in some directions even approaches 

 completeness ? 



Simply this, that if the doctrine of evolution had not existed 

 palaeontologists must have invented it, so irresistibly is it forced upon 

 the mind by the study of the remains of the Tertiary mammalia 

 which have been brought to light since 1859. 



Among the fossils of Pikermi, Gaudry found the successive stages 



* 'Origin of Species,' ed. 1, p. 463. 



