OBJECTIONS AGAINST EVOLUTION. 153 



was, as is well known, based on the observed perma- 

 nence of divers species of the marine forms which 

 contributed towards the production of the coral reefs 

 of Florida. In his charming work, "Methods of Study 

 in Natural History," ' the illustrious Swiss savant 

 declares that " upon the lowest calculation, based 

 upon the facts thus far ascertained as to their growth, 

 we cannot suppose that less than seventy thousand 

 years have elapsed since the coral reefs already 

 known to exist in Florida began to grow." And 

 as there is reason to believe that the entire penin- 

 sula of Florida is formed " of successive concentric 

 reefs, we must," the same authority asserts, "believe 

 that hundreds of thousands of years have elapsed 

 since its formation began." 



Continuing, he writes : " So much for the dura- 

 tion of the reefs themselves. What, now, do they 

 tell us, of the permanence of the species of which 

 they were formed ? In these seventy thousand 

 years has there been any change in the corals living 

 in the Gulf of Mexico ? I answer, most emphat- 

 ically, No. Astraeans, porites, maeandrinas, and 

 madrepores were represented by exactly the same 

 species seventy thousand years ago as they are 

 now. Were we to classify the Florida corals from 

 the reefs of the interior, the result would corre- 

 spond exactly to a classification founded upon the 

 living corals of the outer reefs to-day. Every spe- 

 cies, in short, that lives upon the present reef is 

 found in the more ancient one. They all belong to 

 our own geological period, and we cannot, upon the 



1 Chap. xn. 



