PEDIGREES AND FAMILY TIES. 203 



together and make a whole, cracked and with 

 bits missing it may be, but yet showing us enough 

 to give hints of new lines of research. 



Till comparatively recently — within the pre- 

 sent century — the outcome of this collection of 

 fragments seemed but a lumber-room of useless 

 facts. True, some sort of order had been 

 introduced, but no system or intelligible explana- 

 tion had been given. When Charles Darwin 

 began to inspect this lumber-room he dis- 

 covered it to be in reality a vast treasure-house, 

 and he immediately set about collecting more 

 material to fill up vacant spaces and missing 

 gems. The result of his labours has revolu- 

 tionised modern thought. His interpretation of 

 these isolated facts and of the motive power 

 behind them he gave us in what we now know 

 as the theory of natural selection or descent 

 with modification. 



An enormous amount of work yet remains to 

 be done. He gave us the key to what before 

 were but hieroglyphics. We are now all engaged 

 in doing our best to translate. Alas, many essay 

 the task before they have learnt the language, 

 and many work badly, the best of us but slowly, 

 still knowledge is gradually growing. 



We are hunting now amongst the records of 

 the past to find pedigrees for the living and the 

 dead. This we can only do by collecting evidence 

 of every possible description. Much of it is de- 

 rived from inorganic nature — floods and earth- 

 quakes, cold and heat, wind and rain. Thus 

 we learn how forms no longer represented in 

 the life of the globe, struggled and failed and 



