BOOK VI 



THE MECHANISM OF THE PRODUCTION OF 

 NEW FORMS 



CHAPTER XXIII 



THE LAWS OF CONTINUOUS PROGRESS AND 

 THE APPEARANCE OF GROUPS 



Law of the late appearance of the higher types Discoveries making 

 against this law The epochs of the first appearances of groups 

 found to be more and more remote. 



THE notion of a continuous progress in the general 

 evolution of the animal kingdom from the earliest 

 fossil faunas down to Nature at the present day 

 has struck the mind of observers ever since the 

 very dawn of palaeontology. Cuvier had already 

 stated perfectly clearly the principal stages of 

 this progress, as I had occasion to demonstrate 

 above, when analysing the work of this great 

 naturalist. A little later, the masters of transform- 

 ism, Darwin, Wallace, Haeckel, etc., developed at 

 length this idea, which, in their hands, became 

 one of the principal arguments in favour of the 

 hypothesis of evolution. More recently still, differ- 

 ent palaeontologists have insisted afresh on the 

 gradual perfection of fossil animals, and in France 

 Gaudry has devoted his entire Essai de Palceontologie 



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