Evolution : The Quest of Truth 1 6 1 



marching to their doom. As the numbers 

 become less and less, as the changing environ- 

 ments and the inexorable grasp of time lop off 

 the aberrant and sportive forms, these patriarchs 

 become reduced to a single racial stem and, like 

 the one remnant of a decaying family, perish at 

 last into oblivion. What was once a chain be- 

 comes a series of detached and broken links ; 

 and the lost and missing links comprise the 

 proof that there was a chain. 



The tree of life. 



Evolution is not a line : it is a genealogy. 

 It is a tree of numberless branches, each branch 

 forking again and again. The tip of one 

 branch grows faster than its twin and thereby 

 leaves the other behind ; so that we now have 

 the examples of many of the succeeding stages 

 of development. It is not unlikely that some- 

 thing very like the first forms of life still exists 

 on the earth. The present groups of animals 

 and plants are the tips of the branches in the 

 multifid tree of creation. 



It is evident, then, that the missing links 



