222 Miscellaneous. 
The origin of all the diversity among living beings remains a mystery 
as totally unexplained as if the book of Mr. Darwin had never been 
written, for no theory unsupported by fact, however plausible it may 
appear, can be admitted in science. 
It seems generally admitted that the work of Darwin is particularly 
remarkable for the fairness with which he presents the facts adverse 
to his views. It may be so; but I confess that it has made a very 
different impression upon me. I have been more forcibly struck by 
his inability to perceive when the facts are fatal to his argument, 
than by anything else in the whole work. His chapter on the 
Geological Record, in particular, appears to me, from beginning to 
end, as a series of illogical deductions and misrepresentations of the 
modern results of Geology and Paleontology. I do not intend to 
argue here, one by one, the questions he has discussed. Such argu- 
ments end too often in special pleading; and any one familiar with 
the subject may readily perceive where the truth lies, by confronting 
his assertions with the geological record itself. But since the ques- 
tion at issue is chiefly to be settled by paleontological evidence, and 
I have devoted the greater part of my life to the special study of the 
fossils, I wish to record my protest against his mode of treating this 
part of the subject. Not only does Darwin never perceive when the 
facts are fatal to his views, but when he has succeeded by an ingenious 
circumlocution in overleaping the facts, he would have us believe 
that he has lessened their importance or changed their meaning. He 
would thus have us believe that there have been periods during which 
all that had taken place during other periods was destroyed,—and this 
solely to explain the absence of intermediate forms between the 
fossils found in successive deposits, for the origin of which he looks 
to those missing links; whilst every recent progress in geology 
shows more and more fully how gradual and successive all the 
deposits have been which form the crust of our earth.—He would 
have us believe that entire faune have disappeared before those were 
preserved, the remains of which are found in the lowest fossiliferous 
strata; when we find everywhere non-fossiliferous strata below those 
that contain the oldest fossils now known. It is true he explains 
their absence by the supposition that they were too delicate to be 
preserved; but any animals from which Crinoids, Brachiopods, 
Cephalopods, and Trilobites could arise, must have been sufficiently 
similar to them to have left, at least, traces of their presence in the 
lowest non-fossiliferous rocks, had they ever existed at all.—He 
would have us believe that the oldest organisms that existed were 
simple cells, or something like the lowest living beings now in exist- 
ence; when such highly organized animals as Trilobites and Ortho- 
ceratites are among the oldest known.—He would have us believe 
that these lowest first-born became extinct in consequence of the 
gradual advantage some of their more favoured descendants gained 
over the majority of their predecessors ; when there exist now, and 
have existed at all periods in past history, as large a proportion of 
more simply organized beings, as of more favoured types, and when 
such types as Lingula were among the lowest Silurian fossils, and are 
