156 Evolution of Animal Life. 



of a subject so vast as that of the evolution of animal life. Many 

 telling arguments in its favor must be neglected. 



The relations of island-life to the subject are most interesting, 

 but did not happen to come under the speaker's consideration. 

 Where islands are remote from a mainland, the type of life found 

 thereon is usually unlike in the two ; and in proportion to remote- 

 ness, so is difference. If streams and winds flow and blow from 

 the nearest mainland, the type of life in each is nearer alike than 

 is that of the island to that of any remote mainland. Under such 

 circumstances fossil life heightens the affiliation, just as it should 

 if evolution is true. When ocean-currents and trade-winds come 

 from a remote mainland toward the island, then the life is very 

 much unlike that of the near mainland, but markedly like that 

 of the remoter place. But even here there is not identity. New 

 varieties and new species exist in the two. The kinship is clearly 

 marked, but time has effaced identity by the efforts of natural se- 

 lection. Adaptation to new conditions has necessitated change. 



The story of geographical palaeontology is necessarily much 

 mixed because of innumerable migrations from country to coun- 

 try; but its general outlines are highly confirmatory of evolution. 

 Excluding the contrast of places in the North Temperate Zone be- 

 cause of undoubted pre-glacial migrations even across the arctic 

 region, and a number of telling facts can be adduced. Conditions 

 in the past isolated South America and Australia from such inva- 

 sions, and what do we find there, accordingly ? The fossil animals 

 of the latest tertiary rocks of the North Temperate Zone are like 

 the living animals of the same region, but unlike those of Aus- 

 tralia and South America. The same is the case of the last two 

 when contrasted with each other and with the former. South 

 America, for instance, contains Sloths and Armadillos, and its 

 rocks reveal the sloth-like Megatherium and the armadillo-like 

 Glyptodon. Its past fauna does not resemble that of Australia nor 

 Europe, but bears a striking resemblance to its own living forms. 



The theologic bearing of evolution has frequently been referred 

 to in the lectures of this course. That the doctrine is not anti- 

 theistic can be most successfully maintained. It certainly leaves 

 the God-idea free from the degrading implications of current 

 every-day thought. For a carpenter to make a chair may show 

 great human skill on his part; but his power would be infinitely 

 short of that of a being who could make a chair make itself. Even 

 so, a God that could make a world might be quite a skilful artizan; 

 but such a conception as applied to Deity is degrading. How 

 much more sublime is the thought of an Omnipotent Being who 



