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Let us now for a moment suppose evolution at work 
amongst the lower animals with oval corpuscles, and grant it as 
possible that in process of time fishes might become reptiles, 
and reptiles might become birds, and birds might become 
mammals, what sort of mammals must the birds become on 
account of blood relationship? clearly either camels, or llamas, 
for they are the only mammals with oval blood corpuscles; now 
let us put this doctrine to the test, and ask the testimony of the 
rocks, whether either camels, or llamas are the first discoverable 
mammalian remains. 
The rocks tell us, that nearly all mammals including man, 
are of very recent introduction into the history of the earth, 
for only in Tertiary strata can such remains be found; but 
fortunately for our argument, at the bottom of the secondary 
rocks in the Trias, mammalian remains have been discovered, 
referred to the genera Microlestes and Dromatherium ; and in the 
Lower Oolites, in the Stonesfield slate have been preserved the 
bones of 4 others, Amphitheriwm, Amphilestes, Phascolotherium, 
and Stereognathus; and in the Upper Oolites in the Purbeck 
beds 4 or more others, Triconodon, Spalacotherium, Galestes, and 
Plagiaulaz ; now all Paleontologists declare, that all these 
remains are marsupial, and if marsupial, then when living they 
most probably had round and not oval blood coursing through 
their veins. 
If we reverse the mode of argument, we shall only be 
landed into a similar or worse dilemma; for if we grant it 
possible that reptiles (it could not have been birds, for they first 
appear in the Cretaceous strata) might be changed into those 
small marsupials, by sudden or gradual change of blood, and 
that from them in the course of ages all the other mammals 
with round corpuscles were developed, still the theory will be 
unable to account for the evolution of camels and llamas with 
their oval blood. 
Why all vertebrata should have oval blood up to a certain 
point, and then stop at the camel tribe is a mystery, which will 
most likely ever remain so; but that there is some hidden 
sufficient reason very few men would venture to doubt; and 
