et Imbecillitate Darwiniana. 63 



birth to some creature other than itself. 

 They breed so true. And yet, somehow or 

 other, somewhen or otherwhen, the thing 

 must have occurred, if descent has been un- 

 broken since the beginning. And it is cer- 

 tain, that the secret is somehow or other 

 connected with those weird blanks in the 

 record, the geological breaks. For after a 

 blank, we see that a change, sometimes 

 prodigious, has taken place in the life : new 

 forms have replaced the old : and we stand 

 before them with a feeling difficult to ana- 

 lyse, but akin to awe. How came those old 

 Cambrian, Silurian, Carboniferous periods 

 to begin or end ? By what natural magic 

 were produced in order the fishes, reptiles, 

 birds, and mammals, to say nothing of insects, 

 the most perfect, the most various, the most 

 incomprehensible of all q ? 



i Observe that insects appear very early : in the Silurian 

 age. See Goss On the Geological Antiquity of Insects, p. 6. 



