THE STUDY OF STRUCTURE. 349 



nature — the man who thinks and prays. Truly the 

 history of the world as a whole is the history of a 

 progressive development. Where will this development 

 lead us?" 



Discovery of Missing Links. — In trying to re- 

 construct the pedigree of a race reliance is placed 

 on three sets of facts, — (a) the grades of structure 

 exhibited among the living representatives, (h) the 

 steps in individual development, and (c) the evidence 

 of the race's history as found in the fossils of succes- 

 sive ages. The third method is the most direct, and 

 if the rock-record were complete, the facts of the his- 

 tory of life would be clear. 



The fossil-containing rocks have often been com- 

 pared to a library, with the oldest books on the lowest 

 shelves, but what a library ! Spoilt by fire, by water, 

 by earthquake, by decay ; here half a shelf a-wanting 

 and there a series of volumes with most disappointing 

 gaps ; pages out of books, words missing in sentences, 

 and the vowels a-wanting like the points in Hebrew. 

 One is troubled also by palimpsests, one record on 

 the top of another. 



It is important to realise this from the study of 

 strata, since there are still ill-natured people who 

 suggest that evolutionists simply take refuge in " the 

 imperfection of the geological record," when they 

 are getting the worst of an argument. The im- 

 perfection is a lamentable fact, and we cannot won- 

 der at it when we remember how young man is — his 

 whole history but a tick of the geological clock; 

 when we notice that many areas are still unexplored, 

 and that much ground — being covered by sea — must 

 remain unknown ; when we understand that only hard 

 organisms or hard parts are likely to be preserved, 



