
9 
left them unchanged. The Foraminifer which has formed our 
chalk hills, and whose shells are found in the earliest stratified 
rocks, is still laying at the bottom of the Atlantic, the foundation 
of ‘‘continents to be.” The Lingula of the Silurian is still to be 
discovered in the sea, not far from our own shores. And lower 
and more persistent forms than these may be found, which seem 
never to have entered on the fatal path of progress. Some have 
gone further on the road than others, and remained stationary 
there, incapable of further advance. Their development, we say, 
has been arrested. ‘The Beryx of the South Atlantic differs 
little from the Beryx whose remains are so finely represented in 
the Willett Collection of Chalk-Fossils in the Museum. And 
there is at least one species of fish which, as far as the minutest 
observation can perceive, has remained unchanged through all the 
vast period that has intervened between the present time and the 
Devonian. 
It would not be too much to say that, in every epoch, the 
great mass of life is made up of non-progressive forms, and of 
those which only reach a comparatively little way on the road of 
development. : 
More and more Palzontologists are beginning to recognize 
that degenerate forms are to be found in every geological division, 
and more particularly are they noticeable in those later stages of 
the earth's history, which are distinguished by the presence of 
higher and more complex forms of life. Dr. Smith Woodward, 
our highest authority on the subject, in his “Outlines of 
Vertebrate Paleontology,” speaks of ‘‘ irreversible lines of pro- 
gression and irreversible lines of degeneration.” 
And is there any evidence, it may be asked, in the existing 
fauna and flora of this degeneration ? 
The tiny Hyrax is but a poor representative of its great 
rhinoceros-like ancestor. The huge Python and the little Slow- 
worm show on dissection the aborted limbs which their lizard- 
like progenitors possessed. The Whale, with its mouth furnished 
with that curious “ baleen” (known as whalebone), has the milk 
teeth, which connects it with a higher type. The Slugs of our garden 
carry beneath the skin the rudiments of a shell which they have no 
longer the power to produce. The list might be extended, and 
that to a far greater length than the text-books warrant. Andi it 
is illustrative of my argument that it is but a small fraction of the 
works on Zoology which devote any space to degeneration. 
Men's minds are set on fvo-gress and not on ve-gress. But the 
evidence for the one must be as strong and ample as for the 
other. 
“Sufficient appearances,” says Burke, “ will never be wanting 
to those who have a mind to deceive themselves.” And have we 
not all of us ‘“‘a mind to deceive ourselves ” when progress is in 
question ? 
