140 HOMO V. DARWIX. 



answers " No." Even by crossing different species, nothing 

 has been effecteJ. The curse of sterility rests on all 

 creatures produced beyond the bounds set by Nature. They 

 are unable to propagate their kind. Thus, so far as ob- 

 servation and experiment go, they are both against Mr. 

 Darwin. 



The appeal to geology is equally vain. Though, if Mr. 

 Darwin's hypothesis be true, there must have been a series 

 of forms graduating from some lower form, not only up to 

 man, but up to every kind of creature at present living on 

 the earth, no one of these series of forms can be found ; 

 nor even such a portion of one of them as to afford ground 

 for belief that the series was a reality. 



If a few successive links in some one of these innumer- 

 able chains of descent could be produced, they would 

 speak, so far, convincingly on behalf of Mr. Darwin's 

 hypothesis. But, of the myriads of successive links, in 

 myriads of chains of animal descent which must have 

 existed if this hypothesis be true, not even two links can 

 be produced which so fit as to show that they once were 

 joined. I am aware that Professor Huxley, in a lecture 

 delivered by him on "The Pedigree of the Horse," stated 

 that the rocks show transitional forms, but he would entirely 

 fail in attempting to prove that the horse is descended from 

 any form different from itself. 



There are thus absolutely no facts either in the records 

 of geology, or in the history of the past, or in the expe- 

 rience of the present, that can be referred to as proving 

 evolution, or the development of one species from another 

 by selection of any kind whatever. Mr. Darwin himself is 

 so conscious of this that the whole of the evidence he 

 adduces in proof of his hypothesis is derived from those 

 points of similarity that exist between the bodily structure 



