Evidences of Evolution. 205 



the infancy of our own knowledge it was unanswer- 

 able, and the less we know of nature the more we 

 are impressed with these diversities. It is not, how- 

 ever, simply a question of whether evolution is true ; 

 but which is the more probable of two alternatives — 

 that all the phenomena which point in one direction 

 and which could have occurred in natural sequence, 

 have taken place in such sequence ; or that direct 

 creative intervention has ensued again and again, 

 when the same ends could have been produced with- 

 out such intervention. 



Nature was true to her disciple, and herself fur- 

 nished the replies. 



It was contended that if evolution were true, the 

 evidence should be forthcoming in the existence in 

 previous geological epochs of forms of a generalised 

 character intermediate between still earlier ones and 

 later widely separated forms ; and that of such there 

 were very few. 



The graves of the distant past gave up their dead, 

 and the ossuaries of our own far West yielded most 

 cogent testimony to the truth. Forms from the 

 Eocene and later beds, resurrected by the wand of 

 the anatomist, rising in successive lines behind the 

 wide gaps in the living files, proclaimed that all were 

 of one blood, and showed the genealogy of the con- 

 temporaries of man. 



Many were the forms thus connected. Few are 

 those that may be mentioned on this occasion. 

 The horse-like animals, the rhinoceroses, and tapirs, 

 are so unlike, that proof of their derivation from 

 one source might be thought to be impossible. But 



