20 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, 



combatants will have to employ new weapons, which it will 

 be the privilege of the challenger to choose. The old, op- 

 posed to these, would prove b\3t of little avaiL In an age 

 of muskets and artillery, the bows and arrows of an obsolete 

 school of warfare would be found greatly less than sufficient, 

 in the field of battle, for purposes either of assault or defence. 



" There are two kinds of generation in the world," says 

 Professor Lorenz Oken, in his " Elements of Physio-Philo- 

 sophy ;" " the creation proper, and the propagation that is 

 sequent thereupon, — or the generatio originaria and secun- 

 daria. Consequently, no organism has been created of larger 

 size than an infusorial point. No organism is, nor ever has 

 one been created, which is not microscopic. Whatever is 

 larger has not been created, but developed. Man has not 

 been created, but developed." Such, in a few brief dogmatic 

 sentences, is the development theory. What, in order to 

 establish its truth, or even to render it in some degree pro- 

 bable, ought to be the geological evidence regarding it ? The 

 reply seems obvious. In the first place, the earlier fossils 

 ought to be very small in size ; in the second, very low in 

 organization. In cutting into the stony womb of nature, in 

 order to determine what it contained mayhap millions of ages 

 ago, we must expect, if the development theory be true, to 

 look upon mere embryos and foetuses. And if we find, in- 

 stead, the full-grown and the mature, then must we hold that 

 the testimony of Geology is not only not in accordance with 

 the theory, but in positive opposition to it. Such, palpably, 

 is the principle on which, in this matter, we ought to decide. 

 What are t\ie facts ? 



The oldest organism yet discovered in the most ancient 

 geological system of Scotland in which vertebrate remains 

 occur, seems* to be the Asterolepis of Stromness. After the 



* [This seems is characteristic of the caution of the author. The Ce- 

 pfcalaspidcE, and even the Acanthidce. take precedence of the Asterolepis 



