382 GEOLOGICAL BIOLOGY. 



but they who could best adjust themselves or their actions to 

 adverse conditions were the fittest while they lived, and it was 

 they who diverged. Those expressing more strongly than 

 their fellows the originative energy of life itself are the ones 

 to push forward and furnish the surviving and persisting mem- 

 bers of the race. The pioneers, the skirmishers in the front 

 line, are those among whom appear the founders of new spe- 

 cies and new races, as with men they are the makers of new 

 nations and of higher civilization. 



Thus evolution has been working in the midst of the races 

 from the earliest recorded times; in each line it has been 

 regularly progressive in its order, everywhere advancing as 

 rapidly as the conditions already attained have rendered it 

 possible. 



The great facts attested by geology are that the grander 

 and more radical divergences of structure were earliest at- 

 tained; that, as time has advanced, in each line intrinsic 

 evolution has been confined to the acquirement of less and 

 less important characters: such facts emphasize with over- 

 whelming force the conclusion that the march of the evolu- 

 tion has been the expression of a general law of organic 

 nature, in which events have occurred in regular order, with 

 a beginning, a normal order of succession, a limit to each 

 stage, and in which the whole organic kingdom has been 

 mutually correlated. 



In closing, an illustration may be used to emphasize the 

 real points at issue. 



Suppose a handful of lead shot were placed in a blunder- 

 buss, and the whole load discharged at a burglar climbing 

 into my chamber window. 



The individual shot, originally of globular form, would be 

 found at the end of their journey of various shapes and in 

 various positions. Some of them would have travelled till 

 they expended their force and dropped to the ground in the 

 distance comparatively unchanged ; others would be slightly 

 distorted by impact upon the soft clothing or flesh of the 

 intruder; others would be flattened by meeting the resist- 

 ance of bone; a few would be stamped with the shape of 

 some brass button, surface of nail-head, or some other im- 



