II PROGRESS OF PALAEONTOLOGY 45 



and plants may have been produced, one separately 

 from the other, by spontaneous generation ; nor that 

 it is impossible that they should have been inde- 

 pendently originated by an endless succession of 

 miraculous creative acts. But I must confess that 

 both these hypotheses strike me as so astoundingly 

 improbable, so devoid of a shred of either scientific 

 or traditional support, that even if there were no 

 other evidence than that of palaeontology in its 

 favour, I should feel compelled to adopt the 

 hypothesis of evolution. Happily, the future of 

 palaeontology is independent of all hypothetical 

 considerations. Fifty years hence, whoever under- 

 takes to record the progress of palaeontology will 

 note the present time as the epoch in which 

 the law of succession of the forms of the higher 

 animals was determined by the observation of 

 palaeontological facts. He will point out that, 

 just as Steno and as Cuvier were enabled from 

 their knowledge of the empirical laws of co-exist- 

 ence of the parts of animals to conclude from a 

 part to the whole, so the knowledge of the law of 

 succession of forms empowered their successors to 

 conclude, from one or two terms of such a succes- 

 sion, to the whole series; and thus to divine the 

 existence of forms of life, of which, perhaps, no 

 trace remains, at epochs of inconceivable remote- 

 ness in the past. 



