WHAT IS DARWINISM? 155 



Carboniferous period, that is, as they suppose, 

 through milUons of years. More wonderful 

 still, the little animals whose remains consti- 

 tute the chalk formations which are spread 

 over large areas of country, and are sometimes 

 a hundred feet thick, are now at work at the 

 bottom of the Atlantic. Principal Dawson 

 tells us, with regard to Mollusks existing in a 

 sub-fossil state in the Post-pliocene clays of 

 Canada, that "after carefully studying about 

 two hundred species, and of some of these, 

 many hundreds of specimens, I have arrived 

 at the conclusion that they are absolutely un- 

 changed Here again we have an abso- 

 lute refusal, on the part of all these animals, to 

 admit that they are derived, or have tended 

 to sport into new species." ^ 



On the previous page he says, " Pictet cata- 

 logues ninety-eight species of mammals which 

 inhabited Europe in the Post-glacial period. 

 Of these fifty-seven still exist unchanged, and 

 the remainder have disappeared. Not one can 

 be shown to have been modified into a new 

 form, though some of them have been obliged, 

 'by changes of temperature and other condi- 

 tions, to remove into distant and now widely 

 separated regions." 



1 The Story of Earth and Man, p. 358. 



