28 DARWINISM VERIFIED. [i. 



are every now and then fused together by the 

 discovery of extinct intermediate forms. It is in 

 this way that the Cuvierian orders of pachyderms 

 and ruminants have come to be ranked as a single 

 order, 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 argument 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 geological record, in 

 which there is no reason for supposing 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 palaeonto- 

 logist, and that portion but superficially. The justice 

 of such a plea is rendered apparent, while the hostile 

 argument is completely silenced, by the recent dis- 

 coveries of Professor Marsh as to the palaeontological 

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

 coveries have just been well described in Professor 



