288 RELICS OF PRIMEVAL LIFE 



fection of the geological record, and of the occur- 

 rence of " missing links " between different types of 

 being. The only feasible explanations of this are 

 as yet the suppositions that the times of intro- 

 duction of new types may have been unfavourable 

 to the preservation of their remains, or that the first 

 representatives of each new group were soft-bodied 

 animals incapable of preservation, or that they 

 happened to be introduced in regions yet unex- 

 plored. But such accidents could scarcely have been 

 the rule in every case. Even in relation to man him- 

 self, he is still man in all the deposits in which we 

 can find his remains, and as remote from the apes 

 of his time, in so far as we know, as he is from 

 those now his contemporaries. It would seem, in 

 short, as if, ashamed of his humble origin, he had 

 carefully obliterated his tracks in ascending from 

 his lowly parentage to the dignity of humanity. 

 But in this he is only following the example of 

 other animals, his predecessors. We may, as is now 

 constantly done by evolutionists, fill up these gaps 

 by plausible conjectures ; but this is not a scientific 

 mode of procedure, unless we are content to regard 

 these conjectures as working hypotheses in aid of 

 researches yet without result. 



