48 DARWmiAITA. 



pages^ but even wliole alternate chapters, have been 

 lost out, or rather which were never j^rinted from the 

 autographs of ]S'ature. The record was actually made 

 in fossil lithography only at certain times and under 

 certain conditions (i. e., at periods of slow subsidence 

 and places of abundant sediment) ; and of these rec- 

 ords all but the last volume is out of print ; and of 

 its pages only local glimpses have been obtained. 

 Geologists, except Lyell, will object to this — some of 

 them moderately, others with vehemence. Mr. Dar- 

 win himself admits, with a candor rarely displayed on 

 such occasions, that he should have expected more 

 geological evidence of transition than he finds, and 

 that all the most eminent paleontologists maintain 

 the immutability of species. 



The general fact, however, that the fossil fauna of 

 each period as a whole is nearly intermediate in charac- 

 ter between the preceding and the succeeding faunas, 

 is much relied on. "We are brought one step nearer to 

 the desired inference by the similar " fact^ insisted on 

 by all paleontologists, that fossils from two consecu- 

 tive formations are far more closely related to each 

 other than are the fossils of two remote formations. 

 Pictet gives a well-known instance — the general re- 

 semblance of the organic remains from the several 

 stages of the chalk formation, though the species are 

 distinct at each stage. This fact alone, from its gen- 

 erality, seems to have shaken Prof. Pictet in his 

 firm belief in the immutability of species " (p. 335). 

 What Mr. Darwin now particularly wants to complete 

 his inferential evidence is a proof that the same grada- 

 tion may be traced in later periods, say in the Tertiary, 



