38 THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE ANIMAL WORLD 



reproduced in very restricted regions, and have had 

 also to disappear rapidly through the competition 

 of varieties better endowed with the means of 

 supporting the struggle and more capable of spread- 

 ing by migrations over vast surfaces of the globe. 

 On the other hand, the continuity, necessary in the 

 transformist hypothesis, of animal forms slowly 

 modified from one stage to the other, is found to be 

 interrupted by the inevitable lacunae which the 

 order of sedimentary deposits implies and the im- 

 portance of which it is still difficult to appreciate. 



Lastly, and above all other arguments, Darwin 

 pleads the evident penury of palaeontological proofs. 

 Of the whole surface of the globe, Europe and part 

 of North America alone could be assumed, in 

 Darwin's time, to have been sufficiently examined 

 to have yielded a good part of the archives buried 

 under the soil. What may we not expect from the 

 future exploration of the immense territories of 

 Central Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America ? 

 ^All this reasoning, correct as it is to a certain 

 extent, cannot, however, take the place of the 

 necessary checking of the transformist theory by 

 facts, that is to say, by the exact and real reconstitu- 

 tion of the series of forms through which, during 

 the long series of geological ages, each of the exist- 

 ing types of living beings must have passed. Darwin 

 never dared to undertake this work of the recon- 

 struction of pedigrees, with one exception, which 

 is that relating to the descent of man. 



This burning question of the origin of man^was 

 too often made an objection to Darwin, either by 

 naturalists or, oftener, by philosophers and the 



