THE CREATION OF SPECIES 



let us say, of the ant the question might seem debat- 

 able. Be that as it may, it is assuredly not unnatural 

 that man should be supremely interested in the ques- 

 tion of his own ancestry; hence the assiduity with 

 which zoologists have sought to ascertain what man- 

 ner of creature it was from which the lowest 

 vertebrate directly sprang. It is this question, as 

 already intimated, which Professor Patten now thinks 

 himself able to answer. 



THE TRUE MISSING LINK 



The primitive ostracoderms which Professor Patten 

 now brings into the limelight, so to speak, had been 

 known for a good many years as obscure fossils 

 found in strata of the so-called Silurian period; but 

 no one had ascribed great importance to them until it 

 occurred to Professor Patten that the location of the 

 remains of these creatures in strata just above the 

 fossil sea scorpions and just below the earliest 

 fishes, taken with the peculiar formation of the ostra- 

 coderms themselves, suggested that the sea scorpions, 

 the ostracoderms, and the fishes, "represent three suc- 

 cessive stages in the evolution of the animal kingdom, 

 just as in the later periods the fishes, the amphibia, 

 and the mammals represent successive stages in the 

 evolution of the vertebrates." 



This is equivalent to suggesting that the ostra- 

 coderms are the true link between vertebrates and 

 invertebrates, which the classifiers had hitherto so 

 vainly sought. 



In attempting to satisfy himself as to the validity 

 of his theory, Professor Patten has searched far and 



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