PREFACE 



To gather stones and fallen boughs is soon to 

 ask, what may be done with them, can they 

 be piled and fastened together for shelter ? So be- 

 gins architecture, with the hut as its first step, 

 with the Alhambra, St. Peter's, the capitol at 

 Washington, as its last. In like fashion the amass- 

 ing of fact suggests the ordering of fact : when ob- 

 servation is sufficiently full and varied it comes 

 to the reasons for what it sees. The geologist 

 delves from layer to layer of the earth beneath 

 his tread, he finds as he compares their fossils 

 that the more recent forms of life stand highest 

 in the scale of being, that in the main the animals 

 and plants of one era are more allied to those 

 immediately next than to those of remoter times. 

 He thus divines that he is but exploring the 

 proofs of lineal descent, and with this thought in 

 his mind he finds that the collections not only 

 of his own district, but of every other, take on a 

 new meaning. The great seers of science do not 

 await every jot and tittle of evidence in such a 

 case as this. They discern the drift of a fact 

 here, a disclosure there, and with both wisdom 

 and boldness assume that what they see is but 

 a promise of what shall duly be revealed. Thus 

 it was that Darwin early in his studies became 

 convinced of the truth of organic evolution: 

 the labours of a lifetime of all but superhuman 



vV^ 



