146 EVOLUTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



preceded them have become much reduced in 

 size and numbers, though not absolutely extinct. 

 There is, however, one argument which may 

 be urged with some apparent force against 

 the continual perfection of development, which 

 is that the existing representatives of fossil 

 species are generally very inferior to them in 

 size, and sometimes in other qualities. Ponton * 

 goes so far as to assert that instead of the 

 strongest forms having prevailed, the powerful 

 animals which were well able to defend them- 

 selves have become extinct, while their weak 

 contemporaries have survived to our own day ; 

 and to urge this as a conclusive argument 

 against the theory of Natural Selection. It is 

 true that one might as soon compare a cat 

 with a lion, or a badger with a polar bear, as 

 a sloth with a megatherium ; and it would be 

 absurd to contend that the smaller animal was 

 the improved descendant of the larger. Still 

 it must be remembered that a dominant group 

 (with the exception of man, in whose case the 



* " The Beginning," p. 385. He neglects to inform us whether he con- 

 siders that the strong were destroyed, or the weak preserved by natural 

 or supernatural causes. 



