168 THE STORY OF LIFE'S MECHANISM. 

 SIGNIFICANCE OF THESE SOURCES OF HISTORY. 



The real force of these sources of evidence 

 comes to us only when we compare them with 

 each other. They agree in a most remarkable 

 fashion. The history as disclosed by fossils and 

 that told by embryology agree with each other, 

 and these are in close harmony with the history 

 as it can be read from comparative anatomy. If 

 archaeologists were to find in different countries 

 and entirely unconnected with each other two or 

 more different records of a lost nation, the belief 

 in the actual existence of that nation would be 

 irresistible. When researches at Nineveh, for 

 example, unearth tablets which give the history 

 of ancient nations, and when it proves that 

 among the nations thus mentioned are some with 

 the same names and having the same facts of 

 history as those mentioned in the Bible, it is 

 absolutely impossible to avoid the conclusion that 

 such a nation with such a history did actually 

 exist. Two independent sources of record could 

 not be false in regard to such a matter as this. 



Now, our sources of evidence for this history 

 of the living machine prove to be of exactly this 

 kind. We have three independent sources of 

 evidence which are so entirely different from 

 each other that there is almost no likeness 

 between them. One is written in the rocks, one 

 in bone and muscle, while the third is recorded 

 in the evanescent and changing pages of embry- 

 ology and metamorphosis. Yet each tells the 

 same story. Each tells of a history of this 

 machine from simple forms to more complex. 



