Wellington Pliilosopliical Society. 643 



as to the facts of the evolution of Hfe on this earth and also as 

 to its modes. 



The paloeontological record is undoubtedly imperfect. Mul- 

 titudes of living things of all kinds must have perished in past 

 ages ^Yithout leaving any discernible traces in the sedimentary 

 deposits produced in seas, lakes, and rivers, or buried by 

 volcanic eruptions or in caves ; yet vast multitudes of remains 

 have been so preserved, and every year new specimens are 

 being added to our series. Mathematics assures us that if 

 there have existed transitional forms of life, such as the theory 

 of evolution supposes, it is not conceivable that a fair propor- 

 tion of them should not be found ; but they have not been 

 found hitherto. On the contrary new forms of Hfe appear first 

 in their fullest development, and if such forms still exist they 

 are generally smaller, and altogether inferior to the earlier 

 individuals. One need only compare the remains of the 

 gigantic ferns and mares'-tails of the Carboniferous strata with 

 living specimens, or the immense saurians of the Secondary 

 formations, or the mammals of the Tertiary, or the recently 

 extinct moa of New Zealand, with modern types of similar 

 forms of life, to be convinced of this truth : in such cases there 

 is evidence of degradation or extinction, not of progression. 

 Or, if we consider the fact that the earliest form of mollusc of 

 which we have a record, the brachiopod Lingula, is still to be 

 found in the coral islands of Melanesia, apparently identical 

 with its earliest progenitors who lived thousands of thousands 

 of years ago, we are bound to acknowledge that there is no 

 absolute rule of progressive evolution. Yet that, upon the 

 whole, there has been upward progress, is also abundantly 

 evident. The world in which man has lived is a far more 

 perfect world than it was in any of its earlier stages. 



In tracing the history of the structure of the crust of our 

 earth we often find that large formations which were deposited 

 under the sea have been raised to form dry land, and in that 

 condition have been subjected for long periods to denudation, 

 have then again sunk below sea-level, and fresh sedimentary 

 deposits have been laid down on top of the denuded surface ; 

 afterwards the whole has been raised again ; and we find that 

 the forms of life in the later strata are very different from those 

 in the earlier strata. It is claimed that the evolutionary steps 

 connecting the earlier and the later forms of life are unrepre- 

 sented because they lived in a period not represented by these 

 strata — the period when the lower strata were dry land — and 

 so many pages of the record are missing, as it were. These 

 pages exist somewhere, perhaps still at the bottom of the sea, 

 and therefore inaccessible to us, but perhaps now forming 

 dry land in some neighbouring territory whither the water life 

 of the district which was raised migrated as their sea grew 



