Darwinism Verified. 29 



the horse and pig being connected by numerous 

 fossil links with the camel and antelope. Until 

 quite lately there has been less success in the 

 attempt to find a perfect series of transitional 

 forms connecting some well-known animal with 

 its generically different ancestor. But the argu- 

 ment heretofore urged against the Darwinian 

 theory, on the ground of this imperfect success, 

 was at best a weak one, as resting merely upon 

 the absence of evidence which further discovery 

 might furnish at any moment. The Darwinian 

 might candidly urge that his failure was due 

 partly to the fragmentary character of the geolog- 

 ical record, in which there is no reason for sup- 

 posing that more than one form out of a hundred 

 has been preserved, and partly to the fact that 

 only a small portion of the earth's surface has 

 been explored by the palaeontologist, and that por- 

 tion but superficially. The justice of such a plea 

 is rendered apparent, while the hostile argument 

 is completely silenced, by the recent discoveries 

 of Professor Marsh as to the palaeontological his- 

 tory of the ancestors of the horse. As these dis- 

 coveries have just been well described in Profes- 

 sor Huxley's admirable lectures in New York, a 

 brief mention here will suffice to show their im- 

 port. 



