THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS. 53 
objections” against the theory of evolution. (“Evolu- 
tion,’ p. 234.) This absence of transitional forms be- 
tween different species has always been recognized as a 
serious difficulty; and Mr. Darwin, in the attempt to 
obviate it, succeeds only in showing how very serious 
it is. These are his words: “Geology assuredly does not 
reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and 
this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection 
which can be urged against my theory.” 
Alfred Fairhurst says, in his “Organic Evolution 
Considered” (p. 93): 
“According to the theory of evolution, and especially 
of natural selection, if we start with any organism and 
trace its history backward, we would find that through 
an endless number of generations it had been very slight- 
ly changing, so that any individual is always a transition- 
al form between its immediate ancestors and its own off- 
spring. This being true, one would expect, if the theory 
of evolution is true, to find vast numbers of transitional 
forms connecting earlier and later species in the various 
periods where fossils are well preserved. This, how- 
ever, is not true. Species, when they first appear, stand 
sharply defined. Darwin expresses his disappointment 
at the absence of transitional forms as follows: ‘But I do 
not pretend that I should ever have suspected how poor 
was the record in the best preserved geological sections, 
had not the absence of innumerable transitional links be- 
tween the species which lived at the commencement and 
close of each formation pressed so hardly on my theory.’ ”’ 
Even a cursory study of such texts as Dana’s“ Manual 
of Geology” will reveal that the development of the plants 
and animals through the ‘ages’ of speculative geology 
does not move forward like a steadily rising flood. There 
is rather a series of great waves, each rising abruptly, 
