i.] DARWINISM VERIFIED. 27 



islands from each other has been attended by slighter, 

 or specific, divergences ; and, as if to complete by 

 contrast the force of the example, we find that the 

 only animals on the archipelago which are not generi- 

 cally different from their allies on the continent are 

 birds, able to fly back and forth over the intervening 

 sea. Unless the Darwinian theory be true, these 

 striking relations not only become meaningless, but 

 it is difficult to see why any discernible relations at all 

 should exist between these neighbouring faunas. To 

 cite all the confirmatory facts of this sort would be 

 to write an exhaustive account of the distribution 

 of plants and animals. 



In examining the geological record in general, we 

 are struck with its corroboration of the above-cited 

 testimony of classification and embryology. For 

 instance, as we go back in time, we find families and 

 orders drawing more and more closely together ; we 

 find earlier forms less specialised than their suc- 

 cessors ; and as we now have embryonic birds with 

 rudimentary teeth in their beaks, so we find that 

 formerly adult birds with such teeth existed. It is 

 one of the most significant truths of palaeontology 

 that extinct forms are generally intercalary between 

 forms now existing, so that not only genera and 

 families, but even orders, of contemporary animals 



