48 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS. 
is indeed, the one primary argument for evolution, the 
rest being simply corroborative. On this rock evolution- 
ists build their scientific Faith. Let us investigate. 
We shall note, to begin with, that there are, indeed, a 
larger number of species, both of animals and plants, pre- 
served in the rocks,—thousands, in fact. There are lowly 
organisms, of the crab and cuttle fish variety, and more 
highly organized forms, fishes and birds, and there are 
the prints and fossilized bones of great monsters, huge 
lizards and sloths and other mammalia. It is possible 
to establish a gradation in this great catalog of fossils, 
beginning with the largest or most perfectly developed, 
and ending with the animals lower in the scale of life; or 
vice versa. The evolutionists say, vice versa, the simp- 
lest first, the most complex last, and then they add: So 
they have developed. 
At this point we shall first quote one of the earliest 
palaeontologists, and one of the most famous, Hugh 
Miller, whose “Old Red Sandstone,’ first published in 
1841, has now been republished in the “Everyman Li- 
brary.” In this brilliant work, Miller pays his respects 
to the evolutionists of his age. He refers to Lamarck 
and says: “The ingenious foreigner, on the strength of 
a few striking facts which prove that to a certain extent 
the instincts of species may be improved and heightened, 
and their forms changed from a lower to a higher degree 
of adaptation to their circumstances, has concluded that 
there is a natural progress from the inferior order of 
being towards the superior, and that the off-spring of 
creatures low in the scale in the present time may hold 
a much higher place in it, and belong to different and 
nobler species, a few thousand years hence. . . . He has 
argued on this principle of improvement and adaptation, 
which, carry it as far as we rationally may, still leaves 
