HOW LIFE APPEARED ON EARTH 137 



cal layers, as definitely characterized types. Sir 

 William Dawson quite correctly writes : 



The compound eyes and filmy wings of insects; the teeth, 

 bones and scales of batrachians and fishes; all stre as perfectly 

 finished, and many quite as complete and elegant as in the 

 animals of the present day. ... At one time it is broad- 

 leaved forest trees that enter upon the scene, altogether different 

 from those that went before ; at other times, lizard-like reptiles, 

 birds and mammals, each stamped at its first coming with the 

 essential characteristics of its class as we know it today; so 

 that it is impossible, except by violent suppositions, to connect 

 them genetically with any predecessors 



Hence it was possible for a really eminent bi- 

 ologist, such as Professor Fleischmann certainly 

 must be reckoned, entirely to reject the evolution- 

 ary theories in the day of their full glory. Hence, 

 also, it was possible for other independent thinkers 

 to come to the conclusion that the facts of nature 

 do not give any evidence of gradual evolution, but 

 rather must be explained away in favor of it. 

 On this important point Father Hull writes : 



Attempts have been made to arrange in order the gradual 

 evolution of the different species from the lower to the higher, 

 and from the simpler to the more complex. The genealogical 

 tree thus produced, both for the plant and the animal orders, 

 almost overwhelms the mind with a conviction of its truth, 

 until <we begin to realize how much speculation and guesswork 

 have beeen mixed up with fact in the formation of the pedi- 

 grees; and moreover, how difficult it is to imagine the process 

 by which the larger divisions of vegetable and animal types 

 can have passed over the dividing line between one and 

 another. 



A student who recently took his doctorate of biology in Berlin 



u "Modern Ideas of Evolution." 



