BIOLOGY 



organic evolution. The most reactionary theo- 

 logian would hardly venture to challenge the 

 conclusion that my friend who speaks nothing 

 but Italian came from Italy, even if I had first 

 believed that he travelled by steamer through 

 the Mediterranean and across the Bay of Biscay 

 and afterwards thought it more probable that he 

 came by rail through France and crossed from 

 Calais to Dover. Yet this is exactly the sort of 

 criticism that is even now being levelled at the so- 

 called Darwinian theory by people who are unable 

 to keep pace with the intellectual advance of their 

 generation. 



We can safely trust the labours of the palae- 

 ontologists to fill in more and more completely 

 the gaps in our knowledge, and enable us to 

 reconstruct in all important details the great tree 

 of organic life. Already their work has proved, 

 beyond the possibility of reasonable dispute, that 

 the theory of organic evolution is indeed founded 

 upon the rocks. 



That department of Biology to which the term 

 Systematic is more especially applied deals with 

 the classification of plants and animals, and evi- 

 dently overlaps all the other departments already 

 mentioned, for the systematist takes cognisance of 

 extinct as well as of living organisms, and bases 

 his conclusions on the observed facts of morpho- 

 logy, including even the microscopical structure 



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