432 Darwin^ and after Darwin. 



forms throughout the world, as it would be for a naturalist to 

 land for five minutes on some one barren point in Australia, 

 and then to discuss the number and range of its productions '. 



In view of all the foregoing facts and considerations, it 

 appears to me that the second difficulty on our list is com- 

 pletely answered. Indeed, even on a moderate estimate of 

 the imperfection of the geological record, the wonder would 

 have been if many cases had not occurred where groups of 

 species present the fictitious appearance of having been 

 suddenly and simultaneously created in the particular forma- 

 tions where their remains now happen to be observable. 



Turning next to the third objection, there cannot be any 

 question that every here and there in the geological series 

 animals occur of a much higher grade zoologically than the 

 theory of evolution would have expected to find in the strata 

 where they are found. At any rate, speaking for myself, 1 

 should not have antecedently expected to meet with such 

 highly differentiated insects as butterflies and dragonflies in 

 the middle of the Secondaries : still less should I have ex- 

 pected to encounter beetles, cockroaches, spiders, and May- 

 flies in the upper and middle Primaries — not to mention an 

 insect and a scorpion even in the lower. And I think 

 the same remark applies to a whole sub-kingdom in the case 

 of Vertebrata. For although it is only the lowest class of 

 the sub-kingdom which, so far as we positively know, was 

 represented in the Devonian and Silurian formations, we 

 must remember, on the one hand, that even a cartilaginous 

 or ganoid fish belongs to the highest sub-kingdom of the 

 animal series ; and, on the other hand, that such animals are 

 thus proved to have abounded in the very lowest strata 

 where there is good evidence of there having been any forms of 

 life at all. Lastly, the fact that Marsupials occur in the Trias, 



' Origin of species, 282-5. 



