76 NO STRUGGLE NO SELECTION 



guished. That no intermediate forms had been 

 recovered from the past, and appeared among so 

 many distinct specific forms discovered by geologists, 

 was a surprise to Darwin (who took his own theory 

 seriously), seeing that they must have been so much 

 more numerous than the specific forms. He, however, 

 accounted for their absence by showing the imperfection 

 of the geological record. But the number of extinct 

 specific forms discovered by geologists has been 

 multiplied manifold since Darwin wrote, yet the 

 record of his intermediate forms 'discovered remains 

 a blank. If the ordinary rules of logic were applicable 

 to evolutional theories, this unvarying emergence of 

 the few (the specific) and the non-emergence of even 

 a casual example of the many (the intermediate forms) 

 would be considered fatal to Darwin's. 



But what I desire particularly to draw attention to 

 is, that when we consider how exceedingly minute was 

 the developmental accretion made when a variety 

 supplanted its predecessor (for this is a point upon 

 which Darwin especially insists), and upon the great 

 number of accumulated variations that were required 

 to form a distinct species, and upon the long lapse of 

 time necessary for each infinitesimal accretion, it is 

 impossible for anyone to allege, with any show of 

 reason, that there can exist experimental evidence of 

 the operation of such a principle as Natural Selection. 

 When, therefore, Dr. Romanes advances what he con- 

 siders to be proofs of the operation of Natural Selection, 

 he does in reality no more than give proofs of a principle 



